Is it both important and necessary to identify and weed out bad actors – and should it be done through a decentralized blockchain?
We’ve all seen it happen here: cat-fishing, plagiarism, spamming, social identity-theft, vote-buying, plain old naked scamming, and plenty of other abuses.
Many times, these users go unnoticed for weeks or months, if they’re ever caught. When they are caught, they’re usually downvoted and their reputations take a hit. Often though, this damage is minimal and short-lived. The scammers, spammers, and other abusers live to fight another day...and even resume their previous abuses.
The repeated abuses from repeated abusers and the outright scams that are easily identifiable shouldn’t be something that we tolerate as a community in general. It’s almost incumbent upon us to ensure that such users receive reputations and rewards that are fitting for the sum of their behaviors. The higher the reputation and the more visibility that these people get – particularly if it’s on the most visible pages, such as trending – the worse Steem and Steemit can look to interested non-users and investors.
In my opinion, a good thing happened last night on this platform. There was what appeared to be a blatant attempt at scamming Steem/Steemit users and investors. The post in question and the parties to it were called out publicly, the primary party withdrew the content, and the potential post payout and his reputation were quickly brought to zero. A lot of potential marks were likely saved from losing a lot of money.
Except this guy, perhaps...
But I’m afraid that the swift action was partially due to the fact that the user was an “outsider.” Yes, the potential scam was pretty obvious, but what would have been the result if the post had been written by someone with a 70+ reputation who had been active since last summer? What if it was written by someone who had 2000+ followers and hosted a weekly podcast? Would the reaction have been the same?
Should it have been the same?
There are users on this platform who have been caught in several different abusive schemes and scams over the past year.
Some of them have left. Others have stayed and prospered...even after being caught in more than one abuse.
Some of them have very high reputations. Others have been dragged down to low levels. And a few have been taken down only to rise back up again, despite their continued abuses.
Some fly under the radar. Some are right in our faces.
Some will probably express some faux outrage over this very post. Others will try their best to pretend that this post doesn’t even exist.
I don’t write this because of any personal vendettas or because I want a ... gasp ... “WITCH HUNT!” I simply want to ask this community:
Do you see these things? Do you care enough to want to do something about them? Should users be ostracized for their bad behavior or not? Is this not the ideal place to make it happen?
Or – are you comfortable with such abusers making money and gaining high reputations on a platform into which you have put a lot of time and energy...and maybe even your own money? Are you comfortable with them essentially representing Steem/Steemit on the most visible pages?
We have the means here to shun obvious and known scammers, plagiarizers, etc. – and we shouldn’t be afraid to wield such power. Last night was a great example of what can be done. It’s a testament to the general integrity of the user base.
Ostracism does indeed work. We just need the willpower to employ it, even if it’s against “one of our own.” Our collective honesty regarding who we support and who we ostracize will go a long way towards achieving healthy and sustainable decentralization, especially when money is involved in this system.
Don’t allow this platform to be a sanctuary for social abusers and scammers. Let the world know that it won’t be tolerated. This is our community. We should represent it well. Build trust with the onlookers and we’ll see how quickly they become adopters and investors.
So what would you choose, given the options?
Would you ostracize? Would you ignore? Is simply withholding support enough?
You had no proof of it being a scam. As far as I am concerned it looks to me as if you don't support free speech or freedom of ideas on this platform. I did not see a single word in his post asking for money. I also watched the video of the presentation @stan did in Hollywood. I found it very interesting and was eager to learn more. I believe we should leave it up to investors to do their own homework vs policing and dictating what people post here. How do we know you don't have your own agenda and are making false claims against people? - the only way is to let the collective Steemit mind come to its own conclusion. Calling something a scam straight off the bat without even knowing the real details behind it is just childish and unprofessional in my opinion. We are all human and we all have a past behind us, some may view our past good some bad. What hard evidence do you have this guy is the con man you claim he is? - when you are successful people try to damage your reputation in all sorts of ways. The information you have could also be false. We all deserve a chance to redeem ourselves and speak our minds at free will no matter what.
We had all the makings of a scam.
There was the the promises of huge/easy money. The urgency to get in early. The hype men that appeared from nowhere. The webinar that ended up asking for a lot of money. The promise of a product with essentially no details because it didn't actually exist (admittedly). And the fact that the guy didn't even understand how the blockchain/Steemit worked.
Add to that his history - convicted criminal (from his hedge fund scam with his company Hardcastle Hedge Fund), multiple other complaints about MLM practices and scams (such as WUKAR/Dubli) - and his overall behavior in general that is certainly nothing new, based on previous complaints and his own videos, and there is a pretty clear picture of who this guy is. Also, the fact that he teamed up with another person who is an alleged scammer adds to that picture.
No, that was in the webinar. Sign up for the webinar, they pitch you the BS story for two hours, then ask for money (via wire transfer?) in order to get in early and make huge profits.
Well, in my opinion, denying what is right in front of us is quite childish and unprofessional. When we see something so egregious, it's hard to dismiss it. And waiting for them to explain themselves while other people might be falling victim to the scam isn't an option in my book. Never mind the fact that they weren't actually explaining anything. They decided instead to attack anyone who dared to question them.
Indeed we do. And that's precisely what I and many others are doing and have done. On a blockchain that's built on trust and transparency, we shouldn't be so trusting of those who come with poor reputations and try to conceal their obvious scammy and childish behavior. I would think that those of us who have fairly good reputations in this community wouldn't be the ones under scrutiny in this case, given the circumstances.
