If you haven't heard of the @buildawhale blacklist, then let me know what island you live on as I can use a vacation.
I spend 10-60 hours a week researching, identifying, and punishing spammers, plagiarists, fraud, and abuse. I do this because I don't want my bot to reward these type of users, nor do I want this platform to have any more of this garbage than it already has.
As I have said before, this is a never-ending thankless job, but most people don't know to what extent I mean and how hopeless it is.
The last few days have been especially exciting. If you would indulge me, let me take you on a journey.
I've said this a few times, so I'll be brief. @buildawhale was built to offer promotion services, discourage spam, and reward quality authors. Much of my spam fighting has been done in the dark behind the scenes but was made public due constant claims that bid bots promote spam and don't care about what they vote on.
Since then, I have devoted a large portion of my time to find and identify these users, stop them from using my services, and try to get their delegation removed and cease their ability to sustain their activities.
I have been very public about this activity so it is crystal clear where I stand. I truly believe one of the biggest issues that need to be resolved on Steem is how easy it is to abuse the system and how many are. It harms the credibility and value of our investment. Left uncheck the platform cannot thrive much less survive.
Here are some examples since I have been here.
Plagiarist about to walk off with $2,800 less than 8 hours to act, I did my part
[UPDATED] Plagiarist with multiple $600+ posts, should I remove our vote or just blacklist?
Spammer going to spam all @buildawhale users in retaliation for blacklist
Thousands of dollars in rewards recovered to the reward pool
Uncovering and blacklisting a massive spammer with over 50 accounts
Having a blacklist, spending hours researching and finding proof of plagiarism and spam is about the worst thing I could possibly do as a bot owner. Spammers are the best customers on the platform, and no one wants to pay for it or even spend the time. Having our blacklist has dramatically reduced our bidding windows, and has costed me far more in time and headaches. (Before someone takes this out of context, this is just a fact, it is not my position.)
In the last 7 days I have been flagged 934 times. All the result of maintaining and running my blacklist.
Fortunately, a lot of these users have zero investment in the platform and their flags are as meaningless as their posts.
That's not always the case though and I'm not one to cry about flags.
Here you have one user @michaellamden68 that has been just posting porn images and gifs for up to $30 using purchased delegation. His delegation has been removed and he has been blacklisted from further delegation purchases.
He even self-proclaims he steals all the images.
Please don’t get me wrong, I am “man” enough to stand by my posts; yes they are plagiarised, ofcourse they are #nsfw.
Yet his alt/whale friend claims no one is stealing, and he will buy steem power to flag this "censorship".
He wrote a post that a lot of the blacklisted users have jumped on and started to chatter.
Two users suggested going to the FBI and reporting the blacklist and flags to them as fraud. One user spent 29 days posting slander about myself and @buildawhale before I said enough is enough and started to flag him.
This user put in an anonymous tip to the FBI about this fraud.
I've seen my share of help I'm being flagged posts but this one takes the cake.
The one who suggested contacting the FBI even went so far to create a 1-hour video exposing me as having a "magical power manipulate the steemit driving engine itself".
The funny thing, he was blacklisted for spam, posting the same video over and over and screenshots of off chain discussions 7+ times a day.
He has almost no understanding of Steem and decides to contact the FBI because he received a generic comment saying he is on our blacklist for Spam, Plagiarism, or Fraud. He not only contacted the FBI but has posted 50 or more comments related to it along with the lovely video above.
Yet I have continued to research and report spammers. Honestly, though, it is becoming more and more frustrating and nearly at the point fuck it, just do what everyone else does and ignore it.
I realize many people don't believe in copyright, but decentralized doesn't mean you are free to do whatever you want. Even if you don't believe in copyright or plagiarism, there is the fact users are making hundreds or thousands a day off other people's work.
By the same mentality, I should be able to use the latest Hollywood movies and put them on @dtube and vote them up for profit.
Most of the stuff I report is "out of scope" and is left churning. Most of the time the delegation isn't removed and it is left to go on for months or longer.
Most of the users on the blacklist are spamming or plagiarising, like these users:
If you want to see the entire blacklist, it is available as a Github repo.
And finally, some peanut butter & oatmeal if you are into that sort of thing.
Why you should vote me as witness
Witness & Administrator of four full nodes
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