This post has caused a shit storm today in public and private communities.
I have spent a lot of time thinking about my reaction to this post all day.
For those who don't know, I run @buildawhale and our blacklist. I tend to be quite open about how I feel about things and my opinion.
I have very specific guidelines I have set for myself when choosing to blacklist a user and even more for removing votes (something that I do very rarely and almost exclusively for plagiarism/fraud). These guidelines are not published as it is a secret sauce, shared with the public would just move the line a little further for bad actors to skirt.
Taking action on this post beyond the flag I personally gave it involves stepping closer to censorship and choosing what is considered good and bad content. Although all choices of what is spam and what is not spam involve some degree of subjective decision making, most of the time it is very clear what the right choice is. I try to avoid making decisions on what is considered good and bad content.
In this case, I firmly believe what the choice is, but it involves moving my guidelines a bit. While I am a big advocate that witnesses are not Steem police and every spam issue should not be brought to witnesses I think this is the best course of action here as I know if I take action on this post, others will follow.
I ask every top 50 witness to upvote this comment if you feel I should remove my @buildawhale vote and start the chain reaction or flag this comment if you feel I should leave it be. The vote can be as little as 0.1%, just something symbolic to give your decision. Feel free to leave a comment if you want to say something more.
If I receive 11 top 20 witness upvotes or flags on this comment, or 30 top 50 witness upvotes/flags on this comment I will consider the decision made and act accordingly.
If I don't see either by payout, or not enough votes I will leave things as they stand.
I will vote for this comment with my decision.
As much as I don't like seeing this type of shit on top of trending.....
I personally believe your action as of now is completely sufficient Mark.
This post is not plagiarism.
As for fraud, that's totally in the eye of the beholder....clearly some people believe in this mumbojumbo and there is a huge market for these types of products because of that.
In some ways, there are some benefits to this post trending, it very clearly shows the power and ability in advertising and self investment in our ecosystem.
It is a shame that said product is shady at best, but that is where the community has it's opportunity to step in with their own stake and decide if something like this should be where it is.
I commend you for your personal decision to disagree with it's value and using your own flag.....
As for your business...no, I don't want to see the bots using their delegation to censor content (if it's not obvious plagiarism/fraud of course)
Let this be an example to all content creators and product salesman on steemit.
If you truly believe in your "product", you too have the opportunity to invest in it and push it in front of many eyes.
The community in general can and should decide it's value from there.
Here's to capitalism AND the power of the people!
Clear and easy choice: post flagged!