The question mark in the title is no accident.

I spent this morning reviewing a couple of communities that are connected via their creator (admin) and what I considered to be suspicious usernames. Upon investigation, everything felt wrong - details of which can be seen below.

But before I hit submit, I checked a few things - specifically, the rules for booming support:

1. 2 upvotes per user per week
2. Use of #steemexclusive
3. Cannot have been upvoted by steemcurator01 or 02
4. 3-4 upvotes to community accounts per week
5. No bid-bots.

It turns out that what I considered to be abuse, was allowable within the rules of booming.

I had made the decision earlier, not to share the post because it would be unfair to those who despite in my opinion are abusing their booming privilege, are technically innocent.

So I have removed all usernames and direct identifiers of who the users are and which communities I'm referring to.

I hope this is an appropriate prompt for the booming rules to be updated.

Here is my original post, followed by some thoughts...

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Source

The story is becoming a familiar one. Users slowly build their way into a position of power, get access to a steemcurator or booming account and become corrupted - abusing it for their own use.

This user's slightly different, he was caught plagiarising almost a year ago - seeing him get banned from Community A. Today, he's the administrator of 4 communities, 2 are part of the booming programme and I have no doubt there are plans for the other 2 to get added too. He's also recently been appointed to one of the steemcurator teams.

The user in question is "Mr Administrator" and this is when he blamed his wife for posting plagiarised content:

ok, no problem, there was a little problem on that page since my wife helps me with the publications, I did not realize that she had made that type of publication, she made a mistake and well I accept my mistake, thanks for your collaboration, but it is my responsibility and I assume it. (Translation)

I've highlighted 2 communities in question and will highlight some of the accounts that have received booming support in each, thanks to February's support data.

Plagiarism aside this post is about booming abuse, my focus being on the top accounts and I have selected a handful of users (for reasons that will become clear later). I shall keep each table separate.

Community 1

Author	Upvotes
communityaccount1	11
User 1	8
User 2	7
User 3	7
User 4	7
User 5	4
User 6	2
User 7	1
User 8	1

Community 2

Author	Votes
communityaccount2	12
User 1	8
User 4	7
User 2	7
User 3	7
Mr Administrator	5
User 6	4
User 5	4
User 8	1

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Ok, so not unusual for a community account to upvote itself more than any of its users... and Mr Administrator has shown restraint in only upvoting himself 5 times. So a combined 28 votes to Mr Administrator in his various guises.

Shared Wallets

You'll be familiar with this bit by now so I'll be brief.

User 1, User 5 and User 8 all share wallets.
User 2, User 3, User 4, User 6 and User 7 all share wallets.

Also notice the pattern with usernames. A minor detail.

So we've been through the wallet debate before. It's good evidence but we can't expect community leaders to check wallets when selecting posts for booming.

So here are their club5050 / booming eligibility for the months of December and January - I've chosen to exclude February to avoid the argument that they left club5050 after receiving their upvotes.

User 1

User 2

User 3

User 4

User 5

User 6

User 7

User 8

Credit to @starlord28 for the charts

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I've been reliably informed that club5050 isn't mandatory for booming support though, it's just preferred.

All of the accounts listed above post exclusively in communities run by Mr Administrator.

Hopefully Mrs Administrator isn't responsible.

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I have not reviewed the accounts that have received fewer votes because this type of analysis takes time and I've spent too much time recently writing posts about people abusing the power which Steemit has entrusted upon others.

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Obviously, I'm recommending that Steemit removes booming support from these 2 communities with immediate effect.

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Thoughts

That was my original post.

It's worth noting the following:

• No users are in club5050.
• No users are powering up.
• Money is being withdrawn.
• Posting exclusively in communities run by this admin.
• 8 users share wallet addresses.

78 booming upvotes to these 8 users in February.
28 booming upvotes to Mr Administator and his community accounts.

Every user has their rewards sat in their wallet, untouched. Here is one example.

The delegation is noteworthy too. Every account has delegated to the community account, earning them a "⭐ delegator" label - giving them the right to larger community account curation and increased booming "potential".

In addition, the community accounts upvote each other.

To quote somebody else:

No wonder some users get sad, frustrated, power down and leave.