Payouts with zero votes? What's going on here?

valued-customer (67) · 6 years ago (edited)

Well, that's a theory. How can we test this theory? Pretty easy. We can use a different UI to view the upvotes. I do. I use Steempeak exclusively, and Steemit has no influence on or ability to conceal who might have voted on Steempeak. That disproves that theory. Steem is not Steemit, and Steemit is not Steem, any more than Steempeak, or Busy, or Kure is. The phenomenon occurs on other interfaces with the Steem blockchain besides Steemit, so Steemit can't conceal information on those interfaces, because they're independent of Steemit, not Steemit's subsidiaries.

It is the equivalent of having a Chevy in which the speedometer occasionally didn't work on a given stretch of highway, and then taking the same trip in a Ford, and seeing the same problem, and then claiming that Chevy is concealing something about that stretch of highway. Chevy can't do that to Fords. Something about the highway there, or the upvotes in our real world example, is being revealed by all the makes of UI we have tested it on. Since it happens on at least two of them, it's not those makes of UI themselves that are causing the phenomenon.

"... upvoting random posts..."

What makes you think it's random, and not targeted? How many other posts have you seen affected? If it's only me, It sure isn't random, and that would imply something I do makes it happen.

What makes you say those upvotes are from @animalcontrol? Just an assumption,or is there a basis for specifying that account?

"...using debugging I was able to determine..."

What debugging did you do specifically?

Edit: also, since I am able to see votes that @animalcontrol has cast - as you yourself can see on this comment itself, your theory that those upvotes are being censored could only be partially true at best.

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3 votes

a-non-e-moose (49) · 6 years ago

Disproves may be a little strong, and I'm fully aware of the difference between Steem and it's frontends.

Using a different UI is exactly how I found out that your comment had an upvote from @animalcontrol. The debugging I refer to was using breakpoints in the code of Sauna, my Steem frontend project.

If the highway is the blockchain since my frontend (which makes connections to public Steem full nodes) counted the vote then there is nothing wrong with the highway. It just happens that both the Ford and the Chevy are reading incorrectly, so to speak.

The only reason I say random is because I have only the one sample, and so I have no reason to posit a pattern. I suppose I have no reason to posit randomness either, but I'm fairly certain I've seen this happen to accounts that aren't yours. That doesn't mean it's random though, and some pattern may make more sense and have more utility than doing it randomly.

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valued-customer (67) · 6 years ago

Thanks again for substantively addressing these issues. I reckon Steemit isn't making Steempeak do anything, and your own UI reveals that they both are doing something. What we haven't figured out is just what that is. I am nonplussed by the occasional occurrence of concealing the source of the votes. It is my hope that actual votes aren't being affected by whatever is being done, and not just for the sake of my wallet. I don't actually care much about my HODLings, but do care about the support for my speech upvotes indicate. I care far more about the impact of votes being affected by this mechanism on others, because many do care a great deal about their wallets, and if such is happening, I cannot even imagine how troubling that might be if it became known that something or someone was swiping votes.

It would destabilize the blockchain fiercely. We're recovering (well, at least moving on from) the debacle of Steemit laying off most of it's devs, and the general blackpill that delivered. We lost a lot of accounts in the last few months that I considered quality posters, and we'd lose many more if such is happening.

Nonetheless, if it is I want to know, because I'd oppose that mechanism with every tap I could produce on my keyboard.

Clearly, what I am now grasping is that Steemit is censoring the source of some upvotes, and I neither support this nor see any valid reason for it. Preventing spam is not a good reason to occlude the source of votes. Votes aren't spam, and I've never even seen an argument that concludes they can be. Inconsequential dust perhaps, but that's still no spam, and handled in other ways. Steempeak seems to be doing it too, but inconsistently, since I only rarely spot these cryptic upvotes. That is the weirdest of all, because I can't imagine a mechanism that only works to do that sometimes, and others does not - except perhaps manually doing so by a person that misses some.

I do really appreciate gaining insight into this issue, and I am probably more alarmed by this kind of censorship than you might imagine, because it's implications for the community may well be very profound, depending on exactly what is being censored, and how that's being done.

Thanks!

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a-non-e-moose (49) · 6 years ago

Well the actual votes are on the blockchain, and as far as I can tell seem to be acting normally aside from being hidden on some frontends. So rest assured (as you can from my word) that on the lowest level everything is working as designed.

