More than half a year ago I wrote an article exposing one of the biggest abusers since haejin and let everyone know how he is daily siphoning away value from the reward pool by 10x-ing his shitposts and those of his alt accounts. It wasn't long until this caught the attention of @steemcleaners and soon they started flagging all of his posts for spam to which I rejoyced as it was not only a personal victory but one of the entire community as from then on, he lost the power to drain our reward pool while lining his own pockets by upvoting "articles" which are of no value to anyone.
His reply to this was to delegate all of his 100k SP to a bid bot which was the only move he could do in order to keep reaping the benefits of his stake while providing nothing of value.
I'm fine with that. That's how the system currently is and there is not much we can do about it.
To me, reporting such abuse was a logical thing to do. Something I didn't think twice about before pulling the trigger and for good reason, because if we let every malicious user have his way, sooner rather than later, everyone would be 10x-ing their valueless shitposts in order to reap the maximum benefits of their stake. No value would be added in the process and the price of STEEM would plummet into the abyss without any chance of ever rebounding.
Obviously, this is not something we would want to see but people like @freepress and the likes knowingly disregard this simple fact to reap the maximum short-term benefits for themselves while devaluing our token and blockchain for everyone.
With the recent developments, some would argue that what I've done wasn't a particularly smart move, at least not for myself and my well-being on the platform because, because this malicious user has now stopped delegating to bid bots and has unleashed his wrath on my articles, flagging them with two accounts with over 200k SP, greying out all of my content and "hiding" it in plain sight.
I can't say that this does not affect me at all, but what I can say is that it does not discourage me the least bit. Most definitely not as much as he would want to. The fact of the matter is that I am still going to post on a regular basis, even if all of my articles earn me nothing and only make me lose reputation on-chain.
Nevertheless, I expect this halfwit to continue flagging my articles into oblivion for quite some time, moving forward.
Doing some investigating on him and his 100k SP alt account @boosta reveals some interesting facts.
Seems that I'm not the only one who ruffled his feathers 🤣🤣🤣
A number of influential and OG Steemians are on his flag list. Makes me wonder what exactly did they do to grind his gears so heavily.
You know what? It actually makes me happy to see him use his stake to flag us because that means more STEEM is returned to the reward pool for everyone to receive while this fucker gets less bang for his buck in the end. So, why not flag me more faggot?
I'll make sure you do so in the days to come.
I apologise to my followers moving forward because I will be posting quite a lot more than my regular one post per day just to make this sucker drain his VP by flagging me.
I'm sure that he will eat up the bait like an unsuspecting fish which doesn't have the mental capacity to conclude that worms aren't sea creatures.
As we all know, someone with less than two healthy brain cells can barely do a single computation in 24 hours. And just like that, thinking that he is the hunter, @freepress will soon become the prey.
Fun times ahead!
The other thing worth noting about his alt account is that he upvotes himself exclusively with 98% of his votes which I find to be hilarious and I'm wondering how long it will take @steemcleaners to start flagging his shitposts to make him delegate to bid bots once again.
100% original content 🤣
Showing how ill-minded this individual is.
I love how he reveals the sheer amount of his mental deterioration in the title of his post. Maybe it is worth the self-vote just for the humoristic value it gives to anyone with more than two brain cells.
Also, notice how he is talking to himself leaving a comment from his main account @freepress and replying with @boosta. Seriously considering this dude has some sort of mental issues and suggesting him to give Vrapče a call and consider moving there for a short vacation.
Oh yeah, and the voting pattern of his main account @freepress is even more ridiculous than @boosta. He actually upvotes his own "content" if it can be called content, with exactly 100% of his VP!!
Anyhow, getting flagged for speaking out against a clear case of malicious use of ones stake is exactly the reason why most Steemians do not dare to do so. For most, the consequences severely outweigh the benefits but I'm not like the majority. But I'm not like the majority. Never been, never will be.
Life is yin and yang, what goes around comes around and soon the tables will shift in my favor. That's something I'm certain in. Karma is a bitch and @freepress will learn that lesson the hard way at some part of his miserable life. I'll be glad if I get a chance to find out about it.
Just wanted to get this out there, looking forward to hearing what the community has to say.
Have a good one everyone,
cheers!
Sadly, while what they have done arguably brings no value to the steem ecosystem, it isn't exactly prohibited as well. It is after all their own stake on the blockchain and it is up to their own prerogative how to use it.
That being said, it is also entirely the right of the community to respond however they like in the face of such ethically questionable practices.
We applaud you for speaking out against the misuse of Steem power.
That's the core issue. Not prohibiting 10x self-voting and milking the system to the max is the single biggest mistake dan has done in developing this chain of blocks, imho.
It can't be prohibited, people will always find a way through alt accounts.
Now when I think about it yeah, probably not but it can be countered that's for sure.
LMFAO
100% this!
There is an 'l' left out?
Flaggot?
Homophobic slurs are not the classiest moves, imo.
Yeah, I miss that guy.
Yeah,, If you really want to insult somebody, call them 'drumpf" ultimate degradation.
Personally I prefer rich and entitled, but that may just be me.
Hmm,...
Yep, I was always hoping he would come back.
Me, too.
@guiltyparties @patrice please look into the accounts retaliating against this user.
@freepress, @boosta these two seem to be farming at least
The DV is pretty big and it hurts a bit... However I am glad to see stakeholders using upvotes and downvotes to express themselves.
