Fake profiles can be a challenge with social media sites. Sometimes they are a problem other times not, depending upon the service. They can provide needed anonymity for some or be cause for fraud to others.
I commented on this post by @timsaid Security Guide: How to Reveal Fake Profiles earlier and wanted to follow-up with some thoughts.
One thing I really like about Steemit is the use of Steam Power. It gives authority based upon involvement with the platform and community. The more involved the more steem power they have. New accounts have very little. So it doesn't really matter if it is a dog on the other end, writing blogs, upvoting good content, and making smart comments (very smart dog indeed), if they have steem power they are participating as a valuable member and have earned the right to have an account.
This is not a dating site, we shouldn't particularly care if a picture of someone is a few years old or if they are not as tall as they lead on. This is a community where people can be who or what they want. The value is if they participate in a constructive and beneficial way. If you want to claim you are a fire spitting dragon, cool, I am looking forward to reading your knight chomping exploits. But submit a story. Add to the collective.
As a security guy, my first response is to weed out all the fake accounts or ones with psudo-names. But in reality that would be destructive to the Seemit platform and removing great creativity and worth. So, I say we allow creative names, smart dogs, dragons, re-used stock photos as personal image, etc. as long as the people pushing on the keyboard are making Seemit better.
Will fake profiles be the death of Steemit? Unlikely. We do need to stay vigil to address harmful or dangerous account manipulations, but overall let’s leverage Steam Power for what it is and use it as the measure to judge the confidence of contribution to the community.