I would like to know what exactly gave you any confidence that this was a legitimate project they were trying to sell?
Also - this post wasn't just about last night.
@ats-david , bingo this point wasn't just about last night :)
watch the back peddling now
Sounds pretty conclusive to me... Shame I missed the drama
Cg
number 3 on trending wow a shake up of the exact same line up that's been up there forever, kudos
Damn! Talk about deconstructing an arguement. Impossible to disagree with that, well played, Sir! :)
That is exactly my opinion. How many good ideas we'll lose in the future with this kind of approach? I see this like censorship on steemit. We all preaching free market and than immediately jump on first big project. When I joined steemit last year every were I saw: steemit is SCAM, Larimers are SCAM, stay away!! Later on : Voting trails are SCAM, etc.Still today are people who post here and collect rewards every day and saying: don't buy steem. Who cares! We all adults here and we can do whatever we like. It's our money and our decisions. I'm not talking about this particular project here. And even author of this post don't want to mention any names. Wonder why?
I see this as wisdom of the crowd by Steemit not falling for projects that require your money up front with the promise of delivering something later that will make you richer.
Everyone screams scam at everything nowadays, you have to know who to listen to and judge by yourself, how you can compare Steem to Mogul is beyond me.
Last time I'd checked we had around 170000 accounts. That's crowd. We can see exactly who killed this particular project. I can't compare Steem and Mogul because you didn't gave me a chance to even see Mogul. And crowd which you are talking about, sold me steem at $3 last summer. They really take good care for new steemians at that time. And steemit also promoting rewards for posting. How many people actually earn money on steemit? It would be funny to find Mogul to succeed on one of our competitors platform later on. Don't get me wrong. I'm not complaining. Steemit is great but we should be more open minded and long term focused. The real crowd will find and kill all weed, don't worry.
"The real crowd will find and kill all weed, don't worry."
Yeah, that's worked great for twitter and facebook and reddit. /s
That's why I didn't join any of those in first place.
Yes a really big crowd and even more probably reading it. Let's see do I want the platform to be known for the one that possibly skipped on a huge opportunity or the one that directly helped a really huge scam make bank and fuck over their members and readers? Hmm hard decision there.
The crowd was not the one that sold you Steem at 3$, that was the free market.
Go look it up. Last month I had curation rewards from 1500 unique authors.
If he indeed was not trying to scam anyone he would've stood his ground and defended his project. Not instantly lash out on careful users and start banning them from his "game". If this guy is in charge of that project and this is how he behaves, I don't care even if he was shitting out full blocks of bitcoins. That is unacceptable and very unprofessional. After his behavior I even tested him real quick to see how he would react and he behaved like a 8 year old boy who had just had his christmas present taken from him.
Yes, that's a user I want to trust 100-10,000 $ to.
Thank you very much for your answers. I'm sure we both on the same train here. My only concern is that this kind of behavior could scare and turn away some potential investors. I can smell the rat a mile away and this one was really stinky. My disagreement was only about how we handle this situation. But this is just a small bump on our way to success.
Real investors and people who are about to open up projects as big as in the range of this one will be more open about it, I believe. If not they'll at least stick around to convince people what is being accused is not true, not have a banter and ragequit.
We vote like we usually do and filter it out I guess. What's concerning to me is if a big part of the community already react this gullible to this type of easy to judge scams or characters, how will they act to others who aren't complete morons and know how to behave and trick readers and investors.
Guess it will be a lot more controversial with upvotes and flags when that time comes.
Wasn't the ostracism effected by the very free speech you support? As a newcomer here I was very hesitant to call bullshit especially when there was such instant and heavily weighted support thrown to the initial posting. When I did post it was to point out multiple inconsistencies between the image he was presenting, the claims he was making, and the reality available for anyone to find through a simple google search. None of what I posted was from a third party who might be bitterly libeling an honest man, it was all just factual information gathered from his own website and the sources it led to. That information happened to present a bigger picture than the naturally cherry-picked one he was offering and frankly, that picture looked bad. I would hope that anyone else with a little time on their hands might do the same in similar circumstances regardless of who the OP is.
Even as a newcomer it's good that you did your research. I think you'll find that when it comes to matters of scams, clickbait, and deviant behavior steemit is not so different from the rest of the web.
For that to happen inputs are needed. He provided one, you - another.
It's only broken when it doesn't work for me!
I think I might have taken this position if his behavior and how he talked to people hadn't been so over the top. I was on the fence until he started behaving so badly over a few questions. Also, I don't appreciate the whale votes pushing a "potential scam" to the top of the trending page. That feels like an endorsement.
I agree. I was hesitant to vote on the announcement post cause it already looked fishy from the get-go. But @stan's comment made me think it could be something real. Then after watching the facebook video of his older seminar for some time I had my own opinion on this person and wouldn't touch anything he endorsed with a 10 foot pole, not to mention his very unprofessional reaction to people warning users not to put their money into it without a second thought.
I agree with @thejohalfiles that we shouldn't jump to conclusions based on prior experience and opinion, but when there are so many other factors involved and it just screams red flags, I'd rather falsely accuse someone and warn others than have members of our community lose money on a scam.
A counter-question, how would the users feel that upvoted his post and @stan's comment with a 100+ vote trail if this indeed turned out to be a scam afterwards and many lost a bunch of money on it? I know that's not something I want in the back of my head. The reason I mention the big curation trail on the comments is that it gives it a bad view to newcomers and outsiders (oh over 100 people have approved this, might as well throw money at it) and a reason why I am careful when I vote with my own trail on comments that are controversial.
