Crap content to me is anything that didn't go through at least a basic spell check and formatting process, obviously wasn't proof-read, bidding more than 1 STEEM for a meme, bidding for content that you didn't write/produce/create yourself nor added any original thought to it (worse if lacking attribution to boot), 'Facebook status' type posts and posts with 1 image that you took yourself and added one sentence..... that type of crap should not have votes bought for it - especially by the author.. Hell, most of it shouldn't have any votes period, I'm amazed at how people present themselves to the public when I find crap like that. Worse, we are essentially getting paid so if that's how people present themselves at work, oh Goddess, please help them!!

Not surprising though, I once managed a girl who after 8 weeks working with me being and tardy etc., she decided to miss 4 shifts in a row, then on the 5th shift had a serious conversation with me giving me an ultimatum that I needed to give her a raise because if she didn't make more money here (there), she would have to look for a 2nd job and then would have to drop some hours working for me...

Yeah, guess how that turned out for her?

...but I do have an issue with the downvote trails of others.. not including trailing SC or SFR, that's a different and almost an 'authoritive' decision on the content being deserving of a flag..

..but following the upvote trails of bid bots in order to flag whatever they upvote, that to me is its own form of abuse.. bullying and taking rewards away from content that might potentially be amazing for STEEM and/or could very well be deserving of that bot vote. Regardless of how terrible economically bid bots are to the eco-system, blindly downvoting is disruptive socially and totally irresponsible - discriminating the person because they want to earn more for their post than that damn meme they saw yesterday, instead of discriminating and judging their content, which is our mining system, judging the person and punishing their content solely based on their actions is quite disturbing to me.

On the other hand though, if buying a vote is what helped to get their content noticed and their content turned out to be shit - by all means, flag away, and majority of instances where I see people whining (or rage quitting) because they got a flag due to a bot vote, their content deserved the reward adjustment and honestly they could just as easily say they got a flag because their content is shit instead of blaming it on the fact they bought a vote..

Unfortunately though, it's hard to say what the true intention of the flagger was, and I think the majority of those complaints come from DV's from blind flaggers.

I should also disclose that I do seek out abusers and report them to SFR and SC, I don't go on wild witch hunts but I have found a few plagiarizers, spammers and bot abusers who had their rewards removed to 0 because I initiated the first flag on the post.. Most I find from looking through the bid bot API's and checking out the previous rounds bids, but others I find accidentally because I was interested in them based on a comment or something they made but then I found out all they are posting is junk..
The important thing is that I do this manually and judge the content based on that content on its own. I don't look at post history nor do I care that you bought votes, what matters to me is what you bought votes for or the content you're presenting to try and earn rewards from.

~ ~ •°• »« •°• ~ ~

So my advice to people goes like this:

1. Don't follow some other user's DV trail.
   • Looking for downvote material? Check out bot API streams or look at Hive account@steemcleaners and Hive account@steemflagrewards activity/comment feeds.
2. When you leave a DV please have the courtesy to also leave a comment explaining why. Even just calling on Hive account@steemflagrewards and citing the abuse type is helpful to the author - not all mean to be or realise they are being abusive (that doesn't negate the fact that their post needs a reward deduction though..)
3. IF you still want to participate in vote buying then stick to one or two bots and try to keep it down to one bot per post, especially when your post is new. Buying up a ton of bot votes within the first 24 hours is a sure way to get flagged.
   • If your post has 500 votes valuing 5.00 STU and if 5 of the votes are from a bot then I would not consider that bot abuse unless the content was terrible, otherwise who's to say that the post didn't deserve those bot account's votes? A post with a total of 12 votes where 5 votes are from bots totally screams abuse and greed though, no matter how amazing the content is, spread out those votes!
4. ENGAGE! STEEM should not be about producing an income, it should be a place where you come to create and share your content. If you are already a content creator then why wouldn't you create content here? There are a lot of people here for the wrong reasons or who quit creating here because they stop earning, well why not just keep creating here anyways?
   • Networking and getting yourself out there commenting and curating other communities, chatting up and making friends in the Discord servers etc. should be another main focus of your time if you want to be serious here. Networking is super important because the more genuine followers you have that actually want and read your content, the faster and quicker you will grow!

