If you look for the nucleus of the cause of this drama, @llfarms, it is over a charge concerning @themarkymark's vote bot business and the refusal of a refund to @fulltimegeek. The non-return policy is alledged to be in @themarkymark's vote bot business' TOS; yet bottom line is that there would have been no drama if @themarkymark had not been involved in a wedge issue activity as vot bot merchant.
It has long been my contention that high level witnesses should not be involved in such wedge issue blockchain businesses. This example of @themarkymark being embroiled in behavior unbecoming of a STEEM Witness only proves my point.
My witness vote has been withdrawn ftom @themarkymark as well as my delegation from @friendsofgondor in protest to this childish behavior on both sides of the issue.
As I have said, I would have worked with him and most likely refunded him if he wasn't an ass.
The policy is not unique to @buildawhale.
Just @buildawhale actually uses a blacklist and proactively finds and flags abusers, where most don't bother and will vote anything you give them money for.
The post he tried to promote for 387 Steem was flagged to $0 anyway, but I'm sure allowing him to post 16,000+ times a day and abuse bid bots to farm rep is a better solution.
I'm just a speck around here but would've thrown 120 Steem at FTG to refund him for you if I knew it'd partially save TMC's demise. Principles schminciples when it costs the entire community a great thing. Kind of wipes out a lot of the good one does when it appears that they let this blow up out of proportion, which in turn would affect a larger group of people who care about the community.
It's a bit complicated, unfortunately.
Appreciate the response. I'm sure there's a lot more to it we'd rather not know. Thank you.
The best solution of all, in my opinion, would be the elimination of voting bots; yet we have been down that road before. 😎
I don't see that happening. In my opinion, the best solution is fixing curation and building an incentive for stakeholders to give a fuck.
It would just fix itself at that point.
My solution would be to weight rewards depending on proven Proof of Brain.
Captcha is a silly solution especially since I can have 1,000 of them solved for $2.