As a newcomer, I appreciate your integrity with the vote trail. Thank you!
That is true, it wasn't just his own reputation on the line, it was the reputations of everyone who backed him, and it seemed like some were backing him with a lot of skepticism as well. I think if it had flopped, it would have caused a much bigger rift here.
I can only speak for myself here, but stan has been working on this project for a long time. I DO trust both dan and stan larimer, and so i naturally upvoted it when he told me about it and said that it was a big thing he has been working on.
However i will say that good people can get scammed. I will also say i dont know if this trainor guy is a scammer or not but i DO know the talk stan had given was excellent and i thought this was tied to that.
This is why i give whaleshares to people more and more. It helps others...
Help let the community decide more and more for me is a good thing imho.
Exactly @fuzzyvest. Good people can also be scammed. I watch the webinar yesterday and found so many false mix with no link. The guy was really over the top, making the all thing really sounding like a typical scam.
Thank you Fuzzy, I appreciate nobody is perfect. I also understand it wasn't proven a scam, something I am currently trying to write about.
My position isn't set in stone, but it was a "warning card" for me to question the judgment behind what will be promoted with Whaleshares. For now I am just watching to see how things go.
Key. Dont exoect perfect solutions as they rarely exist when humans are involved.
EVERYTHING and i mean everything can be abused. I am giving alot ofntrust to a community by giving them this power and WHEN someone abuses it it will indeed cost them. ;)
I really appreciate your attitude, it's nice to know that my opinion is valued by respected members of the community. I still don't know much about Stan or Dan but I do know what some of my dad's friends give me a sleazy impression and my dad doesn't seem to see it. Same goes for friends.
This right here. Up until the end I felt skeptical as hell but didn't want to go and call him a scammer even if he was because I only have my perspective to judge that on. What bothered me was the way he seemed entirely insincere, just looking to sell something, and how initial many people saw an opportunity for their own benefit an were ready to jump into bed with him. I am happy the community eventually decided to voice their opinions. It seems pretty clear that the members invested in steemit in more ways than just monetarily were not ready to jump on board with a guy like this.
Using one's stake to reduce rewards on something one disagrees with is not censorship, no matter how many people here will tell you it is. Matt Trainer could have kept going but he got personal and gave up pretty quickly.
Conversely, the real speech in danger of being confined is the speech which challenges suspicious people and suspicious proposals.
This is the way the "collective Steemit mind" comes to its conclusions, if such a thing can be said.
"the only way is to let the collective Steemit mind come to its own conclusion."
@ats-david's post here = $791
@matttrainer's post = $0
The wisdom of the stake-weighted Steem crowd has spoken
Should have been more clear brother. - come to conclusion through words, not down-votes and sweeping the conversation up under the rug.
What? Really?
Upvoted for the interesting topic and what I suspect will be an interesting conversation.
I have mixed feelings on this, and I have caught myself making conflicting decisions. I don't go on about the issues of stake often. Yet, it feels different for me to downvote and have a small impact. Then it seems when I watch those with very high steem power downvote. I don't like scammy people, but I subscribe to the ideals of buyer beware.
On a personal note, I feel like I have learned a lot in the past 10 months or so, yet, I appreciate the feedback from those who have more experience than I do. I don't appreciate being "protected" by scam flaggers.
Nearly every time I have spoken out against a group or account, what bothers me is false pumping up by those with the largest's stakes "ganging up or down" on posts. My view on this is still being refined, which is why I look forward to the conversation.
As a community we also need to teach the concept of "Buyer Beware" and not just try to "Flag Protect" the community. I don't want to teach people "learned helplessness" because others are trying to protect them. It has become top of my list to define my views on this.
I think it has less to do with trying to protect others than it is an expression of, "I'm not going to accept this as a stakeholder myself." Yes, by bringing attention to an issue through commenting and flagging the post, other users might be influenced by that, but it's mostly an exercise for the individual flagging. It's ultimately up to each user to determine whether or not they will support or not support a given project, regardless of how others have voted. As @scaredycatguide said below in another comment - it's all about due diligence.
Regarding last night's post, I flagged it because I saw it as a blatant attempt to scam people and I felt that it would do damage to the reputation of this platform if it continued and if people were duped into giving them money. That damage has a direct effect on me as a stakeholder. So, I voted my economic interests just as much as my moral ones.
I don't intend to protect any individual person from themselves. If they want to buy into a scam, then that's on them. But if I can identify it and feel that it does harm to my own investments, I will express my concerns and vote accordingly, as we all should, no matter the size of our wallets.
You made the best argument I have heard to my position. I like it. I think the only part that bothers me is the UI graying it out. Thank you taking the time to "Argue" and help me refine my view.
Interesting that you should choose to make a post about morality and "bad actors" when you are one of the biggest trolls on the platform.
I don't want people to think it's okay to say "I choose to answer what questions I want and ignore the ones that would obviously prove I am not a scammer." It isn't about protecting anything but our own investment to most of us. The whales supporting this horse shit also ignored the extremely easy to answer question I brought up multiple times and instead upvote comments to save their reputation and promote an agenda. Let's see maybe after upvoting all of these "neutral" comments and putting their reputation on the line for this guy they can ignore me again. "Why not put the money in a smart contract or multi-sig with a trusted third party agreed upon by the community?" I will be amazed if I don't get ignored again.
Agreed, the behavior of the OP and those who were vocally supporting it (including how they ignored your question and others) is what inspired me to make any comments and eventually flag the post.
