Please note that I'm declining rewards on this post. I want you to give your votes to others who need them.
As part of the @SteemFlagRewards community I was made aware of the account @cryptosteemcoin who is posting crypto charts with minimal additional text and then buying around $25 in votes on each one. This is fairly common behaviour. He shows no interest in actually being part of the Steem community or trying to earn votes from people rather than bots. All he is doing is enriching those bots whilst reducing what rewards others can make. He may not even be making much profit, but I still think this activity should be discouraged. Our best tool for that is flagging. I should mention that I have tried communicating with him, but he shows no interest in discussing the matter.
His only response is a flood of retaliatory flags, but do not worry as these are not really affecting me. He has run down his voting power and only has a small amount of SP anyway.
He’s using two other accounts for flagging that are obviously his as they have been doing similar bot abuse. These accounts are @theclosetlab and @shopaddictsite. The former left an enlightening comment asking about if he could spend $10k on buying votes and turn a profit! I wonder if he really has that sort of money.
Various people have told me that the profits from buying votes are minimal, but there are a lot of people doing it anyway. If they buy enough to get onto the trending page then they may pick up some votes from other people and trails, but at his level he is really just feeding the bots and not gaining followers or positive comments.
It is your rewards he is plundering, so it is up to you if you want to take action. Flagging is as valid for curation as voting, but by default you do not get anything in return (apart from possible retaliation). With Steem Flag Rewards you can be rewarded for your actions. If you leave an appropriate comment and it is approved then you will earn a vote to compensate you for what you could have gained by self-voting (if you do that). With the current SFR community we can only take a small percentage of his rewards away. That may be enough to wipe out any profit, but reducing it further with more contributors sends a signal that the Steem community does not want to see this sort of abuse.
If we do nothing then we will just see more and more of this sort of behaviour. The vote sellers will keep increasing their power and Steem will just become a spam swamp with genuine creators struggling to make anything. The price of Steem would probably plummet anyway as who would want to invest in that?
This is just one example of abuse and we find many more each day. If you join the SFR Discord then you can get alerted of new cases that require investigation or action. This is not an attack on defenceless minnows. It is an attempt to build a better platform for those with a genuine interest in creating something of value.
It is up to us whether Steem prospers. We can choose to ignore abuse and take what we can for ourselves or we can take action to stem abuse at an early stage. Many of the vote sellers do not seem interested in where their votes go as long as the money keeps coming in, so we have to hit the buyers before they get too big to tackle. By investing a little time now we can help to build a better Steem than stands more chance of success and then we will all profit.
If you still do not feel that you can flag, then please consider delegating to @SteemFlagRewards or one of the dedicated flagging accounts such as @admiralbot, @rabbitbot and @noblebot. You can also vote up the comments of those who flag to enable them to do more. Most of these people are only minnows and they take the risk of their accounts being attacked. Show your support for people like @anthonyadavisii, @steemseph and @enforcer48 who work so hard to try and keep up with the abuse.
I am not asking for delegations for myself as I have a reasonable amount of Steem and I already delegate to these accounts. I do not self-vote or buy votes. My only problem is in keeping my voting power up as there is so much that deserves flagging and I still want to vote up good content too. If a few dolphins could contribute even just 10% of their SP in delegation to these accounts we could do so much more and they would not really miss it. Delegation is such a cool aspect of Steem as it costs you nothing apart from some lost curation rewards and you can take it back at any time.
If you haven't worked out how to delegate then a simple way is by installing the @steem-plus browser extension that adds a button to Steemit to do it.
BTW I composed this post earlier and have since had even more retaliation flags. I really don't worry about them, but I have some cool people countering them anyway.
- I'll buy guitar picks for Steem
- Get a Wirex Debit Card to spend your crypto.
- Get some passive income with Mannabase
- Get paid to search at Presearch
- Battle for cards on Steem Monsters
Steem: No GPUs or ASICs needed for mining. Poor men's dream. Great place to find the extra funds for your other crypto investments.
Just do some POS mining with a click of a button! You don't even need an audience.
Can we just scrap all the dapps already? Let's just put in simple uptick boxes next to every username and let the DPOS take over.
What's social about anything on this blockchain? Might as well go back and play solitaire.
Very cynical! It's not all gone to automation level, just most of it.
Have we hit that critical level yet?
I still get a lot of manual interaction so I would say no, not yet.
LOL. This is the "under the hood" reality of Steem that makes this place a train wreck. A scamma's paradise as I posted about recently.
Tone Vays didn't call this a scam for nothing.
It could have not been a scammy place if better rules were put in place and administered, rather than a free for all.
But “muh decentralisation!”
Too many wants the absolute “free for all” when convenient.
Yes, I've mentioned that elsewhere, this blindness for "decentralized" everything as an answer-all. Decentralization only works if ppl act responsibly to make it work. Otherwise, it fails. Economic incentives also work to force ppl to do something, like how POW is done that keeps the integrity of the network because of the investment to do so. Not allowing disintregrity and alteration of the chain is in one's best interest.
There are no rules other than code=law stupidity to allow anything here. Code can't handle all of human behavior. It's code... lol.
Steem is what we make it. Thanks for all you do.
When the majority are going full @theclosetlab, at what point do people throw in the towel?
Thanks for the kind words @steevc!
That guy is waisting his money and the reward pool.
Posted using Partiko iOS
This nails it really, should all the reward pool go to the bot creators, or do you want more of the pot?
These guys keep coming on here and using bots that make them no money.. its all an illusion, those big payouts that can be seen are simply that..
I so wish that Trending was not the default page. It gives a very wrong impression of what Steem is.
yep the problem of steem is algoritm of trending and hot page, we need something like google, not just pay to win , its to easy to game. There is no visibility for people who are not using bidbots and dont have true followers.
