PLEASE JOIN ME IN FLAGGING A SHIT POST & REWARD POOL ABUSER
If you have been following the current saga that is @grumpycat and the #abuse, #rewardspoolrape etc tags you would know that he:
- is a whale
- has taken (and rightfully so) a dim view and soon to be very heavy handed stance against those that attempt to abuse the system and take from the community through the use of last minute vote buying
So what is this last minute vote buying thing?
In its most basic form, a user (typically a dickhead) waits until the last day before post payout and then spam purchases a metric shit ton of votes from various vote sellers. This deprives the greater community of due time to evaluate the quality of the post and downvote accordingly if the rewards are not commensurate with the quality of the post.
In most instances, these will be “shit posts” like this:
https://steemit.com/love/@pradeeprajora/107-love-quest
This one being nothing more than a stolen FB image, and certainly not worthy of nearly $60 SBD for his plagiaristic efforts. You will also find these a lot with stolen Youtube videos, links to google news articles etc. All fall into the category of non informative shit posts that do nothing but dilute the truly valuable original content produced by hard working authors.
While I doubt the shameless knob jockeys that engage in this type of behavior make a ton of $$$ they are still depriving more deserving posts of just rewards. Additionally their self centered, non community based fuck everyone else purchasing habits only perpetuate the problem and encourage vote sellers to continue upvoting posts last minute as they are getting paid regardless.
While the vote sellers are the root of the problem, they have sufficient means to insulate and protect themselves from 99 percent of Steemit users save the larger whales. Accordingly it is not a winning strategy to go after them if you are a minnow or dolphin as they are a large well funded and aggressive army that will counterstrike your account into oblivion. So how can we combat the problem?
When facing any well organized or superior force avoid a frontal assault destined for failure, in fact avoid the army in its entirety. Instead go after the farmers that grow the wheat to feed the army, burn the fields, burn their houses to the ground, kill their livestock and make it a non cost effective endeavor to engage in supplying the aforementioned army. Or in this case, make it very cost prohibitive to buy votes at the last minute in the hopes of fucking over the reward pool like a total self centered douche.
My fellow stemians, whom do create excellent content, who put in the work, do you believe a stolen FB image deserves $60 SBD in proceeds. Do you think it is good practice for the community to engage in this type of conduct? Trying to skirt the system and over reward your posts before anyone can react? If not, downvote the living shit out the post I mentioned and any others like it you find along the way. I have led the charge for what it is worth and given my 100 percent downvote. Now it’s your turn to stand up for the overall health and well being of our beloved Steemit community and stomp these cockroaches out of existence.
Related Articles:
https://steemit.com/steem/@grumpycat/warning-to-vote-buyer-sellers-introducing-grumpycompliance-mandatory-in-14-days-no-post-promotion-allowed-after-3-5-days
https://steemit.com/steem/@grumpycat/random-selection-of-vote-purchases
@crytographic Any idea what rule I would of broken to have caught a flag on this one from uradick.. or is it just someone being a dick and exercising their own agenda on a neutral post..
I've reviewed the history on Steemd. It seems to upvote quite a number of whales including Bernie. Not sure if it has something to do with some beef with Grumpy cat. I saw 100% downvotes against him and checkthisout. You caught a 37%. It'd be interesting to see if someone can put together a mapping of the steemit beefs. Obviously contentjunkie and grumpycat are one as are Haejin and Bernie. More drama than a soap opera, amirite?
You are right, I noticed the up voting patterns were suspect as well. Basically as stated above, just a dick exercising his own agenda irrespective of post quality.
Apparently an informative post about people farming the rewards pool hurt someones delicate sensibilities and they downvoted/flagged based on that, and not a legitimate reason.
Fairly typical for those that can't attack their actual target due to a lack of SP to go after lesser members that may have posted an opinion potentially pro someone they don't like.
Basically a sad move, reflective of self loathing, and self hatred by a person whom as a child was likely molested by the family dog.
Is what it is..
I do wish he would of had the testicular fortitude to comment or at least provide his reasoning.
Either way I'm happy for the exposure so its a win. I also suspect that it will eventually go positive at some point, if grumpy or someone counterstrikes the downvote with an upvote. I don't care if it gets the post up to .01.. as that will get rid of the need to click the extra tab to see the content. I do wish some more folks would upvote it though. 450 views and 43 upvotes, we can do better... :)... Thank you for your comment..
