RE: Are tribe apps actually used, or only their tags?
Happy about what precisely?
If you mean that they have the most TL posts, not really surprised considering the nature of their content.
It's shortform, many don't have any text, easy to repost / recycle from other sites so no wonder they would be able to smash that metric. (Assuming that is what you are referring)
I am still wary of them after confronting one of their leader / promoters engaging in comment spam w/out apology which makes me question the ethics of the team.
Chief concern is the app could potentially be used as a vote farming front. As you know, our community has been deceived more times than I'd care to admit.
I hope you have a better idea and can assuage my fears. In any case, very glad Crokkon pulled the data as it gives us something to perhaps have situational awareness about.
For them, numbers are everything. It's very likely going to be a major headache as far as abuse, but perhaps in the future STEEM rewards will be few and far between and they'll be in control of what content the appics token goes to.
Spent some time reviewing the posts on their tag and seems genuine; albeit, some single image posts appear fairly overvalued due to Rancho / Haejin votes. I did a few reverse image searches w no hits so looks good so far for image plag. / recycling.
Nothing appears to be overt but there was this sponge-bob account had a couple single image posts that had suspect voting but for the most part, it looks clean.
!ENGAGE 25
@anthonyadavisii you have received
25 ENGAGEfrom @abh12345!View and trade the tokens on Steem Engine.