A Gangsta Sherlock Would Be an Awesome Dream - Steemit Sock Puppetry Continues?

The last post on this topic was fairly in-depth and was well-received by the Steemit community, but it also drew some passionate responses from those identified.

Before we get into this data, I want to reiterate a few points and respond to some of the comments made by @kushed and @honeyscribe. Let’s start by pointing out some facts.

Fact #1

The actual data that I shared was not disputed by either @kushed or @honeyscribe. In fact, they admitted to what was concluded in my previous post – that @honeyscribe is @perspective. This is important to note and it is important for us to understand that what I shared was neither a lie nor a misrepresentation of the data. I connected the readily available dots, I laid them out, and the links and behavior between the accounts were not disputed.

Fact #2

Both @kushed and @honeyscribe confirmed that they were engaging in deceptive practices. This was the purpose of my previous post – to identify the deception and who was involved in it. Again, this was not disputed, although they did offer reasons for the deception. I’ll leave it up to the reader to decide whether or not those claims are true after all of the information has been shared.

What we do know is that a sock puppet account was in fact created and it was in fact being upvoted by the same whales who were upvoting the original account. These posts on both accounts were upvoted by whales for nearly two weeks. At least one of these whales – @kushed – knew that it was the same person. Furthermore, the original user – @honeyscribe – was intentionally deceiving readers/curators by pretending to be two different users and interacting with herself. Regardless of her intentions, that is the epitome of sock puppetry. Add in the collusive whale vote support and we have exactly what I had intended and expected to find.

I would also like to pose this question to everyone: If I had not published my post about these two accounts, would they still be carrying on with the deception and would these whales still be collusively upvoting both accounts? I saw no indication that this was going to stop.

To be clear – I was not questioning whether the account @honeyscribe was in fact being managed by a real person that was not @kushed. This was already understood to be true. I never claimed that @kushed was the writer of the posts. The purpose of acquiring and presenting the data in the previous post was to establish several facts about the @perspective account and the people involved in its creation and curation. That post was only one of several building blocks. Those facts are now established.

Fact #3

@kushed had been given plenty of opportunities before this week to clear up some of the suspicions, but he instead chose to be obstinate and to antagonize, which left users with no other option but to explore the matter without him. In addition to that, any public questioning of this matter has been met with threats of flagging and swift retaliation by himself and other whales, which only served to make users more suspicious about the observed behaviors of the involved accounts. Despite all of his previous claims to the contrary, @kushed finally admitted to creating and upvoting a sock puppet (whether he wants to call it that or not).

Fact #4

At no point was @honeyscribe’s personal information ever going to be made public by either myself or @bacchist. As a matter of fact, we really don’t have much information at all – other than what was given to us by another user. I have never been concerned about “verification” and still don’t care about it. I find the “verify yourself” requests on Steemit to be absurd, quite honestly. I am perfectly fine with anonymity and I am fine with multiple accounts. That is not the concern here. I don’t believe that @honeyscribe has any reason to fear for her safety by using this site and I don’t believe there is any cause for concern about me identifying similarities between two anonymous accounts, neither of them created by her with her personal information.

The reaction from @kushed

I found @kushed’s accusations (which have been edited) that this is a witch hunt by Steemit Inc. in order to strip users of anonymity to be absolutely ridiculous. I do not work for anyone on this site. I have never been personally approached by any Steemit Inc. employee – in fact, I’m a little disappointed that I have been repeatedly ignored by them and have even mentioned this publicly. So, @kushed can make accusations all day long about the intent of this, but he is, quite frankly, ill-informed. I also do not work for “the competition.” If anyone has read my blog, they would know that I am self-employed in the coffee industry and am building my own company, working directly with farmers and farming communities in Central America. So, I hope we can put these baseless accusations to rest.

