Bidder Beware: @buildawhale @upmyvote @ipromote @badcontent @themarkymark
I did not, do not, and will not consent to any donations towards @themarkymark campaign against spam, I want a refund for services that were denied to me.
There is a movement here on Steemit for a reduction in spam or trash posts. Many feel like posting content that is too small, or does not bring value to the site, is stealing from the reward pool by abusing bid bots, and therefore must be blacklisted. There are multiple fake accounts out there being made, in order to post simple and easy content just to cash in. This could become a problem for the site, but at the same time this campaign can be used to take advantage of innocent people.
Bid bots can be used as a way to advertise your post, buying upvotes for SBD or Steem. It is a mutually beneficial relationship between the bid bot and the bidder, as both parties will possibly receive profit from the transaction; as long as the bids do not outweigh the bots voting power. In this way, people can post one line, one word posts, spend money to upvote them, and the cash out. Obviously this is abuse of the reward system and not the intended use of bid bots.
So the problem comes when these bid bots start enforcing a no refund policy on blacklisted authors. There are various service out there searching and blacklisting authors; the problem being, the author is usually not aware of being blacklisted. An author could possibly send a large amount of SBD or Steem to one of these bots and essentially be refused service, and refused a refund; the bid bot swindling the author. These bit bot owners will then take the money and transfer it to an alternate account, increasing their personal wealth by thousands of SBD.
How do they get away with it, when everything is 100% transparent? They are whales and they eat minnows. It doesn't matter if a minnow is wronged, since no one will see their posts. It doesn't matter if a spammer is conned, because the spammer creates low level content. This is ridiculous and immoral behavior. Stealing is wrong no matter what the intention is behind it.
The blacklist enforcing bid bots do not advertise this fact, their master blacklist is not readily available to view and in fact, they are shown on bid bot tracker for automatically refunding invalid bids. Is a blacklisted authors bid not invalid? Little to no support is given to blacklisted authors, and their bids are usually claimed to be donations. Why would the most profitable bots not refund these bids? It is clearly dishonest and fraud, two qualities that these bid bots claim to be trying to remove from Steemit. Does the ends justify the means? Or does someone stand to profit from these fraudulent policies?
The main questions include: Why do these bots not have programming to refund blacklisted author bids? Campaigning against theft while committing theft is hypocrisy at it's best. If one has no time to be dealing with spam refund requests why are there no warnings in place and no information easily available? Why is the code not refined to deal with refunds for blacklist authors? Is the code designed that way?
In conclusion, here are some screen shots and a couple of links. Good luck out there and thanks for reading. Bidder Beware!
Evil Bot Owner, Fruit Pretending to be a Vegetable, Confused Whale Thinks it's a Minnow
UPDATE 2-11-18
This character is now auto refunding Spam posts from Dmania. The question remains, will the money be refunded that was previously stolen?
UPDATE 2-11-18
There are many people who have been scammed out of their money. Check it out at Discordapp.com inside the buildawhale support channel. I have found at least five other authors who are asking for refunds but do not receive them.
https://www.fbi.gov/scams-and-safety/common-fraud-schemes/internet-fraud