As I have become minimally infamous for the #shitpost series wherein I call out users that abuse the platform for personal gain, I figured I would do a follow up on those I have outed and document what, if any progress we made towards cleaning up the platform.
But first, I have on occasion caught flak from other users for my proactive and somewhat aggressive method of outing and subsequently going after those that choose to abuse our fair community through nefarious and self serving means.
I have been downvoted for alerting lessors that the SP they were leasing out was being used by a bad actor in a way detrimental to the community. I have also been compared to the East German Stasi (secret police), called the moral police, a witch hunt creator and accused of being more abusive than those that consistently farm the rewards pool.
However, for every negative, I generally receive X3 the positive from other members whom actually care about the site, its long term health, and the greater community.
- Members like @troglodactyl; whom stepped up and immediately countered downvotes by those whom wanted me to turn a blind eye and let the abuse continue.
- Members like @protegeaa; a delegate I alerted whom cancelled the delegation for the abuser, kept his word and began upvoting my posts as a thank you for my work towards keeping the community clean.
- Members like @cryptographic, @gregory-f, @libertyteeth etc. all have shown a great sense of community by helping me out from time to time by either countering malicious downvotes or promoting me when I had nothing to offer in return.
- Let me not forget those on the @minnowbooster @steemcleaners and @mack-bot team; @furious-one, @reggaemuffin, @logic and @patrice whom have been proactive in blacklisting accounts or going after accounts when notified and been very supportive of my repeated submissions to the various abuse channels.
- Members like @fbslo for delegating me some free SP to combat these morons
- Lastly you have other minnows like me @aussieninja, @bethwheatcraft and @ervinneb whom work with me to tirelessly promote each other’s content as we strive towards our whale destinies.
It is members like those above and many others that show the sense of community that gives me hope in the platform and motivates me to continue doing what I am doing for its betterment.
So let us do a recap of our efforts and results.
Our first winner was @pradeeprajora
Article: https://steemit.com/steemit/@pawsdog/please-join-me-in-flagging-a-shit-post-and-reward-pool-abuser
He was essentially on the low end of shit posters by stealing FB images, posting them to later upvote with bots in excess of $60 SBD per post. Our efforts were successful in that they changed his pattern of behavior, the account is essentially dead now, and he has not as of yet not repeated his abusive behavior.
Winner: @amanat1993
Article: https://steemit.com/shitpost/@pawsdog/the-shit-post-diaries-1-12-18-2
A slightly more damaging shit poster he would post random bullshit images of a camera, a ceiling fan, the sky etc. and robo buy votes at the last minute. He actually banked a couple thousand through his scheme. Now he is blacklisted by @minnowbooster, @upme and his self serving fuckery has been severely impacted. Although I see he may be under the mistaken impression he has been forgotten as he recently leased some SP, bought a few more late votes and may be attempting to once again travel the path of self voting with leased SP; accordingly I encourage readers to once again peruse his blog and show him love where appropriate.
Winner: @shaileshgiri
Article: https://steemit.com/shitpost/@pawsdog/the-shit-post-diaries-1-17-18-3
A typical youtube video thief that buys votes and self upvotes. While my write up was good, I think we failed in our follow through as her behavior is for the moment going unchecked and is essentially the same as it was prior to our efforts.
Winner: @ryacha21
Article: https://steemit.com/shitpost/@pawsdog/the-shit-post-diaries-1-17-18-4
@ryacha21 had $35,000 in leased SP he was using to upvote his own shitty comments in the last few minutes before they were due to pay out. He now has $9,000 SP as numerous delegates dumped his punk ass thanks to our efforts and recalled their SP. Outing him also forced him to go on an upvote everyone else spree to hide his previous bad behavior. You can go here https://steemd.com/@ryacha21 and think of his voting history as pre and post @pawsdog intervention. I believe around page 6 I started showing him love and he had up until that point never voted for anyone but himself. So we made progress, impacted his shitty behavior and motivated him to spread some curation mana around. He was also banned by @minnowbooster and a few others which will curb his ability to lease SP and pay for self votes in the future
Winner: @kospi
This idiot was actually somewhat interesting I that he would continually post a single bible verse per day and then use leased SP and Bots to upovote it. He would also make a shit ton of spam comments on his own posts and then use the leased SP to upvote those as well. He is, at this moment still a work in progress, though @mack-bot and @patrice have been notified and begun cleanup efforts on some of his posts. That said there is still much work to be done if we go here:
There are still a ton of spam self upvoted comments in need of purging and I invite all to show him some love.
