Are you on the Steemit @Blacklist?

What is this account for? How do you get added to such a list? And what does it mean to be 'Blacklisted'?

The other day I saw a downvote on a post by an account called @blacklist-a. The post received a downvote from a member of the Steemit.inc team also, and so this interested me enough to go and have a look at @blacklist-a.

I'll not name the post here, or list any accounts involved (other than @blacklist-a), but I will provide images below.

The Black List

Taking a look at @blacklist-a's profile https://steemit.com/@blacklist-a, the blurb is:

This is bot use many factors based on time and flags from serious members of the steemit community. A Flag from this bot stop other bots from auto-voting your post.

Immediately a few questions spring to mind!

Who are the 'serious members'?

Which 'other bots'?

And who wrote this text because it could do with a few amendments!

Also, on the profile page linked above is a URL: http://pastebin.com/h1unSks2 More on the contents of that soon.

Serious?

_{Serious source}

Who are these 'serious' community members? I'm assuming they know how to code for a start. And, they've been here a while and seem to have a good view of what's going on on the Blockchain.

Hmmm, I wonder who fits the bill there...

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No auto-votes from 'other' bots

So who are these 'other' bots? Bid-bots? I'm not sure about that because @blacklist-a was around before HF 17 (The delegation Fork) and so Bid-bots didn't exist back then.

How about curation bots? Potentially.

A recent report by @paulag reported a link between reputation and post worth.

The reward/reputation increase showed a really nice (almost programmatical) curve, whereas reputation increased, post payout increased. This got me thinking, I wonder if their are curation bots that support users as they rise up the reputation scale?

And, I wonder if being a member of 'The Black List' stops these bots from visiting your posts while you are present on the list?

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http://pastebin.com/h1unSks2

At this link, there is more information on what the @blacklist-a account is, why it's there, and also, what do do if you want to be removed.

The Steemit @Blacklist uses a range of metrics to determine who's a repeat offender of plagiarism, hate speech, bullying, ongoing power-abuse and so on.

This does imply that the account is owned by Steemit, as only the Steemit account has the 'power' to take down the biggest whales, should they go rogue and fall into the criteria above.

Speaking of the criteria, I think most of us have an idea of what falls into 'plagarism' and 'bullying', but what about 'hate speech' and 'power-abuse'. This seems a bit more subjective to me, and indeed the post that I noticed the flag from @blacklist-a on, seemed to fall into 'hate speech' - at least from @blacklist-a's point of view.

The Blacklist is computer-generated and is updated irregularly to make sure bad behaving accounts get a quick flag so that other upvote-bots can avoid upvoting the blacklisted accounts and simply skip to the next post.

This could answer the earlier question: 'How about curation bots?'

It does sound like the 'other bots' are auto-voting curation bots. I would love to know the criteria/rules here!

The @blacklist-project is a much wider and further stretching authority than any of the singular up or downvoting guilds currently running on steemit...the black flag is computer-generated by a popular opinion from a wide range of always active members of the community.

Another question answered? Who can confidently state the above, I can only think of one team of people.

There are one way to get off the blacklist once you are on it, and that is to change your behavior from evil to good over your next 40 posts. Once you have reached that number you must send 40 STEEM to the @blacklist account with "REVIEW" in the memo. Someone from our staff will then manually look at your blog within the next 24-48 hours and remove you from the list if your account now qualifies for it.

40 STEEM! Damn! Somewhere in the region of $150 at the time of writing, and there are no guarantees your account will be removed.

The Blacklist contains between 200-500 accounts at any given time. The list grows or shrinks depending on user behavior (1) and user-reaction (2).

I'm going to look at how many and who might be on this list next. Good to know that if you react positively to the flag, it could well be rescinded, maybe!

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Who's on The Black List?

The short answer, a lot of people!

A quick look at the Wallet for @blacklist and @blacklist-a, show no transfers 'to' of 40 STEEM. I'm assuming those who've been added either don't care, or are not aware they are on any list.

I've used the 'TxVotes' table in the SteemSQL DB to gather some statistics.

In the past 40 days, 1433 have been flagged by @blacklist-a. Assuming 1 (top level) post a day, all of these accounts are still Blacklisted.

Over 3000 accounts were flagged by @blacklist-a in the past 3 months.

Here is a list of the accounts, with a Reputation over 60 who have been flagged by @blacklist-a in the past 40 days:

See anyone you recognise?!

And a list of the top Steem Power holders who have been flagged by @blacklist-a in the past 40 days:

Again, more people you may recognise - there are a few on each list that I do and of those, I am surprised they are on a list which compiles users guilty of:

'plagiarism, hate speech, bullying, ongoing power-abuse and so on'

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Summary

A user/some users with a large amount of Steem Power use @blacklist-a to tag accounts so they are not voted on by auto-curation bots.

Perhaps Steemit are supporting users behind the scenes, or maybe it's another group of whales who have a large stake.

The subjective nature of the criteria that can get you added to the list is not going to the please everyone.

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Looking at the lists above again, who has the potential to get added to The Black List?

I guess!

Questions / Theories / Answers?

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Cheers!

Asher @abh12345