Very well said. I agree with you on this.
Agreed .
This post is an eye-opener.
Thanks
Well said, David. If this platform is going to reach it's potential we will have to use the power we have to say no to scams and corruption. The power lies in our upvotes and flags and last night we saw that working in a beautiful way in my opinion.
This is an example of Capitalism working! We don't need a government getting involved, we can simply weed these people out and expose them. They will always lose in the end. I am just happy they were caught out before any people lost money. I big thanks is owed to a select few, who stopped it in it's tracks!
Upvoted as always! I feel ostracized everytime I look at my blog page to check my payouts. I work my butt off to write good material and look at the Trending page so I can marvel at people making hundreds for garbage... maybe I can find some good cat pics!!!
It will happen man. Most the people making that much were known before steemit even existed. So they got a huge headstart that only first movers get.
Thanks... I appreciate the support. I just keep working really hard but don't seem to be getting anywhere!
I think that the whole Mogul things was an example of a good use of downvotes. I do think that part of being a good steemian lies in ensuring that steem is a good environment, and part of that is reducing the visibility of scammers.
While "Buyer beware" makes sense, not everybody has the time, or the background to do a full investigation. Also, people who can spot scams will be put off Steem if they see scams on the trending page, so we do well to remove them when we can.
@dwinblood mentioned third party "investigators" to look into things like this, since you're right, not everyone has the time. I think that's a great idea.
A good idea, but who watches the watchers?
We'd just have to trust in their impartiality.
What if my definition of a good environment is different than yours. I honor freedom even above fiscal security. Not freedom for the scammer exactly, freedom for the person considering what the investment opportunities are. I would have never put a cent in this, but I want to make my own choice, not have others decide for me.
You are entering some really murky philosophical statement with that. I think that even the choices we think of as our own are often determined by our environment, and the people that surround us.
The fact is that the amount of opportunities that enter your awareness are always limited by something, and in this case you can think of the process as applying a filter to the opportunities that you are exposed to, thus reducing the cognitive load needed to evaluate them, and freeing up your resources for other things.
I am pretty sure I can be murky at times. :) I didn't ask anyone to "Free my cognitive load" though. Does that mean anything, isn't one presenting themselves as more qualified or some type of protector to me required to ask if I want their help? I want their opinion, but not their help - unless I ask.
I am not trying to be argumentative, I find hearing the argument for this interesting.
He said this was his life's work.
If I put my life's work into a legitimate business and was about ready to launch it, I wouldn't let naysayers keep me from going through with my project.
However, if I were running a scam, and got called out and ostracized by the community I was trying to scam...I would've done exactly what Matt did.
In my assessment of this situation, his actions speak louder than any words.
Billy Mayes here for Mogul, we're going to party like it's $1999. But wait there's more!
you mean smiley nice people aren't always so? NOOOO @contentjunkie nooooooo
hahaha good meme xD oxi clean xD
What about people that have a negative rep because of subjective reasons. or just one butthurt whale that decides your the target for the week?
That is definitely a problem. One we haven't really solved yet.
This, a thousand times this. Steemit took a huge hit in terms of a positive reputation for free speech just about two weeks ago when a whale voted an SGT Report out of viewership - I don't have the specifics in memory at the moment, but SGT reported on it to his YouTube followers and I have to say --- it did not look good for Steemit. Especially since SGT has been praising Steemit as an alternative to other social media platforms in light of their censorship tactics and this guy has a HUGE following because he is smart and has access to and can reach practically everyone in the alt-media/crypto sphere. People could still view the Steemit-buried report on Youtube, but on Steemit it was no longer even possible to view. Needless to say, that is highly counterproductive for Steemit.
If whales disagree with something because it does not align with their subjective views and they can neither prove nor disprove arguments for or against a statement in a factual manner then proceed to eliminate it from conversation or viewership on Steemit nevertheless, that is authoritarian censorship, plain and simple. What happened to "I may disagree with what you say, but will defend to the death your right to say it?" That is the gold standard of free speech, not "If I don't like what you say, I will kill your message."
Of course there will be bumps and hiccups along the way, but it appears there should be some sort of explicit community contract that whales agree to abide by when they reach that stage and perhaps an appeals process of some sort where petitions are posed to the user base as a whole.
This has happened in cycles for almost a year. It is one of the biggest remaining problems with steemit, though we haven't really come up with a fix for it, though we do have ideas we've all discussed, but those ideas don't really matter unless steemit inc. decides to experiment and try some of the ideas out. I do know steemit inc. is working on quite a few things for the future, but I don't know how likely they are to do something about this.
The argument of course will be that it wasn't censored since it is still on the blockchain. That too me is equivalent to saying "it wasn't censored you can file a Freedom of Information Act request". What are the odds someone is going to be viewing the blockchain in a way to monitor for such posts. Then there is the funding side of things. If a person cannot earn when some people appreciate their work because a powerful person(s) down votes it then that could be a form of financial censorship. They'll argue then "if they are here only for the money they don't need to be". Which arguing that someone doesn't view Steemit the same way you think they should is kind of silly too if we plan on having a lot of people here. We'll end up with many people, using it for many reasons, and we don't need people deciding who and who cannot benefit from and enjoy steemit. That is negative PR as you said.
These things go in cycles. I've been very vocal about this in the past. I've also warned of exactly what you describe, them doing this to someone with a large following and causing negative PR outside of steemit.
Balanced and reasonable response, thanks for the feedback. Now following.
