Hello,
I hope I'm allowed to burden you with a random strange observation: whether it's actually abusive behaviour I can't judge, but any other purpose of the whole fuss I can't think of with the best will in the world… In any case, you seem to me to be the right people to talk to in this case:
I noticed a post with the title "deleted" within my Dream Steem Community these days - but only in an alternative display via moecki.online/hive-107855. It didn't show up at all on the Community Landing Page on steemit.com!
When I tried to open @travel-nepali's post from the alternative overview, I got an error message from Steemit - "This page doesn't exist." Now, it is not really possible to delete posts once they have been posted...
At the same time, the functionality of steemit.com was down for a few days, so I had to look further into alternatives. The upvu.org site also showed me the empty post in question. I was able to mute it in the Community as a result.
Nevertheless it's not longer visible in the muted list!
At this point, however, I had already become curious - according to his profile page, the user has 0 own posts, 0 comments and 0 replies since joining the platform. Sure, there are quite a few who have a similar situation for whatever reason. If you look in the Steemworld, however, you will find posts and corresponding votes.
If this happens once through auto-voting, I would consider it a coincidence. Here, however, there are permanently - yes, there are a lot of them! - empty posts are published, each with the title "deleted" from the beginning - they are not edited afterwards! The posts appear across the board in all Communities. In some only once, in some more often. They have all been voted on - by @bullionstackers. Sometimes immediately after the appearance of the empty post, sometimes a few days later. This account in turn gets 100% beneficiaries on all of these empty posts....
Distribution and irregularities do not indicate an automated process to me. But why all the effort? One doesn't actually seem to get rich with this procedure. The account of the "author" is modest and thus inconspicuous among many other small fish.
The voter and recipient of the benefits, on the other hand, is not quite so small, but also inconspicuously inactive, at least for several years.
So: what have I come across? Is this empty post in each case some kind of trial balloon? Whether the Community only works with the standard view or whether such duds stand out in the alternative representations? Are there then possibly far more such "invisible" posts from other accounts, on which far higher votes are then shifted back and forth?
I remain at a loss at this point and hope that you have more ideas or possibilities to get to the bottom of this...
Thank you very much for your efforts!