I did not want to come to this but this abuse has been going on for far too long. I have been here on Hive for quite some time now and this is just an account I created so it won't affect any of the projects and communities that I am a part of. No need to drag those into negative things like abuse reports.
A young girl @sabrinah joined Hive and posted her introduction post on Dec 15, 2023.
Her story starts a day before this, when (by her own admission) she found Hive on Dec 14, 2023 (her account was created the same day) after finding Inleo on X platform.
I found Inleo on X. I followed the link straight to sign up. I have been on something called threads in the last 24 hours. I love it. Yes, I will stick around.
She created a Discord account on the 14th as well. But she joined a lot of Discord servers; it didn't look like she was a newbie at all but an experienced user on both Discord and Hive. Maybe she is a smart one.
Let's read her intro post one more time. She said:
Now, more on writing. I started writing when I was 9. Just for fun. I could cook up an entire story in a day. It was what I did mostly. As I grew, I had numerous book stories I had written just piled up. It was my favorite run to but then, I wanted to branch out, so I learned content writing.
She has been writing since she was 9 years old and she can cook up an entire story in a day. She wrote a lot of stories yet she gave you no links to her previous work, no mention of her X account. (Maybe she wanted to start from a clean slate. Have a different anonymous account online. That's perfectly fine. A bit odd but nothing bad so far).
To understand the origin story of @sabrinah. I have to introduce you to some more accounts.
There are two public accounts @iskafan (where she writes financial articles in Leo Finance community) and @iskawrites (where she writes mostly fiction and non-fiction in communities like the InkWell and HiveLearners) from the same author. Let's just call her Iska from now on. Both of these accounts have been a bit inactive lately and both of them are on power down too.
@iskafan created an account on Sep 9, 2021 and wrote an impressive introduction post with all the necessary tags.
She would do proper sourcing of photos and would talk about the things she loves, including reading, writing, AI and finances. (Sounds familiar?). But she never mentioned how she came here on Hive. She never mentioned any other social media accounts outside Hive. (She would later create a Twitter account and add the link in her bio.)
When asked by someone how she joined Hive, she replied like this.
This has to be the craziest story I read. This could have easily happened too. And she wants to stay anonymous... that's perfectly fine too.
Later she would create another account @iskawrites, not as a hidden account but as an account to segment her writings. Nothing wrong with that too.
The next account is @edystringz, the oldest account so far. This was created on December 30, 2020. This ontroduction post is a bit weird too. She made her first post on Jan 11, 2021.
She told how she met with a coincidence in which two of her siblings knew about Hive. She never mentions them in the post. Just like the other posts, there are no social media links outside of Hive. Her interests are writing and finance as well.
What was common in all of these accounts? Crazy onboarding stories, common interests like writing and finances. And no prior social media accounts before joining Hive. Except @edystringz all the other accounts have proper sourcing, good use of tags and communities from day 1. And they wrote that post within a a few hours of creating their accounts.
But these can just be coincidences...right? Now, let me start with how these are all related to each other.
Similarity in writing style
1. The same structure in story writing, with a lot of one-line dialogues (not strong evidence but still very useful)
A random InkWell Post by @sabrinah
A random InkWell Post by @iskawrites
A random InkWell Post by @edystringz
These are just one example and although the stories are vastly different, if you look at other examples and study more posts of these supposedly different writers, you will start to see a pattern. Every writer has a style, and her style of writing is common. I know this is quite subjective and two writers can have similar styles as well. (I would have termed this a coincidence at this point and it sounds like a big stretch. Yes, it kind of is if you look at it in isolation. But read the rest of the post and come back to this point and it will make a lot more sense).
Also note the fact that all of these accounts have similar interests and write posts in mostly the same communities, their favorites being InkWell for fiction writing, LeoFinance for financial posts and other Nigerian communities.
2. [Stronger Evidence]: Use of </diva> tag to close the <div> tag instead of </div> (she later corrected this mistake half a year ago but not before doing the same thing with all her accounts...another coincidence? Maybe)
@sabrinah made many posts with the same </diva> error (closing the <div> tag with </diva> instead of </div>) and the last time she made this mistake was on April 16th, 2024, where you can see two posts, this one from @sabrinah and this one from @iskawrites written on the same exact date with this error still in them (and this error was in the previous few posts on both accounts as well). But she fixed this error on the next day on both the accounts on different posts (still a coincidence? I don't think so.)
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(These are not just on one or two posts but on a lot of posts...possibly they were using the same snippets or templates? or just thought this is how you end this tag?)
