Trevon James and Craig Grant are two of the biggest scammers in the cryptocurrency space, and not too long ago, their biggest scam platform to date went belly up, which of course was BitConnect.
Once it went tits up, they both sought out refuge here on Steemit, thinking that everyone on here would just conveniently forget what they both did, but it didn't take long for the whales to realize who they were.
Craig Grants account seen here was always stripped of his rewards, because all he does is post about scams on his account.
Trevon James however, account seen here, was a bit more subtle, and tried to pretend he wasn't associated with any scams, by just posting family videos, trying to appear wholesome, but as you can see, the whales finally figured it out, and took his rewards away too.
Now, everything should be good to go right, no more Steem blood money is being paid out to these bad actors right... well no, and here's why:
A little known bot called minnowbooster, you may have heard of it?
So, with minnowbooster, both Trevon and Craig have figured out that they don't need to post in order to earn Steem Backed Dollars, which are then used for other nefarious activities, such as promoting more scams or pumping shitcoins, because they could just earn their blood money via minnowbooster instead.
Below is exhibit A, which is Trevon James's wallet, which shows just one of his minnowbooster payouts:
Simply tap or click here to enlarge the image.
Below is exhibit B, which is Craig Grant's wallet, which shows two of his minnowbooster payouts:
Simply tap or click here to enlarge the image.
Now, it's no secret that I am no fan of bots, but if behavior like this is allowed to continue, I believe it's just one more reason among many as to why they are very bad for the overall health of Steemit going forward.
I personally think that bots will eventually get so bad here on Steemit, along with the people who use them, that the great majority, if not all the rewards pool, will go to the bots and their masters in the future... assuming nothing is done about them.
What say you guys and gals?
Are you fans of bots, and should this bad behavior be allowed to continue?
I'd love to hear your thoughts in the comment section, and look forward to discussing this issue with you.
These guys removed trust of people from youtubers and youtube reviews.
I am a youtuber too and trust me guys we all are not like that. You can take advise from us. These were just Rats.
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I think it's a better idea to trust no one, and to do your own research... wouldn't you agree?
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Interesting article and I can see why you are so concerned. I just can say nothing about it,2 weeks ago I did not even know what cryptos and Steemit are and for sure I've never heard of bots in my life,but thanks to articles like this @tolkatore , I can learn quickly and pay attention to all the aspects of the world of Steemit!
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My pleasure, and things like this need to be discussed, even if they are controversial.
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Interesting aspects. I have not dealt with steemit for quite some time now. recently I wrote something about upcoming ICOs in February and it took me quite some time (It is not a very good article but the research was time intensive). I Earned only the likes of people I know so I was quite disappointed. I thought to myself why not boosting it a little bit (I did use two bots on that post and felt a little shady... but if you not overdo it to me it seems alright). Back to your post - in case it is a winwin why not using bots. One issue is for sure that the bots gain more and more power which leads to a (even more) unbalanced system. Furthermore a problem I see is (I have a good friend running a well-known bot) people are transferring more money than they can earn in many cases! Sure it is their own responsibility to check the bots status but because I know that each round the bot gets more than it can pay - not good. all bots should pay the transfers back in that case. Pump coins will always be the case doesn't matter what you try to blacklist... youtubers getting payed... adds and so on and so forth so this again is something each Investor is responsible of doing his/her research.
I am glad to still see you here very active!
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I think bots only exists for one purpose, and that purpose is to game the system... if the bots don't even read the posts they are up-voting, then what's the point of them?
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Great post.
As a non techy I hate bots. Steemit has some strange loopholes and IMHO they are highly exploited.
As I try to sift through huge amounts of new postings I keep finding repeated content, irrelevant comments and huge payouts for some, without any obvious reason for it.
Steemit is a great concept and has a lot of potential, but the more I’m in it the less I like it. It needs some cleaning up. Not by censorship, but by better rules of the game.
And why is there no downvote button?
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They have a flagging system, but it is a bit abused in my opinion. I think a down-vote button would be a much better option as you said, but we shall see what the witnesses decide to do going forward.
The main reason why I hate bots so much, is because the bots and the people who belong to them don't even read the content they are up-voting, which in my opinion is totally unacceptable.
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So they don't read the posts, what exactly are they upvoting? Is it traffic? Is it "copy and paste" blogs?
