@instructor2121 refuses to answer one simple question that has been asked countless times by multiple members below: How much of the rewards that are being sent to @trail are being used to reward those whose posts you are using to earn these funds?
Does anyone find these posts by the *-trail accounts useful?
Check out how much @instructor2121 and his scheme team are brining in from this one!
Does anyone have more information on this scheme they can share with us?
Please, feel free to join me in flagging whenever you see one of these shit posts!
I joined the trail discord group because I am genuinely interested in helping undiscovered content creators grow, but after seeing this and doing some digging I'm kind of disenchanted. It was my understanding that bitshares were distributed to all the voters on the trail, but it looks like rewards haven't been paid out for a couple of months.
My GF's intro post was featured on a @steemisbeautiful post, they posted her photo without permission and that seemed kind of weird. Think the post has over $300 now, and it's kind of sad to know that won't be shared with all the new users they profiled.
Tried asking on discord, but it seems like no one is really interested in serving the community after all, just their wallets.
I was under the impression that I would be rewarded for my vote, but I guess they stopped doing that.
Thanks for bringing this to light, @berniesanders, I'm no longer a supporter of steem-trails.
As a new user, its kind of discouraging to see so much circle-jerking and meta content trending/hot. I'm just gonna keep my head down and keep post weird art and music experiments.
It is one of the reasons I was away from the platform for 6 months. Got tired of circle jerking and exploitaition of hard working content creators and artists...
Hey logic is back, time to bring in reality and we will be fine :)
sorry I'm just joking, who are you and what are you up to?
Who are you?
guy having fun on steemit, I'm me what who do you want, I think this is the first time I've brushed past you.
I see. No problem.
there was a "sceptic" around later he named himself reality, you are logic you must be related somehow :D that was the "joke"
@kevinwong
I called these guys out months ago and was told "we aren't here to add rewards to people's undervalued posts." I was like, well then what do you do?
The answer, obviously, is to add rewards to their own posts, then funnel it through the main account and send the earnings off the platform. That's how you apparently support the user base.
I appreciate your effort flagging this #rewardpoolrape.
I have seen the phototrail rake in some 100 $ for 5 photos and the original posters of the pictures got some 5 $.
What is most disturbing to me is that some witnesses are following these trails with their vote, too.
The times I've noticed these trails is on their short comments with 100+ votes where they leave the actual post they comment on without votes. Way to make the platform look shady... and every time I've asked they go self-defensive and tell me to join discord.
No, I'm not going to join discord for this, just be more open about it and there wouldn't be an issue.
I agree. The only useful trail I've ever seen is @aggroed minnow support.
true dat
Because discord doesn't have a blockchain where what they say is in stone.
...and half of Steemit misses out on the discussion , or fight, or lies or ....
Monopoly.
I'm curious what purpose these trails serve. Would the same funds not be better going to actual authors. I would be interesting in hearing what the community thinks.
That's what I thought the idea was - to create trails that vote on the authors of the posts that deserve the votes based on the quality of their content. These trails appear to be sharing other people's work, then upvoting their own trail accounts...not the authors. Some have even complained about the trail accounts posting some of their work without permission, then benefiting greatly from it.
But the sheer volume of trails and the rewards that they're getting - often without many views or interaction - is a little absurd.
Even in chainbb you have the Post Rewards Beneficiaries system.
Authors that are in the featured posts made by those trails could be added to the system and it would give them the percentage they deserve. That is not that hard to do.
Maybe steemit could have something like that too.
That can be done. It's not exclusive to chainbb. Why it's not being done seems to be a mystery.
Whales should flag them to annihilation :-)
Oh look, trails-trail is still free. Hm.
I was going to create shitpost-trail ...
Be sure to include me on that,....
me too, f*ck >:(
Create it now, before it's too late! Maybe they'll accidentally vote on it and you can be part of the voting scheme...all the way to the crypto bank!
Or I could just do The Daily Trail Selection and Steem Trail News. I like to out-meta people.
Really? I'm saddened to see your response to this stuff.
I'm saddened to see what I originally thought was a good project turn into almost no control whatsoever over self-voting "community" accounts to the tune of hundreds of dollars per post. These "trails" were supposed to be about finding and upvoting quality content, not creating a bunch of different trails to upvote with whale power.
What happened to spreading/allocating rewards to users on their own posts? Why isn't that the goal, instead of funneling a ton of rewards through the -trail accounts?
i see a 'daily photo selections' post BY @photo-trail making $375 and features 17 photographers.
how much of that $375 will those photographers see?
if they aren't getting shit, do they know that?
I have a question on that post which they have yet to respond to.
Much better 😊
wrong. we are committed to building more communities...self sustaining communities. you gotta think bigger man!
I think it might be sarcasm, or irony, or something in that vein.
Now you're talkin'!
@ats-david you have been consistently upvoting most of my photography posts, I thank you for that kind sir, and some of those get featured in the photo-trail, where the total photos of other authors combined, get $300 plus which is good for them but I guess not good for us authors. During the last few days I was then approached by photo-trail if I would want my photo included in their post or just the link..So my answer, was the best way possible that I can reach a wider audience..which is including my photo..I didn't know this until now, it just saddens me because I have to go out in the middle of the hot sun and shoot. I need to bring extra clothes because the sun makes me perspire like I went to the shower.. My point is the original authors should also get the same treatment or attention when our work is shared to another post.