While she fixed these mistakes on her @sabrinah and @iskawrites accounts, she did not fix this mistake for another week in @iskafan account. However, once she fixed it there, on April 23, 2024 (a week later), she never repeated that weird mistake on any of those accounts. (Coincidence? Maybe)
To be really sure I asked if there is a variation of the </div> tag in HTML to ChatGPT. I guess this will be helpful for all the non-technical folks reading this.
3. Similarity in Discord texts, especially the use of exact emoji patterns by all three (Iska, Edystringz and Sabrinah... all taken from the City of Neoxian discord server)
The City of Neoxian Discord server is one of the most active Discord servers related to Hive. There are giveaways hosted daily for a whopping $10 vote or so and you have higher chances of winning it if you are chatting a lot. That's why some users go out of their way to chat. Most of this chat is spam anyway. (I just wanted to give you insight into why the same person would be in this Discord from all their accounts. In short, the more you chat the more chances you have to win a big upvote).
Iska, Edystringz and Sabrinah,have all have been part of this Discord server and were really active. In fact, this was the Discord chat that raised some eyebrows. Iska and Edystringz were so similar in how they were texting here. Someone asked me to check their profiles for similar patterns and that's how I found the similarities in their accounts.
Anyways, how were these discord messages similar? Let me give you an example.
This emoji 🏃🏾♀️ (:woman_running_tone4:) is a very specific one because of the 'tone4' part. This emoji was used in the City of Neoxian Discord server a whopping 987 times.
Out of these 987 times it was used 578 times by @sabrinah alone. 239 times by @edystringz and 166 times by Iska.
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578 + 239 + 166 = 983 (only 5 times by the rest of the server. Still a coincidence? Maybe)
How unlikely three random people will use a woman_running_tone4 emoji on a Discord server where you can't even choose the tone from the Discord suggested emojis.
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This is not just a coincidence, there are many other examples of these, as complex as having multiple emojis in the same order.
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You will find other examples within the texts of using certain words more often than others, having similar punctuation marks. Even some three emoji combinations like this (coincidence? Quite possibly)
I knew about this connection for some time but I was too lazy to write this post. I thought she would get caught on her own but nope. And when I saw @sabrinah was asked to verify her identity she didn't do that.
Let me summarize all of it again from the start. @sabrinah @edystringz and @iskafan all came to Hive in weird ways. They all found Hive by suspicious methods, never mentioned any other accounts that onboarded them, and none of them had any other social media accounts prior to coming here. They are all making the same unique HTML tag mistake in their posts and fixed it at the same time too. On top of all this they have been writing about the same topics in mostly the same communities. The fact that they are using the exact specific emoji with the same exact tone and combinations proves that they are the same person. For me, even that HTML tag mistake alone proves that they are the same account. I just shared the rest of the 'coincidences' to make my point stronger.
And when @hivewatchers recently asked @sabrinah to confirm her identity by linking her X account, she refused to link her account hiding behind the privacy factor. @hivewatchers let her go off their blacklist easily and that's what prompted me to write this detailed post. When I finally thought this was over, as I had known about this a long time ago. I even reported her account to be verified a few months ago. It looks like @hivewatchers ignored my request but finally they took some action on perhaps someone else's report. I knew she couldn't come up with any social media accounts prior to her joining Hive because clearly this is her alt account.
These are not just baseless claims anymore and I hope I was able to put my point across with this post.
I want to mention some accounts that I think would be interested in this story. @nathan007 I think you were wrong in linking this @sabrinah to @sabrinahandralic but I am sure you will be happy to know that she is just a milker trying to milk rewards just like her other accounts. Her @iskafan account made more than 7,000 HP as author rewards (according to Hivestats) most of which has already been taken out and the rest is on power down. Similarly the other account (@iskawrites) is on a powerdown too. I expect @sabrinah to do the same until she comes back with a new story. After all she could cook up an entire story in a day :)
There could be more accounts that I am unaware of... I have already spent a lot of time digging up these account, don't won't to waste anymore time on them. Maybe someone can dig up some more stuff.
I want to tag some curators, moderators and some respectable anti-abuse guys. @theinkwell @neoxian @livinguktaiwan @antisocialist @dlmmqb @ecency @bhattg @leo.voter @thekittygirl @ladiesofhive @mahdiyari
And I want to mention some of her friends and members of The Neoxian City discord server. @dandays @nkemakonam89 @raymondspeaks @abdul-qudus
@b0s @quduus1 @valchiz @hopestylist @justfavour @queenstarr @meritahama @protokkol @mikechrist @pravesh0 @chinay04 @burlarj @ahmedhayat @tahastories1 @vickoly @oluwadrey @abenad @olujay @cindynancy @deraawrites @princessbusayo (sorry for the tag spam)
Apologies for not coming across this post sooner.