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No, they just up-vote whoever delegates power to them, so basically, the bot gets paid, and the people buy votes. Then the bots find the best content to curate, and just up-votes it without even reading it either.
Hence the reason why so many posts have tons of up-votes with very little comments in comparison.
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Holy smokes I did not know they started flagging them?! when did that start?
As for bots I've come to learn that exploiting bots are fairly easy if you know how. I have only used them a couple of times but I don't think they are actually worth it. Well unless you get that free SBD like you said.
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Well, in fairness, they get the Steem Backed Dollars because they put hundreds of thousands of dollars into the system, which they got from their scams... that's my issue.
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Ah yes, these particulate people are gain from the loss of others that is unacceptable
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I wasn't a fan of bots earlier. Never used them. But no matter how good my posts were, I simply got payouts less than $0.50. That's when I tried my first not transaction and got instant results.
I understand its bad for the platform but if whales will he conservative of their up-votes then such things are ought to happen.
I know you are generous mate. Not everyone is as generous as u.
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Ahh, I see, but bots in the long run will only serve to drain the rewards pool, and take away the rewards that should go to people actually creating great content or interactions on the platform.
In my opinion, eventually they will get so bad here on Steemit, that the witnesses will be forced to take action against them.
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That is very true.
I thought minnowbooster was created by one of the witness to promote minnows. Probably I had wrong.information.
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Probably so, a bots priority here on Steemit is to make money for itself first and foremost, and then help its backers.
Think of it like this: The Steemit users give their monies to the bot, the bot keeps 75% of it, and gives back 25% collectively, which makes the bot and its owner richer and richer overtime, and extremely powerful to boot.
Now the percentages could be off, but you get the general idea.
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I agree. But centralization is born when we ourselves kill decentralization. There has to be encouragement for new joiners.
Now today I posted a help guide for new joiners. It did not get even a single upvote. As a beginner why would I not try out bots. Why would one think of a system where he will not be alive for long. Anyone will think of own existence first. That's the bitter truth.
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I just started playing with minnowbooster, by sending steam power along with a memo to the post to upvote. Now, here is the thing, I was wondering how some posts recieved so many upvotes yet so few views. I see posts regularly being upvoted in the $100s with inconsistant views to upvote. Not sure what to make of it.
If there is a reward pool being drained by bot use then it would seem that does little to incentivize good content and the number of competitions and other well disguised posts creaming the rewards will increase and then there is as you highlight the Trevon James and Craig Wrights of the world profiting from the system. Which might be fine from the point of view of @Stan Larimer who disappeard in a puff of smoke yesterday appauled with the community for exposing in his words a brave little team of entrepreneurs in reference to an arise bank and bitshares partnership which recieved a lot of negative feedback, so much so that Stan took to his overalls and rocking chair to dispeal the perception of mobster associated with his godfather of bitshares moniker.
Drama aside, the answer is in the design of the system and how it combats gamification, not an easy problem to solve. To start one has to understand the Steemit / Steem decentralized model @ned clearly describes it as
"Steemit is a centralized website sitting atop a decentralized protocol—that's steem"
from here it gets a lot more complicated.
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That's because the vote bots don't even read or look at the content, and that is my issue with them. How could they up-vote something, which in turn gives it credit and recognition as being a quality piece of content, when they haven't even fucking read it?
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Yes, that is it, bots can't even read, as dumb as that sounds it does enable us to spot posts that are heavily bot up-voted.
Keeping in mind that there are possibly also non public bots being used by whale groups financing themselves with cleaverly disguised posts as mention.
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Without a doubt, hence the reason why the rich keep getting richer on here, with little to no effort whatsoever.
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There's certainly some weird goings on, here's a screen capture from an officialfuzzy competition. Notice the views 52 and votes 136 he runs very frequent community challenge comps to produce art work, videos, tweets anything... all in the spirit of community building, prizes are always bts tokens, I've never seen steem offered, participated in a few of them myself and found him making some strong critisims of @ned and steemit on Telegram chat yesterday.
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That's what bot action looks like my friend... pretty sad ain't it?
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Yep, It looks very much like the ratio of votes is screwed by bots. curators are likely not being rewarded for their content least not on the level they could in the absense of bots.
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I 100% agree, but I do not see the bots going away anytime soon, but hopefully as more real people join... they will be able to drowned out the bots.
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