I don't really think these upvotes in particular reflect support for your speech. It seems more likely to me that this is an automated system just trying to gain curation rewards. I'd like to emphasize my uncertainty here; I'm not sure what their motivations are.

As far as Steempeak not being as consistent, it might just be that whatever blacklist they may have implemented is less strict about what to censor and when.

I share your sense of being alarmed. Censorship is something I care about greatly. It was one of the big motivators for me to start developing a frontend. It's first working title was actually Uncensor.

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valued-customer (67) · 6 years ago

Sadly, my internet access has been interrupted, and only with the help of a kindly neighbor am I able to reply presently.

As a result I am unable to actually dig into these matters myself any further.

I'd be very interested in a frontend aimed at censorship resistance. That was my reason for visiting Steemit to begin with.

Thanks!

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a-non-e-moose (49) · 6 years ago

Well keep an eye out for my next development post then. Censorship resistance is a central design tenant of mine, insomuch as I can facilitate it with a frontend.

Maybe even check out some of my older posts if you're interested.

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valued-customer (67) · 6 years ago

Followed for interests.

Thanks!

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themarkymark (78) · 6 years ago (edited)

There was a patch made by Steemit Inc to hide accounts that violate their Terms of Service from the front end. It also prevents these accounts from hiding content from other people.

Most of the accounts are related to @fulltimegeek and one account from @berniesanders.

The fix is designed to prevent showing massive spam that accounts like @animalcontrol and @exterminator are doing. It also prevents them from slowing down or completely breaking posts once you reach the thousands of comments in a post like @fulltimegeek is doing.

There are a few bugs and side effects though.

First off, the accounts still show up in recent replies page.
The accounts till affect the comment totals on posts/comments.

It also causes some weird behavior where you can see comments and posts with a positive value but no votes. This is because the votes from these accounts are not shown in the UI.

This is for all sites that use Steemit Inc's infrastructure (SteemPeak, Steemit.com, and sometimes Busy.org).

The votes are still there, they can still add and take rewards, they are just not displayed on the front end. More importantly, the content is not even forwarded to the front end, so in cases of @animalcontrol, it drastically reduces the load on posts where he is spamming.

You can see the full list of accounts banned from being displayed in front ends here

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8 votes

valued-customer (67) · 6 years ago

Thanks for this clarification. I do appreciate very much your exposition of this information. Do you have any more information regarding the patch and it's application you can provide?

Thanks!

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themarkymark (78) · 6 years ago

It is a UI patch only, and for any front end that uses Steemit Inc's resources. This means SteemPeak automatically gets it and sometimes Busy (Busy doesn't always use Steemit Inc's nodes).

The biggest thing is it not only hides comments from users on the irredeemable list it prevents their content from even arriving at the browser. This is a very significant change, as this prevents users from being able to slow down or even kill other users posts by posting thousands of comments on their post.

After a few thousand comments, a post takes a long time to load and many times will fail completely. By preventing the comments from even hitting the browser, load times are immediate even on posts with 6,000+ spam comments (such as mine).

Accounts on this list also cannot affect the visibility of other user's content. For example, if a user flags a comment of yours to hide it and that account was on this list, they will not be able to hide your comment.

That's really all there is to it. There are a few bugs though and it isn't a complete implementation but a first pass at solving a major problem.

I am sure in time the other issues will be resolved, namely the recent_replies page and the comment counts reflecting the spam comments.

This change will help deter this behavior, unfortunately, @fulltimegeek has not only become the #1 spammer, he is also the #1 abuser as he not only posts 8,000-35,000 spam comments a day but he is upvoting them with 500,000+ Steem Power gaining uncontested rewards without sharing any curation rewards or being flagged by Steem Cleaners.

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8 votes

valued-customer (67) · 6 years ago (edited)

Thanks for the improved exposition on a matter that was previously opaque to me. What potential may exist for this power to be in the hands of the accounts of the affected blogs? My primary concern is that this is essentially a centralized censorship, and that rubs me incredibly raw. While I do see that it is necessary to effect some kind of preventative mechanism for this problem, I don't like that it is imposed by Stinc.

