Flagging Abuse and Ending Censorship on Steem
Trending may not be particularly attractive, but it's not the only place where bots abuse the rewards pool. This bot is part of @berniesanders network, and has long been used to censor people by greying out their comments. Worse, in some folks minds, is that the botnet is essentially a circle jerk of self voting, as can be seen from the upvotes on this comment, all from the network of socks.
Please take action to flag this botnet that is being used to suppress human interaction on Steem social media, take rewards from the pool that would otherwise flow to content creators, and is nothing more than spam.
Note: I have lately been ignored by this botnet after having been serially flagged by it for some time. I am not posting this because of personal reasons. In fact, it is obvious that posting this is likely to be the cause of resumption of that serial flagging, and not personally beneficial. I point this out to preemptively refute accusations of personal reasons for my post here.
This is perhaps the most harmful botnet on Steem. Investigation I have undertaken reveals that this botnet has flown more flags than any other source on Steem to date. The comment accompanying these flags reveals they are being used to deliberately harm Steem while profiting from doing so, and not for any beneficial community purpose.
Take action to end this harm to Steem, or the consequences of censorship, abusive bots, and profiteering will continue to harm all of us that post here.
Thanks for reporting. Here's a link to the offending comments: https://steemit.com/@abusereports/comments
There are literally hundreds in the past couple days alone. All the same, all upvoted by the same 7 or 8 sock accounts to 0.04 USD.
My full downvote is only 0.02 so I can only take down half a comment on my own. Then I would be downvoted to zero as retaliation. Not sure I have enough SP or support to get into this battle.
Agree with you though, those comments are a major problem. I run across them from time to time, and wish the person behind them had never heard of Steem.
As you can see from the screenshot above, my 100% downvote only took the potential rewards self voted down to .03 Steem (Apparently half of what you can achieve). It doesn't matter that I cannot solve the problem myself. It matters that I do what I can. I'm not sure that this botnet can be outvoted by all minnows and dolphins combined. I actually suspect it cannot, because the stake was derived from the original ninjamine, and has been continually used to extract rewards via self voting since. However, the quest for ROI this user is on will impel them to change their behaviour long before their SP is outweighed. When it is reduced in profit more than it's harmful behaviour benefits it, it will either change behaviour, or prove incapable of reason.
I expect the strong profit motive will induce change in behaviour.
I do what I can, and that is all I can do. Do what you can, as you reckon is going to impact the environment in the best possible way. Thanks for the additional confirmation of this accounts harmful nature.
I saw another positive effect of HF21 today. The free downvotes have caused at least 1 of the mega whale upvoters to see a reduction in demand for votes. This caused them to decide to begin giving away free manually curated votes with their extra SP. My [Mission Agua Possible] project received one of those free votes today. And boom just like that, a real world market-induced change for the better, playing out in real time. Maybe I'm easily impressed by that, I dunno. It feels pretty big, pretty good. Until now all I've personally received from HF21 was misery, so this provided a needed morale boost.
Hey when you can't afford to put yourself on trending there isn't any better free publicity then to ruffle the feathers of the Bernster....wouldn't ya say?
LOL Can't say it did me any good to be on his bad side. Didn't hurt me none either though. I don't take any of it personally, except my own posts, and I don't take me very seriously. I have seem comment that some folks noticed I was on 'the list'. Maybe I did get a publicity boost as a result of his attention, but I only care much about that if it produces engagement, and hopefully valid criticism that can enable me to correct what I have got wrong.
Honestly, I doubt he notices my downvotes. They're really more philosophical than financial in impact.
I am sure that's because you are a real philosophical type of guy....lol, see ya around Ralph!
You don’t, little bitch.
You don't. I wouldn't even know why someone would want to even try....all he has to do is spend one day posting a gif of a burning trash dumpster to make up for any losses. It's all trivial to him, he's laughing all the way to the bank.
I agree in the concept of voting down bots.
It is such damaging behaviour to the future of the platform. A content creator or sponsor looks at this childish arrogant self absorbed circle jerked bullying and wonder why they would bother to invest their time, content or money. It seems like a great many have already abandoned the platform, and many more will follow.
So many that I have to suspend disbelief that it has been done intentionally.
20 hours and NOBODY gives a flying fuck what you think.
How does it feel so be so pathetic?
Since when is being right pathetic? I note the withering of the stream of rewards you have voted yourself as a result of my post, at least on this comment, which I flagged for being self voted.
Your ROI will be increased by forthright curation, since it seems flags will be forthcoming on your self voting.
It may be difficult to not spend all your VP on harming others and aggrandizing yourself directly, but you may be able to learn how to aggrandize yourself as a secondary affect of upvoting others. That is the claimed purpose of EIP.
Roll with it, and profit.
I am 100% on board. Giving most of my SP to this cause going forward.