Due Diligence is the key phrase for all of this. Whether high rep or low rep, newbie or veteran. All projects should be vetted and then acted on upon accordingly.
No single individual will catch everything alone. That is why we are a community.
Not every person will agree on whether something is good or bad. That is why we have the choice to do what we want with our votes.
In the end, we hope the overall reaction is the prudent and correct one. Not just mass hysteria. No matter who it is.
Steem on!
I am going to resteem this. I think I want to write my reaction to this as a post of my own. I'll provide a link when I have completed it.
EDIT: Link to my response
@ats-david, this is an important topic... and I think it's great that you brought it up because Steemit is a "young" community and we'd probably benefit from examining things like this. As we grow-- and I believe we WILL-- this is going to happen again, in many different colors, stripes and shapes.
But let's forget about Steemit for a moment and talk about LIFE and COMMUNITIES. I'm going to borrow a bit from a lengthy comment I just left on @dwinblood's reply post to your post here... "water chooses the path of least resistance." In this case, we could substitute in "money" for "water."
What I know from communities in life is that if an "undesirable element" moves into the community and remains unaddressed and is allowed to spread unchecked, the community goes into decline. And when the community decays... "quality" tends to flow out, leaving behind mainly the "garbage," with a few pockets of "goodness" entrenched behind tall barbed wire fences.
On the other hand, if the community stands together and runs the undesirable element out of town in tar and feathers. the community tends to not only thrive, but it strengthens the community bonds. Of course, this assumes a community where the majority share a similar vision for the community.
But let's return to Steemit... this was part of my response elsewhere:
Even if someone is very determined to break through the system... you have to ask yourself WHY they would persist in investing lots of time, money and resources in getting into a community that is determined to make it an eternal uphill (and costly!) battle for them... especially when there are lots of other options out there where people only give a very minor $hit.
But there are no easy answers....
That's something I've seen too, and I think you're right on the ball with that. People who love to debate opposing sides of things will disagree. I personally don't like to debate just for the sake of winning an argument though. Some people who like to disrupt happy communities go in with that sole attention and hide behind "issues" as their shield. I always try to seek out those pockets of "goodness" you talk about.
This is the post I would have wanted users to read some time back when they called me a jealous troll for telling the truth about the real threats to the community.
A is A.
Nature will always demand truth. Dishonesty only lead one way.
-It's inescapable no matter how some try to ignore or make excuses for ignoring offensive deception of one kind or the other because they themselves fear having to stand on their own.
Honesty still remains the superior way to deal with reality. And if you don't stand up for justice - on this platform or anywhere - no god will have to punnish you. Nature doesn't have to know in order to be the final judge.
So yes, do all of the options presented if necessary. Don't let the senior, celebrity, high rep, high vest, your upvoting sugar daddy or even your friend get away with scams or even just a slight "inflation" of the truth.
There's no need to make matters worse of course, by seeking primarily to do harm rather than to restore the balance, but for all that life is worth don't let evil thrive by turning a blind eye to what's right in front of you.
This is so applicable it's uncanny, well written
Thank you. I meant every word of it and felt I needed to write it on the go even as I was a long way from a computer, but thanks to eSteem it still worked out OK.
We need to do something as a community about this @ats-david guy chasing off all the most profitable scams!
How are we going to make it big without investing into scams???
I'd like to see some lines on a chart explaining that one #smart guy.
#ostrichsize
I'll work on that chart. It may actually end up showing us that we need scammers in order to make it big. I might just be a huge jerk-face after all.
Here in our little elementary school we teach the children to use their W.I.T.S.: Walk away, Ignore, Talk it out and, finally, Seek help... The it come to bullying, this is a pretty straight forward program that brings about great results. But what do we do when one "Seeks help" because the bully doesn't want to stop bullying?
Cohesive methods are being used, starting with authorities climbing in influence from staff, to teachers, to principal and, if need be, superintendent. What happens when the bullying doesn't stop even there??? Usually, the police and the justice system starts to deal with this and the justice juggle of our societies starts.
In our case, on our own platform, there doesn't seem to be not yet a neutral body of people with cohesive powers to take care of bullying beyond the WITS and the platform itself , including all of its participants pay for that. Fair??? Absolutely not. When the fun is there only for a few, it is not fun at all, it is bullying.
Maybe within @steemcleaner group we easily could build a protocol to deal with such individuals. Otherwise, people who like the highs of bullying, who have loads of power on here, will only keep tarnishing the whole platform to our detriment and succeed in sabotaging the cohesiveness building for the strength of us all.
We would need a group of people high non-partisan or simply have a double-blind examination of the content in from top the group to render verdicts to such bullying events.
Thanks for raising the concerns, the opportunity to keep this important discussion open to creative problem-solving and having the courage to stand tall in front of disrespect.
All for one and one for all!
Namaste :)
Do the examples below qualify as scammy as well or is it all in good faith, just-the-free-market-at-work, and for the best of Steemit?
Look at this, a photo worse than my worst outtakes when I was taking photos aged 9, then look at the payout.
Or this. Content: "Cross-post on Golos, make some extra money". $1000,- Yay.
Or this, a few stats from Twitter. $560,-
Or this. Content "My witness node crashed. It was badly set up (Was it? Not the most dependable of witnesses then, are you?). It is better now. Some technical stuff about how it is set up. $1800,-
That's a good question. I would say that it depends on the individual posts/accounts. But votes/payouts alone wouldn't really be a scam. Motive is one of those things that we really can't definitively know.