Honorary #shitpost mention: @jonesteemit
I would also like to give an honorary #shitpost mention to @jonesteemit, whom as of yet has not been awarded and entire article dedicated just to him, but is another self serving shit poster that went down the road of posting comments with sequenced numbers 1,2,3 etc and upvoting them on 4 month old posts. What I find to be particularly annoying about him is that he fails to take responsibility and show actual contrition for his actions. Instead he is upset he got caught and is currently suffering the penalty of @mack-bot and @patrice while arguing with me here about his behavior:
That’s the recap, Steem On… Together we can make a difference; we can impact these selfish morons and make their schemes considerably less profitable. We just have to be dedicated and consistent in our efforts and check back up on them from time to time and show them more love when appropriate.
I applaud your courage and the effort you put into doing the right thing!
Those who insult, slander and malign do so because they have no other argument and are best left unaddressed as much as possible, and if you can do that by taking the high road at the same time, there's no better way to achieve success at what you're doing.
Great job and keep up the good work!
BTW, thanks for the @just2random resteem. Looks like he's got the right attitude and I've followed him!
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No worries, I appreciate the kind words.. Doing it the right way is a battle at times. But we are making a difference. Each abuser that I have called out has for the most part been severely impacted. That last winner "the bible guy" has a dead account now that was essentially nuked out of existence. There is hope if we work together, I do see that.. Again thank you for taking the time to comment..
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Hey Pawsdog,
I've got some homework for you. Delegating SP was my first attempt at increasing the value of my Steemit account by means other than the inherant increase in value from the network itself. Shortly after delegating SP for the first time you contacted me regarding ryacha21 and after seeing what you were talking about I promtly undelegated him/her. I subsequently undelgated the other person I had delegated SP too as I realized they were doing the same thing. I'm currently experimenting with various ways to earn rewards, not all of which are in keeping with the general philosophy of steemit (like upvoting my own comments), but like I said I'm just experimenting to see how it works. None of this seems to have incurred much value in return. My wife and I are currently on a cruise and I can't get pictures and videos to upload so I will have to wait until we get home to post my own content to see how that works (earnings wise).
That having been said, I have come across particular person "travelingsomm" who has only been posting for a couple of weeks but has been making ~ 250.00 per post from the very beginning. "She" seems like a very nice "girl" who makes very nice posts and receives a lot of comments but all of "her" income seems to be coming from "entities" that do not specifically comment on "her" posts. She also just resteemed a "friend" (kpine) who made a first time post and what do you know, earned 270.00+ right out of the gate. Anyways, I would be interested in your analysis of these individuals as I suspect that the individuals to whom you are referring to in this post are maybe getting a little bit more sophisticated in their Steemit mining efforts.
Anyways thanks for all you and you colleagues do for Steemit and others like myself who are trying to learn how to increase our account values while keeping the community health and growing.
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Interesting I will check into it..
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So, eliminating upvote bots would eliminate most shit posting.
Then, if you eliminate being able to upvote your own comments, you would eliminate even more shit posting.
Only if the Whales and Witnesses had the balls to make that change.
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That's on my wishlist too.
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Only time will tell.
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I agree with you entirely.. I think that the bots really hurt the purist ideals the platform was built on, that the best content is organically upvoted based on its merit.. I'm all for both changes... as it would seriously kill the vast majority of spammers...
