More on Witness Voting

I just wrote this long response to a comment asking about voting and thought I might as well publish it as a post since I believe that many still have questions about it. Also, yesterday, I listened to a conversation between Justin Sun and some of the witnesses. they asked him to remove the votes on the 20 brand new witnesses that he set up. Now, at least 8 hours later - and a business day in his part of the world, that hasn't happened.
I have a feeling that many on Steem are voting for the fake witnesses right now because the word used to be to vote for number this to that. Let's make sure everyone voted for actual Steem witnesses - not for the take over ones.

Hope this helps.

Justin Sun bought Steemit - which is one of the frontends that run on the Steem blockchain. With that, he bought a bunch of Steem which was supposed to be used to pay for development on the blockchain. It is millions and millions of Steem.
The way witnesses go up in the ranking is based on the SP the voting accounts have. If you have a lot - you as one person can vote in witnesses and then do whatever you want instead of the community having a say in it.
The witnesses were concerned about this kind of misuse since Justin did not agree to communicate with them. The issued a soft fork to temporarily freeze the known accounts Steemit Inc was holding.
Justin got mad and convinced three exchanges to power up the steem they were holding - their customers steem - and vote in 20 witnesses he set up - basically computers run by him or his team. He promised the exchanges that he was going to do a hardfork on Steem that you can power down in one day - since it was not their Steem but that of their customers.
The community noticed what is going on and started to vote. Many people either didn't bother to vote for witnesses, didn't use all their 30 votes, or had a lot of votes going to witnesses far down from the top 20 - the top 20 are the decision-makers.
Many changed their votes to vote for the top-ranked that had a chance to make it into the top 20. We needed at least 4 to prevent a hardfork. Right now, we have 7.
These are the top witnesses we have in right now.

These are the ones you do not want to vote for

There are 20 all with the same setup. All of them are running version 0.22.5 as you can see. Do NOT vote for any of them and if you already did by accident, please remove your vote.

These screenshots are taken from steempeak where you can vote for witnesses. You can also vote on steemworld.org.
Just put your username with an @
https://steemworld.org/@ your user name
We, at the Freewritehouse account, are voting for the top Steem witnesses (and about 5 others further down). If you want, you can go to Account Details and enter freewritehouse as your proxy.

Just click on change proxy, enter freewritehouse, confirm with your active key - done...

Here is the Youtube Conversation

https://www.youtube.com/watch?time_continue=3&v=Ymms5Eayog8&feature=emb_logo

We now have a community!! Join the Freewriters!

• Go to https://beta.steemit.com/
• Sign in with your steem name and posting key
• Go to explore communities
• Join the Freewriters
  Post your Freewrite through the community if you wish or use # hive-161155 as your FRIST TAG on a dapp of your choice. Just make sure that they don’t put their own tag as the first.

Join us for the daily 5 - Minute Freewrite. Check my profile for a new prompt every day.

I am adding the CC tag to all prompt posts and to most of my other posts as well. You can earn Comment Coins simply by leaving a good comment. No spam please!!!

All images are my own unless otherwise cited.
Graphics made on Canva.

_{Animation By @zord189}

#SoCalSteemit is building and supporting the Steemit community of Southern California. If you are from SoCal and are into creating quality content here on Steemit, we'd love for you to follow us @SoCalSteemit and join our group on Discord!

Join @Actifit, become healthier by being active and earn as you walk. My referral link

Listen to the Sustainable Living Podcast here!

Join us at the Freewrite House for fun and games!!! Weekly drawing for SBI memberships and so much more!!

And get your Freewrite House Swag here