I would much prefer you, I, and every other account holder be availed this power, as it indicates that slippery slopes to censorship that pose literal existential threats to subjects of tyrannies exist on the Steem blockchain. I came here to ensure that potentially lifesaving information would not be kept from me. It would be a shame if pictures of poop made us all less free.

Please forgive my ignorance of coding realities. My only excuse is that I the time I could have spent learning to code instead was used detecting my thumbs with hammers.

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17 votes

themarkymark (78) · 6 years ago

No data is being removed, you can still access the spam from other front ends or even your own if you put one up.

The process is being limited to extreme cases and is not used without heavy consideration.

I would much prefer you, I, and every other account holder be availed this power, as it indicates that slippery slopes to censorship that pose literal existential threats to subjects of tyrannies exist on the Steem blockchain.

That would be ideal, but there is no implementation in place to make this happen. The problem is fulltimegeek is spamming more comments a day than the entire blockchain combined. A stopgap solution had to be put in place to prevent the entire site being consumed by spam.

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3 votes

valued-customer (67) · 6 years ago

"...there is no implementation in place to make this happen."

Since this has become a problem, it's time to implement such a long term solution. The present stop gap measure has the potential to become a permanent power to censor, and that transformation of temporary measures to permanent tyranny would not be the first time such a thing had happened. The US income tax is a good example. Hell, every tax is. Instituted to deal with some issue as a stop gap, they become permanent.

I don't think this is an issue that should just be glossed over. This is a fundamental attribute of Steem, and the primary metric that imbues Steem with value to me. I can post blogs or rants anywhere and be censored. I came here so that I wouldn't be censored, and this is censorship.

Steem flirts with an existential danger to it's existence by taking such a stop gap measure without immediately and effectively preventing that from becoming a permanent tyrannical imposition. If this power remains centrally imposed, Steem will eventually lose all value to me. It will no longer have any claim to being censorship resistant, and will simply follow the lead of Fakebook, Twatter, and Goolag in being the prime censor of it's users.

This needs fixing every bit as urgently as pics of poop. Even moreso IMHO.

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16 votes

a-non-e-moose (49) · 6 years ago

"...unfortunately, @fulltimegeek has not only become the #1 spammer, he is also the #1 abuser as he not only posts 8,000-35,000 spam comments a day but he is upvoting them with 500,000+ Steem Power gaining uncontested rewards..."

Wow, this is egregious. To think, I was in the process of asking for his help with java coding right as this all started to boil over.

Is there anything we could do about this at all? I'd like to see these ill-gotten rewards stay in the pool to hopefully be distributed to non-abusers.

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a-non-e-moose (49) · 6 years ago

Thanks @themarkymark! This explanation makes a lot of sense to me, and is more or less what I anticipated.

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geekpowered (69) · 6 years ago

That's one of those spam bots that has recently been removed from the interfaces because they have been commenting a shit ton on different posts, crashing Steemit pages when they're loaded. I don't remember who owns it though. Just a part of the Steem Whale Wars.

I would guess that however they patched Steemit to not show their comments also hid their upvotes...which is weird...

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valued-customer (67) · 6 years ago

Steemit can't do that on Steempeak, which is the UI I am using. Something else is happening. Since the phenomenon is that the account that casts the vote isn't visible, what is the basis for claiming it is any particular account?

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geekpowered (69) · 6 years ago

You said Steemit, so I assumed you were talking about Steemit. SteamPeak instituted their own patch to get rid of the bots from the comments as well.

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valued-customer (67) · 6 years ago (edited)

I didn't say it was Steemit. @a-non-e-moose did. Please provide any evidence of your claim that either Steemit or Steempeak is censoring bots in the way you describe.

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geekpowered (69) · 6 years ago

Sorry, I replied without clicking into the page and misread.

I'm guessing either they tried to fix it a similar way...or SteemPeak is based on the condenser code? In any case, the account in question is one of those bots that was patched to not show. I'm guessing they did it the cheap and dirty way and just deleted the name with some regex or something.

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valued-customer (67) · 6 years ago (edited)

"...I'm guessing..."

isn't evidence of anything. Could you provide some kind of actual evidence beyond your guess that someone did something that made bots not show somehow, somewhere?

The fact is that @animalcontrol just upvoted the comment of mine you just replied to, and that upvote is visible. You can see that for yourself. That's evidence.