I would also like to point out that @kushed’s tirade was not flagged by any whales, despite many intentionally inflammatory remarks, insults, and accusations about other users, which were factually incorrect. On the other hand, my post was flagged by multiple whales for providing accurate data – particularly about a deceptive sock puppet account that was being knowingly rewarded by the very same person who reacted in a rather inappropriate manner. So, if any whale feels the need to flag this post, please do not pretend to be doing it because “it just doesn’t look good for Steemit.”

What really doesn’t look good for Steemit is rewarding people for making inflammatory and reckless accusations while simultaneously punishing others for providing accurate data about sham accounts and collusion from whales that grants high SBD rewards to such sham accounts.

What can we glean from these facts?

We are at a point now where those who have been screaming “WITCH HUNT!” and “JEALOUSY!” can either accept that some of these claims are in fact valid and have been confirmed, or they can continue ignoring the data and the admissions from those users who have engaged in the sock puppetry. If we are to take the identified users at their word and believe that this is an isolated incident, then we can at least acknowledge the fact that the data presented has, at the very least, cleared up some of the concerns.

On the other hand, if we are to acknowledge that the deception was real (which it admittedly was) and that the previous claims by these users were in fact not true (which they were admittedly not), then we must acknowledge that what they are now claiming may also be not true. Again, I will leave that up to the Steemit community to decide and I will continue to provide information so that users can make informed decisions about whether to invest their money into this platform and how to use their invested Steem Power. (Full disclosure: I have actually been investing some of my acquired SBD into Steem Power.)

All of the data collected here can be found by anyone with minimal computer skills. Most of it is simply a recognition of patterns, layouts and writing styles, images and sources, curation trails, and account behavior from steemd.com. There’s nothing sneaky or nefarious about it. There’s nothing fabricated or hyperbolic. If you disagree with how the data is presented, then simply move on to another post and ignore this. I’m going to present what I find and I hope that the information is helpful for decision-making by other users.

On that note – I’d like to present more data from additional accounts that are well-connected to all of the accounts previously mentioned.

The origin of @lifeisawesome

As @kushed has publicly verified, @lifeisawesome is an account that he created and is operated by a blogger friend of his. This account – like @honeyscribe – was created by one of @kushed’s accounts, @lakers. In her recent post, @honeyscribe stated that she knows @lifeisawesome, so any interactions between them must be taken at face value. There is nothing wrong with friends interacting with each other on a social platform. As far as voting goes, @kushed can certainly vote for his friends if he chooses. That is also a point that has never been disputed by me. Again – I’m only interested in the sock puppet accounts and the collusion between whales when upvoting those accounts.

We have already established that one sock account was being used and was being collusively upvoted by whales – and that at least one of them knew that it was a sock account...because he created it for the user. I do not believe that this was an isolated incident.

Before we get into more details, let’s look at a few examples of @lifeisawesome’s blog posts. He has a very distinct style to his writing.

He also uses some word cloud images (we have seen these before, if you recall from my previous post.)

Here’s another set of examples:

Notice the exact same style of the lines – even the triplicate use of some phrasing.

And again, we have the use of a word cloud – this one being an actual cloud.

As you can see, this style is fairly unique. Oh, wait...I’m terribly sorry. I’ve made a mistake. These last two images are actually from the account @sherlockcupid. I apologize. It’s hard to tell the difference here. So, if you’re curious to know, exactly who is this @sherlockcupid?

Enter @wd40

If you recall from the last post, @wd40 was one of several accounts linked to @kushed. It was one of the early upvoters of both @honeyscribe and @lifeisawesome, which we can see here:

On September 8th, 2016, @wd40 created the account @sherlockcupid. Their very first actions were to follow @lifeisawesome, then upvote three different posts by the account @livingthedream. (More on that account later.) Shortly thereafter, @sherlockcupid followed @honeyscribe. The next activity was to upvote a post from @honeyscribe and another account – @gangsta. (More on that account later.) This account then created a blog post and proceeded to upvote another two posts, one each by @lifeisawesome and @honeyscribe. You can see this activity from steemd.com in the image below.