Hey, I want to be civil here so please no flagging, but that isn't the "model" of the trails. The trails do 'vote on authors of posts that deserve the votes based on the quality of their content', we upvote and support the authors whos content is featured and the rewards that go to the trails help them grow so their support to the minnows it worth more down the line. If the trails never grew, it would be impossible for them to offer any impactful support.
Even if the views are low on a particular post, does it not balance out when the trail hosts can now have a 1$ upvote for minnows and offer contests or challenges?
you guys are making your own posts with other peoples content and raking in HUNDREDS of dollars when the original posts are barely making double-digit figures.
I find this questionable behavior at best.
A percentage of the posts earnings at the very least should be shared among the creators whos content you made that money from. There is no excuse for this.
Does this mean you have talked to all the people featured to find out if they didn't have permission? A steemian will learn facts well before hurriedly concluding!
what it means is I know what i see
i see photos that do not belong to someone who made a post containing those photos, and now that post is pushing $400.
if the creators gave permission for them to make money off of their creations and not see a dime of it, then they are fucking morons.
If you are asking me, then yes. This has been noted in the trail repeatedly, to assure to ask all content creators for their feature.
No it doesn't 'balance out' you just need to take a look at the figures being moved out into exchanges from @trails and the figures being transferred into the acc from all the other -trail accounts to see something unfair is happening on a huge scale. You can see that the actual creators/authors are not getting anything like like figures, total bs about being for the community, they are for themselves otherwise why not split the rewards more fairly?
At what percentage? How much of your trail's influence is actually allocated to the users you upvote compared to your own -trail account?
For the trail I manage, 100%. I don't know what you mean upvoting my own account. When I log onto my trail I go to my tag, I go to new, and I start upvoting and resteeming articles that have good work and no plagiarism. I retain 100% of my vote power and usually start with NEW articles.
I understand your concerns, but for my trail (science-trail) all of my influence is allocated to the users who I upvote, and I don't feel as if I have don't anything other than try to offer support to the little guy. Even the first post I made powered up so that it would generate the most steem power out the gate, to help people down the road.
I didn't even get any payout on the 607 dollar post I created from scratch (nobody elses content), and the payout I would have gotten from the recent 350$ post, which I planned to reinvest to help grow myself as a reward for my community engagement has been diminished 150$ because of this attack. My trail isn't very old mind you, but I feel this is an adequate and fair course of action which has been unjustly harased.
So you are not one of the trails with links back to @trail or @steemtrails . You don't regularly transfer funds to either of them, then you are not doing anything wrong. There are many 'trails' who regularly transfer rewards to @trails, which is believed to be way in excess of actual author rewards that members of the respective trail receive. This is deemed an unfair 'theft' by many of the community.
Well, that isn't 100% accurate either. The owners of this system have had steemtrails in operation for months, they have other community projects to organize and other accounts to moderate. They claim a percentage of the 50/50 payouts which are the choice of the account owners.
I'm glad that you can recognize that there isn't anything inherently villainous to the project . The members of the community that deem this unfair theft by the community have to understand that the excess generated by the reputation of the trail is the same as any other steemit account. No system can operate to the size of steemtrails without compensating the users who allow it to operate, that is why many of the hardworking users part of the project are speaking out agaisnt an unfair attack on their accounts, like me.
When the community speaks and want to grow something...support happens. and this is what you are seeing. its a great thing!
Why don't you actually answer the questions that are being asked @instructor2121? You're doing nothing but beating around the bush because you know all of these funds are going straight to your wallet and nowhere else.
your not answering important questions
please pay attention
The only purpose they serve is to make the team that is publishing them more SBD to dump on the exchanges. Why else?
my photos were featured and made their post hundreds of SBD, while mine was out in the cold.
Certainly looks like that.
It appears so. Fair distribution to the real authors needs to come. This is a monopoly.
Well one way to do it would be to share the rewards with the original source authors - the last hard fork allowed that and I think people would appreciate it. I don't have the technical expertise to say how hard or easy it would be to implement but I think it should be possible.
i might even venture out so far as to say it's a "theft ring".
On the 💰
I actually found some new photographers to follow through @photo-trail, but if they don't share the rewards back to the authors, then it's exploitation at best.
Yes in fact I have found others through these kind of summary posts - I think we need to be careful that people are happy to be part of it though - I think profit sharing would help.
All you have to do is ask what we do with SteemTrail...I will be more than happy to explain. We BUILD communities, and do not charge for our upvotes.
After HF 19 we will be delegating SteemTrail voting power out to 60-70 accounts so we can reach 1K-2k users each day...again this is free, no charge.
You can chat with me on steemit.chat(the same place you send your threats to) and we can share with you the vision of SteemTrail.
Thank you
Upvoting so everyone can see me dispute every one of your bullshit claims.
How does transferring money to poloniex help users exactly? I dont want to be a part of these whale wars regardless. Im fine making 5$ on a post and avoiding the whale-drama.. but if you are transferring money to poloniex instead of the the users who make you that money. Then it is a bit fucked! I wish you guys would stop flagging each other. but if shit like this is happening behind the scenes you guys will be at war forever :( ! You both have a shit ton of steem, lets do whats best for the community and make the community better, and the price of stem higher. Everyone wins that way. These wars are counterproductive. Not saying they aren't necessary, but they aren't helping. Its like a steemit civil war :(
We build communities and are funding development of our 100+ community websites powered by STEEM....he is selling his upvotes for SBD. Now think about that for a moment. Great question!
