Today, Lagiaguara goes back to the case of @petervi, brought to light by @ilgiaguaro in this post.

Image source

In short, this user is an inveterate plagiarist, who steals frames from other people's videos. Not satisfied, he uses bid bots on plagiarized posts to increase his reputation (actually, 68) and rewards.

We have flagged some post, but he didn't interrupt his activity. On the contrary, since some bidbot probably doesn't accept purchases from the @petervi account anymore, he has changed the account to buy upvotes. Mainly @deven11 and @techmax, as we can see from the screenshots below:

Source of screenshot

Source of screenshot

LET'S INVESTIGATE DEEPER!

In this article, we conduct a deep investigation. We will show that @petervi, @techmax and @deven11 are accounts under control of the same person.
Can we prove it?
Yes we can, of course. The fairness of the blockchain is the traceability of every single action!

FACTS

We see @petervi's transfers to his bittrex account named 87306d19097445aebe8

We have learned that every bittrex memo states a unique account, as also shown in our post about Yanik's ring case.

Thus, we can see who's using (and who used) the bittrex account marked by memo 87306d19097445aebe8:

Surprise surprise! A well-stocked list: 13 accounts, since September 2018, are transferring money on same Bittrex account: the aforementioned and still in use 87306d19097445aebe8. Another memo was shared, 42c7b063fc8c414d8f8, used between February and November 2018, decommissioned after a massive ban that led to the abandonment of old accounts and to the creation of new ones.
Let's see them specifically, besides @petervi, @techmax and @deven11 there are:

@vegasteem
@harrybell
@marverick984
@punjolife
@chotho
@techlife
@biomanu
@pario
@mike11
@amity123

We can see a poor imagination choosing names: 11, tech and life appear several times...

But, seriously, let's check all users on the list. We're not pasting here all the screenshots, but everyone could check: every single account was repeatedly flagged by cleaners, then blacklisted or even permanently banned in October 2018.

Let's read:

PERMANENTLY BANNED. Part of multiple account scam ring revolving around the theft of various art and posting as own. Also persistent plagiarism of recipes

Exactly what still today @petervi keeps on doing, as well as other two accounts mentioned @techmax and @deven11.

Need some proof of plagiarism regarding the two accounts not yet considered?
Here, let's see one of the latest @techmax posts. In fact, we find same species of plagiarism and same modus operandi of @petervi: a picture stolen from a youtube video, concurring to Colorchallenge photo-contest:

techmax post

Source of plagiarism: Video on youtube, see still image cropped around 0:15.

Here is the “delicious bruschetta with peppers” by @deven11: stolen from Youtuber Sarah Carey (min. 3:56)

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Now, to have a complete picture of the situation, let's see the comparative timeline of all profiles:

Note: @amity123 account has been reactivated, we see him voting another account that contains exclusively copy/paste, @fiftysats. And @chotho's account has never completely interrupted the activity, upvoting and earning SP.

CONCLUSION

We have evidence that "new" accounts @petervi, @techmax and @deven11 are connected in a ring with previously blacklisted or banned abusers. We see them committing bid bot abuses and plagiarism.

We can stop them now with a permanent ban: so let's proceed!

But the problem does not end here: how can we interrupt vicious circles "new account-plagiarism-bidbot-ban-new account"?

A social blogging platform such as Medium have gained great visibility and appreciation worldwide, thanks to the quality of its content.
Until we get rid of the scum of plagiarists and abusers, our platform will not be able to take flight, it will remain a tap to draw money without a real quality system.
We would all be happier, if we knew that Reputation was a significant datum, compared to the good behavior of users on the platform.
Anti-abuse bots are useful, but the only solution, I think, is to implement human curation and manual verification. We need competent readers, and competent readers could become competent cleaners.

Last but not least, let's not forget that trending page is the advertising poster that Steem Blockchain exposes to all visitors, whether they are already registered or not.

The Steemit mass adoption campaign is currently underway: it would be a fantastic thing if more and more people enter, but we must try to make a leap forward, not just increasing users, but also increasing the average quality of the contents, and eliminating the scum.

This is @lagiaguara, reporting directly from the jungle.
Onwards!