Alphabet has hired people full time to read and study steemit, Im done being genuine here. What is the point to better inform our future slavemasters?
https://steemit.com/google/@heimdallr/google-is-up-to-something
As for grump Im pretty sure his reasoning is similar to mine,
Im here because I need money,
Vote buying is marketing and everyone who is selling something needs marketing.
You get what you buy for votes and using it has shown me that more people are attracted to the dollar value of a post than anything that is being said inside.
Ive been doing it for two weeks now after 17 months of acting just like you suggest I can now say I may one day decades from now have a chance to actually compete here.
Steemit is nothing more than a marketing research tool now,
You sell a character that may or may not be you and none is the wiser,
This place is getting to me, Im done with interacting here unless necessary like everyone else who is here just for the money,
Unlike grumpy,
Im feeling hopeless.
#neutralpost :)
@uradick is FOLLOWING @grumpycat and @checkthisout, and downvoting what they are doing.
I would imagine that INSPIRING others to downvote unsuspecting and naive minnows would fit in a similar category.
I would hardly call your image "neutral"
Image is an image, to get attention to a shit post. Nothing more nothing less.. Regardless I did not post it alone and upvote myself 60SBD at the last minute...Basically its a downvote based on hurt feelings or disagreement over content, neither of which are proper reasons for down voting.. Its o.k. though I'll take the exposure and be happy for that... :)
Instead of trying to incite flag wars against minnows, take a look at what @upme is doing - https://steemit.com/steemit/@upme/upme-ban-list-update-1-9-2018.
A MUCH more proactive, positive, and (I'm sure) effective approach.
Grumpy is lining his pockets with $240 upvotes for his -$90 flags, and YOU are getting caught in the cross-fire
I'm perfectly content to be caught in the crossfire... It means I'm in the fight.. If you read my most recent article, this comment or comments like this were mentioned. I am not aligned to Grumpy, nor do I care what he is doing with his money. That is outside the scope of this article. I pointed out one policy of his that I agree with. That said I may disagree with other actions of his or have no comment due to lack of interest or knowledge .
I also fail to see the positive side to what upovote is doing. Its just a vote seller trying to go on a PR campaign and pull the wool over the eyes of the ignorant. The truth of the matter is that vote sellers in any form should be abolished from the system in entirety. No matter how you slice it, their very existence corrodes the purist ideals of the original Steemit that good content should be promoted based on Merit not on purchasing power.
Also let my current account which is a mere month and change old provide proof positive that an author can do just fine without purchasing a single vote. They just have to create good content, engage their audience and pick topics that sell to write about. If a person is unable to do that, then they should not be here, they should sink to the bottom and they should make way for content that will improve the site by bringing in more unique visitors through the serps. They should not be allowed to stay afloat with their mediocre offerings through vote purchasing schemes.
Also not inciting a flag war against a minnow. I was pointing out bad behavior that farms the rewards pool. Yes that one user may be negligible in the grand scheme of things, but 1000's of users engaged in that type of behavior could be quite detrimental to the overall health of the site.
Your own words apply to all, no? -
"Regardless of the politics involved he is using permissible site features in a way that he feels will benefit him, he is not breaking the rules and thus whatever the issue is, it is a site issue and not a user issue."
Grumpy's rule is not even a rule - it is simply a threat which bots can choose to enforce to avoid the unpleasantness.
You seem to want to back away from the title of this post - "please-join-me-in-flagging-a-shit-post-and-reward-pool-abuser".
Your words speak just as loudly as your other words.
I"m not backing away at all.. I stand behind what I said.. I'm just not part of some imaginary faction on the site. You seem to want to place me in a club or niche with grumpycat, which is not the case. I like the idea of crushing bots selling votes.. Other policies of his I may not agree with.. You need to remove your desire to place me and grumpycat as buddy buddy which is the take away I'm getting from your comments. I have no control over the man or his money. To that end I agree in many cases with what bernie does but I don't particularly like him or his application, I don't like the fact that he lines his pockets with his vote selling service or engages in flag wars, but on occasion he does some good.. In those instances I agree, others I don't.. No different here.. I am about the policy of killing rewards pool farming and vote bots in general.
No, I understand. I quoted you in wondering why it didn't apply to @pradeeprajora, who violated no rule of Steemit.
@sugeelson and his @upme bot have provided a list of other shit posters that you might train your sights on.