Ya I get it. him and whaleshares have chosen to operate differently. more business like. And while he is asking theses question and showed everyone that you guys had sent money to polo. He never says where or what he does with each2 SBD he makes from randowhale. I get it, im trying to stay medium you guys. I'm just a minnow trying to make sense of these things really. And regardless of your spite towards eachother. I have nothing but love for all of you whales. I know that you are all trying to make steem worth more, its wise for your investments! Even the founding fathers had differing opinions you guys. I just want there to be some common grounds, common ground is beneficial to steem!!
why would he even charge 2 sbd for his upvote? greed,more money, and influence. SteemTrail votes are free, and will always be free.
And bernie screams "scheme"...give me a break.
okay goddammit
for the last time - this isn't about the upvotes from steemtrails
its about the REPOSTS where you guys are making a shit ton of money using content created by other people.
ive asked you this multiple times today, and now I feel like your pretending not to even see me.
HOW MUCH OF THE EARNINGS FROM THOSE POSTS DO THE CONTENT CREATORS GET??
if zero, then you need to GTFO
Sorry, you're not getting a break. There's a significant difference between you lining your pockets by posting others work vs allowing people to pay for a chance to receive a large vote. You're taking funds from the reward pool without giving people a choice where I am not.
Whales should just flag it to hell until authors receive considerate percentage. Lets make the solution simple, please :-)
@instructor2121, It looks really bad when you don't respond to Moby's pretty straight forward questions.
What are the 100 websites that you are transferring money towards? What are the best few? I see that bernie gets 2 dollars for a randowhale vote. its plain as day. But I dont see how much you are taking, there is no transparency. It would be nice if you talked about it.. If you take 15% for yourself, that would be fine. Just say as much so everyone knows.. Then give the rest back to the users who make the content you use to make the money with? He showed that you transferred thousands to polo, how did you get those thousands, where did they go? Do Steemians deserve to know? I am trying to remain neutral. I KNOW that this ocean is big enough for you whales, but you keep shitting on each others doorsteps. Theres a whole ocean, how do you guys end up shitting on each others doorsteps every day?
Why not share in public, not everyone is on chat and to be fair there is no transparency nothing is recorded forever on the blockchain in a chat. Why not in the comments, or defend in a post with explanations as to the way the -trails are operating? Maybe without defending you may find all of the @trails sub trails being defollowed or muted en mass as a reaction to lack of defence.
Hey what happened to the TRAIL deposits? They were every day, then once a week, then once a month, now it's been two months since the last deposit.
You build communities by raping them for thousands of SBD each day? Nope!
Thinking small man. These communities are being built with or without you.
Your days of bullying the small users with your fear tactics are OVER! And you know this. Just enjoy your 1.6 million SP man and enjoy the ride. The community is much much bigger than you and they are speaking. Peace brother
You're the one taking rewards from the community rather than giving back as you claim, yet I'm the one thinking small?
You can build communities without pillaging them.
and you are fleecing the little guy with your vote buying scheme. Why not give your votes for free?
@randowhale is 100% transparent and people LOVE it. They also have the OPTION to pay @randowhale for a vote or not. In this case you are taking rewards from the reward pool simply to line your own pocket. There's a HUGE difference but I don't expect someone like you to understand that.
I like @randowhale, you did a great job with the last version and I am following the development you do up close. Brilliant business-strategy.
When it comes to @instructor2121 I have seen him working very transparent in building up a community of real people who read and follow different content, my impression is that his trails have a function of a good old fashion "book-reading-club" who curate very serious in a manual time-consuming way.
When it comes to "lining his pockets" and "taking rewards from the rewardpool" - that seems to be a very quick judging opinion from your side. Maybe it will do you good to come on discord and actually talk - voice with him and his community of 1000+ members on http://discord.gg/pz3UT6s when they have meetings every night.
Or join steemspeak with 1500+ members on http://discord.gg/g7amU35 and ask the always active people there what they think about this.
I´ll upvote myself right here to line my own pockets and give you something to flag for free. Remember, if anything is wrong in your world you can always come and just... blame me ;)
xoxo
Can you please enlighten us of what's happening with these trails here instead of insisting we join discord all the time and going full self-defense mode with your "workers"?
+1
Yeah, Bernie, you're a real hero. What is this post? It adds nothing? Are you keeping the reward from it?
Adds nothing? Whatever you say keyboard warrior. Fuck yes I'm keeping the reward.
People, look at this, he wants others to be altruistic, then makes money off of posts encouraging you to take from others.
Nobody cares what you say. Go back to writing more nonsense...
at least he wrote it himself
lol, got a chuckle out of me. So true.
What these people? forget is that everything is public on the blockchan, anyone can check into what is going on in whatever account, rewards in, out, patterns of transfers inward/outward to/from accounts etc. It looks like all these 'trail' accounts are all operated by @trail and regularly transfers occur back to the 'holding' account before exit out to exchanges.
It certainly seems like these 'trail' 'services' are all designed to garner upvotes for those who participate....but if you look at where the rewards are being transferred to @trail @uwelang and others ( go check wallets) in very large amounts which do not reflect the authors rewards at all.
Perhaps if they truly wanted to help the community they would redistribute the rewards to the 'trail' community. instead of keeping them. Perhaps it's time to MUTE these 'trail accounts and support authors directly?
I think they are successful because the newly joined members on Steemit are so desperate to get the big rewards they believe the hype of the 'trail' creators.
SteemTrail is one of the oldest and largest projects on STEEM... We are successful because we work hard and fought through the bad times. We are still here, and with a growing and excited community, we will stay.
