It's like something from an HP Lovecraft story - The Old Ones emerge from their slumber to claim dominion over the Earth, leaving mankind doomed!
Except in this case, it's possibly Steemit that's facing doom. At least, there's a major problem that may doom what the platform is supposed to be - quality content.
The Newest Plunderers
Two new accounts have appeared - @rewardpoolrape and @eatsrewards - and they're upvoting themselves and each other (as well as the occasional junk post. The Old Ones (i.e. someone) have delegated large amounts of SP to these accounts, so their plundering of the rewards pool isn't something to be ignored.
What makes it all the more unpleasant is the expressed opinion of other members of our community.
The Reward Pool
A finite amount of new STEEM is created each day. 75% goes towards rewarding authors and curators, 15% goes to witnesses and 10% goes to people who hold SP. I wouldn't call it a fair system, but that's what we've got.
Obviously, the more people take from the reward pool, there less there is for everyone else. But it gets a bit more complicated.
You may have seen someone give you an upvote worth a certain amount, let's say $0.10, and after a while that same upvote is worth only $0.09. This could be due to fluctuations in the price of SBD, but it could also be because the reward pool is being plundered.
Naughty!
They probably waited until after Christmas to do this so that they could evade Santa's naughty list. By Jingo, they'll be on it next time!
A form of plunder which is almost as bad can be seen in the comments section of posts by @davidpakman. David has done a good job of bringing other people onto the platform, but he has been persistently upvoting his own comments at 9-10 times the size of his upvotes on other peoples comments!
I've already tried pointing out to him that this is bad for the community, but he's either missed that message or ignored it. (Random thought: perhaps we need to create a badge of honour for people who point out reward pool plunder? Unless that would be too annoying...)
Bots
I've written several posts about bots already and pointed out that people are abusing them to get upvotes on junk posts. My most recent post on the subject shows that they can often get it wrong and end up costing bidders a lot of money, so only the bots (and the people who delegated SP to them) benefit.
I don't have a problem with minnows using upvote services if they're producing good content which isn't reaching much of an audience. They need to be careful about not losing their money, though. There are some ethical service providers who will only upvote content that they've vetted as quality, original work, but their SP is rather small right now.
Anyway, my personal opinion is that it's acceptable for minnows to pay for upvotes until their SP reaches 500. By that point, I think they'll have what they need to gain an audience for their work.
What Now?
Besides having people like @berniesanders flag these plunderers, I'm not sure. Please share your ideas and opinions in the comments.