I accept my DVs and hope it is the beginning of a new era!
There was no need to make a big dramatic post about it.
!dramatoken
The goal was not to create a dramatic piece but rather let everyone know the developments of a long-lasting relationship with the aforementioned abuser and his continual abuse of our shared resource and the retaliation that's underway in an attempt to silence all future whistleblowers.
Nice
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"The art of steaking" lol
Pure gold! Gave me such a good laugh, I was seriously contemplating giving it an upvote :D
The sad part is that everyone delegating to bid bots or mainly vote-trading is doing pretty much the same thing.
Let's hope HF21 fixes this.
Sadly, I don't see how EIP will fix this. As curation rewards are going to be increased bot owners will consequently return the extra STEEM to delegators to compensate for any losses caused by 10% of author rewards being funneled into the SPS.
The idea is that downvoting with free downvotes shit posts will make bid bots less lucrative than delegating to a curation project that returns most of the CR by being good at curating and not curating shit that gets flagged by free downvotes.
Add to that the curve that will reward curators more by being early and bid bot buyers nothing unless they stack which at the same time will always cost the late bid bot the most CR or get downvoted or receive no other natural upvotes.
It's gonna be worth a try though but we're gonna need everyone to step up like you just did and call shit out and use their downvotes or else it won't change much, no.
Sounds good on paper but we all know that the plagued human nature won't allow for it to play out like planned.
What I foresee happening is massive flag wars, more retaliation ego-driven flags and a market where one can buy 100k SP worth of flags for a fraction of the cost one would need to spend now to buy the same flag.
Thank you so much for participating in the Partiko Delegation Plan Round 1! We really appreciate your support! As part of the delegation benefits, we just gave you a 3.00% upvote! Together, let’s change the world!
Heyyyyyyyyy mithril is kind of cool lol
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Mithril?
Lol yeah you've used their logo there eheh
Nah. That's haejin's profile image
But i think it is also the mithril logo llloll
I can see the resemblance but I don't think it's the actual mithril logo
Good for him!
Thanks for the issue you brought to us.
This is the democracy of our blockchain.
Keep us informed of the developments.
The pleasure is all mine.
Will do!
I've been flagged loads of times by various abusers, but I tend to go after those who cannot do me much damage. Haejin attacked me ages ago when I called him out. My main target these days is @crystalliu who is taking many dollars each week on junk posts as certain vote sellers refuse to blacklist him. They prefer to take his dirty money. He flags me, but he never has much SP and he runs down his VP. He has loads of other accounts doing the same.
The freedom Steem gives us is open to abuse, but many of the big players opt to not do anything about it. So much for the crab bucket.
Sometimes calling out those bots which don't flag him works wonders =D
People have asked the vote sellers to blacklist him, but they are not interested. It just makes Steem look bad. I have posted about this guy and got more people to flag him, but with $20 on lots of comments it takes a big account to hurt him. We just need to remove his profit.
Which vote sellers?
booster and promobot
Yeah, those two care the least. Those will suffer the most with the new EIP =D
While I do agree that many large stakeholders turn a blind eye to such abuse; there will always bee good whales who will do everything in their power to counter it. One such example is @acidyo.
Thanks for this information.
You have
DRAMA!To view or trade
DRAMAgo to steem-engine.com.!popcorn
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It is absolutely necessary to bring such people to light. Yes you may face some temporary set back while flagging them but there are many who will support you and eventually these tricksters will fail.
Exactly! And by flagging whistleblowers these kind of people want to shut up all whistleblowers moving forward which is definitely not something I'll do.
Way to go my friend👍
gracias muy buena información
There's one flag on this post, and it's nobody else then Boosta! Hahaha!
On a serious note, it's that kind of behaviour who make me abandon the steem ship. And I'm pretty sure I'm not the only one. Being a minnow and seeing this kind of stuff going on is pretty discouraging.
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It's going to take a lot more than a couple of dollars worth of flags to make me abandon the ship but I get where you are coming from. It's definitely not a good place to be at.
Congratulations @runicar!
Your post was mentioned in the Steem Hit Parade in the following category:
Hi @runicar!
Your post was upvoted by @steem-ua, new Steem dApp, using UserAuthority for algorithmic post curation!
Your UA account score is currently 5.308 which ranks you at #779 across all Steem accounts.
Your rank has improved 13 places in the last three days (old rank 792).
In our last Algorithmic Curation Round, consisting of 366 contributions, your post is ranked at #152.
Evaluation of your UA score:
Feel free to join our @steem-ua Discord server
I was away for a while. Glad I didn't miss much... Same shit, different strategies.
Yep. Not much missed meanwhile. Hopefully, things get better with hf21.
Yeah let's hope so. Although many have been saying that with the previous hard forks too. ..
Full upvote, full support! We need more people like you on steem!
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Thank you buddy!
Aha so that's why a post of naturalproducts I resteemed is now hidden. So sad when abusive people just don't see how bad they are. Tsk.
Then you get down voted and you hate the shit out this bitch
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Not only would it create the prisoner's dilemma but all other malicious activity would be multiplied to an extent that it would plague the entire blockchain sending ripples throughout the system resulting in a shitstorm of unimaginable proportions.
hf21 will bring about some interesting times indeed. Will flag selling outweigh "honest" curation of abusive content is anyone's guess but it will be an epic battle to combat abuse while countering newly created abuse ie buying flags to retaliate.