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4 votes

valued-customer (67) · 6 years ago

I wanted to add here, that now I can no longer see @animalcontrol's name on the upvote I referenced above. That is weird.

This problem is troubling me. I am troubled because I came here to resist censorship, and this is censorship. That's a problem for me.

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enforcer48 (68) · 6 years ago

Because that's exactly what happened.

You must have missed the entire drama surrounding @fulltimegeek, etc.

The frontends have chosen to not show those accounts because they are adding thousands of comments on specific users.

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4 votes

valued-customer (67) · 6 years ago

Can you provide source for this? I was aware of the drama, even piped up trying to end FTG's flagging of @themadcurator, and had some of that nasty spam inflicted on some of my comments when discussing with LindsayBowes how she got dragged into the issue.

I took a few flags for it, but FTG has been supporting my posts and comments consistently before and since. I haven't found that to be a problem. It's odd that I do see most upvotes, and only occasionally see rewards pending without such a vote being visible. I can see why the spam needed to be dealt with. It was not merely obnoxious, but intolerable, and the intrepid can find my comments to that effect if they are willing to wade into that spam ocean, but concealing the votes doesn't seem at all indicated.

The fact that some of it isn't concealed, at least on Steempeak, is more confusing yet.

Is there a post or comment about the solution you could point me to?

Thanks!

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Show 1 more reply

a-non-e-moose (49) · 6 years ago

That upvote from @animalcontrol isn't visible on Steemit actually. If you use Steempeak and it visible they must not be in perfect sync on this issue.

All the ones I say are hidden are hidden on Steemit.

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valued-customer (67) · 6 years ago

THAT is interesting! I find it odd that the issue is intermittent. I hate problems that have that feature, like a car that works fine when you take it to the mechanic, but as soon as you drive off has the problem again.

There must be a pattern to it that can provide a basis for grasping what is actually happening.

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a-non-e-moose (49) · 6 years ago (edited)

This one has four upvotes! Again one from @animalcontrol, then 3 more from different fulltimebots. Those are @fulltimebot8, @fulltimebot18, and @fulltimebot22.

These are all abusers I'm pretty sure, but I'm not sure what to do about this. These votes are pretty substantial, and if those really are "full time" as the names suggest then it's certainly a drain on the reward pool.

The only thing I can think is downvoting the comments, but I wouldn't want to adversely effect @valued-customer, or other recipients of these upvotes.

Here's the vote info for those:

"active_votes":[{"voter":"fulltimebot8","weight":131191,"rshares":"81945650920","percent":6533,"reputation":0,"time":"2019-03-29T04:22:06"},{"voter":"animalcontrol","weight":287133,"rshares":"81821001317","percent":271,"reputation":"48428787253","time":"2019-03-29T04:04:42"},{"voter":"fulltimebot18","weight":78153,"rshares":"81950152515","percent":6543,"reputation":0,"time":"2019-03-29T04:24:27"},{"voter":"fulltimebot22","weight":78156,"rshares":"81951721871","percent":6544,"reputation":0,"time":"2019-03-29T04:25:21"}]

Since your comment was made at 2019-03-29T03:47:33, only @animalcontrol is making curation rewards here. Maybe @animalcontrol is owned by the owner of the fulltimebots and it's a scheme to earn curation rewards.

If I recall, I think I read a post about this kind of abuse from @enforcer48, or at least that account resteemed it.

Nothing about any votes being hidden though.

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valued-customer (67) · 6 years ago

Well, I don't see how unsolicited upvotes are a form of abuse. If the autovoters are endowed with stake, they are deployed per the stakeholders wishes. If my posts and comments are upvoted by them, I reckon it's because what I say has value that the stakeholder wants to encourage. That's how upvotes work.

Are you calling all upvotes abuse, or all autovotes abuse, just the ones from FTG, or only upvotes I receive? You can easily ascertain if there's any quid pro quo by having a look at my wallet and xactions. You might also read a few of my comments regarding bidbots. I've never bought a vote, never pandered for a vote, and don't think I will.

What I do is speak my mind, and it seems FTG provides me incentive to do that. How is that abuse?

a-non-e-moose (49) · 6 years ago

Them being based on common software like condenser could explain why more than just Steemit, and Steempeak as I've learned from @valued-customer, don't show these votes. I'll be right back with details on who cast the phantom votes on these two of @valued-customer's comments. It certainly seems to be effecting that account specifically.

