Blockchain Sherlock Eats Copy Pasta for Breakfast!
How I accidentally found and eventually exposed a cheater abusing the @minnowsupport voting service for several hundred dollars a week.
image source: movies.stackexchange.com - Does sherlock have an eating disorder?
This will be the story of how I stumbled over, and then unmasked, a kid who tried to game the system for quick profit.
But before we go there, let's talk a bit about copy-pasta on steemit and my personal motivation to spend a few hours investigating this situation.
Everybody's Here for the Money
Let's face it, everybody's here, at least in part, because of a monetary incentive.
But that's not a bad thing!
I believe the way monetary-value in steem is created is revolutionary. It changes a whole bunch of paradigms in the bigger picture and it is definitely one of the first really usable applications of a blockchain based economy - an economy of content and community interaction that creates it's own cryptocurrency as it grows.
This is something precious! And we, the community, must do our best to protect this growing Utopia.
There are many things that need to be addressed, and a lot of kinks that need to be ironed out, but this can grow into something wonderful and liberating for many many more of us.
But there are some who just come by to make a quick buck by any means possible. They will try to extract the value that has been created, they come to take but not to partake!
Posting copy-pasted articles or images without giving sources, it's called plagiarising, is just one of the ways unoriginal people will try to get rich here. When you see something like that happening, I believe it is a social duty to be vocal about it!
You can contact @steemcleaners over steemit.chat or discord if you see plagiarised content or spammers!
But what's coming next is about more than just plagiarised content.
Not Just Copy Pasta
I stumbled over a network of accounts posting copy pasta and circle-jerking each other.
image source: quickmeme
It really all started by accident. It's not like I am hanging over steemit trying to catch cheaters all day.
I was initially just trying this new "Votes Graph" tool provided by @steemreports. Unsurprisingly it showed @minnowsupport as a close connection of mine.
I use @minnowsupport & @randowhale (in that order!) for almost all my posts, I usually wait a few days, though, so my "organic" upvoters will get the benefit in curation rewards (and minnowsupport voters from rando)!
So, curious me, clicked on @minnowsupport next, and immediately noticed two accounts that stuck out: @bloodless & @brainer seemed to get unproportinally many votes from @minnowsupport.
I looked at their profiles and they just looked too similar, both pasting tons of very comparable copy-pasted memes and ecards. It started smelling really fishy and a look under their "recent replies" showed that they were getting their minnowsupport votes cast from countless different discord usernames to avoid the 1vote-every-12hrs constraint.
It was obvious someone was abusing @minnowsupport heavily, but they did not disguise themselves very well in doing so!
Looking into their wallets' transfers led me straight towards two "proper" accounts @aut0matic & @renepaolo (obviously the same person), from which the whole scheme seemed to originate.
In total I have mapped 20 steemit accounts and 87 discord accounts (so far) involved in this dodgy activity.
The paid rewards on these accounts in the last 7 days alone are 141.684 SP & 157.257 SBD - that does not include pending rewards nor rewards prior to this, and the operation had been running for about 3 weeks already!
Time to Set Things Right
And here's how things turned out.
image source: taringa.net
Quite early after my initial discovery I tried to contact @aggroed to ask him how abuse is handled with @minnowbooster (yeah you read that right). This little mistake threw the whole thing on a tangent. I had mixed up booster and support and naturally @aggroed sent me to talk to @reggaemuffin. @reggaemuffin of course didn't see any abuse by these accounts... oh well...
A bit of an awkward detour, but something good comes from everything! There might be a nice surprise in one of the upcoming Googly Prizes. ;)
In the meantime I had also tried to contact @renepaolo, too, confronting him about his connection to @bloodless, but he evaded me.
So, after the initial confusion I finally contacted @aggroed again and alerted him to the details. He quickly took things into his hands and was able to bring the cheater to his senses and end this scheme. All the accounts I was able to connect him to, have stopped their devious activities two days ago. He was given a chance to post an apology before he would be publicly outed otherwise.
He did just issue that "public" apology, disappointingly though, it's posted under one of his obvious sockpuppet accounts, @hundreddays.
It contains a heart warming story of how he did this in order to pay for his grandpa's hospital bills. Hmm... I just don't know... it's hard to believe for me. Maybe the fact that the only sockpuppet account that has remained inactive is called @granpa lends this story some credibility, but posting the confession from another sockpuppet account and not revealing ALL his fake accounts leaves me with a foul taste in my mouth.
That is why I am sharing my side of the story now!
edit: fellow steemian @discordiant has uncovered that the apologizing account (@hunddreddays) was introduced with a fake sob story fishing for money! "100 Days Left: I'm here to save for my burial expenses" - serious troll-balls that guy!
edits:
- @hundreddays has posted a follow-up continuing to give vague excuses and not actually revealing ANYTHING! sigh
- I have just posted my final thoughts on the situation and a list off all his accounts involved in this scheme [here]
What do You think about Copy Pasta?
How would You have handled the situation?
Do you believe @hundreddays' confession?
follow @fraenk
... it's free!
steem-on and prosper