I may just be 23 years old but if there's one thing I've learnt, it's that corruption and cowardice go hand in hand. Why is it that the "1%" can get away with whatever they want to do or say while the rules and norms of society apply to the other 99%? It's simple: The majority of us aren't willing to take a stand or do anything about it.
Why is that though? Are we too afraid of being the only ones willing to take a stand? Or is it because we fear the backlash from those who hold most of the power? Is this what freedom of speech has come down to? Is this what democracy has come down to? Do we really just have freedom of speech as long as we don’t talk about the elite? Is that really what defines freedom of speech in this day and age?
This is what we’ve turned freedom of speech into. We are all collectively to blame. We are all cowards and this cowardice is what allows the elites to make money through corruption.
Now why am I bringing all of this up? Because the recent shenanigans by one of those “1-percenters” has made me sick. I wrote up an article about it a while ago but unfortunately nobody was willing to take a stand for it. Many minnows and innocents lost their rewards (something that they had worked for) all due to the greed of one person.
Now before I delve further into this post, you should all know that steem is not infinite. There’s a limited reward pool which is used to pay out everyone who posts here. When people spam and upvote their comments, what do you think happens? It reduces the reward pool for everyone else. In simpler words, by spamming and self-upvoting, the user is stealing the money that rightfully belongs to people who actually create quality content. But that’s not all. The user actually threatens and bullies in his comments and according to him, those comments of his are worth $4-10 each.
It is sad that I have to write something like this again and hope that MAYBE…. JUST MAYBE this time one of the people who claim to care about this platform will be willing to take a stand.
What drove me to write this article was a post by a fellow steemian actually: https://steemit.com/abuse/@steemit.abuse/whale-upvote-abuse-whales-you-ve-got-1-hour-to-downvote
If you read that article then you will notice that berniesanders has created alt accounts and has comment spammed simply for the purposes of making money through his upvotes and creating alt accounts with a high reputation that will no doubt be used to downvote people that he has issues with and to grow his bot army to satiate his hunger and greed for more and more money off of this platform. But that post is not what I’m here to talk about.
You see my issue isn’t just the fact that berniesanders can comment spam and upvote his posts with his bot army and get away with it (Lord knows how many accounts that guy has. Creating more accounts and killing off genuine accounts seems to be his new hobby these days. Not to mention this hypocrisy is hilarious because he actually threw a huge fit when someone else was doing something similar and upvoting their comments with their bot army.). My issue is the fact that he believes each of his comment deserves an upvote from his bot army which gives him anywhere between $0.2 - $10 in post rewards (He currently uses 55-56 of his accounts, each with delegated power growing stronger each day). My issue is the fact that most of his comments are threats or spam and he upvotes them with his alt accounts. My issue is the fact that all these people who claim to be the care takers of this platform support this sort of behavior but when a minnow or someone weaker and less psychotic does something like this, these “caretakers” have no issue in jumping the gun to downvote and practically delete that account on steemit by making it impossible for that person’s posts to be visible.
Now don’t get me wrong. I wholeheartedly support the work of @steemcleaners , @spaminator , @adm to name a few. But it’s funny when all they do is act hypocritical because they’re too afraid to take a stand for what’s right. Now let me show you a few pictures and you people can be the judge of whether each of these comments deserve the rewards that they’re getting:
hi @block-police and thank you for this post
I have personally felt this 'cowardice' that you mention, having previously looked at data for whales and then not writing a post for fear of backlash. As a minnow or even a collective group of minnows could not take on the power of most whales.
however what we can do is educate, like you have done with this post. Eventually minnows will grow, with this information at hand minnows and dolphins can chose to support or not support these whales. If the support for these accounts do not grow in line with the growth of steemit then we have a big chance of making change.
Keep up the good work and I would love to see you pop over to the Business Intelligence Steemit Community some time #bisteemit
This post as of my comment is showing a disastrous negative 38 votes. I believe the whales of #steemit will eventually push it further down with more. Confirming that there is a clique of assholes called beta-whales.
Ah... now I know why you ignored one of my questions long ago.
ah, please send me the question again, maybe I just missed it as there can be soooo much going on
To be honest, I don't even remember what the question was. You provided some data and I was asking for deeper analysis of whatever it was you were looking into.
Troll them back mercilessly. Comment on every single post they make, exposing their conduct. Shame them!
I had one idiot try and do the same to me and that's how I dealt with him. His income collapse once everyone of his readers found out what he was up to.