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thx for the recap! keep up the good work, you know you are already having an impact (and thus, you are making a difference)!
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Why thank you and any impact that affects them and slows them is a positive as it preserves the site for those that do care.
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lol, fun read, keep up the good work! :)
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Thanks, and I shall..
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Amazing work man!
It's only the relentless and disciplined actions of the Defenders of Steemit that will force these Reward Pool Thieves away. People will always try and game the system, and it's up to all of us to prove that this behaviour is not acceptable on our platform.
I'm surprised that you've received any criticism at all...
If people witness a crime, would they not report it? If people witness anti-social behaviour, would they not say something? People ignoring wrongdoing is almost as bad as wrongdoing themselves.
The reward pool is for everyone, if people legitimately earn their slice of that reward pool through engaging content and hard work, then that's amazing... if they earn their slice through dodgy behaviour, that is selfish. We all suffer.
Love this follow up article... it's great to know some impact has been made but we still have a lot of work to do.
Ah, as an aside, I think you might have missed some words out of the sentence about protegeaa.
Thanks for all your effort dude! I for one super appreciate it!
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I agree, strange the shit that people on here criticize others for.. Good catch on the typo.. fixed.. :)
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Good job in calling 'em out, maybe you oughta change the name to watchdog instead too 🐕.
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Thanks, that may be a good idea..:)
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Great idea to recap our effort. This a good way to track progress, also to remind us all to check this jokers. Thank you for your continues effort @pawsdog ! Have my 100% and continue doing what you do. When we have 100,000 SP it will be far easier :)
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I agree, and if we keep doing what we are doing we will get there sooner rather than later.. and our organic efforts will far surpass those the earnings and rewards of those that choose to abuse the system and pay for votes..
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Well said :)
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Then we agree, once again.... :)
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Here's a fun shitposter who figured out the bid bots. $50+ per post for stolen porn images @suicidegirl
Edit: looks like bernie found this account too
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Really.. lol.. I will give it a look..
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Really.. lol.. I will give it a look.. Looks like bernie took interest in him already..
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I actually noticed this person the other day.
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Any relation to the actual suicide girls? Probably not. I feel like I shouldn't even know what that is.
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This seems like a good place to ask this. LOL
I'm curious about how this works. If you could explain, that'd be great.
Ok, now to create balance in the force, I'm going to rip you to shreds in my next comment.
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I think @flauwy is being a little extreme, but he's not entirely wrong. It's a slippery slope. On steemit, there's a fine line between censor and curator. We want to be curators, not censors. It's something I am constantly repeating to myself to be reminded of what we are doing here. We're curating content, we're not the thought police (I say this because in times passed we've had discussions about content quality and effort). Some of us seem to judge content on what we know (which is not a lot) as non-experts. We are all painters judging poetry.
I kinda have to agree though. This series of your content is not my favorite. It doesn't help things. It actually makes you just as guilty as them because you're trying to benefit off someone else's garbage content:
I would respect this series more if you wiped the rewards from this series and instead of using it to profit from other people behaving badly. To make matters worse, you complain about people abusing the reward pool, then you self-vote your own content.
I got no problem self-voting, but if you're going to do it. Do it after day 7.
I don't by any means regard you as a dumb person, so it puzzles me that you think this series might actually be benefiting anyone but you. There's a guise of awareness here, but it's not really. There's already people spreading awareness like @spaminator, @steemcleaners, @cheetah, and @patrice. There's also the discord channels and hundreds of curators out there spreading the word and making sure this stuff stays clean. The best way to contribute is on those channels and reporting this stuff there. Instead, we post this for profit and proliferate it. This is almost like advertising the garbage out there. I'd rather it get downvoted out of view, but this shines a huge spotlight on it. It's just not my preference.
Anyway, that's my $0.02. I know you already have your mind up and you don't like to let anyone convince you otherwise, but I gotta say something. Everytime I come here, it's like a jab in my side to see this.
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