So, it seems that we have another doppelganger – this time it’s an account that appears to be just like @lifeisawesome, friend of @kushed and @honeyscribe/@perspective. Just like the two accounts mentioned in my previous post about this topic, @lifeisawesome and @sherlockcupid write about very similar issues, use a very similar layout and almost identical writing style, and they also interact with each other.

Let’s look at another example from @lifeisawesome:

I’m sorry. That was a post from @sherlockcupid. Let’s look at @lifeisawesome this time.

Once again, I apologize. These two images are actually from two different posts from these accounts that happened to post on the same day – September 10th. Given the fact that we have already verified that one of @kushed’s previous bloggers had a second account, I think it’s very possible that the other blogger also has a second account. Like the previous two accounts, both of these receive upvotes from the same whales. They’re also appearing to be different people while interacting with each other, with the other connected accounts – such as @honeyscribe and @perspective, and with the rest of the Steemit community.

Same group of people. Same apparent deception across multiple accounts. Same curating collusion. This is what we call a pattern of behavior.

There are plenty of other similarities between these two accounts, but for the sake of brevity and post size limits, let’s move on to the other accounts mentioned above. If more links between these accounts are requested, I can provide them in the comments section.

A fresh pair of socks for when things get muddy

Two other accounts were mentioned above – @livingthedream and @gangsta. Like @perspective, both of these accounts were mined – @livingthedream on August 29th, and @gangsta on September 1st. The account, @livingthedream, follows pretty much the same pattern as the @honeyscribe and @lifeisawesome accounts. They interact with these other users, they use similar images and the same hosting. Layouts and writing styles are essentially the same. In the case of @livingthedream, this user shows up and earns instant whale votes (from the same whales again, go figure), then the rest of his posts have continued to trend to this day. Ten posts – ten winners.

The image hosting for @livingthedream follows a very similar pattern to @lifeisawesome. On September 1st, both accounts use a site cdn.pbrd.co, then they switch to the ‘s’ postimg.org for hosting between September 3rd and September 6th. Their next posts again switch back to cdn.pbrd.co.

This could just be another coincidence, but let’s take a second look at one of the images posted by @lifeisawesome:

I’m sorry – I did it again. That’s actually from @livingthedream. Just another chance occurrence, I’m sure – just as it was a coincidence that @sherlockcupid was created by one of @kushed’s accounts (@wd40), then immediately upvoted three posts by @livingthedream.

Now let’s take a look at @gangsta. This account uses the same image hosting – cdn.pbrd.co – and the pattern of curation matches @perspective, @sherlockcupid, and another account, @armen, which is also a mined account. Some additional info about @armen can be found here. These four accounts (one of them an admitted sock puppet) follow the same trending patterns. The first post is mostly ignored; the second is upvoted by one or two less-influential of the whale accounts; and the third is upvoted by the same whales once again.

This user, @gangsta, also exhibits similar content, layout, and style/phrasing as the other users, including the use of the word cloud images, plus interactions with the same involved users.

Again, due to post size limits and whatever brevity may be salvaged here, if more info is necessary, I can provide it in the comments. I believe the data is painting a clear picture of the patterns and associations, but that’s based on all of the information that I’ve gathered. It’s not so easy to present all of it – and I think users should check on the accuracy for themselves, if interested. But much more can be provided and there are still a couple of blog posts of information that will be shared.

In any case, all of these accounts (with the exception being @armen) have very peculiar similarities, from the use of word cloud images and hosting sites to curation patterns and interactions with each other. They also all appear to be from the UK, three of them admittedly. The strangest aspect of it all is the fact that all of the accounts in question are now followed by @kushed (with the exception of @perspective). Currently, @kushed is only following 25 accounts, but all of the accounts mentioned are among them.

