Time for another Whale Watching report with some interesting finds since I started monitoring the Whale activity on Steemit in terms of voting on posts a few days ago. I've been double testing my bot @robotev on actual people that have volunteered to be followed as well as on Whales and this has allowed me to find some interesting posts and how Whales voted on them. The first one I even reported in the comments of the previous post, but I'll be going in more details now along with some information about a few more interesting posts that I have stumbled upon as well.
Whales are Normal People Just Like You
I should probably start with the fact that the Whales on Steemit are normal people just like most of you and they do make mistakes, they get lured by Clickbait and mislead by good-looking content and they sometimes correct their mistakes, but now always. They are busy people that probably have a different thing to do besides being only on Steemit, so they should be forgiven if/when they miss good posts and instead support posts that they should not. The best thing that should hopefully happen to Steemit in the future however is when we will not have to rely on Whales to find and reward good posts, that however will most likely take quite a bit of extra time. So we as users of Steemit should try to also help as much as we can, even if it is not that much that each one of us can do, I'm already seeing some good initiatives that are forming that are intended to help the community in some way or another.
Clickbait is a pejorative term describing web content that is aimed at generating online advertising revenue, especially at the expense of quality or accuracy, relying on sensationalist headlines or eye-catching thumbnail pictures to attract click-throughs and to encourage forwarding of the material over online social networks. Clickbait headlines typically aim to exploit the "curiosity gap", providing just enough information to make the reader curious, but not enough to satisfy their curiosity without clicking through to the linked content. - Wikipedia
Admissible Evidence 1
Your Honor, here is the first evidence - the posting history of the user @htyfn. This is the one I have mentioned in the comments of my previous post as being able to earn a $205 SBD reward for his first post that was essentially a joke, probably a copy paste one. You can call that luck, though the post probably did not deserve that much as it was really nothing special. Then a second post with a cool Cat photo, again not original content by copied from somewhere and $185 SBD reward for that... stuck by luck again. The third post with a few more photos, again not original ones with no source, but at least a mention of the author (probably) had less of a success with just about $7 SBD reward. Three posts in a matter of two days, nothing original and nothing special and almost $400 SBD in total rewards, a reputation of 53 and an user encouraged to continue posting non original and nothing special as content on Steeemit. Should Steemit encourage users and posts like that while ignoring good authors and their useful and original content - Hell No!
Admissible Evidence 2
Your Honor, here is the second evidence - the posting history of the user @seanmeeh42. This one is a from a new user that did not post a very good first introduction post, though he did a better second one resulting in a $186 SBD reward so far. Is this post worth so much, most likely not as I have seem much better and more interesting introductions from other people that did not do well in terms of reward. That is also why it is very important to have good luck when you come to Steemit as you can be off to a good start with just one introductory post, though do not count too much on luck. So let us see how things will go for that person after the good start he had with his introduction...
Admissible Evidence 3
Your Honor, here is the third evidence - the posting history of the user @asolopreneur. A user registered a week ago, did not have much luck with his first two Clickbait posts, but apparently the third one was lucky. Posting a number of photos of cute cats and there it is, a Whale vote and a reward of about $165 SBD for that post. Told you Whales are just regular people and they also do fall for catchy titles and nice photos, though I don't think that this should be the way posts on Steemit should go... becoming Clickbait. However three Clickbait posts, the third once successful with a good reward and a reputation of 50 for that user and even 38 followers! The fact is that this method works well so far judging from the titles of my posts as well... if the title is too ordinary and tells too much about the post you are pretty much less likely not to attract much attention with it, even if the post itself is good and interesting. Whales do admit that sometimes they cast votes on posts that they haven't even read just because of a good title and a thumbnail... not what you'd want on Steemit.
Admissible Evidence 4
Your Honor, here is the fourth evidence - the posting history of the user @bestfoodchoice. This user has posted a couple of distracting posts at first, then started posting food recipes most likely not original and not with original photos for sure. Soon after that, a couple of hours later, two of the posts already were with rewards of about $190-200 SBD... somebody apparently did not read the posts at all. Instant high reputation and high reward to expect, however, and this is the good part and a proof that whales do mistakes and sometimes, just sometimes they fix them. The posts that did not deserve their high rewards were flagged and their possible rewards gone, reputation got lowered and since the same user apparently continued to post copy/past food recipes more posts got flagged. Told you, Whales sometimes do fix their mistakes...
Admissible Evidence 5
Your Honor, here is the fifth evidence - the posting history of the user @james1987. More food recipes with non-original photos and probably copy/paste recipes with some masking extra text (you can copy these from a book and not from a website and make it hard to be caught). The first post did not get a lot of attention, the second one though scored a smaller Whale vote and a reward of more than $5 SBD. Probably a vote without reading the post at all... food posts do seem to attract Whale attention on Steemit apparently. Now, don't get me wrong... I have nothing against posts about food even posting recipes, however in order to award them I think that the user should have followed the recipe and made something nice, then take a photo and post it and share some firsthand tips or comments on the recipe. This way I would not mind giving my vote and even if the post receives a big reward from a Whale too, but what I'm seeing is not what I'm expecting and encouraging these kind of users and posts will just make it worse. We need good food bloggers on Steemit and not people trying to exploit the system and that are just in for the quick reward they may get!
Admissible Evidence 6
Your Honor, here is the sixth evidence - the posting history of the user @artists. Here is another new user that has posted a non-original work, without citing the author (saying Facebook is just like saying source: Internet), only a photo as his second post (the first is not original either) and instantly 50 reputation and $170 SBD reward. Is this the message we are going to be spreading about Steemit... come in, post some shit and get some quick money for it. We do NOT need to encourage these kinds of people and these posts. I'm not saying we should not vote for posts that do not have original content, but giving them $170 SBD reward just for that. Whales might be feeling generous, but their generosity should be channeled in a better way.
Hopefully this post was interesting for you, make sure to leave your comments to let me know if you want me to continue doing posts like these based on my Whale monitoring activities...
If you have a question or want to add something, then please leave a comment below.