However...if we know that one of the users has schemed/scammed or abused in the past, we should certainly take that into consideration. If you've been around long enough and have paid attention, you should have an idea of who's who around here and how they've earned their influence/stake.
I agree, we can't begin judging motives.
Just continue posting good photo's and content and hopefully it will all even out.
300+ for that huh? Following you @ocrdu.
I see it. And the community, as far as I can see, reacts against abusers.
my concern is about what will happen when the steem community will grow larger and no one will be able to monitor the whole flow.
we should think about it now that it's still manageable, and try to imagine the future framework
It is my hope we may have people that choose to be investigators. Perhaps they will dig into the blockchain form reports, etc. They will post their findings and reports much like @steemcleaners does for spam, plagiarism, etc. I suspect the community will reward them well for their efforts if they keep it unbiased and civil and just report their findings. If big people end up being revealed as doing something bad they might flag them, but then that is when we the community would need to up vote to counter those things.
As things get bigger I suspect blockchain investigators could become a viable type of person we end up having in this community.
I agree with @dwinblood, and I like the idea of unbiased investigators as well.
But honestly, I didn't give that scam a second glance, it was obviously too good to be true.
I didn't even know about it until I read @ats-david's post. :)
I second your idea, @dwinblood. As an intelligent person, I saw that and immediately saw a scam. But when I saw all those whales upvoting and vouching for the guy, it made me doubt myself, so I decided to watch his webinar.
I think unbiased third party members would be invaluable in helping people make their own decisions without being influenced by the opinions of the top Steemians.
agreed and mmmhmmm
My personal opinion, I was sad about the lost 2 hours of lifetime last night. The idea itself, as far as I think to understand it, to use a big group to generate steem dollars, keep some of it and give some big prizes to a few lucky winners, is quite clever. I'm actually sad we lost this game. It were just not the right people implementing it, so it is good we lost it. It could have worked if they would not have been so exorbitantly greedy with all the other products they wanted to sell around the project. Total turn off is expecting 300 people to pay US$ 2,500 each for the 'honor' to develop the product in the first place.
To answer your question, the reaction was surprisingly drastic and direct. But totally worked. And that is what impresses me most about a community that is forced by design to create good content. It's obviously working. Which, in our world, is a bit surprising to say the least. Usually systems are designed with good intentions, but people still abuse them heavily everywhere. Not so much with steemit and we should be cautious to keep it that way.
One thing though is not always working. People promoting obvious pyramid ponzis. It's always the same story, since beginning of history. Some people with a substantial user base make a lot of money by promoting it, earn huge in lead bonuses, some of their followers profit as well, but the vast majority loses when the system collapses inevitably sooner or later. And they know it. And everyone else should also know it, but many people still follow. It’s plain stupid. And yes, this is happening every day on steemit and we all know some bigger names who do it. So, what should we do with those guys?? Let them still make a profit from the ones they send into doom? Well, good question. Everyone still has the right to make own decisions. But maybe a warning sign can be attached to those postings or a link to a scam reporting site. Like “smoking kills” on cigarette boxes.
It is always better to weed such abusers out of Steemit, keeping them will create a bad reputation for Steemit and discourage new people from joining the community. If abusers stay then STEEMIT may end up being tagged "Den Of Scammers"
Disclaimer: I am just a bot trying to be helpful.
there are lines that need to be drawn, I draw lines at Violence, threats, Scams, Collusions and justifying and/or condoning the above. The rotten apples need to go, updating to include how many turned tail after claiming they just didn't know or "not my problem"/.......really???? soooo just do zero research and promote stuff , consistently by......a few who have knowingly unsavory backrounds but I digress @atsdavid, again <3 One Love Namaste and here is a Unicorn for youuuu my dear friend , it farts out rainbows and grants wishes
I enjoy seeing you on the trending page holding solid, ;)
Brother, I can not tell you how much I appreciate reading this post, AND seeing it rewarded. I have posted similar concerns, and didn't even see a viewcount. I have gotten caught up in unrewarding activities. I have devoted hours to helping others without them giving back. I have lost time devoted to contributing to my goals and the platform. And as I onboard non steemit friends who are good people, i seek to protect them, and introduce them to those devoted to at least some ounce of humanity.
This sort of discussion, though not the sexiest, is appreciated for a healthy future for us, the platform, for communities, and just in general in life.
.
Respect and all the best!
Amen to that
Agreed!!
Ostracize, no brainer.
But not because of money. But because of steemit.
What we have here is one of the least salty waters on the internet. In 2017 that is like an internet unicorn.
To keep it that way, we need to act on people trying to damage this community in any which way we can
True and it must be done by us
I sat through the whole thing.
If you were thinking of spending any money on this, buy bitshares with it instead and dump 'em after he causes a july 4th -5th pump.
I also came back on steem and upvoted samupuha after it, if that gives you an idea what I think.
it was funny to see how fast his precious 700 dollar post went to shit from the flagging.
meep
Hey man, I like your account, it's like performance art or something, lol. followed you. No need to reply, I know what you are going to say. lmao.
meep
hahahahah i love this reply, i feel the same way
Hmmm.... I was pretty ignorant to the whole scammer thing on here. I'll have to start keeping my eyes peeled. Ostracizing doesn't really seem unreasonable to me, personally. If people come on here with clearly bad intentions or ill will, I doubt many people would miss them. Every society has rules. And in some way, if a 70+ rep member starts some type of scamming, they should be reprimanded even harder as they'd cause much more damage to the community as whole. I dont know. I just hate that shit. Come here, post awesome stuff, and be civil; that's where I stand. Anyone trying to take advantage of others... I'd be fine with seeing them sent packing. That's my 2¢
A great well written post,
I believe that scammers SHOULD be ostracised, there is no place for them here in this great community. We all want to make a little (or a lot) of money but there are legitimate means of doing so.
