Can You Explain Why This Post Exposing an Alleged High Profile Scammer on Steemit is Censored, Despite a Ratio of 44 Upvotes to 1 Downvote!?
I really don't like getting involved in arguments online - In fact I have put a lot of time into learning how to defuse and avoid them. So I am not intending to start an argument here, rather I am intending to invite discussion and maybe to learn something.
I was pointed earlier to a censored topic that I found interesting for a number of reasons, it touches on downvoting in Steemit, plus on a possible high profile scammer using Steemit to potentially mislead people and get richer in the process.
I posted recently about the problems with downvote censorship and made some suggestions as to how to improve Steemit's process of handling the situation and so I take notice when I see posts that have been downvoted and 'hidden', especially when they appear to contain content that really shouldn't be being hidden and where individuals may have a vested interest in keeping the post hidden. At least Steemit has a mechanism where we can examine the hidden posts, unlike Facebook and Youtube/G+ - so points scored for Steemit there, for sure!
In the censored post it was alleged in some detail (via the provided external links) that Craig Grant and his Girlfriend were and are involved in organised internet fraud/scams involving organised gangs of scammers from Africa. The case came to light after an older man lost his life savings to a gang in Africa who used Craig Grant's girlfriend's pictures to pretend to be her and the older gentleman then killed himself. Craig's girlfriend (possibly directed by a lawyer) opened a court case to attempt to sue match.com for $1.5 BILLION USD because her images were being used by scammers!
It is quite a long story and I suggest reading through the full details via the links that were provided:
http://www.davinsden.com/avalos/
http://www.miaminewtimes.com/news/miami-model-yuliana-avalos-sued-matchcom-for-15-billion-but-now-shes-taking-criticism-too-6394189
This is a bizarre story, but it is made more bizarre by the screen grabs from Craig's Facebook page in which he is seen to openly admit to being in business with the African scamming teams and deliberately using his girlfriend's photos for profit. I appreciate that sarcasm doesn't travel well online, but I can't name many people who would incriminate themselves in a major crime just for a sarcastic joke. His girlfriend then claimed that Craig is seriously mentally ill... and so from that we can infer that he therefore cannot be held responsible for his actions in a court of law? I have no interest in judging anyone here, but from the stated evidence it appears that he is either a career criminal conman or so mentally imbalanced that he cannot be relied upon in court. Either way, I suggest at the very least to consider carefully any financial interactions that may be offered with or through him.
Looking through the list of upvotes for the post, I can see that craig grant upvoted the post - so apparently he's ok with it too!
Downvote Censoring
Despite the intrigue of the story that was censored - I am also interested in the mechanics of the downvoting process. I can see that the post received only one single downvote and over 40 upvotes - yet it is still censored on Steemit. I am wondering why that is and my only conclusion is that the account that posted the story is in minus reputation figures - apparently because someone has set a voting bot to automatically downvote all of his/her posts. While I totally disagree with auto downvoting someone, since it is not really any better than posting spam - I can appreciate that some account owners are so annoying that you might be motivated to do whatever you can to get rid of them!
So I would like to know if anyone here can explain the cause of the super powerful downvote?
Thanks
Wishing you well!
Ura Soul
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You may not know this, but in my peregrinations here, I have learned that @nextgencrypto, @berniesanders, and @randowhale are accounts held by the same person(s).
You might reconsider funding @randowhale, if they are downvoting your posts with their 'other hand'.
@randowhale is a for profit account, and every time you send SBD to that account, you increase the funds of the @nextgencrypto account that downvoted you.
I actually follow @berniesanders, because he rouses rabble, and @dan himself flagged him into the negative rep territory.
He rarely posts, however.
Just thought I'd share what I knew with you regarding the intricacies of voting, bots, buying upvotes, flags, and the particular accounts you are interacting with on this post, as it directly pertains to your query.
Thanks for that. I can see that these accounts appear to be connected via SteemD, yes... Do you have any more information on the identity of the human involved?
@nextgencrypto was one of the earliest miners, and that is the source of his stake. I dimly recall the name of a person attached to the account, but, even if Alzheimer's hadn't banished that memory, I am unwilling to dox someone.
I believe that account runs @nogalert, because of a longstanding feud with @noganoo.
