I've worked hard in the last week or so trying to flag spam and make Steemit a little better, and some people did appreciate it and even paid me (thanks @positive and @sigmajin!)
Recently, @inertia and I flagged this article for tag spam: https://steemit.com/new/@nimos/pokemon-go-is-a-sign-of-the-end-of-our-species-my-first-real-post . And a little bit later after that, what do you know? @dan upvotes it to around $700! Trolololol! If @dan had reached through my monitor and slapped me in the face, it would have had the same effect! Well the whales clearly don't give a shit about our flagging campaign, or maybe they have other ideas in mind..I hope.
Flagging isn't the answer, what we really need is better user side filtering to sort through all the garbage on this site. Plenty of people have suggested ideas, including me. I guess I'll have to sit back and be patient and hope these things get implemented. As it stands now, this site is abysmal compared to Reddit when it comes to reading the latest news on Linux or Bitcoin or anything else i'm interested in.
For now I'll just flag for the lolz and upvote whatever garbage I think might get me the best curator rewards. That seems to be the best strategy . You spammers can rest easy for the moment.