So, dont think for a moment that we have just popped up....we have been here grinding it out everyday. never left because we believe in the platform and the community.
this means nothing. if religion has taught us anything its that the age and popularity of a concept has nothing to do with its accuracy or level of morality.
Sorry, but this doesn't begin to answer what has been questioned here, so it simply comes off as entitled avoidance.
The accusation wasn't that this was some fly-by-night scam, but specifically that lately this model, absent any changes, inequitably benefits older members feeding the trails with lower-effort posts versus the newer content creators, for the latters' more substantive body of work per topic.
Answering the legitimate concerns raised, as other trailblazers have done here, would have been a better use of today's "grinding", in my opinion.
No one's automatically entitled to the benefits of anyone's hard work because you've been "grinding everyday for years" for your own wallet, waiting for this exact scenario.
Some people here seem to be forgetting whose hands are actually feeding them.
Give some link for reading about project?
What happened to the TRAIL coin deposits? I will unfollow at Streemian if this goes unanswered...
Amen to this
There was some discussion under one of the postings by photo-trail about copyrights to photos, see here.
Photo-trail's main counter-argument was: "I'm a lawyer, I know this is OK, who are you?", plenty enough to irk me, but maybe my fuse is too short.
He has since given the option to be quoted by link rather than by transcluded photo.
Still, I don't like all this meta-stuff much.
I think Nspart was telling me about this a few days ago and I misunderstood what he was talking about!
Nspart was the one who brought up the question of legality and payout sharing for these photo-trail posts that consist mainly of other people's work, copied without prior permission.
I hope you didn't misunderstand in dangerous ways 8-).
No I can understand his point of view. If the trail is getting larger payouts than the original posts it can raise some questions.
Wait so I don't see whats wrong, please could you explain to me
#rewardpoolrape
I know better... lol great name for it!
How do you figure? We are free to transfer to anyone we want and that's money that was already out of the pool. I think you're missing the entire point.
Hi bernie. I like that you give me the opportunity to defend myself, since you name me on your list. I am going to speak for myself and those who lead steemtrail. Steemtrail gave me the opportunity to help the Spanish-speaking community when no one else did. If you check your steemitchat, I wrote you asking for help. You never answered me and it's perfect, I really understand. You did not have to answer me, you do not know me. But instructor did answer me and helped me with the spanishchallenge which was my personal contest. At that time it was the beginning of HF 18 and the posts were not worth anything.
In that list I only appear as a number, but I invite you to see the #spanishchallenge tag and see how many users are participating. The spanishchallenge is like a baby for me, born of a prize that I win and with no future prospects. And I am proud that today is 13 weeks. You can think what you want, but that pride nobody takes it from me. You can ask all the members of the Spanish speaking community what they think of me. I kill myself for growing my community on steemit. No one can deny me that.
The subject of rewards is very delicate Bernie, I imagine you see the trending and there is post with a single paragraph that collect $100. I never complain about this and I'm not going to do. I have nothing against you, I congratulate you when you fixed things with htooms and I think if you take 5 minutes and check the tag spanishchallenge, you will notice that I really work for my community.
You received a mere 100$ - you're definitely not an insider there, anyone can see that.
Maybe that's why he only got 100$. :/
Even though I haven't really understood the trails fully, I believe that the Spanish trail (only one I've engaged with by being a part of the Spanish speakers community) has kept a lot of the steemians to keep posting even in hard times like HF18 was, besides that I don't really get the trails, but I think in a way they unite people with likewise interests. I do not support flagging of any kind on Steemit, but I understand that the rewards can be a little more generous to the authors, but I also remember when all the trails started those posts were getting a very little rewards and most of the rewards that were given to the authors were not given on SBD but by open ledger.
I follow the @photo-trail account, I've found it quite useful actually because it does the Daily Photo Selection and re-steems from accounts that I can then follow. Hadn't noticed the other ones.
Do you believe it deserves $300+ per post (every day)?
Talking only about the @photo-trail account:— I try not to get into what deserves what kind of reward, but sure - $300 every day is a bit much for that imo. But then I'm also not aware of what they might be doing with their rewards... Maybe they're funnelling it back in to the community somehow. In general I say let the market decide (which is what's happening here, as you are a part of the market, and the market is discussing what to do!)
We'll see what happens.
For me, I like the photo-trail one (300+ daily seems exorbitant, yes) and I want to re-iterate for the record that I wasn't aware of all the other *-trail accounts until this post, and the fact that they are all connected makes it a bit more squishy to me.
I don't know about the other trails, but photo-trail was also ignoring people's copyrights, IMNSHO. For completeness: photo-trail insisted he wasn't and has since give the option to be referred to with a link to a photo instead of the photo itself.
@photo-trail should at very least be giving back a percentage to the authors, I never got a cut, but apparently some people did. It hurts the actual content creators like myself.
I had to google "IMNSHO".
Okay, I wasn't aware of all that. We've seen that happening before with other photo inspiration 'best of the day' type posts. They made a lot, the photographers made nothing.
Have you ever read a post anywhere thats worth $300?
I've read posts that have received $300 that had far more EFFORT put into them than these posts making money by posting others work. But, to answer your question, probably not.
Writers for "The Atlantic" or "Time" probably make less...
The Atlantic is a CIA OP. And it is bad at even that.
For small users, getting noticed is difficult. Trail comments have been very helpful when I encounter them.
I get flagging the features, but some of the other posts are really brilliant!
