As many of you know, there is a guy who basically decided to rip Steemit apart by creating 70+ accounts and downvoting tons of, at times random, people. A lot of people have written articles exposing these accounts as connected to each other and basically just being a "Flagging Ring" designed to bring down accounts the creator either has a grudge against, or just randomly decides to screw over. This person, and their accounts, are known as the "Steemit Defense League".
Great articles on this include the following:
and 
However, I feel I have something to add that not many people know about. And that is evidence that all of these accounts were created by using a site called Microworkers to pay people to make accounts and turn over the password and username. I have been a Microworkers user for about a year now, and they are a mostly legitimate site that occasionally allows some gray-hat activities. However, this is black-hat and actually violated their terms of service, so the campaign was terminated. Before that could happen however, I remember that about 70-90 people had created accounts and turned them over through this assignment. See the screenshot below for what remains of it. My personal info is redacted.
Additionally, here is the URL to it, although you might need a Microworkers account to see it.: https://microworkers.com/hm_jobs_details_not_running.php?Id=15385d206047
When I contacted Microworkers to ask about that campaign being cancelled, here is what they said:
Around this same time another, more innocuous, job was posted on Microworkers - one that I actually completed. This job was simply to submit the name of my Steemit account. I did this because it was quick, and nothing seemed that unusual about it since it was only asking for a username. I figured somebody might be looking to create a network of similarly minded people to write about similar topics, or something like that. You can see the whole description in this screenshot:
As you can see "Member_198227" made this assignment. Microworkers doesn't give much information on users, and rightly so. However, it does give some basic information about what country the person is from, since some jobs might be specific to certain languages or countries. The "Steemit Defense League" accounts are known to resteem articles in several South Asian languages. Where is Member_198227 from?
I admit this isn't definitive proof, but it would be a hell of a coincidence.
From what I have seen in the most recent articles on this issue, the so-called "Steemit Defense League" has about 70 accounts associated with it, which makes me almost certain that this Microworkers campaign is how those accounts were created. Again, it would be a hell of a coincidence otherwise. Interestingly, the Steemit "Defense" League accounts almost all seem to have been created between one and two months ago - the exact same time this campaign was active on Microworkers. If it is a coincidence, then who else out there is running around with 70+ accounts? Either way it is a problem, but this is exactly how a desperate, obsessive person would make accounts to flag people. The timing, number of accounts created, and the location of the Microworkers user all point to this being how the Steemit Defense League was created. Literally paying shills to gain bot accounts - it's just sad.
Now I ask for a few things. First off, I am a smaller account, so downvotes from Steemit "Defense" League, even if they are worth very little, are a real danger to me. Therefore, I ask that people upvote this post if you found it interesting or useful. That is more out of protection than anything else. I assume I will be targeted for this post. Second, it is great if people share this information, link, and screenshot, but please link to this article if you do.
Thank you, and I hope this goes some way toward exposing just how sad this effort to rip apart Steemit really is.