We have some chance to get on Hot, so that might be better, but a certain Mr H is on there a lot. Surprised he's still around.
He's doubled his investment several times already. Now, it's just pure profit.
I've seen he's in a fight over dstors. He'll get no support from me
As I was reading your post I started wondering what the position of the people that run the upvote services would be. It seems like flagging those post is kind of undermining their user base. As you said though, I don't think they care as long as the money keeps coming in. It's too bad they couldn't implement some form of manual curation. Groups like SmartSteem at least force you to be approved to a whitelist before you can really start seeing decent ROI.
Some of the bots have blacklists, but plenty don't, so the abusers can always buy some votes.
@steemflagrewards group are abusing steemit as his own members using bot to increase the rewards and commenting his group members post and upvoting them. If a person other then steemflagrewards group post they downvote them and encourage all his group members to downvote them. The person @steevc angry with me because i downvoted his post. I asked on discord server @freezepeach and they replied me that i upvoted myself that's why i was downvoted and one of his group members said he is the member of steemit and he have rights to downvote my post. If this is the thing then why @steevc angry on me if i downvoted his post. I am helping people to analyse the chart who are trading in cryptocurrency. If he don't know about trading then who is he do judge my post and who is he to downvote my post.
We have to create a group to teach a lesson like these group. What's wrong in this if i am analysing the chart and helping other people who trade in cryptocurrency. If using bot is illegal then steemit should ban steembottracker website if using bot is legal then steemit should ban like @steemflagrewards group.
Sounds like someone who has zero clue of what is going on.
Who are you helping? Who's commenting about your wonderful analyses? Do you want @r0nd0n himself to clarify what he told you instead of you making stuff up?
Freezepeach isn't applicable for bid botted posts, but I'm hoping to be able to calculate the total for self-upvotes and apply the service to any flags above that threshold in the future.
You are still downvoting my comment as i am discussing with you. It shows where you are come from.
I think you need to look at your own content.
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A title, a screenshot, a link, 3 short lines and 'Good Luck'.
Now look at this post created by @steevc which you have flagged in retaliation. Do you see any resemblance?
No, because this post has taken time and effort to create. It has many words... >400 of them, unlike yours which has less than 15.
By buying votes you are removing money from the daily pot that could be used to reward decent posts that have substance.
Do you see anyone commenting about your analysis? The only comments are from bots stating they have upvoted you. To say you are providing a service is a farce. Nobody is looking or using this 'valuable information'.
Why not create something useful and generate a proper following. I'll even send you some votes if you do.
As it stands, you are just reminding me of your existence by continually flagging me for $0.00 with multiple accounts. I’m not here to piss you off, I just give a shit about the platform and want to stamp out the abuse.
I am not arguing with you as i know you don't know about trading. It takes time to make followers. Atleast i am not posting junk.
You are not gaining followers, so buying votes does not help you there. You should try something else.
@cryptosteemcoin
Correct analysis, the issue here is that certain peeps want to keep all the money for themselves because they don't like other people becoming successful with the use of promotion bots.
They are usually unsuccessful people themselves and don't like to see other people do well.
According to them anyone that is deemed "1984 Orwell unworthy". Has no right to be here.
Do what most people do, ignore them (perhaps add some opinion, detail, reasoning to your price targets) and keep promoting your stuff if that's what you want to do. 😀
Don't let them win.
You may need another account though because these flaggers have you in their naughty books.
One last thing, ignore all of the comments regarding not gaining followers, follower count has dropped since you joined because new followers closely follows new user account signups, which have declined recently.
You were getting lots of votes for your stuff, in many instances far more votes than the low iq flaggers are getting.
So you decided to respond with something other than a flag at last!
I'm not against people posting crypto analysis, but what you post can barely count as that. You don't give any real insight. As they stand your posts might be worth a few cents, but you don't seem to care about getting votes from anyone who actually reads them.
I support many people on Steem and most have nothing to do with Steem Flag Rewards. I see people putting lots of work into a post that earns cents, so I'll give them more. Yours are definitely not worth over 20 dollars and so I use my curation as it was intended to adjust that. Others are of the same opinion. Do you really think I'm worried about making a few cents by doing this? It costs me much more in my time to look into whether a post abuses the spirit of Steem.
Am I angry? Your flags may have removed a few cents from my rewards that I won't miss and others more than cancel them out. I'm more frustrated that you did not seem interested in discussing why we might be flagging you. I've been flagged by some big accounts, so yours is no big deal. Refusing my rewards on this post shows I'm not worried about the money.
I'd rather see you being part of the Steem community and earning because people appreciate what you do, but if you continue like this you can expect more flags.
You obviously don't understand that there are few rules on Steem. It's up to the community to decide what is acceptable.
please share the rule so that i can follow them
There is no 'rule', but you can find definitions of what is considered abuse on the SFR discord, e.g.
Bid bot abuse
Compared to similar posts in the same category, the bought votes increase the rewards of the post above 50% of similar content. Blatantly overvalued bad post.
Think about if you are adding value to Steem or just being greedy. If you are not attracting real votes and comments then you need to re-assess your strategy. There's a limited amount of Steem to go around each day and we like to see it go where it is deserved. SFR can only remove part of your rewards, but that may be enough to make it non-profitable for you.
Hi @steevc!
Your post was upvoted by @steem-ua, new Steem dApp, using UserAuthority for algorithmic post curation!
Your UA account score is currently 5.847 which ranks you at #374 across all Steem accounts.
Your rank has dropped 3 places in the last three days (old rank 371).
In our last Algorithmic Curation Round, consisting of 218 contributions, your post is ranked at #13.
Evaluation of your UA score:
Feel free to join our @steem-ua Discord server