I am not flagging any of the individual users posts, only the one taking advantage of those users.
Bernie you are a legend. It appears that trail is becoming a great monopoly for some people. Steemit devs need to solve this issue before it gets too late. #stoptrailmonopoly
each trail is its own community. thats by design. they grow and support each other. no monopoly
How do you distribute payouts?
@instructor2121 Answer to this question above by @freedomnation would help your cause. I believe this has been asked of you before without reply which insinuates either a. You Don't want to answwr because the truth will make you look bad or b. No answer = hope this goes away.
So what it is?
We are in the process of developing 100+ websites all on steem. expanding the steem platform and ecosystem.
We dont need to "help" our cause. we are every transparent and open..we even have a podcast every thursday...we discuss SteemTrail and a bunch of other things. Everyone is welcome to join us and ask questions.
YOU ARE STILL NOT ANSWERING THE QUESTION. STOP EVADING.
Why don't you just use payout declined on those?
Where can I find out more about the 100+ websites all on Steem, especially as it relates to photography?
we do updates in our weekly podcast. you should join us.
I am out of town but will do so as soon as I get a chance. This biggest concern seems to be fairness to original content creators so hopefully that can be addressed.
it has already been addressed
something i don't quite yet understand about this website is why are these not acceptable but the "minnow support group is"
what's the difference?
A couple people have asked me to respond to this comment. I don't know enough yet to tell you what steemtrails is, but I can tell you what the Minnow Support Project (MSP) is and what the @minnowsupport curation trail is.
MSP is a public community run by 5 witnesses: @aggroed, @ausbitbank, @teamsteem, @theprophet0, and @someguy123. There is a document showing governance that's still new and getting updated along the way as the project grows that's publicly available on the @minnowsupport wall. It's completely free to be there and everything is voluntary. This includes a publicly accessible bot, which costs 0.001 steem/sbd to initially register, and is capable of controlling a community account to vote on any desired post.
We currently have 700 people at the beginning of our 7th day in the Discord room making roughly 1200 votes a day using the community bot. Each community bot/account vote puts about $0.25 onto a new post. A full vote done manullay by me is about $1.60 on a new post.
For people that like the community and want to see it grow there are membership routes accessible to anyone that wants to complete them. It includes joining a Streemian trail and following the bots with your own vote so taht you too are voting on ~1200 different posts by other minnows. It's currently not that much, maybe another 30 cents, but it's more than they were making before. People ultimately come for the bots, but stay for the community.
Lastly, it's actually a horrible money maker from curation. I'm still waiitng another week before first round numbers come in, but because the minnows vote so early on a post, and because the votes are spread through so many very small posts it has to be the worst curated whale (besides a non-voting one). Whatever does get made will continue to stay with the community account, which I'm currently the only holder of the keys.
We're public, transparent, have an operating document, run by 5 publicly elected officials, and everything is accessible and voluntary if you are willing to pay the registration fee required, which is 0.001 steem/sbd. Nearly 95% of any curation profit goes to minnows. There are both posts on the chain, and a series of channels in the Discord that contain all the data to show that this mofo is as legit as they come.
Thanks for your concern.
@benjojo, @berniesanders, #aggroed, @neoxian
There is nothing underhand about the #minnowsupportproject, it does just what it says on the tin. Support for minnows by minnows with the awesome assistance of several generous whales and dolphins. The project is not an earner, far from it, it serves to help the community develop at the lower level, ultimately improving and benefitting the platform as a whole - hopefully by nurturing up and coming great authors that will bring added value to steemit.
thanks for the clarification. there are a lot of "communities" around here and explanations like this go a long way towards transparency.
In this case, this group is making posts of others work and rewarding themselves with $300+ per post. It's nothing but a scheme to make money for themselves and make it look like it's a community effort.
ty for the clarification
Yes, but what is really new about this?
We have all watched these circlejerk schemes day in and day out... since practically the beginning.
So because it's been happening since the beginning it should just be ignored?
@berniesanders - could you please upvote @wetthebeak's comment so that @aggroed's defense of the minnowsupportproject becomes more visible? I have no connection with either of those accounts other than supporting the minnowsupportproject.
Great find friend.. I'm not sure that I can ao anything if I flag the accounts due to my low so but I think we need a report section on this website for these kinds of things.
Cheers for the good work.
-Goldie
Damn this shit is still happening! trail tails... damn and not even the original author getting any compensation what a load of bullshit!
that's a good point! I am curious now to know the answer... cheers bernie
meep
I have no idea how these trails work
anyone enlighten me?
Do they ask for permission from certain high quality authors to collect all their work into a single post and then share some of the rewards??
As far as I know, having been featured before by @photo-trail, is that the only reward I got was the one time upvote from @photo-trail.
As someone who wakes up at 3AM to head out and take photographs to share exclusively with the Steemit community, yeah I feel this is #rewardpoolrape.
The trail accounts go through and find posts related to whatever the trail is and feature them in a single post. The trail votes on them but the trail post itself generally earns 10, 20, 30x the amount that the actual posts earn. The trail does not share the rewards with the authors it features.
seems unfair, do the trails at least require the authors permission?
Some do, some don't apparently.
Honestly this is problematic
I hadn't supported them for the same reason and went around asking how it works and how the rewards are split but got pretty inconsistent/vague responses
I'm not really interested in flagging people unless they're blatant scamming (not giving rewards out if they claim to) or plagiarizing etc, but you've certainly made me more reluctant to vote for any trail
I wont comment just resteem here and in Discord !