You have to just buymore steempower! work hard, create new accounts and start over if you get harrased by a rogue whale or group of corrupt whales... just creaty ea new accouint and make moneyon steemit from THAt account while never letting pepel know its you! rise through the ranks even become the enemies friend, and when yorue on top of steemit announce who you are and if you get downvoted them, no one will stand fr that, youll have powerful friends, if this is a serious issue just talk to the steemspeak.com channel and theres whales in there who will be the judge
i personally wonttouch the issue with a ten foot pole i am not gonna mess with the [olitics of steemit until i have at least 100,000 SP to be in a position of power... and i wuld do it in a different account because too much is at stake
you cant always win every batle u have to go home to fight anaother day and you may have lost the battle but u wont win the war etc etc etc
seriously maybe in the future teh whales will auto correct and corrupt whales will see the light and atone for their ways... you wil get mroe flies with honey tha vinnegar
i promise thinsg willbe oK if you justs tart over with a new account and just secretly contact ur old friends to follwo u and just get a new account going! dont fight with the whales just make ur own posts and dont singke out any names! i PROMSIE that w ill wrk
of u just make the post about generic vague issues and not about any one person in particular you can get a lot ore done! forgive them quietly silently and addresses the problem at large THIS is how we will fix these issues.... and juust acquire more stake! n
prove you believe in teh system more by BUYINGmroe tsake, u cat always esrn it as easy as whales yet! accept that and just BUY your steempower wiuth Bitcoins! put in your money from your real orld incom! buy bigger stake! show you mean what you say and fight the whales u speak of with steempower! i promise if you buy mroe steempower youll feel better and when u do that it proves youre part iof the grup they will letopff whenthey see u jave steepower!
The grub who kept down-voting me had much more SP than I do. Post comments on every single one of his posts. When he down-votes the comment to make it disappear, come back and post again. Trust me, be relentless and the moron will get the message.
Force the retard to keep down-voting you. Eventually you will totally destroy their voting power and they won't harass you ever again.
@block-police please stick to the script.
you are not in line with the rest of the devotees.
steemit cannot exist or function properly when we don't all believe.
ps: I'm with you. Steemit is such a broken system.
First, I appreciate that you're not on Steemit merely for money, as you wouldn't make this post if you were. Good on 'ya!
Second, @berniesanders has actual supporters, because a lot of the things that set him off are actually undesirable. Whales are just as cowardly as the weakest krill, and they are usually quite focused on money, which is why they have it.
For them, it is a poor business decision to spend their time - and particularly their treasure - trying to defend against such abuses. As you can see from the extensive lack of comments on this post, even those that have much to gain from it, who have been where you are now, aren't backing you up either.
@berniesanders has been a whale since there has been Steem, because he mined it from the get go. I'll point out that most of the Steem in existence today was mined initially, even though there hasn't been any mining for over a year now. He has a fuckton of SP (or is it a metric fucktonne?) and trying to impose external controls on him creates no profits, causes losses, and creates mechanisms that affect the rest of the whales - not something they want, generally.
So, he does some stuff they like, and don't wanna do themselves. Fucking with him is inconvenient and unprofitable, at best. Whatever they do to him will be available to be done to them, which they don't want to promote.
Third, while he is easily characterizable as mercurial, he isn't psychopathic. There are plenty of posts that have mentioned @berniesanders that he hasn't flagged, even when they are critical of him. While it's of no import statistically, my own experience shows this, during discussions in which I learned of Steem's genesis.
Lastly, I think changes are afoot that will make even @berniesanders reign in his less acceptable practices. When SMT are pimped, the market will have to consider Steem, and Steemit is the pool of evidence of how well the blockchain works.
The weighting of VP by SP gives whales their power, including @berniesanders, and either that is gonna change, a lot, soon, or more, like free speech itself, is gonna change on Steemit. If the VP weighting scheme of each SMT can be other than the way it is on Steemit (which I seem to recall, vaguely, is the case) then the fact that witness votes are thusly weighted still remains a threat to the blockchain integrity.
While it is of great import to you (and those others who have been where you are, who I will not drag into this by naming them) that @berniesanders can flag you into oblivion, when the changes that make the witnesses no longer vulnerable to concentration of wealth occur (which is prolly gonna happen before SMT are issued, because such control of the blockchain has got to be considered by any reasonable potential adopter of SMT as minimal due diligence) then the problem @berniesanders represents to you will probably be solved as a side effect.
There are very few ways to secure the witnesses from simply being bought, and the only one I can conceive of is changing VP weighting, whether simply for witnesses, or all of Steemit.