As previously mentioned, these accounts are upvoted by the same whales – @kushed, @complexring, and @steemed/@itsascam/@steemroller. Most of them are almost exclusively upvoted by these whales. There appears to be a clear attempt to “pump” these accounts that would otherwise receive very little attention. These voting patterns will require another post to explain (it’s a lot of data), but it’s more than just a coincidence, in my opinion. These users appear to manually curate – @steemed has at least admitted as much. The curation patterns between these whales and these specific user accounts – plus additional accounts – will be presented in a follow-up post to this one, which should clarify a lot of the information here and further prove the patterns that have developed.

What does all of this mean?

There’s a lot that has been said about whether or not any of this is prevented by “the code.” I’m certainly not disputing that the code is what it is and that any of this activity is not disallowed by it. All of this falls squarely on the social acceptance of the behavior – which is absolutely a vital aspect of any decentralized community. Do we accept behavior that is seen as deceptive or fraudulent? Do we reward bad actors for abusing acquired power? Is it possible to simply ignore the behavior, despite its negative impact on the rest of the community?

This is what we need to consider, especially at a time when the perception of the platform isn’t that great. A commenter on my previous post asked why I decided to present this information. Here is my response to that and to whether or not I believe this behavior is a “scam.”

To answer why I have presented this information:

The questions about the accounts already identified and that will be identified have been unanswered for weeks. Any attempt to get answers from those creating and upvoting these accounts - some of which are in fact sock puppets, admittedly - has been met with personal attacks, inflammatory accusations, threats of punishment, and actual heavy flagging from the very people involved with these accounts and their friends. At some point, asking for these people to help resolve the issue became futile. They are not interested in that, for (to me) obvious reasons.

I want other users to have the same information that I have and I want them to be able to make informed decisions about their investments and how they use their influence on Steemit. This particular post has already proven what I had set out to prove - a sock puppet, created by a whale, was being collusively upvoted by that whale and his friends. Regardless of why it was occurring, it was in fact occurring. Unfortunately, it is not limited to this one account. There are others tied to this same whale and his friends.

As to whether or not this is a "scam" -

There's certainly nothing "in the code" that prevents this from happening, but that doesn't necessarily make it socially acceptable. Sock puppetry is generally frowned upon in social media. It's not the same as simply using a pseudonym for writing, especially in this system where readers/curators are using their invested influence to give rewards [to creators]. Deception in this regard could certainly be considered a scam, particularly when it's perpetrated by those with the power to dole out a large portion of the daily rewards pool - and particularly when they knowingly support the sock that they created. When multiple whales are involved with multiple accounts, it can certainly - at the very least - appear to be a scam and may influence the decisions of potential investors, whether they believe that they can also do the same with their own investments or whether they decide to avoid the platform altogether. Neither are good for the overall health of Steem and the Steemit community.

I want it to be clear that I’m not doing this for the rewards or because I believe it will actually help my reputation. I understand the impact this could have on my ability to receive upvotes from whales in the future. I’m also not “targeting” a specific person – because as we can see, there is more than one person involved. I honestly didn’t want to find out all of these things when I began looking at the data. I was hoping that I was wrong. This has certainly dampened my enthusiasm for the platform because of how many people are actually involved and how influential these people are, but I still think this can be a great community for content creators. If we want it to be great, then these issues need to be addressed by the community. Ignoring it won’t resolve anything – it won’t improve the image of Steemit by both the internal and external communities.

So, take this information however you wish. There’s more coming that will further corroborate what has already been demonstrated, so please don’t think that this is the extent of it. If you find this useful for your own purposes and decision-making, then I’m glad to help. If you think it’s useless and that there’s nothing to see here, then feel free to ignore it. I’m simply presenting what I see and what I’m seeing concerns me as a user and investor – and it has also been seen by others and is a cause for concern with them as well.

Please consider the information here and let’s try to figure out how these concerns can be resolved. If you think this is worth Re-Steeming, please do so.

*If you missed the first two posts about this, please give them a read:
Take Two. And...Action! - by @bacchist
Examining Honey from a Different Perspective – Steemit Sock Puppetry Continues - by @ats-david

Follow me: @ats-david