For me the only way Steemit makes any sense is to act as an individual. No hosting other's stories, no guilds, no trails, no bots (as if). I blog, those that like it vote. I vote on stuff I like. If I am interested in a subject I will check the tag.
Yes, ganging up to line pockets not your own seems silly to me.
I agree @onetree.
I am trying to express myself through my blog and then also post things that I think are either helpful or interesting.. haha and hopefully there is somebody else out there who also likes it and then votes for my posts :-)
I think support groups are useful and i'm not vouching for any specifc one. I believe they Help train newer users and get them integrated into blockchain AND blogging, which many people are new to. If the Steemit community is to grow, like it or not, being a blogger is sort of almost necessary, especially for none cash investors, a skill that many don't have at first. In this light, I find support groups useful.
I can see your point, but I think what sometimes happens is the "support" groups manipulate the newer, more inexperienced users.
Thankfully, blockchains promote transparency.
@instructor2121 @tincho and others, why not just set your comments and official posts to payout declined?
This is heartbreaking. There should be less than 20% of trail money going into the "organizer's" pocket.
I am looking forward to digging further into this.
@berniesanders thank you for the informational post.
@fyrstikken thank you for dropping your comment into discord.
@instructor2121 would you be willing to do an interview for the daily steemit?
@steemitqa this should be in the breaking news as there is a huge $3200 transfer out of steemit that could have been shared with the trails that are being run by this individual.
:)
Hey there - I just thought - as I was called-out personally- i have to reply - might be a mistake but let us discuss. I think it is indeed a good point you raise the discussion if certain posts are really worth over 300 or 500$ - that is something a lot people new to Steemit are interested in. I certainly agree maybe some posts are not worth 300$ - some might be worth more. On the trending page some post over 2,000$ might be worth only 50$ or 5$ -maybe even less.
Just let me say i was really surprised to see my name written here - wow, makes me kind of Celeb - was not sure first if i shall be shocked or flattered to be considered a Steemtrail owner or sth like that or even a big earner.
I can only speak for myself (well guess what I would outline here) - I fully support Steemtrail, different trails support different content - we up vote and resteem posts. Steemians that get these votes certainly benefit from higher rewards - the people like me curating that also earn rewards fro investing some hours actually doing it - well may it be 500$ a day if you are good or 100$ if you are less active, some even earn only 5$ a day. Is that too much @berniesanders - what daily rate are you charging your clients? Pretty sure at least 2,000 a day so $250 per hour so what is the issue? If I spend 5 hours a day searching posts, qualify them, up vote / esteem - don't you think at least $250 a day is a fair rewards? From a community perspective I know people hate it or love it and there will always be different opinions. But i am confident it is an approach that helps certain topics and newbies in the relevant fields.
Knowing I should have better said nothing you can now attack me - I am here - i am a german guy that started this with two pillars: 1 - help the German community to earn maybe more that 50 cents for a post and increase it to 10 or even 20$; 2 - to earn something for additional work i do here on Steemit.
In the post it is asked I would owe the community an answer - not sure what you mean and if my comment here answers this. Re transferring rewards to Polo oh well - I powered every single rewards here until i started this trail - maybe one could also change some to other coins, is that fair or not? Has no one here taken any rewards out of steem? I have never done a power down, why should I? I believe in this steemit community. Long comment - enough for today - I need to care of the family now. It is late here.
To summarise - I think we should get on a discussion what post is worth what and why? The rest I outlined above, thanks for listening - I hope she of it makes sense.
my question isn't a philosophical discussion about whether or not a post is worth that much
it's about whether or not you distribute those funds appropriately to the creators
i see images in your photo-trail post thats making $375 that in some cases didnt make even $10 in the posts made by the creators.
for you to then take those images and make your own post which banks well into the triple-digits and then not offer so much as a 1 steem of those earnings to any of those creators is outright theft.
@mobydick - sorry but I am not handling the photo trail so I can not answer this question - I handle the German-Trail - we did introduce Steemians from Germany until last week talking about them all with permission of these people - I even introduced that I will move this to the next step after HF 19 that the people I introduce get a percentage of my personal rewards from my trail rewards - if that is of any interest by anyone.
Of course, another brush-off.
despite you not being in charge of the @photo-trail, your answers should be the same regardless. i dont imagine you give too much autonomy to those running those accounts for them to act TOO differently from one another.
I am not giving anyone anything - I am German-Trail - i am not the boss of trails however the boss of trails is a great guy - don't ask me about stuff i can not answer
why don't you use decline payout instead?
That might be an option too - I am open for any suggestion - we could even copy a concept like - send me 5 SBD for an upvote lol. Collecting ideas and presenting back! I am a soldier only. Thanks @personz
Dude, where's your buddy Ahab?
sry for offtop, but this is soooo... LOL! smash
I guess he is just keeping the money for himself.
So while I'm almost sure this comment will get flagged to death I'm still gonna input my few cents.
So you can see, this is gaming-trial - I've been trying to grow the community around the gaming tag here on steemit, since I'm a very passionate gamer and I felt that the gamer community has been really underrepresented here on Steemit.
Recently (like 2 weeks) to the commenting and upvoting I used to do on posts I also started doing the "best of gaming" post for the day.
I will admit that first I was not asking people for permission to showcase their posts in those, but once I was told that I should do since maybe someone doesn't want to get featured I started doing that.
And the way I showcase the posts is by saying a bit about the post (in my own words) mentioning the author, linking the post and then saying why I think people should read it.