Yesterday was my first day using this site and the first post I saw was that Mogul one promising ridiculous sums of money for "playing a game". Right off the bat I knew it was a scam but I had to see what the story was so I start reading through the post and every line just screamed "I'm scamming you!" but ninety percent of the replies I saw were positive, people practically throwing their money at the black hole being presented to them. This did initially turn me off the steemit community, I had to keep asking myself how so many of these people could be so blind.
But, in the end, I found a few replies that were sceptical/critical (seeing how the scammer responded to this criticisms further enforced my belief that it was a scam) and the very first vote I gave was to promote one of these few rational comments, and that is what gave me hope for this community, that is why I made my first post yesterday, and another one today and why I'm leaving this response now.
Thank you.
My hope is that competing, "Consumer Reports" types of accounts will emerge. Then, we can all check our voting against the service(s) that we trust. A couple ways those accounts could get revenue would be i. a premium service to go ahead and automatically remove our votes if we accidentally vote for a suspicious account; or ii. by author rewards from publishing weekly lists of changes to their databases.
The potential for abuse exists there, too, but competition between services should bring the best to the top and drive the others out of business.
I am really new on steemit so I might not be grasping fully the issue debated here.
It seems to me that everyone can advertise and promote their stuff. If someone has an issue with other persons project they are right to criticise and point out flaws. We should all be prepared to receive constructive criticism. The person running the project should be able to answer the questions in a manner that clears the doubt. If they can not do it then its their loss.
Of course, often people follow those who shout louder and not those who put forward well reasoned arguments. We could end up ostracising someone who did not deserve it. Being wrong, making a mistake is always a risk. As long as we are equally ready to come forward, admit such a mistake, apologise and make up for it we should be fine.
If we're all going to live in the same house, I expect everyone to do their fair share. If my spare change keeps going missing, someone is getting the boot. That's life.
Bella discussione...tutta da leggere...con calma..
As long as we aren't always jumping at opportunities to ostracize others, I think it is the best tool available to make sure the community moves in a positive direction. But it requires the community to continuously move in the direction of consensus about what it stands for and where it's headed.
Yesterday reinforced my excitement for this community. I came here 3 weeks ago and have very little steem power and have yet to develop a deep network of trust. I do however have a lot of passion for community and a desire to participate. Matt was in the same boat but instead of passion for community, he waved money in everyones face. I was really worried when I saw him pulling in $1000, with some upvotes from trusted whales in the community.
I am not going to call him a scam artist, for all I know he could be offering a real opportunity (every bone in my body says he was not, but just to give him the benefit of the doubt). For me, the problem wasn't really him being here and sharing his plan, even if it was a scam...it was that he was getting a lot of attention and support.
Minnows have to "go through the grind" but if you invest money into steemit, you can take a huge shortcut. This is kind of a loophole but still, many who invest in steem are interested in the community aspect of the currency and have something to offer, they like helping out others. But if a guy talking like that, making huge promises and few details and with 0 stake in the community comes in, I would hope a majority of the community would blow him off, and thankfully they did.
When he started his list of people who were "disqualified from playing", I replied to him and explained in a peaceful way why people felt threatened by his post. I tried to represent the feelings being communicated in steemitchat and the discord channels. As I say his post being flagged down, I kept getting upvotes on my comment. Since he didn't reply, I made a stupid parody of his post which quickly received 78 upvotes.
Of course it felt good to be heard after 3 weeks of feeling a little underappreciated as a minnow , but it felt even better that someone like me who only has a passion for community and a desire to make great content was encouraged to speak my voice despite being new here. Meanwhile someone who obviously just saw steemit primarily as an opportunity to make money without much regard for community was left out in the cold in the end.
You make a good point about whether or not this would have been accepted if he were well known and had good rep and lots of SP here.....I think we will have to cross that bridge when we get to it but I hope there continues to be a strong priority placed on community and quality material, the money will come, there is way too much talent and creativity here, it has to.
Great to see everyone sharing thoughts on this and other things. Not going to go into details as I see others doing a good job at that and you have enough to read unless I am asked specifically. Last night's occurrence may have been more of a precaution. People had mixed feelings about it. Many seemed to want to be more sure and comfortable.
In closing I think everyone involved learned from their interaction and the over all individual and collective outcome(s). Let us continue to work together to support or not support with our individual and collective reputations, steem power, and up/down-votes.
One of th biggest reasons I enjoy Steemit is because I see more and more hard worked content get recognized and rewarded. I appreciate a social media site that does this. But seeing the comments and seeing the potential negative side of it all just shows it is also a fine line to walk. Yes scamming and dirty spamming (stuff like basic instagram spamming follow and unfollow, etc) should just be passed by and left in the dust. But attacks and such are a very fine line and needs every careful consideration about its action. Again Steemit has shown to really reward hard work, time and effort. I don't think extreme moderation is needed for probably most cases (unless in cases such as posting illegal content and such)
Im still standing on 51. Cant giving long elaboration bout this point. More Robot we need for that. Plagiarism is parasitism. They wanna earn much fu*ckin money without givin appreciation to original creator.
Either I've been incredibly lucky or I'm actually Billy-no-Mates?