Thank you very much for taking what must have been a considerable amount of time to do this research. I have for a long time thought that writing style, language usage, although perhaps circumstantial, is possibly the best way of outing abusers.
To those who think the anti abuse efforts on Hive are unimportant, there are many known links between terrorist organisations and crypto farming and Hive needs to remain squeaky clean in this respect.
Finally, thank you for actually caring about the chain and it's users.
My very best wishes.
This is such a detailed work! I can’t imagine how you investigated all these, Detective! Good work!
I stumbled upon Iska a few times in thw past. Too bad she’s powering down and seems like leaving Hive..
Sus..
Hope we’ll get to hear from these accounts because the explanation of how they stumbled upon Hive and the rejection of a verification are all sus..
Maybe one day, I will tell you in private. You have done well for anti abuse work on Hive too. Thank you! shhh
🤫🤫🤫🤫
This part here - did you mention us because you are lumping us all in with this.. or what?
Probably just doing this so we'd be aware.
Makes sense.
Just to make you all aware of her doings, like @b0s mentioned.
Okay, thank you :)
Zachxbt but on Hive.
Love to see this kinda investigation here.
Would get more interesting if counter party comes up with more evidence, if not than it's clear as crystal water that they're all same.
All these accounts have been banned from my Discord.
It's about time.
Not sure who this is but good job Detective.
Thank you for everything!
She has been banned from curations and communities (where I can). I will be listening to the other side of the story too and I hope it is as you’ve explained.
I have seen @edystringz's face. I have to check records and there is a chance that she is not connected to all this.
In anti-abuse matters, we must be very careful and verify multiple times before taking strict action against anyone. We should ensure that no one is wrongly accused, which is why I am open to hearing other perspectives on this report. Let’s see what they bring to the table.
Thanks for understanding!
I have seen a picture (said to be of @edystringz) those could be her. But how will it going to change anything? Have you seen all of the three personalities/accounts' pictures?
I didn't want to share it publicly here respecting her privacy.
I said @edystringz account is the oldest and might be the first account of her. Also, I am just presenting facts here, the evidence is speaking for itself. I would love to hear their perspective too.
I have access to a private database with information related to people's faces. If their face is there, it's highly likely that the person is real.
I’m also waiting for more information regarding Sabrina (There are many decentralized antiabuse workers outside of HW. They also collaborate and share information with each other.). So far, everything you've shared is all that we know.
My point is to give them a fair trial to prove their innocence, remaining open to any new discoveries.
You will likely hear more possibly made-up stories that use "appeal to emotion" manipulation (having insomnia, taking drugs, alcohol abuse), etc.
The only way there is a chance for appeal is by verifying with a proper Twitter account. However, that would still not be proof as the user has used an avatar with a generic photo of a Muslim woman for identity deception.
"her" is likely yet another male abuser pretending to be a woman with a fake avatar and story to get easy farming from susceptible male curators.
Additionally, it seems Sabrina identifies as a Muslim, possibly from India or Bangladesh.
On the other hand, @edystringz appears to be from Nigeria and, as far as I recall, is a Christian.
Is it possible that Sabrina helped her with the HTML formatting and informed @edystringz after making the corrections?
There are ways to further verify this narrative, and if I find anything new, I will share it with the relevant people.
Of course, I could be wrong as well. We are all humans just trying to do our best.
Born-Again Christian :)
Jesus indeed is the light, the truth, and the way.
You are right, Christ came to save us and we should continuously focus on Jesus in order to be transformed and ultimately become the best versions of ourselves.
That’s all we have to bear as Nigerian :)
I won’t say I give up on Nigeria. I will always pray for our country and the citizens
How long can we all handle the current situation in Nigeria?
@anonyi Thanks 👍 💕
The Nigerian connection explains how that account got the list of all these milking accounts to comment on from day 1. This list has been circulating around the Nigerian community and has been used before by farmers.
You have to mind that you have given away all the clues that the abuser is likely going to use to avoid being detected the next time "she" creates new abusive accounts.
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Thank you for bringing this to my attention.
I saw your recent interaction with her and thought you should know. This person decieved a lot of others multiple times.
@freecompliments what do you think of this post?
Quite interesting. There are some things here which are suspicious (the div/diva thing I could attribute to autocorrect, but the emojis and similar writing styles... not as much).
