I noticed a handful of downvotes on this post by @cmp2020 this morning (it still has a couple days left, so as long as you're here, go take a listen to his #openmic entry.). The downvotes came in from the following accounts:
| fongopot |
| vladimirtopiev |
| stormstblogger |
| charlesbiters |
| steemtwitting |
When I checked them out on steemd, I noticed three things:
- They have each been casting a large number of downvotes.
- They were all created by the @steem account with 0.1 SP and 14.9 SP delegation.
- They were all created in the last couple days.
Taking steemtwitting as an example, here is their steemd info. All look similar.
The account owners are certainly free to vote however they want, but I have to wonder if Steemit, Inc, wants its Steem Power delegations going to this purpose. I also wonder how many accounts are still waiting in queue to come join this emerging Steemit-powered downvote consortium?
This whole scenario reminds me of an article I wrote last year, Down-votes: Steemit's Achilles' Heel?, and with the recent launch of EOS, I'm led to wonder anew what happens when someone with substantial holdings in a competing blockchain eventually launches a "suicide flagging" mission against Steem in an attempt to reduce competition?
At any rate, it will be interesting to see if anything comes of this emerging botnet. Last year, a single account managed to raise quite a stir with a sustained downvote campaign. It may be interesting to see how this plays out with multiple downvoters and another year of maturity for the Steem blockchain and community.
Update:
In the time it took me to write that post, three more downvotes came in:
Update 2 (June 13):
Based on this post, the downvote consortium is now up to at least 17 accounts:
As before, all created recently, and all downvoting with ~14.9 Steem Power that's delegated from the steem account. That's about 250 SP from Steemit, Inc being used in a downvote campaign. Of course, these are just the ones that I have happened to see. I haven't been out hunting for them, so there are likely others that haven't crossed my path.
If all five of these accounts flagged at once for 100% it would barely equal 1 cent. It’s like calling the cops over a mosquito.
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Who's calling the cops? Pointing out that they exist and it's an interesting new dynamic is hardly calling the cops. Frankly, though, I would hope that Steemit would have some sort of automation in place to catch when their delegation is being abused and remove it.
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Was just a metaphor to put it in perspective. They have no stake, the flags are meaningless. Just ignore them. In machine learning we call it an outlier. Something that’s so far from the norm we just exclude it from the data set.
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Not very encouraging, disappointing response.
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It is what it is. What is so disappointing.
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From a statistical (not only ML) perspective they might be outliers, but they might also be indicators of an important trend for other reasons. The ocean is made of molecules of water after all. And there's more to votes than their rshares value.
@remlaps is bringing up something interesting here and put in some work. Dismissing out of hand is just rude.
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I responded to 3-4 comments regarding this across multiple posts, and this response isn't as detailed as my other responses as I responded quickly thinking it was part of the previous thread.
But in the end, the flags are insignificant, and best to be ignored rather than get worked up over. Even a minnow has little to worry about from a $0.002 flag.
Even Steemit Defense League with their 15 accounts rage flagging innocent people only could do 3 cents worth of damage if all accounts attacked at once ten times a day.
It sucks, but it's not worth getting worked up over, it just plays into what they want.
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Fair enough. Point is, I don't think you want to discourage hobby investigators, but perspective is always to be sought after, you're right on that.
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There are some accounts which are doing this thing. I was downvoted by some bots in the same manner for many days. That bots were doing it for many accounts. I posted about them in my blog.
@themarkymark in his recent post https://steemit.com/abuse/@themarkymark/steemit-defense-league-is-dead declared that delegated SP have been snatched from many such bots. But what @themarkymark says is not the permanent solution of this problem. Flagging is the problem. I even proposed to regularize flagging in one of my recent post. Flagging has become a menace. It is being misused.
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Flagging in most cases is a gift to the community. Two votes get distributed back to the reward pool.
It cost money to flag and in most cases the flags are justified.
Unfortunately there is some malicious flagging but it isn’t the majority.
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My friend flagging is not a problem but the way people are using this nuclear bomb is a matter of concern. If flagging is used to make others silent, to abuse good things or to compel people to obey then this system should be removed or at least amended so that flagging may be justified. Nobody should be allowed to be a tyrant ruler. It should not be linked with SP holding only. Community's consensus should also be there.
The system of reputation is been exploited in the same way. A whale upvoted by other pet account and only his own posts are able to get repo score 80. I am not afraid to say this that his contribution to this platform is nothing as far as I know him. Is reputation score algorithm perfect? No! Is the system of downvoting perfect? Definitely No!
However, I thank you @themarkymark for replying. I have not seen many big names here who bother to reply.
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The majority of flags are not malicious but I agree they happen. I get over 3,500 flags a month in response to me trying to rid the platform of spam.
The majority of malicious flaggers have no steem power and their flags are meaningless. It is not always the case but most of the times it is true.
Removing flags from the system would be a big mistake. The amount of useless spam would escalate and no avenue to fight it.
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I am not telling that flags should be removed for once and all but there should be a system where unnecessary flagging may be discouraged. It is possible to work on such algorithm which may resolve this problem.
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They are discouraged by the fact they take away from your potential earnings and thus cost you money.
Not sure why people getting all upset about five flags that barely equal 1 cent when combined.
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So far, yes. I'm not sure about the future, though... If Steem grows big enough to threaten other platforms, the downvote may be an attack vector that can be leveraged by a well-funded competitor (or state actor) who is willing to destroy the value of their Steem investment so that their own platform can realize a competitive advantage.
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They would do far more damage using it to upvote and honestly more posts need to flagged anyway. Just look at new.
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I hope you're right. I'm not so sure. Seems like with enough funding, someone could use strategic downvotes in a way that would drive away clusters of users and gradually erode the user base.
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There is far worse going on than strategic downvotes.
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I just got hit too, not cool! :(
https://steemd.com/@anonimau5
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