Calling this a "witch hunt based on jealousy" is grossly unfair. If the @msgivings case was fraud, let's have some highly visible and whale-powered value judgements made about that, and with similar emotive weight (perhaps this has already happened). No matter how good the system is, how so elegantly tweaked it be, the core value of Steemit is the people, and @ats-david @bacchist et al. are supporting that value.
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Thank you. I've been hearing this for weeks when it comes to these sock accounts. I'm starting to realize that the people claiming this don't actually know what a "witch hunt" is. So, perhaps I'll help them:
"the act of unfairly looking for and punishing people who are accused of having opinions that are believed to be dangerous or evil" - Merriam-Webster
This is certainly not a witch hunt. This is a proper investigation into accounts that are defrauding Steemit. The prior accounts that got away with taking many thousands of SBD from the rewards pool - even through copy-paste and other forms of plagiarism - still won't be condemned by these people constantly claiming "witch hunt," "jealousy," and "FUD." This particular user that you're responding to even goes as far as trying to insinuate (on multiple occasions) that I'm here on behalf of a competitor to harm the platform. However, I'm not the one siphoning the many thousands of SBD rewards out of the rewards pool every week.
I think this type of poisoning-the-well and veiled threats of flagging from whales does more damage to the credibility of the platform than I could ever do. The abuses of those with the most influence on this platform does not go unnoticed and, sure, I may be flagged for speaking out, but that's not going to deter me from doing what's right. Some of the people making rather large sums of money off of this platform ought to follow the example of those with the least amount of influence who are doing everything they can to make Steemit successful.
Rather than condemning those who find the flaws and want them corrected, why not use their power to negate the behavior of the bad actors? Not voting for them as witnesses would be a great start. Let's see how many people are willing to do that.
I've already removed my vote for Steemed and Smooth's witness. It took me a long time to see the truth, but it's pretty clear now. My trust in them has been smashed. Smooth has done a lot of work, but I am very upset by him flagging this post. I dislike him thinking that he is some overlord. While I refrain from flagging, he goes ahead and does it to a post that contains data. He will not get my witness vote.
"I think this type of poisoning-the-well and veiled threats of flagging from whales does more damage to the credibility of the platform than I could ever do." And this is why, when I speak to Steemit users who are abandoning the platform, say that they are leaving. These whales are damaging the health of Steemit. They are cutting Steemit by the jugular. Their greed is destroying it. It's quite ironic, isn't it? They threaten us, censor facts, in the name of "not adding value' when they are actively destroying it. Absurd.
I think, that apart from the perps, this @msgivings problems is not being faced for philosophical reasons. I get the impression that a powerful meme in this community is that of the "free market", and this together with the feeling of Steemit's game-changing potential --
-- result in an unwillingness to intervene. However, with the help of Professor Hindsight, I see that one of the pillars of the world view we were lead to (educare) in my British Grammar School was laissez faire, and then this whole concept was largely bullshit: the benign British gentleman with a battleship of tommies ready on the horizon.
The system here is good, but the humans need to stand up and be counted. As you are doing.
That is exactly what you attempting to do.
No one is 'defrauding' steemit. They are using the blockchain as the rules allow. If there were some sort of "exploit" that allowed people to vote multiple times with the same SP, earn rewards in excess of that determined by the programmed formulas, etc., that would be something reasonably described as "defrauding" Steemit. Otherwise, it is 'defrauding' only because you and your accomplices don't like the posts, don't like the rewards they earn, don't like the authors remaining anonymous, believe that you have the right to impose your will over that of the SP holders, and have taken it upon yourselves to declare this as 'defrauding'. There is no other basis for it.
I don't know how else to say it: If you like the posts, vote for them. If you don't like the posts, don't vote for them, or if you feel strongly enough they are bad for the system, then downvote them. The blockchain then impartially determines the outcome. That's what the system does, and as long as no one has discovered an "exploit" such as I described above, your complaints are just disagreement about subjective value being taken to an endless platform of trolling and counter-trolling instead of left to the blockchain to objectively count votes and decide on rewards. I prefer the latter.
If I recall when @msgivings was uncovered as posting plagiarized content, there were whale-powered downvotes applied. I only did not downvote IIRC because the post was already heavily flagged and well below zero when I saw it. Otherwise I would have.
If you like the content, upvote it. If you don't like the content, don't. If you think it is harmful to the community or overrewarded then downvote it. That is what happened with @msgivings and that is what I hope will happen with any future harmful (plagiarized, etc.) content and that is what I'm doing with this post (which districts from evaluating content and attempts to shift focus to individual actors) as well.