There are some users who have multiple accounts, even self-admitted, and I think that as long as none of it is plagiarized or repeated from account to account, there's nothing wrong with this. You can create multiple accounts on any social media website, and there's no reason to penalize that on Hive either.
Frankly, with this amount of activity, I'd be very impressed by someone who's able to create so much unique content. A big kudos if this is the same person doing it all - as long as it is all original.
This mistake was not just for one post, but for months in all three accounts (Iska/sabrina/edy) and they fixed this mistake on two of the post in the same day while on the third after a week. And never did it again. If it was just one or two posts then it could be a coincidence but if it was for 100s of posts?
There is nothing wrong with having multiple accounts. In some cases, it has many advantages. But if the multiple accounts are created just to deceive people and gain just rewards then it is an abuse, especially if they pretend to be someone else and then write spun-looking articles.
On the amount of activity. They have abandoned their @adystringz account a long time ago, the activity on @iskafan and @ikawrites have almost gone to zero now (as they are likely leaving Hive and powering down almost everything).
But while the activity on the above accounts went down the activity on her @sabrinah account went through the roof.
Ah, I see. The timing's rather coincidental there.
The use of multiple accounts to deceive people isn't good; however, I'm still on the fence if it's still involving production of unique content on each account. I'll copy something I wrote on another comment in this post:
"Reasoning, and I'm using the logic of HSBI's founder here: if someone is using AI to the degree that it's not easily detectable, then they'll put a substantial amount of time into learning the tool and using it to enhance their writing, which frankly takes at least as much effort as the writing itself. That's actually an admirable use of AI, especially if it improves the readability of the article."
I'd still like to see the retort of the users mentioned before I make a final decision. This is definitely a situation that's worthy of careful weighing.
I appreciate the context you've provided!
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Learn all about this shit in the toilet paper! 💩
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One of the accounts made a lengthy comment. It looks like they are talking on behalf of all the accounts. https://peakd.com/hive-174578/@iskawrites/re-anonyi-skyf0j
After a period of dormancy this account came forward while the active account didn't say a word after all this. Can you still not see it, Sir? (Let us wait more maybe @sabrinah will come back to reply)
And I am not against using AI to enchance your posts. But making multiple accounts to write with multiple accounts in the same community (keep in mind some of the communities have strict rules of posting just one post a day or posting from just one account, hence breaking those rules). Also, deceiving a lot of people with these accounts for months.
Fair enough, and thank you for linking this! Going to take a look.
What a crapshoot of a comment from iskawrites, sheesh 😂
Clearly some personal stuff going on there that's beyond my realm and interest...
(6/50)
@anonyi! @freecompliments Totally agrees with your content! so I just sent 1 IDD to your account on behalf of @freecompliments.
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Asking the author whether they noticed repetitive or unattributed AI-generated content. If there is, then I'm going to taken direct, immediate action.
Both Edy and Iska have been caught using AI generated post around an year ago. Since then they managed to get off the AI detectors. But their post looked mostly AI or plaigiarised from websites but rewritten to avoid those online detectors. She is not a fool and knows a lot of stuff by now.
She has been awfully quite for some time now.
As for @lucidlucrecia, i'm just guessing, but as soon as she was contronted she started to power down all of her tokens in her wallet, so it looks like she is going to abandon that account. If so and I did tag her here, so she can weigh in, this is a vague admission of guilt in my eyes. She could also just feel it isn't worth the effort to defend herself. None of her content was groundbreaking nor was any of it personal in anyway, which also in my eyes points to her being a token farmer.
I'm not going to question the personal motivations (frankly, we're all here, to some degree, for the token aspect). I like that Hive gives people the freedom to use the platform in many different ways, even though my own usage is community-oriented.
Upon some reflection - and I have been thinking about this - if Lucrecia and Sabrina keep creating Threads, I think I'll curate and reward them normally. I see Threads as a different animal compared to, say, long-form blogging. AI-generated images, reposting images, reposting quotes, etc., etc., is all very normal behavior in traditional social media, even if not original. I still have a guideline to curate original content higher than the rest, so it ends up balanced.
When deciding the curation and rewarding of posts and comments, I'm still on the fence about the situation. I'll give it some further thought and see what Lucrecia and Sabrina say in response to this post.
I'm leaning towards the side of continuing curation and rewards. Reasoning, and I'm using the logic of HSBI's founder here: if someone is using AI to the degree that it's not easily detectable, then they'll put a substantial amount of time into learning the tool and using it to enhance their writing, which frankly takes at least as much effort as the writing itself. That's actually an admirable use of AI, especially if it improves the readability of the article.