While the relationships between @berniesanders and various other miners (whales) date into the prehistory of Steemit, I am unaware of significant alliances between @berniesanders and that group, but am told that there are more accounts linked to the person.
Prolly the best I can do. The meds are still kicking in this AM =p
oh ok - well you are doing pretty well for someone experiencing the idea of alzheimers!
I will stop using randowhale on this basis and see how the others work out - but there is no way for me to really prevent any such problems without totally stopping using all the services and experience shows me that if I do that then I get paid significantly less and that means I can't post as much.
I want to say that my personal take on @randowhale and other services is only my personal take. I neither judge nor condemn these services, or those that use or offer them.
You post a lot of very good content, and despite my interest in it, I haven't kept up. I kept up enough to deplete my VP though LOL.
You do you, and I only provided the information about the flagger and the service so you could make decisions for yourself with better information.
I just get paid significantly less, and post anyway, but I'm weird =p
Sure, I understand - I attempt to take in a wide view of systems and make my actions tip them towards balance point if possible, so I am interested in who is behind the vote services and who is receiving the big sums of money from them.
Thanks for your votes, they are appreciated - I know I will get support from the community if I continue to post quality content and I will do so anyway, but anything I can do to gain more resources here will definitely result in more such content being here and also allows me to vote up others who do the same.
I have attempted to live mostly without cash at all for several years and eventually reached the point where I couldn't continue. To get my teeth fixed I need money now, so I am doing whatever I can to maximise my time here, without stepping outside of integrity.
Teeth. Yeah, me too =p.
And, in my estimation you're putting out good content and lots of it.
Thanks! I'll let you know if I find the way to grow new teeth :)
Update - I think the post has now reached a point where it is no longer 'censored' - but still I don't know why.
Update 2: oops.. no it wasn't uncensored.. there was just a glitch in the page rendering that made it visible.. now thought it is not.
A $1.5 million wallet will do that
And on this post you have a $685 000 wallet downvoting/flagging you, but I guess they didn't care that much or with a flick of the % slider this post would have been censored too!
yes, i saw those. the johal files downvote came only recently.
I really thought Craig was legit, but unfortunately there are so many videos of him just saying very strange things. I am not sure if he was just upset here, but its very disturbing. Skip 30 seconds into this, and ignore the beginning: http://indavideo.hu/video/YULIANA_LOVE_IS_IN_DANGER
Thanks for that, a variety of spiritual dysfunctions are displayed, yes. :/
I have just created an addon for steemit that mildly improves the situation with downvoted posts being hidden. ;)
You can get in touch with @freezepeach and they can help you fix it.
Thanks, yes, the very first post they resteemed was one of mine. I'm not clear though on how they can help, beyond getting the posts more support and upvotes. I still don't know why the post that is the topic of my post here remains hidden, despite so many upvotes.
The hiding is based off of reputation. If someone with a higher reputation than the person that censored it does not up vote it then it remains hidden. I think I explained WHY that is on another post you and I spoke on. The reputation system was created to fight spam bots. There were a ton of them and they were all up voting each other. So in terms of quantity of votes being a determining factor that was actually how the spammers were blowing past any attempts to stop the spam. The reputation system was implemented to make it possible to fight spam. So if the post is still hidden then it generally means someone with a better reputation than those who have up voted it flagged/down voted it.
As you can see in the SteemD page for the post, there are currently 4 downvotes for the post and 51 upvotes.
The reputations of the 4 downvoters are : 31, 45, 48 and 65.
There are many upvoters higher than these, including you!
65, 75 and 72... plus more.
It doesn't appear as hidden though when I look at it now, so what are you expecting to see?
ah, I pasted the wrong link into my comment that you replied to here. I have corrected it now - so that it goes to the post on Steemd. That post is still hidden for me when I see it in my feed.
Have you tried refreshing you browser? I've seen some stuff get cached in the browser.
I checked with my @chaospoet account:
It is not showing hidden.
Ok, I don't know why but consistently I have seen that about 50% of the time I load the list, the post is hidden and about 50% of the time it isnt'. It looks like some kind of bug to me.
https://steemd.com/craigrant/@matrixdweller/craig-grant-caused-someone-to-comiit-suicide
That shows nextgencrypto and some others downvoted, and why it remained hidden at the time.
