Recently, @transisto revealed a horde of abuse by people who received delegation from @freedom. You can read about that here. I dug a lot deeper to get more attention to this issue. I have documented some of the major recent abuses by freedom's delegates in the coprehensive post below.
Freedom is currently delegating to the following accounts.
@utopian-io is a service rewarding open source contributions. So, there is no abuse here.
@appreciator is a voting bot. It doesn't vote on comments. It is voting on low quality posts, copypasta and illegal posts, that is, posts that violate laws. This post voted is copied from youtube.
This post copypasta from cnet. This post it upvoted is most likely copyright infringement.
@funny-gifs is a user who got 389,538.264 steem delegation from freedom. He or she is using it to upvote on low quality comments.
He is colaborating with other people who received delegation from freedom. In the following case, @askquestion. He is also providing a voting service with no regard to quality of posts.
Next on the list is @jasimg. He upvoted this post with images ripped from google. The text in that post is also most likely rephrase plagiarism.
5th is @pula78. He is voting on low quality comments.
Next on the line is @askquestion. He is posting almost the same content that is, "updates to cryptocurrencies" and most of his reports look like the same. He is just inputing the new prices in a post template and posting them again and again and getting huge upvotes. Those upvotes are coming from @funny-gifs, @elizabeth302 and himself.
All three of them are colaborating with each other.
Next is @rocky1. He is selling votes by himself. Check his transfer tab for more.
@ak2154 got 200 M vests or 100k delegation. He is also selling votes. He transfers 50 SBD per day to freedom.
https://steemit.com/@aksdwi also got 100k. He bio at the time of writing this post, "Send minimum 0.1 SBD to 5SBD and the link of your post for Upvote".
@akshaykumar12257 got a 100k SP. He is selling votes via @minnowbooster. Before, freedom directly delegated SP to them. But here you have another intermidiatery.
I looked at a few votes and found an image plagiarism post he voted within a few minutes. Here's the image post and here's the source. Not his fault actually. It was voted by @minnowbooster (they have a history of supporting abuse by giving away votes without any regard to quality). He is also begging for delegation from ned. His recent transfers show one transfer to ned with this memo:
Hello sir I heard you are owner of the steemit sir please delegate me 200k steem power so I can help this community and this will help me too.
https://steemit.com/@lays is selling votes just like many of his pals. He is colaborating with @elizabeth302 (whose delegation freedom recently revoked).
His bio:
i will support only quality content send 1 sbd to 10 sbd and our group will upvote you from diffrent ids remember no spam post allows
Translation: "I will vote on any post if you send me 1-10 SBD."
Of the last three delegates, two are @mamqmuqit, @tayyabhussain. Both of them are sending 50 sbd per day. @mamqmuqit is selling votes via minnowboooster.
@tayyabhussain is selling votes.
His bio:
I Providing upvote & finding original content, Send bids 0.10_0.20 or 0.50 SBD With Post URL In Memo (Don't Send Me) any amount when my VP Is less than 90%
At least he is being honest. At least not claiming anything like "I will upvote quality content send be sbd". He is voting on posts that are not giving proper sources and are poorly formatted. That's what I found in the recent votes. If I dig deeper, I think I will find more abusive posts.
The big problem these people are creating is that, their vote selling is allowing them to keep the rewards to themselves. Also, the people to whom they are selling are a few specific people who have mustered the skill of effectively using votes.
This is only benefiting freedom, the delegates and a few vote buyers. They aren't adding much to the community but taking away a big share of the reward pool (upto 5%). This type of actions discourage original content creators.