Not a final decision yet... I'll give it a bit of time. Rewards are going to be delayed this month, even though I've collected the data and the funds lol!
I guess my point about LucidLucrecia is, if she's abandoning the account, why waste the rewards on it? Just give her a fair chance to respond and if she doesn't, give the rewards to someone more likely to use it. That person is not me, lol. Not saying they would go to me, but I don't and won't be blogging from this account, so hsbi is just wasted on me as well.
I recall reading that HSBI can sometimes be used on comments for select accounts which don't create posts, but do submit comments (as per the founder), but that may have to be negotiated with the founder. We'll see though. That bridge can be crossed if/when we get there.
We had this a long time ago, but there were too many issues with it. Presently there is no Hive SBI upvoting on comments. I have some ideas for how we could do it in the future (using community resources to upvote comments manually curated by signal accounts) but we are not actively working on it.
Thank you for investigating and sharing this.
!BBH !hiqvote
PS: This might be interesting for you too!
@bradleyarrow @pepetoken @bitcoinman
Interesting.
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Also a leader of a community where these users have contributed to some degree. As mentioned in another comment, there are some suspicious 'coincidences' here. On other social media platforms, there's really nothing wrong with using multiple accounts. As long as the content in each is original and not plagiarized, I don't really see a huge problem with it.
If there's repetitive content, or plagiarized to some degree, this does pose a problem. Have you managed to actually see any repetitive content? Does the content look to you like it was sourced from elsewhere, or appears to use AI without attribution?
Those factors would be pretty important for me to make a determination.
Cheers!
Thank you @anonyi for the good research and for all the time you've invested in it. We at @DIYHub have decided to remove her/him from our team.
Why did @diyhub reply with 'Crazy Stuff' under a reply here and then deleted it within seconds? Was that 'her' forgetting to change the account before replying here? Did she have control over that account still or was it a genuine mistake from you guys?
Here is the transaction link of that deleted comment.
No - only 2 guys have the posting keys @stevenson7 and me. I guess stevenson forgot to change his account ;) Our curators operate on discord and the bot got the posting key - there is no option to delete a comment so I am 100% sure that stevenson is the reason ;)
Thank you for your witness vote!
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Detective Conan working!
Damn😂😭
Here's another contender https://inleo.io/profile/islariver/blog
This account was opened just to publish this post. Wow, ego trip on steroids. Whoever is behind the account seems to have lost all credibility
And yours just to publish this comment? How ironic.
Maybe you should read the post first. Or you know about all this. Have a wonderful day, @sabrinah
I must say, you’re quite mistaken my dear annoyed friend. Assumption really is the mother of all fuckups.
I could, with a fair bit of confidence, speculate that you might just be another alter ego of HW. The tone, the presentation, the assumptions indicative of a self-police-trained mind, and the rather obsessive stance towards being right - all of it points in that direction. You swiftly garnered a full 100% approval from the HW bots and fake accounts. But I wouldn’t stoop to such childishness.
As for Sabinah, I’m afraid I have no clue who she /or quite more likely - he/ is, nor do I believe her posts merit the accolades she’s received. That entire universe she inhabits is a bit of a mystery to me.
I suspect there are quite a few of us who take issue with HW's rather relentless approach to hounding people. I've been here since the very inception of Steemit, and I've made some significant investments, which I’d rather not see subjected to scrutiny from the gentlemen behind the HW account.
Wishing you all the best in your noble quest of the truth!
Weak attempt 😂 😂. We know it's you.
With a certainty that far surpasses all reasonable odds, I’m quite sure you have no clue who I am 🥸
Excellent work. Thank you for that. It seems that my intuition was also correct that something was fishy about that account activity hence I asked for the verification. The stories looked like spun AI to me or plagiarism of AI-generated stories and the account magically exactly knew which tags to hit from the day and seemed to have a list of at least 50 known comment curators (those users almost always guarantee upvote on comments left on their posts) to hit with comments.
There is another account that seems suspicious
https://hive.blog/hive-167922/@lucidlucrecia/re-rapesnvjmt
I sent you some reward for work.
The account is blacklisted again. The evidence is conclusive.
The user tried to avoid verification with misleading responses. It's extremely rare that nowadays someone has no social media account of any kind.
The user also used the appeal to emotion fallacy (likely a false statement) to avoid further actions.
Other accounts "edystrinzs" & "iskafan" had a history of AI-generated fraud.
I will take a closer look at 'lucidlucrecia' later. Seems suspicious on the first look and thank you for the rewards.