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a-non-e-moose (49) · 6 years ago

This one actually has two votes, one from @animalcontrol again and another from @fulltimebot25. Neither show on Steemit, but I don't know about Steempeak or any other UI. Sauna shows them though :D

Here's an excerpt from the raw json response of the comment to help substantiate my claim.

"active_votes":[{"voter":"animalcontrol","weight":287147,"rshares":"81828420412","percent":271,"reputation":"48428787253","time":"2019-03-29T02:57:45"},{"voter":"fulltimebot25","weight":131186,"rshares":"81947792950","percent":6548,"reputation":0,"time":"2019-03-29T03:18:27"}]

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a-non-e-moose (49) · 6 years ago

While it's probably irrelevant now, I said I would make a comment here detailing the debugging process I used. Ready or not, here it comes.

The grey window in the background is Intellij, an Integrated Development Environment I use for java programming. The three lines of code highlighted in red are instructions for Intellij telling it to suspend execution there so I can poke around in the variables during runtime. These three lines happen to be right around where my frontend (the white foreground window) does the networking to get the data about a given post or comment. Sauna will stop running when it reaches these lines and I can look at the values of the data it's working with. In this case we are getting a comment on this post written by @valued-customer that begins with a quotation.

After I click the fetch post button, we get this. It shows the list of variables at the bottom for the suspended program, and their values. To take a closer look at the variable named "out" I simply click the View link to the right of it.

It pops up with a nice little window that contains the entirety of the variables contents. This includes the voter information in this case, and this is where I got that list of four upvotes I said were on that comment.

Painstaking may have been a bit of an exaggeration, this actually ended up being shorter than I thought it would. I did kind of go fast and gloss over some details, but if you were wondering about what I meant by debugging this is the best explanation you'll receive from me.

Good luck out there folks.

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valued-customer (67) · 6 years ago

Thank you for that detailed explanation. I appreciate it very much indeed.

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crypto.piotr (70) · 6 years ago

Dear @a-non-e-moose

I visited your profile just a moment ago to check your latest publications and I realized that you didn't post anything in a long while :(

Did you give up on Steemit ? :(

Yours
Piotr

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a-non-e-moose (49) · 6 years ago

Not at all :)

I've been poking around every now and then with comments and upvotes, but I've been taking more time for things outside the internet recently. These things come in cycles for me.

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crypto.piotr (70) · 6 years ago

I'm glad to hear that @a-non-e-moose

Honestly it made me worried when I realized that you didn't post anything in a while. I've learned to value you a lot already and your work here on Steemit.

I remember you've been working on your own Steem front-end:
https://steemit.com/steemdev/@a-non-e-moose/i-m-working-on-a-frontend

Any progress?

ps. is there any chance that I could contact you more directly? telegram? email? I would love to keep in touch with someone with your skills and knowledge :)

Yours
Piotr

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a-non-e-moose (49) · 6 years ago

'Progress' may be a bit too strong, but not for lack of effort. I've been revisiting my project every few days when I have the time and trying to avoid burnout.

I have been eyeing a few cryptography books too, but I haven't had extraneous funds to purchase any sadly. Fortunately just 2 or 3 days ago I found a free download of the code examples from one of those books however. I haven't had much free time this week, but I did take maybe an hour or so tinkering with what I might learn from those examples. Hopefully over the weekend I'll have more time.

I'm also very glad you asked. It's a good motivator at least. Thanks @crypto.piotr!

To address your post script, I don't have telegram and you'd probably have better luck contacting me via Steem than E-mail. I did recently create a discord account, so if you're there that might work. I'd say that I'm more likely to check my E-mail even than discord though. All that said, I'm not averse to those other contact methods.

I would rather avoid posting my personal E-mail address or other such info permanently to an immutable public blockchain if I can help it, and I won't ask you to either. Instead, if it's not too much of a hassle, send an E-mail to [email protected] with any relevant contact info. It will still be visible to anyone who might look for a few hours, so don't send your safe combination or Bitcoin private keys ;)

Make sure to reply to this comment promptly after sending that E-mail. I'll be watching so I can catch it, and I'll reply to you from my own E-mail address.

It's not exactly exchanging one-time pads during a secret in person rendezvous, but it seems more private than posting that stuff on Steem to me.

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