I'm being targeted for a downvote campaign.

Hi folks. I've been mostly quiet with Steemit for a while. I've been here lurking. I've been helping out behind the scenes with a couple of Steemit-based projects. And I've been dealing with a lot of stuff at home!

However, I thought I'd let you know about something a little bit different for me! This is special. This is the first time I've ever been targeted for cyber-harassment, with dozens of downvotes.

The funniest part is, they are taking all this time, but it has had no effect on my payouts or reputation score whatsoever.

They are donning their cowardly "Anonymous" Guy Fawkes masks and trying to intimidate me. To be honest, their adolescent pranks pretty much flew under my radar, because they had no effect. But, what triggered them into attacking little old me?

You see, for the past several weeks, I've been informally working with the group @SteemFlagRewards. Basically, if I see something particularly spammy or annoying on the Steem blockchain, I highlight it and report it to others. I try to get bots that upvote spam to unvote. I've reported mostly plagiarism and dubious links to illegal and copyrighted movies. As a content creator and entertainer myself, this sort of intellectual property stealing goes against my moral ethos.

Because of that, I've handed out dozens of downvotes to trolls and schemers and thieves. I feel like, if I've got this extra Steem Power laying around, I might as well put it to some good. The good I see is taking away from spammy scammers, that way more can be in the hands of the honest users of the platforms. As an added bonus, I get it little upvote from Steem Flag Rewards when I do this. Spammers hidden, good content rises to the top, and I get rewards. I also upvote the people on the same mission of cleaning the blockchain. It's a dirty job, but in the end it's a win-win-win.

^{Here I am, petitioning @introduce.bot to unvote spam for illegal movie downloads. Then the spammers come by with their $0.00 downvotes! Oh, my!}

I also hope that if producing crap on the blockchain is less rewarding for them, that a few of them will eventually give up. Or even better, maybe they will change their ways and start producing original and valuable material.

I just wanted to give you an update, to let you know that I'm not dead. It's also a message out there to the trolls to let you know that I'm not intimidated. I've been dealing with trolls since the 1980s and the early days of the Internet and Usenet forums. It was laughable then, and laughable now. I do not find cowards hiding behind masks as scary.

Here's the thing. I'm not doing this for the $0.05 upvotes. I don't really care about the downvotes. I have two jobs, a house over my head, and food on my table. I would like the real content creators to get their due, and the spammers and scammers to disappear. Is that too much to ask?

Keep doing good, people!

Credits

• Logos below of the Freelancer's Guild and The STEEM Engine Initiative owned by the respective groups.