This is good information for people to have. Like you and others said, it helps to inform us with the facts. The value of this site is actually dependent on people like you to come forward with information and let people make up their own minds. I am glad to see that @ned has voted for this post. This gives us all confidence that we are free to speak our minds, even if it contains information that some wish to suppress. You provided facts not opinions. There is no reason to flag this at all. Flagging something that shows data is really showing something else, which we all know.
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@stellabelle said this and I started replying when not viewing full context, went to respond and it told me I was at the 6 post limit. So I am posting it here.
I agree. I am a strong advocate and out spoken about the fact I think the flag should only be used for Plagiarism, Spam, and Abusive posts. I've held this stance for months. I do not endorse flags for disagreement. I consider that a hostile act. It is penalizing someone subjectively.I do believe I need to extend this. If the investigative efforts have been proven to identify what is likely a sock puppet style account then there may be good reason to flag such posts. We need to discourage this. If it is endorsed by specific individuals then we need to withold our support for them if this is how they want to use steemit. Then at least their actions would be confined and only contributed to by themselves. These actors are powerful, so that still will put a big drain on the reward pool. I also believe this is something worth knowing about when we cast our votes for witnesses. I won't vote for people partaking in sock puppet activity or endorsing it as a legitimate undertaking.
I applaud the efforts of @ats-david, @bacchist, @klye, and others for investigating things like this. I know some of them have gone negative in some comment sections, but we are human, we are passionate. People are going to make mistakes. If they are mistakes of passion in a comment section let's cut them some slack. It is clear from their blog posts that their true intentions are to make steemit a better place and attract more people.
The flagging and undue effect of that from steem powerful is one of the main things that has kept around a half dozen people I tried to get to start using steemit to come here. They really don't like that ability and despite the fact that censorship does not exist due to it being on the blockchain, without the technical ability and wherewithal to get at those posts (Understeem) it is effectively censorship as far as they are concerned. We as a community can do things like this post and our support of people making these posts to make such activities unattractive, and unrewarding. It doesn't all require magic code. We as a community can make some things happen as well.
Thanks for your response @stellabelle.
I appreciate your thoughtful comments even if I may not agree in every sense. I do, however, agree on the question of censorship. I don't agree with the current design of the UI that aggressively hides flagged posts and low-rep posters and I consider that a form of censorship. I would very much prefer if these posts were just given no extra visibility or rewards (assuming votes go that way) but not actively hidden. Extra visibility and rewards must be earned, and no one is entitled to that, but hiding and suppressing goes farther, and gives unnecessary and excessive power with voting rights (SP). That includes cases where I have flagged posts. I may disagree with rewarding them, but I don't want them suppressed either.
I work hard to get my steem power. It'd be nice if I could pay people that create the type of content I like without fear of someone else coming and taking that away from them because they don't like the topic or because they disagree with something that was said.
If you don't like something... move on. If you like something vote for it. To me that is simple.
To some the argument is that content they don't like is drawing from the collective pool of funds to be distributed. So? Did I earn my steem power or did I not? Do I have the right to up vote things I enjoy?
If I do not then why is it okay for very powerful accounts to up vote fluff and drivel... and spend 10000 times what I can spend, which also takes from the pool and my flag to reduce that piece I believe is overpaid amounts to removing maybe $0.01 - $0.02 cents from the post?
I don't BELIEVE (yes I recognize it for the opinion it is) that YOU should be able to dictate where I am allowed to allocate my steem power. I really don't care if you like something or not. My vote is about my interests not yours. Likewise, I am sure you like some things I do not. I may think they are worthless. Yet I am not going to go try to reverse your vote.
Overall I believe it works fine until people obviously farm the system or consistently up vote friends posts that are mediocre quality for massive sums of money.
I don't see a change to the code fixing this. It is more us as a community reaching consensus and trying to steer it by discussions such as these.
Awesome point and I think about that all of the time, when a person flags another's post that person has invalidated everyone else's position.
Dan voted for it as well. :) Informed we can make a difference. We can at the very least let the participants know we can see, are watching, and have some community members who are good investigators. They can carry on and keep supporting their own puppet accounts, but to do so they will gradually lose the support of the rest of us for even their own accounts. I assume being a witness is important to some of them. Yet, hopefully they realize we are watching closer and closer and every account they do like this adds more information about the pattern. The more we see the pattern, the more we see the actors. All we need do is remove our support.
For me, this post changed how I feel entirely about SteemIt and it gave me hope for our future. Based on the upvotes from the founders.
Agreed it shouldn't be flagged as long as nobody is being harmed though and that is a difficult line to tread.
My main concern is that if someone (such as the user being discussed) had valid reasons for using another account to post something very sensitive then revealing this kind of information here could actually get them into trouble by revealing and associating that information with their main indentity.
For example in some countries homosexuality is a crime and could result in punishment or even death. I'm sure there are other examples of similarly dangerous information that someone may wish to keep separate from their usual posting account.
In some respects this kind of investigation could be considered by someone in that situation to be akin to being doxed and publicly shamed.
I'm not saying that is the case here as I do not know enough about it but it is good to take account of the potential reasons why people may be using different accounts.
Whenever one is delving into the matters and actions of others one must keep ethics in mind.
Perhaps I'm overly cautious and overthinking this? I don't know.
If this user was actually trying to distance themselves from the other account, they wouldn't be interacting with it. Also, both accounts are already anonymous. As kushed had stated originally, these accounts were allegedly created with pseudonyms for those purposes. Creating a second account to write about the same topics would be unnecessary. And again - it's the fabricated "dialogues" between these accounts that are most telling. I have no qualms with anonymity. That's not the issue. The problems with this are multifaceted.
Interesting. You make some good points which I hadn't considered.
Dox-ing is essentially a form of witch hunting and in-fighting that is harmful to the community and system as a whole and I don't support it (thus I have now flagged this post in part to stop incentivizing such activities). That said, if you are in such a situation yourself, you would do well to better protect your privacy and not leave so many 'clues' around to be found.
This would be a good point, IF... They weren't just posting about relationship stuff, food, etc. It isn't that they are using more than one account, I get that point. It is that there are many accounts involved and this is not the only case. Also, no personal information was released just plain account activity which is available to anyone who chooses to do the research and find it.