Most importantly I want everyone to remember that progress happens in baby steps. As long as you keep getting people who comment on you, follow you, even if it's only one a day or once per post, that is progress and growth! Each time you claim any amount of rewards, especially SP, that's growth! Don't let the STEEM price or DV trolls discourage you - just keep on keeping on and STEEM on!

So now I leave you with a comment I made the other day on poor Hive account@manniman dTube post here where he is talking about how some downvote warriors from @OCDB chased off creators of a good cause, simply because they used bots on their posts. It's a flippin DOG SHELTER! No offence to @OCDB at all, I think their curation initiative was a great thing to happen for STEEM and heck once they even featured me in a curation report, however I think Hive account@acidyo's "Down with the bid bots!" campaign should have been kept separate from @OCDB as a whole because now I feel I can't as strongly support their cause knowing how irresponsible they are about their downvotes.
(but hey, that's probably fair, because this post of mine may get me moved off their whitelist and on to their blacklist. 🤦‍ Oh well.)

The dumb ass thing is that people are DOWNVOTING automatically based on the author using a bot. Like shut the fuck up downvoters who do that!

It's not even the same as following a curation trail, here is my take on why:
STEEM is about being rewarded for content.  
People come here to create and hopefully gain some rewards for their content as a bonus.

In order to mine STEEM, we create content.
We also earn STEEM from upvoting content.

You can earn STEEM from downvoting, through reporting at steemcleaners   
- however you don't even need to downvote, you are rewarded just for reporting if it's approved.

You can earn SFR tokens by reporting to  
steemflagrewards but I don't consider that earning  
because you're not earning STEEM directly.  
However I do use steemflagrewards whenever I DV  
something, and I use @steemcleaners along with them  
whenever there's something drastic or the person has  
higher SP than me (which doesn't take much)

We don't earn from downvoting alone, going on a 
mission to downvote strictly based on using a bid-bot 
is the stupidest thing. You're wanting to downvote  
to put some rewards back in the pool but then you  
aren't doing anything to earn rewards or 'mine' STEEM  in the process  
(by mine, I mean content creation)..

Not only that, but joining a curation trail is not  
harmful, it promotes what is at the heart of the  
platform - earning rewards through creation and  
curation.   
You should be responsible enough to follow a responsible  
curator so you are not voting on crap content automatically.

The only downvote trail that could be considered  
responsible to follow would be @steemcleaners

Any other downvote 'trail' does nothing but alienate  and hurt the creator since I guarantee you aren't  
just DVing based on the content,  
you will be DVing based on someone else's opinion of the author  
and being judgmental towards the author or their actions.  
It is personal when you DV based on using a bid bot.

I am all for downvoting shit, I am all for downvoting
because someone used a bot for their shit.

Paid a bot 2 STEEM to upvote a post with a single
meme image and no thoughts or captions to go along 
with the image? Or worse, pay more than 1 bot for
that same post? YEP, downvote for bid bot abuse.


Paid a bot 1 STEEM to earn a little profit and gain
some extra attention on your usual, thought out, well 
formatted and original content? Or a post reviewing
something, or a post bringing attention to a good 
cause? (like this shelter) I WILL PROBABLY GIVE YOU AN UPVOTE!

It makes NO SENSE what-so-ever to downvote just because somebody
used a bot. If the content is decent quality and original, 
how does it NOT deserve the rewards earned from the bot vote?  
> @kharma.scribbles

Good luck and may the content deserving of downvotes shrink to nothing some day! Everyone should find one thing to DV each day!

^{If you read this far, leave me a Hive account@giphy (!giphy) reaction comment to win an SBI unit - this is valid until post pays -}