If you are following me, there is a good chance you have read the unfortunate saga I am involved in (thanks to all those who upvoted that post). My last post was going to be my final post, but now that the bad actors in this little drama have come forward and identified themselves, I might just serve up some more pudding!
A couple weeks ago, I shed some light on the bot @abusereports with this post. That bot was created and is supported by at least two bad actors, @nextgencrypto and @berniesanders and there may be others but the point being, I have identified large self-upvote abuse by this "team"of bad players, which is the same premise this bot operates on... Identifying and shaming bad Steemit actors.
$929.99 Pilfered From "YOUR" Rewards Pool Last Week!
What I was able to find this week was that @abusereports (mostly through consistent self-upvotes by the same team) rewarded themselves with $929.99 (+/-) over the last 7 days. Last month I was able to calculate rewards totaling $7,869.52 over a 25 day period (amounts taken from published rewards). I guess you can say this shady group has discovered their own little get-rich-quick niche! Below is a snippet of the list of bad voters that always seem to be upvoting @abusereports posts. They also flag together as also seen in the bottom snippet.
According to Steemit's own "Terms of Service," para 14.1.1 states: "Use of our Services in any manner that could interfere with, disrupt, negatively affect, or inhibit other users from fully enjoying our Services, or that could damage, disable, overburden, or impair the functioning of our Services in any manner; is prohibited. As far as I'm concerned, that shoe fits!
If this bot's main purpose was truely to "protect and preserve" the Steemit rewards pool, and did so honorably by refusing payouts, that would truely be commendable (I've said that before!) But to identify and report all other bad actors (some subjectively), and then profit on the same by multiple self-upvotes, multiple times per day, and day after day, is just hypocritically deplorable. It is also distressing to the Steemit platform and that is not a good thing.
Now, attempts are being made to silence my account and just this morning I received a somewhat veiled threat on Steemit-chat (by one of the bad actors himself.) All is not lost though as long as I'm still standing on high ground! So now, if I never accomplish anything else on Steemit, I would simply like everyone to know how fragile your freedom of expression has become here on Steemit. What is also lost is freedom of speech and the ability to voice your real concerns. When a handful of people can stymie thoughts and exert as much negative influence as they do, and to do so without facing any real repercussion, the platform is no longer decentralized and is in danger. In this votes screenshot below, the team is attacking fellow Steemian @mmmmkkkk311 because his comment has called them out also. I've noticed this day that some supporting comments to me have also been flagged.
The idea that Steemit will NOT step up and fix these types of issues is troublesome to me and many others. Most bystanders will not step up and speak up out of fear of reprisal, and that is understandable. And I understand Steemit wanting to remain at arm's length solely for the purpose of the perception of "de-centralization," but some bridges must always be defended and sometimes crossed, at any cost. In this case, by only a couple of the not-so-mighty few.
Maybe Steemit just hasn't matured enough to realized that yet.
I've declined payout for this post because it too will be voted down, but if you feel the need to reward this post, you can always donate. But you could really do the entire Steemit even better by resteeming... that's entirely up to you.
