@discombobulated flagged me for noting that I think it is wise that people avoid upvoting unverified rape stories lest they implicate themselves in a scam by directly financing it. I guess this advice is absurd right...
See no evil, hear no evil...
A certain user @ricegum was lazy enough to plagiarize reddit rape stories. See @earnest's post.
But given the how well rewarded emotion-bait is, more creative users so inclined will either confect their own rape fiction or hire freelancers to do so.
There have been swathes of new accounts - which I won't name lest their rape claims be legitimate - that have received thousands of dollars worth of upvotes through unverified rape and abuse accounts.
This doesn't surprise me because humans are in general rather emotional and like to assume honest intentions.
What's shocking is that whales (true whales, i.e. 100k+ SP) have been involved in pumping these unverified works, instead of ignoring the posts lest they finance Social Engineering Scams.
What's perhaps worse is that some of these whales are top 19 witnesses.
Should we not expect greater neutrality from those who govern this ecosystem?
Should we not expect our leaders not to whimsically upvote anything that triggers sympathy?
I recommend that you champion a whale that manifests neutrality, and that is not so sensitive to his emotions that he/she throws due diligence out of the window.
I've voted for @abit given his track record in maintaining neutrality, but I advise you to vote for any witness that manifests such professionalism.
Food for thought:
After being exposed, @ricegum claimed her intent was to demonstrate the facility of social engineering on Steemit, and I recommend that you read the comments under that post.
>> through unverified rape and abuse accounts
Insinuating that people need to verify rape stories is a little bit callous IMO. Yes whales need to do their "due diligence," but people should be able to feel comfortable sharing whatever stories they want. The community will decide their worth, but don't tell potentially real rape victims "prove it."
Edit: Wow I made @positive 's headline for the story! Guess someone is a little salty that I disapprove of users promoting a "prove it" witch hunt against potential rape victims.
Edit2: Don't be afraid to downvote and stand up to bullies!
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I don't think anyone needs to verify it. But if it isn't verified I wouldn't think it is wise to vote on it.
But it's just my opinion I guess. I personally avoid upvoting rape stories, true or false I don't want to be involved.
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Not sure why you flagged me. I didn't ask potential rape victims to provide proof. Just commented that it's unwise to vote what is potentially fraud lest you implicate yourself in it.
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I downvoted for your insinuation like my comment above said. If you had just left the emphasized "unverified" portion of your comment out, I wouldn't have downvoted.
> There have been swathes of new accounts - which I won't name lest their rape claims be legitimate - that have received thousands of dollars worth of upvotes through unverified rape and abuse accounts.
To me that is leading users to think that if the rape posts were "verified," things would be different. Since this is very distasteful to me, I downvoted.
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I clearly wrote that users should not upvote unverified rape stories. And I meant to say unverified. Why? Because implicating yourself in a potential scam is not legally savvy.
I think your downvoting was distasteful, given what I said seemed like sound legal advice. But if you think it's worth involving yourself in a scam good on you. And I wish you well in directly financing unverified rape stories.
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> given what I said seemed like sound legal advice
Oh really? lol. I am pretty sure everyone's use (including you) of images that were created by other people without providing a source to them is more of a legal worry than upvoting content you find valuable...
My "legal advice" to you would be to provide sources for your material.
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I understand 100% what you would find reprehensible about an implication that female (or male) writers on Steemit should have to provide some sort of corroborating evidence to satisfy their audience that they're telling the truth. Given what a horrific trend it already is in our society, we certainly don't need Steemit to become another platform for victim-shaming.
That said, based on @positive's original post and followup comments, I think we can be clear that wasn't his point or intention. His example of the wedding night rape story that turned out to be plagiarized from Quora is what I think he is referring to as "unverified" claims - the "verification" process being some sort of check to ensure the source material has not been copied or stolen. That poses a serious threat to the fundamental sustainability of the Steemit model, since ultimately no one will want to contribute financially to scammers who they suspect may be fraudulently preying on people's emotions using stolen material. Not to mention it leaves the authors who are contributing their own meaningful, thoughtfully-written stories left out in the cold. It's one thing to tell them that money's not the point, but even if if's not - and for the most part it's not - eventually if enough people see that their genuine, heartfelt work is being ignored in favor of callously purloined emotionbait, there will be a mass exodus that will be hard to reverse.
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Red herring
That has absolutely nothing to do with potentially financing a scam. Seems you have no argument. But whatever, implicate yourself in potential scams all you want. After all upvotes are only stored on an immutable blockchain.
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Hi @positive you always have great content, and try your best to serve the community, thanks for that.
Yeah i guess with the current steemit platform it is going to be a little hard to get neutrality on a large scale, as so many kind of users can upvote posts that can't be verified.
I believe we will surely get there but i guess it is tricky with the decentralized / censorship free platform issue that can occur
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Rape fiction
I aint touchin that hot potato
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Good post @positive. I stand with you on this issue. I voted for @abit awhile back myself. I have no problems with whale's voting, but if they are voting on fake tales generated to inspire an emotional response that is not likely going to end very well.
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This is totally true, people use emotional baits to attract upvotes and it's quite sad. I can't wait to see the wave of clickbait headlines and others spread in here :D
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Not to mention we've seen a number of sob stories involving very tragic things and whether or not they are true, doesn't it seem kind of weird making money off of such tragedies... I mean, I understand it can be therapeutic to write these things out and share emotions on things like rape, abuse, addiction issues, or death of a loved one but there are plenty of other ways to do that and in my opinion it's a bit perverse to profit on something like that if true.
Not that a don't have empathy for people but I don't reward sob stories.
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Exactly. But if you say that some people treat you as though you're the sociopath...
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It's a rich mens world ...
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I'm not voting for any more @abit hype posts.
Been there, done that, got trolled by @abit himself.
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Understood.
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can't comment ^_^&&positiveneutralitywhalesincentivizingrapefiction20160727t151754098z
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Don't vote to make money from @abit
He doesn't owe you anything.
Though I understand your concern.
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What are you blathering about? Who said I was voting to make money from him? I voted because you hyped him and I bit. Then he trolled me stupidly on a very helpful post I made for the community:
https://steemit.com/money/@justbc/early-bird-gets-no-earn-one-shocking-lesson-of-curation-rewards-that-ll-earn-you-thousands
As far as I can tell, @abit is nothing but a leech on the lifeblood of the system. Guys like him are a very real threat to the life of the platform itself.
But good job hyping him 24/7!
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Interesting that found some discussion about me here, although off-topic.
I don't understand why you said that I was trolling in your post? I happened to see your post, and I pointed out the fact that something was wrong in the post, also I didn't vote for my reply (others did). I had no much time to follow every discussion so I missed your reply, fortunately there're other people replied you earlier (probably not in time as well though). If you made it correct when I saw it again, I would have voted, but you didn't, the outdated formula and chart are now still in the post. So what? It's sad that you took it personal.
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Interesting gossip: .
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Sorry I thought you were someone else that complained he wasn't upvoting his stuff.
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