It's not often I complain much about anything on Steemit. We all are witness to the abuses daily... vote buying, spamming, bid-bots, self-voting (which I'm guilty of), and all that other nefarious Jazz! As a matter of fact, there are enough complainants on Steemit already, so why should I bother? Because most times, nothing ever gets resolved and when something so flagrant shows up, I would feel guilty for not complaining.
Today I happened across an automated account named "Reporting Abuse" run by @abusereports. It seems the main purpose by and of @abusereports is to compile lists of those account holders accused of abusing, or gaming, the rewards pool as some would say. This @abusereports publishes a list of account holders that it identifies as abusive, large self-upvoters at least daily. And I've seen this list of "Bad Steemians" as they're referred to, published up to 4 times per day.
The following message statements from @abusereports are incorporated into many of the posts and reads as follows:
"This is an automatically generated post that will be updated with a list of all large votes that were placed just before the reward cutoff time.
Being included on this list may indicate abuse (trying to hide large votes on undeserving posts), however, that is not always the case.
If you would like to help stop abuse, please analyze the votes below for abuse and flag if warranted.
Please show support show your support for @abusereports by following, resteeming and upvoting this post if you see value to this project."
Here is what really bothers me about this posting account; The only value in this project is in the amount of rewards this account holder is scamming from the rewards pool. Not only does @abusereports UpVote it's own post, the account creator (@abusereports is brought to you by @nextgencrypto) also UpVotes each and every post from what I can decipher. I just counted the last 25 days worth of earnings on the @abusereports account where the author rewards totaled $7,869.52!
Yep... read it again -
over Seven Thousand Eight Hundred Dollars of our rewards pool money...
... in less than 30 days for auto- generated reports; and undeserving posts at that!
I could see this as a great service if all posting rewards were refused however, this is not the case. If someone is going to hypocritcally call out somebody else for raping the rewards pool with large self-upvotes (regardless of when it happens) when they do precisely the same thing themselves (with large self-upvotes) AND reap huge rewards multiple times per day, then I think the entire platform is corrupt and colluded with same. It leads me to believe Steemit is even more of a Ponzi scheme than some people claim it is! WHY? Because this is ALLOWED to happen!
When hard working minnows can spend hours creating content and get rewarded pennies for their efforts (and any dust that may be earned is now swept up by somebody else!), then maybe we should all think twice about who we throw our support to. Definitely not to @abusereports or @nextgencrypto. When users steal from the rewards pool, it affects all of us, and the price of Steem. We should all learn to speak up when such an obvious injustice occurs on Steemit. We should be able to responsibly police ourselves.
(Revised) After I posted this, I soon discovered an article posted by @truthforce where he responded to another post by @timcliff where he talked about the idea of being "Stakeholders" of Steemit with his list of Call To Action Items. I totally agree with the viewpoints expressed that Steemit has it troubles, especially on the centralization (or decentralization) front, however you wish to look at it. The point being in these two articles is this: If you love Steemit, then stand up and do the right things. We can all add value to this platform, even just by doing the simple things like identifying the bad players. The new sociatal mantra "See Something, Say Something!" should apply here also.
The Other Front - Censorship!
Since when does any one account holder have the right to enter a decentralized platform and attempt to censor and curtail free speech! Here is a snippet I came across today that actually led me to discover @abusereports:
This was a memed post that simply mentions a "vibrator" and is not even considered NSFW, but yet @abusereports took it upon itself to warn this poster about "Posting in Bad Taste?" I'm not sure - but in any case, Steemit does not need any policing on the creativity front, especially from such an unscrupulous individual. I believe most Steemians do a wonderful job of posting in good taste and are here in part because of the whole idea of decentralization.
If I myself (less than one year-old minnow) am beginning to see Steemit for what it really might be ( I hope not), how long will it take for the general public to perceive that Steemit may be something totally different that what it portends to be. Maybe it has always been a get-rich quick scheme... just for the unethical.
And maybe if change never comes, that's all Steemit will ever be... nothing more than a wolf in sheeps clothing!
If anyone reading this post agrees with this abuse, then take a stand and please resteem for widest possible dissemination. Please visit the following posts also for similar and related content.
@somethingsubtle - A Tale of Two Steemits.
@truthforce - re: Open letter to Steem stakeholders: What adds value to Steem?
@timcliff - Open letter to Steem stakeholders: What adds value to Steem?
Ban the Bots!