Why is it hidden and not censored though?
I'm not sure what you are particularly pointing to in the steemd link, it's a big page - where do I look to find the cause of the post being hidden? If I see downvotes that shouldn't automatically mean it is hidden, right?
I'm not sure what you mean by 'hidden and not censored'.
Its pretty clear why its hidden. Craig is a whale and has many minions.
ok, but he himself actually voted it up - so at best we can say he is running damage control and PR to mislead the community.
I think that 100% and 0.01% hold a small difference in weighting.
The same applies to weight differences between upvotes and downvotes. The problem with Steemit is that a whale powerful enough to smash through 40+ other up-votes to send it into the negative might feel inclined to shift their attention to others who use their voice in the face of perceived injustice.
Should push come to shove then I recommend a quick look through a self-defense post of mine - as there 'is' something that can hurt an errant whale.
Edit: Huh... a whale who almost exclusively relies upon curation dues. Does a lot of resteeming to improve exposure and add weight to his or her curation. This is a scenario that I had never contemplated in the anti-bullying thread - though less followers would still impact curation earnings on account of a more limited resteem outreach.
Of course, the first step is not to get into a fight in the first place - but that can be hard when one feels a responsibility to warn the community of something that appears off.
I read through your self defense post - thanks for sharing. In my own case though the large account that downvoted my post appears to have been a proxy account setup purely for that purpose and other related purposes. The account used by this individual for earning money on steemit is probably a different one - so threatening to inform his/her followers is not possible.
Hidden, as not visible but with choice over making it visible, hidden, and not censored.
The vote section shows that three people downvoted that, one of those being a whale.
Ah, I see now, yes - I didn't realise that nextgencrypto had so much SP.
I have just created an addon for steemit that mildly improves the situation with downvoted posts being hidden. ;)
Please do not use #steemdev for stuff like that, it's for sotftware development related to steem.
i have removed the tag, i used it because i thought this topic was of relevance to developers of steem. i would appreciate if you would remove your downvote here now - thanks.
This post received a 2.9% upvote from @randowhale thanks to @ura-soul! For more information, click here!
Hi. I have recently been targeted by downvoting; I wrote an article about it. Although I can see now that you would like some, diagrams and statistics, that seems warranted, although I do not have them. My Article, @ruckusist, Is more just a complaint piece but holds up this end of the argument. Is there really any justification for Bot Censorship? I follow @craig-grant becuase he does not seem like a criminal, Although most people would rather Herbalife be brough up on criminal charges, they havent been. As a matter of fact, These MLM companies are thought of by the current U.S. administration, as high profit companies good for america. Why not make money the same way the president does? If Carl Icahn makes money on herbalife... and Craig Grant makes money on Bitconnect... What side are you really on? Are you really that anti capitalist, anti-government? Or are you going to get with the program? ... Just a personal note as an anti-capitalist... I am getting with the program, under protest. I just want to know what everyone else thinks.
I have just created an addon for steemit that mildly improves the situation with downvoted posts being hidden. ;)
Ponzi schemes have a very specific definition in law. I do not know enough about the specific cases you are mentioning to comment on them. In the case of craig grant however, the alleged ponzi scams are not even the main point here - he openly stated that he is working with African gangs of identify fraudsters who con vulnerable people out of their life savings!
Yeah... that's what I said. Carl Icahn openly cons vulnerable people out of the life savings, and he is the financial advisor to the President of the United States. What part of that is not clicking here? Are you just picking on one guy here? or do you really care about the issue? Because it sounds like you are after the wrong people. You are attacking a symptom, not the problem. And that will make things worse.
I have no idea what you are saying here.
Im saying that it appears you do not care at all about censorship, having an adult discussion or trying to keep up in a conversation. There are Real People in the world. Who set examples for others. if you are worried about "African gangs of identify fraudsters who con vulnerable people out of their life savings!"... How is that work coming? Do you work for an NGO? that deals with these kinds of problems? Do you know anything about anyone else who might be involved in these type of activities? Or are you just spamming content? and then throwing your hands up. Cheers.
Whether or not I actively engage in hunting down criminal predators is not the point here. Do I need to be a policeman to call 911? no!