I upvote every post I feature and I comment on it. And not just by saying "good post" by I try to engage in a conversation with the author on the topic of the post. At least a bit if I know anything about the topic at hand.
And each of the people who I asked was very receptive to being featured so far!
I think that is pretty much the point of steemtrail - to help communities grow and I have seen the gaming tag grow incredibly in the past few months. I will not claim that it is my doing, but I will claim that engaging with people on their posts, giving them support and generally being supportive certainly didn't hurt the gaming tag.
I should also mention - I'm the guy running gaming-trail.
And I sincerely hope that we can have a nice discussion.
You're the guy managing the @gaming-trail you transfer to @trail usually quite large sums, how do these figures compare with the actual authors whom you are promoting? MY guess nothing even remotely similar.
I'm not transferring anything. I do have only the posting and commenting key for the account.
Then who is?
These posts that only summarize other people's work really shouldn't be rewarding the one writing the summary - it should be rewarding the original posts referenced in the summary.
This can be done with Rewards Beneficiaries.
I will admit that I do not know what rewards beneficiaries are or how they could work.
The main trail is handling out the wallet.
And do you honestly believe that I do not deserve some reward for going through each and every post in the gaming tag everyday, reading them and trying to promote the best ones?
It does take a huge amount of time to do that.
Some? Perhaps.
Not a guaranteed motherfucking $400.
Don't you think the people who put their efforts into creating other articles that take all day deserve a $400 payout? A guaranteed $400, at that. You have the trail to back you up. For everyone else its a lottery.
That's a week's paycheck to some people.
... I am just a minnow and I can not afford to get in a flag war.... I have been here about 2 months,and have seen several people who have been flagged to near death.... all It takes is some big whale to hit you with his finn... and then you go into a spin that can take weeks or more to recover from...
I will respectfully leave the flaggwars to the whales....
I do understand the importance of bringing these matters to light,but as a lowly minnow I fear their bite...
:-)
namaste!
I will not be flagging any steemtrails. At this point I am watching to see what they do. Their plan for delegating power to many accounts seems potentially positive. I know they've offered training and engagement for a lot of new users.
I will watch for abuse. If as you are indicating there is indeed a problem then I will remove my support. I don't need to flag them if there is an issue. I simply could remove support.
The potential for abuse is there. It is definitely worth being on the look out for.
I've seen some of their plans on how they plan to use some of that power they have been amassing and if it is used like they indicate it could be positive for growth, and for a lot of lesser known posts.
Thank you for bringing it to my attention, for at the very least I will be paying a lot more attention. I have lended my support to them for awhile now though I don't actively help or up vote any specific trails. If it is indeed being abused then I would remove such support.
You should offer some detail for your accusation Mr Sanders. What is it that you think is a scam here?
Edited to "scheme". Are you involved as well?
Is that what questioning means to you, a smoking gun of complicity? I'm not involved in any trail.
What are your accusations, I'm interested.
Exactly, looks like decent content on varied topics, are you just jealous, Bernie?
I don't think this has anything to do with the content or the upvoting of other peoples content (the actual trail), but it has to do with the summarizing other peoples work and taking the rewards.
So I see now from the comments. I thought it was kind of lazy to allow it to play out that way but
¯\_(ツ)_/¯Congratulations @berniesanders!
Your post was mentioned in my hit parade in the following category:
this is bullshit and the exact reason I want out of the broken system we exist in now. wake the fuck up and stop being greedy ffs. resteemed and upvoted.
Yeah I am frankly not happy that the #rewardpoolrape is happening. Not that Steemit is my primary source of income but I do want to make something and tactics like that are ruining the platform. With yours.org starting up soon we have to do something to retain the incentive for people to post good content.
This is just exploiting the Seemit system. This guy has conceived a "scheme" that out-schemes the developers who themselves have become rich by making themselves into whales right from the start. It's a lot like multilevel marketing, and this guy has learned how to market his posts with upvotes..
.
Holly Shit! I don't even see how they are making that much. I would have to look at this on my computer.
Thanks for making people aware.
I'm feeling more and more like the community is at a tipping point right now, where the more recent influxes of newbies (like me!) has also spawned a corresponding increase in predatory behaviour.
Don't let your guard down on your wallet just because you're on your Steemit honeymoon. Flag proudly minnows, your content is worth much better than this...
Wow there seem to be so many.
What are these trail accounts used for?
Only answer = #rewardpoolrape
close to 100 now....goal is to have several hundred..all with their own steem powered websites! BOOM!!
And those have been "in process" for how long now? Is there any evidence of this process?
Please don't ask me to join discord...
takes time. i dont see you volunteering your time to help with anything. or doing anything whatsoever to grow communities. get busy!
Why would he or anyone else volunteer when you are obviously being well paid ?
I'm been curious wtf those are. I've seen them everywhere
bringing awareness to the community
Great info mate.
You want to talk about reward rape? Wow, drive by and steal from a guy that helps people get started here and hasn't had a decent reward in a few months. You sir, are the epitomy of what you claim to fight against.
Coming from the guy who spews bullshit he can't backup...STFU douche...
Whatever man. You are a miserable, no talent hack, who has decided to make as much damage as possible. Instead of building here, which you obviously could, you choose to injure others who are working within the system. I feel sorry for you.
I believe you're actually feeling sorry for yourself at this point. Trust me, there's absolutely NO reason to feel sorry for me.
I've met some assholes on here, you sir, are by far the biggest.
Thank you!!! Adios!!!