Steem is still young. It's certainly chaotic, but there's enormous opportunity right now. There's a lot of excessively compensated content, but there's also a lot of more blatant abuse. My current strategy is to focus downvoting on the most clear cases of abuse and generously upvote legitimate content. The goal is to shift the culture of the network by attracting productive members and deterring the most destructive ones. We can't take on all the problems at once, but if we plant seeds for the right kind of community there will be increasing competition for rewards through high quality posting. Stay optimistic.
@pivi and @sianer: When you downvote my comments to try to reduce their visibility, I'm likely to counter with upvotes even when otherwise I wouldn't upvote them. The end result is likely to be both higher visibility and higher payouts for me than if you just left them alone.
Seems like a perfectly acceptable counter strategy to me.. I find it amusing how so many of the people that act like dicks, fail to see how their efforts are in most instances counterproductive. Much in the same way that when bernie started going after my posts with his bots and using rando to crush my posts, over the next few days my rep and post values actually went up to well in excess of what they would of been had he not attacked me. Nobody likes a dick... Thanks for bringing my post back to life.. your the man..
I agree with your strategy, and as I build this account I will be able to take a more proactive role in both promotion and demotion of content based upon its usefulness to the platform and community as a whole.
And as I mentioned, the vote selling Army or a member thereof down voted this post proving my aforementioned assertions.
This post was not inflammatory, contained no hate speech or otherwise offensive material, it simply ran contrary to their profit machine and served to enlighten Steemians as to how their practices, in the end, do nothing but damage to the platform.
That said I am not a fan of abusive voting practices in any regards, nor have I aligned myself with any particular faction though I may find some commonality in the beliefs and actions of some users irrespective of other practices they may have that I do not agree with.
To that end, a down vote/flag here was basically a pointless dick move.
Regardless I always end up better for it in the end and the posts usually do better when someone shows their ass and attacks me for no particular reason.
Communities hate bullies, in fact people in general tend to dislike them.
Also if you are going to flag/down vote at least man up and have the testicular fortitude to leave a comment as opposed to lurking in the shadows like some trench coat wearing exhibitionist awaiting the chance to lunge out and flash his wiener.
Comment, I challenge you to debate. I challenge you to treat this like a community and work out our problems through productive conversation. I have the requisite grey matter between my ears to go point/counter point with any and all takers.
@grumpycat has also bid on 6th day voting bots within the last 11 days. @grumpycat also abuses self-bidding. (I bid on myself to get more visibility in this huge list of replies)
I have also started something called the Grumpy Report
It's a sporadic report that appears when @grumpycat has taken victims intended to notify each other and build a temporary guild in order to recoup losses from the downvotes.
To be honest I'm not sure a blanket rule vigilante approach is the way to go. It punishes some that don't do as OP has suggested. Some people might also put effort into their posts and still use upvote bots, whether in the first day or the last it doesn't really make a difference - and by flagging these posts you're basically invalidating the investment they made, whether or not you agree with the investment vehicle.
Target the individual users that you believe are doing the wrong thing, but the community should be able to handle it as a whole, not as a coordinated vigilante effort.
Or the platform should be adjusted to cater for the exploits that people have found.
I think there is a dramatic difference with regards to intent if the votes are purchased on the first day or the last day. If an author purchases them on the first day, they are trying to get noticed in an honest fashion. They are trying to promote their post while providing the community with ample time to disagree if they so choose. When votes are purchased on the last day, it is not about promoting good content that betters the site, it is about an (investment) or giving a little SBD to collect more SBD in return. Basically, there is no other plausible explanation than that of trying to enrich oneself just before the post is about to pay and before anyone can prevent it. In the example I mentioned if I look at that users blog, this is a repetitive pattern that he engages in and that is not the only post. If we have 1000 users doing that then it becomes a very serious problem.. thank you for your comment.
Fact of the matter is, SBD and STEEM are financial instruments. I read another post a while back about it being frowned upon when people power down and withdrawal their steem.
Not sure if you share that opinion. But it can't be both ways. If people are going to keep funds in the platform, invested or earnt, then they're going to want to see a return on those funds. If the platform isn't supposed to operate in that way then there is something wrong with the platform that needs to be addressed from a design and functionality perspective.
What you're fighting is essentially human nature. If I have $1000 to add to steem, I'm doing it on the proviso that I'm expecting that $1000 will grow. It's the same if I earn $1000 within the platform and choose not to withdraw it. I only keep it there because I expect growth, one way or another.