However, as it happens - yes I do actively engage every day in a variety of activities intended to heal, balance and evolve the human community. I literally see zero evidence to support the notion that I don't care about censorship or having an adult discussion.
I was being through when I said I believe this is part of a much bigger problem. The direction being taken here by money holders in the public arena, much like @craig-grant, Seems to have no interest in " activities intended to heal, balance and evolve the human community". Can you reconsile that? Are you just bucking the system? Or is there anyone answering the phone when you call 911? I am not trying to be negitive. But with a blow-off comment like... "i clearly see you have linked source material but I will continue to remain ignorant." was irritating. Peace. continue healing the world one 911 call at a time.
I am not really able to understand your comment here. You have provided a quote that I didn't say and as far as I can see you haven't provided any source material of any kind here.
Someone down voted me for an honest mistake when posting to promote my post on Steemit chat, I used the wrong hashtag and the owner said he didn't take to spamming lightly. My post was hidden so I just reposted it. Sometimes I think things get taken to the extreme and there should be moderators to moderate that as well. And a checkbox to see the legitimate reason why you are being flagged.
Yes, definitely - I got involved a while ago where 'steemcleaners' were downvoting everything from a guy and it all started by him just including a couple of basic image links at the bottom of his post.. Something that many users do here, including some of the ones at the very top of the system.
I learned there that Steemcleaners isn't actually an 'official' part of steem and they aren't even acting on an official policy, it's just some guys who are acting as vigilantes to 'clean up' steem of content that they personally don't want on here. :/
I too got involved in all of this because of @Steemcleaners.
@adm is another Proxie account that appears to be pretty crappy.
I really don't like my posts being Flagged this way unless I was attacking someone.
But to be construed as a "Plagiarizer" and a "Parasite" by ANYONE on an Open Platform is a bit Absurd. I don't need someone else's BOT telling me what content I should or shouldn't look at. And Flagging should not affect rewards... that's just asking for trouble.
Thank you for posting your concerns. They are valid and shared my many.
Too many...
I have just created an addon for steemit that mildly improves the situation with downvoted posts being hidden. ;)
You are welcome - exposure leads to change!
That and bots operating with whatever logic they are using can quickly create havoc, especially if backed by a decent amount of steem power.
I have just created an addon for steemit that mildly improves the situation with downvoted posts being hidden. ;)
Some guy that the community allows to do that, rewards their efforts. Again the project is open source and there aren't any admins or "officials", there are developers but one can fork the project whenver they wish, they can distribute the tokens, and implement whatever policy they wish.
There is an issue here in that there is a Terms of Service for steem that actually could be said to prohibit the actions of Steemcleaners. Despite their claims to be supported by the community, there are many who disagree with their decisions and for justifiable reasons.
There are no terms for steem, none that were explicitly agreed to anyway.
Yes people will disagree but it's only an issue if it's consequential like a lot of people, or a large majority, but what are some reasons that you consider justifiable for people to disagree with spam, tag spam and otherwise curation for those ends?
Oh, I meant to say that there are terms of service for Steemit, not Steem. Since Steem and Steemit are both created by the same group, I combine them in my mind.
The terms of service for Steemit specifically includes a term in section 17 that is relevant.
Cases of blatant plagiarism with no added value from the author and deliberate malicious misuse of the software that amounts to criminal intent are valid reasons to downvote, i think. Deliberate propaganda and misinformation is also a valid reason. Some might say that some of these are subjective, but ultimately I feel that the absolute truth can be known in all cases - though it might require a lot of research to find it.
Nope, it's irrelevant what someone writes as Terms of Service if nobody agreed to anything.
Not at all, Steemit Inc. Is subject to local laws and as such could be compelled to comply with them or face termination. As such they could choose to remove accounts from Steemit and, although I am not familiar enough with the licensing for Steem, could potentially also be forced to effectively enforce laws on Steem too. It's a new technology, so the case law is not clear - i think - however, a blockchain is not an ungovernable system.
I don't want moderators, I want better code logic for down-votes. Moderators become a huge problem as we've seen on youtube, facebook and twitter. I would hate to spread that cancer to steemit.
Yes, totally makes sense.
My suggestion was somewhere in between whereby the community's own self regulating up/down vote process is made more functional. I will always lean more on the side of doing nothing than on censoring and control, since bias is all around and I am regularly (unfairly) censored on FB/G+ etc.
