How Much Are @dragonslayer109's Hidden Gems Worth? And To Whom?

I Received An Unexpected Comment On A Post Yesterday

I must admit, I was put off by it right away. For one, I don't like people posting links to their posts in the comments of my blog in general. It's spam, plain and simple.

But also, I've been hearing numerous complaints from authors who felt violated by @dragonslayer109's use of their content for his own personal gain without providing any benefit to them as the authors.

He does not ask permission to feature posts, which bothers many people who view it as disrespectful. He does not share any of the rewards that he earns on his "Hidden Gems" posts, and authors rarely see much benefit from them in the way of increased rewards on their own posts.

@dragonslayer109 has done very well for himself with these "Hidden Gems" posts... But I want to emphasize that it is mostly himself that benefits.

I Broke Down The Payouts From The Post

Post Author	Post Payout
@gargon	$45.46
@bacchist	$20.14
@sauravrungta	$158.56
@hitmeasap	$7.29
@menta	$78.44
@allmonitors	$84.69
@kaylinart	$115.83
------------	------------
TOTAL	$510.41

The payout @dragonslayer109 received was nearly as much as all of the authors of his "Hidden Gems" combined.

That's shocking on its own. He is making more off of aggregating the work of others than the value he is adding to their posts. Clearly some of those posts would have had at least a few votes on them by the time he featured them... What they got out of being featured requires a bit more information.

How Much Did Authors Benefit?

A look at the voting on the posts reveals that the posts he featured hardly benefitted at all from his aggregation.

@gargon received one whale vote (@proskynneo, who to his credit voted on every gem post), a few random votes, and several low percentage bot votes:

The story was much the same with @bacchist:

As you might expect from the gem with the highest payout, @sauravrungta's post received the most post-post votes:

Once again, @hitmeasap saw a similar pattern to the first couple posts:

I expected that @menta's post would show a similar pattern as the others, perhaps with little more action. Somewhere between @gargon and @sauravrungta would seem about right.

Boy, was I in for a surprise!

This Is "Hidden"??

@menta's post had already received upvotes from one of the largest and most watched whales... @berniesanders!

As if that wasn't bad enough, the very next post on the "Hidden Gems" had also received similar attention:

What Is Going On Here?

The last author on the list of "Hidden Gems" will be a familiar one to most Steemit users.

@kaylinart has been consistently putting out high quality posts for as long as I can remember. She has earned a following, name recognition, visibility, reputation, and the rewards that come with those accomplishments.

Her reputation score, number of followers, and post count are in the top tiers of those categories.

Just the other week, she had an impressive run of well earning posts that really stand out when you look at her blog.

It begs the question... Why are her posts being included in the "Hidden Gems"??

But it gets worse... @kaylinart was featured in the "Hidden Gems" before. Quite recently, in fact. It was the third time in four days that a post of hers had been featured.

I also noticed @sterlinluxan was featured in at least two of those posts. He has nearly 700 followers!

Should This Be Allowed To Continue?

I have to take him at his word when @dragonslayer109 says that he started the project to help underappreciated authors gain recognition. But it's clearly strayed far from that goal.

As far as I can tell, he's doing as little work as possible in order to get a steady flow of rewards.

In fact, six of the posts from the above list were just taken from a low-volume private post promotion channel on the RocketChat.

Auto-voting from whales ensures every one of his posts gets several hundred dollars. He knows that as well as anyone. It's clear that most of them do not look at the featured posts and vote on them. The only one that did was @proskynneo. (Thank you!!)

The posts he's choosing don't reflect any kind of unique curation service. He's using well established authors and posts that have already received whale votes.

I think we need to hold people up to a higher standard if they are going to be auto-voted. This is simply unacceptable.

Look for future posts, because I have barely scratched the surface here... there is plenty more evidence that I didn't have time or space to address