I see your making friends again bernie :)
You must not have been here long....
Your feeding the beast my friend, something you should probably stray away from unless youd like your hand bitten off.
Just some friendly advice ;)
Yeah? Fuck that. I've been here a year and I earn my rewards with solid content.
Thank you very much for this post. I have followed and upvoted, please do the same thing for me to help each other.
I hopr hf 19 better than hf 18, frankly i do not understand about hf 19, if it is fun, please explain to me what is the difference. thank you
You've got my support!
I'm trying to understand this also. We deserve an explanation. We deserve an acceptable reason. Upvoted!
How can I get in? Just kidding. I knew Steemit was going to have issues like this. A well organized group can turn this into a cryptomining operation.
Why is there always people that will turn something good in something bad. There are so many people in this community really working hard on their content they put on steemit. It infuriates me so much that people think they come from behind and steal what's not their's, and take credit for other's work.
I am trying to express myself through my blogging and try post interesting things and hope that there are other steemers out there who find it interesting just like I do and vote for me.. I don't think there is any easy way to just cash in, with everything in life it takes a little time :-)
Retracted: unsubstantiated implication.
I spoke to @kyriacos and asked the same question. His answer was that he provided some artwork and was compensated for it.
Fair enough. I liked his last piece of artwork on Ethereum.
Retracted.
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just a few days on steemit and there is just so much going on and many things like whale wars like people want to call it but i don't see anything wrong with many things going on and i definitely don't see a rape. basically the same steemians are on the trending page, so if anything was wrong with the trail, we should all start there. it is just like someone say the recent randowhale is a scheme, ofcourse, people can call it a scheme but i definitely wont cz some have enough investment and vision or business expertise to take full advantage of the possibilities of the steem blockchain and same applies to whaleshares. People basically have the steem blockchain and they bring their visions on it. i think the mistake is people are looking at blogging aspect alone but their are many other ventures that the steem blockchain affords. i have been seeing the trail accounts too but they do build community and they do have massive impact on community. they also have curators and the curators go around looking for people to support. i think the problem here is misinformation. regardless of how you want to put it, community is key on steemit and no doubt the trail do a good job. they have contests as well that implores steemit to create more content. they create an atmosphere that steemit needs no doubt and it is obvious. these are not bots. these are steemians follow a trail and many people have their trails. you will not blame someone for having supporters and have people willingly following their trail. These community supported accounts earning 300 bucks play a very huge rule and you may have missed out of the many curated authors that the trail have supported. nobody knows the bigger picture, so you can't say for sure where the funds go to. Talking of vision and investments, you can't say because money goes to poloniex, it is being siphoned, what if it is going into further development efforts to be announced in the future or what if it goes out to return into the steem economy. it is just like say people who earn thousands on their trending posts are siphoning money because they send money to poloniex or randowhale for instance, is it logical to ask, where its money goes to because you check its wallet and you find its money sent to poloniex etc or whaleshares. definitely no! becoz we can't know what the big vision is and if somehow, they bring it back into the steem community.
for the trail accounts, ofcourse, a portion of its rewards goes to curators and you can't tell if they are developing something to further bring value to steem. on steemit people get rewards by adding value to the platform and value can take different forms! i think no one has any right to say others or anyone is raping the reward pool except they can confirm outright that they have evidence of what happens to rewards after the steem goes to poloniex. all this talk of whale wars and rewardpoolrape is scary for newbies and reading the comments on this post, if people are afraid of getting downvotes, then how can the comments on this post not be one sided? looking at the comments here, people are afraid of you and really and it is scary, so community is definitely essential! steemit is a wonderful place and peace is want is required. where i am from, if i am to pry into another person's wallet, it is even bridge of privacy especially if one doesn't have the legal right to pry further and draw out more evidence. if you had gone to poloniex to ask them to who wallet the funds go to etc, then you would have completed the job and come out with a valid statement but you don't know these things. there is definitely privacy built even into the model of steem and this should be respected according to my views. this post doesn't have complete basis really because if it does, same kind of post should be done for many users on steemit! community is important and brings value to steem. it is not known how many steemians have joined steemit becoz of posts from the trail accounts alone. these facts are not known, until these facts are known and this post works but only until then.
I admit, I did not read that entire block of text. I will say if people are afraid of me, it's likely they're doing something negative for Steemit or acting like a moron.
Hear hear! (I am a newbie - it IS scary! And shockingly rude, some comments 😶)
bernie sanders doesnt like communities...he is all against them..if it were up to him, he would run everyone off so he could play by himself. this guy isnt your friend...he has used fear tactics on many good steemians, some have even left because of him.
he is upset because he has realized the steem community IS NOT ran by him..but ran by everyone. its a hard fact, but he is finally understanding. The Community runs the Community....not a bad acting whale! enjoy your day bernie
You still have not answered the question about what is being done with all of the funds being transfered to @trail and then on to exchanges. Why are you avoiding this question @instructor2121?
Developing websites for each community...ALL powered by STEEM.
You're so full of shit and we can all see right through you. It's time to put up or shut up.
Well, we have spoken to jesta about using chainbb for our collaboration. we really dont care what you think.
And you can, but I won't support posts that just summarize other people's work and then keep the rewards.
Why not have all of your trail accounts actually use chainBB to write the posts, use the post beneficiaries system I just released, and have ALL of the rewards distributed to the users whose work they reference?
I've had a look and 95% of the *-trail post bring about 100$ per views. They are therefor completely worthless to everyone by every possible metric.