Well steemit is a happening place and many new things are being seen on the platform on daily basis. Each day, a new kind of abuse, nuisance or scam appears here. I have always strived to be a positive member of society by highlighting these issues and today’s post is no different..

Rep 25 Abusive Flag Bots

Yupp.. you read that right. Some new bot accounts have been created here by some filthy and disgusting steemians to play with the emotions of other steemians. These bots randomly flag posts across the platform driving people mad. The fact that it all happens completely anonymously (means without disclosing the identity of authoritative account behind these bots), further enrages the victims. In some cases, these fake flag bots put someone else’s steemit account address in their bio, tricking people into thinking that those clean accounts might be the filth behind the flag bots and hence they try to create flag wars.

Signs of Abusive Flag Bots

Over the period, i was able to follow these bots and their activities to create their common profile, which segregates true flag bots from these abusive flag bots. So here are the characteristics of abusive flag bots :-

1. Their Reputation Score is 25.
2. They never post any article or comment
3. They are followed by 20-22 people (who in my guess are the reason behind these bots. But it is just a guess)
4. They have no Steem Power except that is assigned to their account by steem blockchain (which currently is 14 SP)
5. They follow some 80-100 random people
6. They resteem random posts to make people think that this is a genuine account or an active bot account.
7. Their account creation date is post May, 2018.

With these clues, you should be able to at least judge that your post was flagged by one of these abusive rascals and not by a genuine account.

Illustrations and Examples of Such Flag Bots

So now comes the mugshots. Behold few of these bot profiles created by people having daddy issues:-

this bot made people think that it was created by @emre who is a credible developer (which of course isn’t true).

This bot tricks people into thinking that it as actual abuse reporter whereas in reality, this bot is abusive itself.

Ramifications of Getting Such Flags on Your Posts

There are none. The Voting Power of these accounts even at 100% is next to zero, which is 0.001 STU which means that you will never lose your rewards on your affected posts that are flagged by these wankers.

Second possible damage in case of a flag could be to your Reputation Score. But again, since the VP of such bots are next to zero, their downvote will have zero effect on your reputation score.

However keep in mind that if you are a newbie yourself and your article has earned 0.001 STU, then one flag from such bot will make it 0.000 STU.

So Whats the Purpose of Such Bots If They Don’t Do Any Harm

God knows.. but my feeble mind can only predict that the true purpose behind this abuse is just to tease people and drive them away from this platform.

I have my suspicion on few people who might be the handlers of such bots but i don’t want to tell their names without any substantial proof and i am sure some of those names might even be innocent so i would never drag someone’s innocence in mud without proper investigation, proof and whatnot.

Regardless, some of these people are sure as hell assholes. The reason such bots never post any blog or comment is because they know that if they do, they will receive some gigantic amount of flags making their accounts invisible on the platform.

Solution

Aaah yes.. the solution.. how can you possibly bring someone into light who hides in shadows? Simple.. put a freakin’ bulb over their heads. Sadly, common users won’t be able to impliment this but with the help of Devs and notable & fair Steem Witnesses like @acidyo, @lukestokes, @blocktrades etc, we can bring these bots to justice.

So the suggestion is that no account should be allowed to either upvote or flag anything unless they make a post. This is simple and efficient. Because if they make a post and then continue to flag random nondeserving posts, they in turn will get massive flags on their posts which shall render their accounts invisible on steemit.

Or may be the devs and witnesses can come up with a better idea. This was only my suggestion.

Speaking of solutions, whenever such peril falls on steemit community, few heroes rise to save the day. One such hero is @flagfixer. He has been on the tail of these abuse bots for sometime and he upvotes the victims as well.. He has not done me any favour since i found him during my research on these flag bots. So this is an honest shoutout to our hero. Keep up the good work..

Conclusion

So, i have done my part by informing people about this nuisance in the best possible manner i could. If you run into such bots, dont hesitate to report it to @flagfixer. He might be able to help you out (provided that you are genuine and not playing him).

Later...
JBN