I've not seen any of the ever growing list of complaints I see on steemit, I have seen the complaints but I've not seen any of the stuff people are complaining about. I did see for the very first time a post today talking about some lottery asking you for $0.01 to supposedly buy a ticket with the chance of winning (I can't remember if the prize is 100% carved in granite so I am generalising) $100 steem dollars. And I have seen these "Prize Giveaway" posts which at first I thought were just designed to gain followers (Which of-course it is.) with no actual prizes but I did see someone the other day claiming that they had not only won something but that they had also refused a prize. (Because it was crap I suspect. :-D)
I have two thoughts.
First $0.01 is not exactly the great train robbery and if I was running a scam it would at the very least be $1.00 a throw!
Secondly nobody is holding a gun to your head to partake in these things.
Now I really like steemit, I've been around the blogging/social media scene for years but my observation since joing is that the major problem for steemit is the very reason it is in existence and that's MONEY. I've read a fair few posts that are essentially moaning about money or the lack of. Everything from Whales hoovering up all the profits and not throwing any crumbs down the food-chain to stuff like "It's not fair! Whys his piece of crap being paid hundreds of dollars and getting thousands of votes when my awesome post is getting feck all!"
Given steemit is like ripples on a pond and the bigger the ripples the bigger the rewards it's no wonder some of the pond life rise to the surface looking for a free meal. For me the best course of action is adopt the same method you should really use with email. If the subject line looks dodgy don't open it. Remember, steemit also records "views" so even just opening a post is adding validation to it.
#TwoPenneth
Now where did I put that rant about rotten Youtubers who are already successful on Youtube coming on here with fifty bazillion followers from youtube and becoming whales within a few hours? ;-)
The last couple of days suddenly Steemit feels like fucking Star Wars. Right up at the top where the whales swim, there's a force for good and a force for bad. This community has some very powerful individuals with very cynical intentions.
A response to @ats-david's post on ostracizing on steemit... flaws, loopholes..
My response. Thank you for writing about an important topic.
Interesting issue to raise
I have mixed feelings in this. Ofcourse, in a perfect world (on a perfect platform), we'd ostracize the baddies. It happens plenty on here. Last night apparently (I was probably sleeping!), but also when my own content got stolen by another member. I'm very happy the community acts swiftly on such an occassion.
However, when is someone in the wrong? Scams and plagiarism are easy to recognize. What about the automatic downvoting of members who a whale disagrees with? Or what about two whales agreeing to upvote all of their friend's crappy posts? I might not agree with these actions, but I cannot touch a whale. Neither can most other members. And if you get on this whale's bad side, he'll drag you down together with his target. And will other whales disagree with him, or stick up for their own? We've seen whale fights here and they are not pretty. I'm sure most people think it wise to stay far away from them, if they hope to stay afloat on this platform. This is a tougher subject I think.
I feel we all should try and make Steem the best it can be and not tolerate bad actions. I'm just not always sure how to best handle it.
I'm in the same boat as you, @playfulfoodie. As a newbie I'm terrified of pissing off a whale or being ganged up on. Steemit is decentralized from nation and international governments, but there is undeniably a pyramid of power here that can easily slip into the bad habits of the past. As a budding new community, we're starting to confront structural issues that come when larger groups of human beings create a society.
I definitely don't know how best to handle it, but I'm very fortunate to have been in on this discussion and see the thought processes of everyone.
I would ostracize and it was nice reading your blog.
Be honest, who else had to google ostracism? Well, maybe it's because I'm a non-native speaker...
I did read your excellent post @ats-david ...There are so many things here that I find strange. But, what I could comment on is that I do not believe that here is better rewarded who builds a "great post". When you have something called influence and bot performance, this rule should not be taken seriously. Good to read this post.
Ever been to a train station.. and had someone come up to you and tell you that they need a ticket to get home - so you give them some money. Then later that day when you are going home you see the same person asking someone else for the same thing? I say it takes a lifetime to build a reputation but only a few seconds to lose it. If Steem becomes "charity coin" or "scam coin" anyone holding Steem (on or off this platform) suffers.
I was thinking that I should write about this. We want neither.
It's great to be able to help others on the platform of course, but just like we need to keep the developer posts somewhat less front and center (however we choose to do that, be it by some gamification, changes to trending pages etc) we also need to make sure that it's not always just a bunch of beggars/seriously endangered people being on "the frontpage" so to speak.
In my opinion, steemit is still young and probably not ready for certain exposures yet. If things go south due to certain scams that were probably avoidable, the critics will be justified in saying steemit was a scam. Even though steemit is a free platform, there is caution. In the words of Malcolm X (I think), He said freedom is not really free. There has to be constant checks and balances all the time. Some people have to protect others from undue exposure and like I said, steemit should not be made to run ahead of it's shadow, let it grow at it's pace and in the process, let us avoid unnecessary risks. Thank you.
I think thatès why we have the flag button.
For all we know @darthnava is a scam. I really hope he isn't, but even if he isn't there are going to be a lot of scam artists who see his success and replicate it. There is a severe lack of skepticism and naivete on this site it seems.
Also, I think it would help if we could publicly downvote comments and posts (or in some other way mark a post with disapproval besides writing a comment).
We have to protect which is our own.Let's fight together.Nice post.
God bless you
Get well soon, thanks steemit for supporting him
I agree with you David ,it is unfair to those who are being 100% original and posting their creative content which takes a lot of time and effort to post. I think for this platform there should be some sort of scam blocker, I'm sure steemit has something in the works to avoid this as much as possible. Great post by the way, keep it up!