I appreciate the healthy and respectful discussion about this matter.
No worries, and I can certainly see your point. That said I think much of the issue has to do with the platform itself, it's limitations, it's flaws and the openness that has allowed vote selling operations to spring roots here and flourish. I think that vote selling in many ways goes against the original intent of the platform to allow users to decided what content is the best and enrich the overall health of the site. They are basically a little black market niche and human nature finding a way to create additional profit. In all I can not blame the individual users as they are simply manipulating the tools available to them to their benefit, just as I do when I downvote them. The platform needs fixing, vote sellers need to be eradicated and we need to get back to the purest form of the platform where good content is promoted organically.
i do think that vote selling performs a purpose as well. Currently - pretty much the only way to climb the ranks so to speak is to either use vote bots, or have some whales that vote generously. There is too much of a gapbetween the votes of a minnow and the votes of a whale.
I had a post the other day that had something like 65 votes. They were all minnows, so it yielded me around 0.20 in rewards. for something that has that much interest I would expect it to be much higher. If i had just 1 whale it could have been in the hundreds.
Downvote countered, at least for now.
Solid move sir, solid move... You sir, are a stud.. That said, thank you for standing up for the community as a whole and being a solid all around guy.. Here have .04 rebate... :)
Another prime example of plagiarists getting paid too much. I'd be pretty stoked with a payout like that, and all he did was copy paste.
I went ahead and flagged, but my flag was ineffective and did nothing. It's frustrating, to say the least, when I put serious time and effort into all my posts to make sure they are 100% original. Flags are not used enough buying votes should be frowned upon.
Curation is an important part of this platform, and if I can just auto-curate a high payout from a shit post it is only going to bring negative attention.
When I joined I was excited about viewing and sharing original content. Curating content comes with the job. I read the Welcome page, I read the warnings telling me if I don't follow these specific guidelines I will have a hard time making money.
So of course, I do what anyone with good intent does, I follow the guidelines. Then I see posts like the one you mentioned making a stupid amount of money that actually makes me a little jealous because not only am I not going to step to that low level, but even if I did, I'd get caught.
I'm certain if I even remotely tried to plagiarize, I'd be caught and flagged before I could reach my current reputation level.
but then I see accounts with reputation 50+ posting nothing but garbage and copy/paste jobs. All I can do is keep moving forward, stay positive, keep posting. So I do. I just think that whales need to do their jobs. I wrote a post about vote buying. It needs to stop. It's one thing getting upvote from minnowsupport to get a little boost. It's another to upvote a shit post on the 6th day from a whale account.
Things like this that can make the value go down.
I agree with you 100 percent. I likewise believe that the "self policing" aspect of the community needs to be stepped up quite a bit. I to get frustrated as fuck when I see garbage posts continually getting high payouts or those with high reputation posting garbage cut and paste horseshit. I know you put work in to your posts as do I and I have only had one post over $60 and I had to get downvoted first.. Hell the vast majority I get less than $1.00 for my effort and it take me an hour or more to put them together sometimes. I tend to do better in terms of consistency with comments. Basically this platform needs some stricter policies and stiffer penalties for failure to adhere to them.. ... you got my .05... :) trying to recharge my SP...
I just recently quit cigs so I am a bit scatter brained -- I wrote above that I would step to that low level, I meant that I would not and have edited it.
Definitely needs stricter policies. However; this isn't to say centralized policies. We are to police each other and ourselves. The stiffer penalties would come from the users.
In the same way that we have a "Minnowsupport group" we need the same for plagiarists and it shouldn't be monitored by or left to bots. There are whales fighting each other threatening to take their accounts down to zero rep while also turning a blind eye to other whales possibly abusing saying "They can do whatever they want it's their stake!" If I was a plagiarist, I would see this as a golden opportunity to slip by the cracks for major profits and that is exactly what's happening, even if by accident If this much effort went to plagiarists I think my rewards would be higher. I am pretty content with my rewards, though.
So then they go and take over $200 from one post on the 6th day. Some even get it done bright and early and no one notices. When the plagiarist account gets paid, what do they do? Send it straight to bittrex or blocktrades and they play the crypto market with stolen work and undeserved earnings.
I feel that at the very least, you and I deserve that money in the sense that if his plagiarism is worth $200 ours is unimagineably more valuable. Aussieninja is definitely deserving of this kind of reward too.
