This has been my attitude on this entirely and I told ats-david that when he asked me in private chat.
I don't care who owns what account, nor do I care who votes for it. I evaluate the posts and decide whether I believe they are adding value and/or whether they constitute some form of abuse such as plagiarism. The rest of this post and others like it is indeed a witch hunt based on jealousy and perhaps competition from other bloggers or others spreading FUD on behalf of other platforms.
I didn't flag because it was already flagged by the time I saw it, but if not I probably would have, because I see the activity @ats-david and his collaborators are engaging in and posting about to be not adding value. EDIT: after revisiting the post I saw it attracting some rewards so I went ahead and added a flag
That said, I do support @ats-david having the right to post about his findings. I just don't think, as a stakeholder, those sorts of findings should be rewarded or given high visibility on the bases of stakeholder votes.
I would have to disagree with you on one point: ats.david is adding value. He is revealing facts which people can therefore make opinions about. He is also illustrating that people have a right to speak freely about things they notice. Ned, the CEO of Steemit obviously sees value in providing data to the community. Your definition of value seems a bit shallow, actually. Based on your desire to police people who are adding value to Steemit, I have just removed my vote for your witness. I think you fail to see how your actions continue to agitate honest people who care deeply about the integrity of this platform and the needs of free-thinking individuals.
I feel like flagging your comment, but I refrain from doing so because you have a right to your opinion, just like everyone else. But the feeling persists. You are not our overlord.
Or perhaps less shallow.
Well that's the incredible thing about blockchain. Eventually in the future someone will build a tool analyzing all transfers, votes etc. and "fake" transactions will be exposed. similar to cheetah finding duplicates etc.
Well said @stellabelle
thanks, I am annoyed by whales trying to suppress the little people from learning and sharing useful information and data. It's unacceptable actually.
Agreed, well said @stellabelle
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.
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.
The great thing is, that everybody can vote for what-ever they want to. If you don't like don't vote.
While I get that the accounts in question seems to be from one person, I would think that maybe the whale is helping that reporter to format and upload things. (just a unlikely but possible scenario)
So it's interesting to read this and to see how we can see everything on the blockchain but in the long run only quality content will guarantee a piece of the cake.
I am sure that if this really was an attempt of a whale to get higher rewards out of the system, that they will re-think their actions and maybe contribute in a better /different way, which ultimately benefits them the most as the price of the vested Steem might go up in the near future.