It' s not censorship if it's replaced with a text telling you that it's curated as low quality shit and therefore hidden, the text is followed by a button and clicking it makes the content it replaced visible, effectively making it not censorship.
The process of curating is not coded for negative bias which creates a lot of harshness from the community, at the same time it cannot be called censorship simply because things are curated to initially be replaced with a cautionary tell of "low quality, proceed with full face mask, shit everywhere. click to enter".
In terms of internet and censorship it's hardly censorship, it's more like a proudly dawned black eye as a child, your content gets delegated to the realm of mystery and intrigue, what's behind this button.
While the situation on Steemit is better than Facebook, for example, in that the posts can be viewed by anyone who desires to - the reality remains that if there were no 'censoring' qualities to the act of hiding a post then there would be no value in the function of hiding a post.
There are so many posts in Steemit that some users will simply glance over hidden posts and assume that the hiding is just. I don't have any figures for it but I think that it is probably true that hidden posts get less views and upvotes as compared to when the same post is made and not hidden.
In my own case, a perfectly valid post that was part of a popular and important series of posts was downvoted and hidden only a few seconds after I posted it, thankfully I recovered it by (ironically) the use of randowhale - a bot.
My post on this specific topic that contains suggestions for improvements, goes into all of this in some depth.
It doesn't censor as it invalidates censorship to make a button that uncensored wherever there is censorship. It's not the quality of censorship, that is a stretch, it's the quality of hiding a post, or making content not visible initially that is worthy, that in itself is what makes it a staple here for curating shit content.
It's not censorship, addressing it by what it is, or flagging, curating, hiding content is correct, calling it censorship because of "censorship qualities" is a stretch and a meaningless one, either it's censored or it's not, so far people on the internet distinguish between flagged content and censored content, and they are very distinguishable, as one simply offers a warning instead of the content, or a black box, or usually no trace of the content, while the other simply warns as it presents the content. It's the difference between content being available and content not being available.
Even if you can demonstrate that hidden posts get less views than unhidden posts on average, the factors that are responsible for that includes where, when, the subject, the author and the audience and that data would be inconclusive at best because of those factors. I guarantee that you will find that posts hidden get less views, as it's completely to reason, but at the same time I bet that certain responses and posts get more views because they were initially hidden.
i have no problem with not calling it 'censorship', but if something is hidden it is by definition now not fully available in a published format alongside the other posts. obviously, i don't make posts to steemit for them to be hidden. i personally feel that what i am posting usually will draw enough attention without me needing to add 'mystery' to it by having it hidden. i do though think it is justified to say that hidden posts are 'semi censored' - since they do result in some of the people who would have potentially encountered the material from not encountering it, just as if it was fully censored.
this though, is not the end of the issue, since the author also loses money and reputation due to the downvotes - which is a whole other dimension to the equation.
It is fully available in published format, it just requires one press a button.
That's not your choice, the community curates content as they wish. Curating content affects visibility, lower curated content will be obviously further down the list than better more curated content, and that is only if you sort content by curation, if you go to the author you can see the content alongside their other content as it was published.
If it's hidden it's hidden, if it's not available then it has to not be available, if it's censored it has to not be available anymore. Obviously it's not any less available because the user is presented with a warning instead of the content directly.
It's not semi-censored, it's either censored or it's not. There is no "somewhat censored". It's censored or it's not.
You cannot argue that they lose money when the rewards are still getting voted on, the author didn't lose money, they didn't get all the rewards they were expecting because people voted against them. The reputation is a metric that more or less is based on what others curated your account as, so if it affects reputation it's because it's their right to curate content, negatively or positively, they can give you a zero start or a one star out of 5 or 5 million, they have given their opinion.
The cancer has spread... unfortunately.
I'd like to see @steemcleaners and @adm close their accounts.
They are only used for abuse on the platform; probably by a very immature and simple minded person, but nonetheless, those accounts do only harm and no good. IMHO of course.
I have just created an addon for steemit that mildly improves the situation with downvoted posts being hidden. ;)
I'm on my way to check your link, thank you and a lovely Monday to you!
Sadly, there isn't always a 'valid' reason for flags.
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