There are users who literally upload chicken scratch drawings or even illustrate their short story with it and get paid a fraction. While they are given a lot encouragement, the whale who sold an upvote needs to be upvoting the guy who is learning to draw, posting chicken scratch. They are more deserving of it then the plagiarist. I can go to any tag and find 100 posts that are more deserving, but it's all because whales are lazy and plagiarists take advantage of their laziness. If no one who is legit would dare buy a vote (unless it's some kind of community approved thing like minnowsupport, which only requires a 1 time super small fee anyways) then only plagiarists would buy votes, making them easier to spot. Whales would be yelled at for upvoting trash and the upvote selling business would crumble, rightfully so. As you said, take out their farms and food supply. Whales who do not comply would then be considered scammers so even if they are, they'd be inclined to stop scamming in order to protect their investment.
But where did the rewards go? To a plagiarist, effectively giving the plagiarist trading power. Trading power that I want, but wouldn't even dare cash it out because powering up is 10x better.
I see a lot of good curation too, but to be honest even some of the good/proper curation that I see the user had to buy an upvote just to get the exposure.
Didn't think this comment would get so long.
Totally agree, in that the platform needs fixing and that while I may not like the idea of centralized policies, they are what allows a business to be truly successful and consistent in the long term. Look at FB, I wish they had a coin I could buy. They are centralized and have a leadership structure that lays out goals, targets plans and makes it happen. This being opposite of Steemit where it seems like policy changes are nothing more than a circle jerk of people agreeing, not agreeing and in the end nothing happens because we can't just hurt a few folks feelings and move on with an action that works towards the overall betterment of the site.
That's exactly right. A circle jerk of people agreeing but nothing happens. Then the flags come in because you've pointed out the bullshit flying around.
Stolen images and buying votes at the last minutes is clearly a bad thing to do, but the worst I've ever seen is people creating a post with maybe one word on it and then generate a lot of self-comments and upvoting every single one. Damn it hurts...
Yeah that is pretty bad...
Hey @pawsdog I️ came across this in my feed and I️ honestly don’t want to see this type of stuff on steem it. Is this the type of post your talking about?
https://steemit.com/sexy/@velly/the-perfect-latina
While I think it is certainly garbage, I am not seeing that he bought votes at the last minute to beat the system and deprive the community the opportunity to disagree.. But I hate those types of posts as they are trash, but simply disagreeing with the content is not grounds to flag unfortunately. Then again its likely a stolen image.. either way it would be a shit post but I am not sure if I have justification to flag it
Got it. Flagging somthing you don’t like is also pretty bad too, it was resteemed by resteem bot definitely not sombody I️ follow. Thanks for your response cause I’m so with you on making steem it a great community!!
Yeah, otherwise we open the door to flag me just because someone does not like an article I wrote etc. I agree there is a ton of trash on here and hopefully we will get that cleaned up. I'm really not a fan of #nsfw as it, to me, lessens the quality of the overall site.. But is what it is I suppose. I'm just trying to catch people that obviously steal images or that try and buy votes at the last minute to beat the system.
Probably stole that crap from IG but, tbh, their resteem service is also culpable for promoting it.
True, very true. It is quite the little black market so to speak that they have established here. I think that vote purchasing at its core goes against the primary concept of steemit in that users are responsible for upvoting and rewarding the best content based on its merit. To that end I basically believe that they should be banished in entirety from the platform so as we can get back to the purist ideals of content promotion the platform was built on.
^Absolutely this.
Oh shit my VP is getting low. I better take a break lol.
Never enough VP... lol.. Never enough..
I looked at the wallet of @pradeeprajora and noticed he was sending all of his SBD to two other accounts, @rajorajiten and @deepverma. Both accounts are pulling the same "shit post" upvote buying scheme and since they are using the same selfie pictures, I assume they all accounts are owned by the same person. I threw some flags on the posts getting ready to payout. Feel free to join me in flagging these "shit posts":
https://steemit.com/art/@deepverma/rangoli
https://steemit.com/photo/@deepverma/selfy
https://steemit.com/love/@rajorajiten/trouser-test
https://steemit.com/business/@rajorajiten/business-promotion
https://steemit.com/love/@rajorajiten/7w4yir-baby-love
ON it...did what I could and hit them each with a flag.. I will make a post about these in a bit as a standalone.