Let's talk about this

I must first admit that this is not a popular or comfortable topic to talk about. In addition, I am not qualified to talk about this. That said, someone must say this, so I am saying it. This post is not meant to be an encyclopedia of abuse that is visible on social blockchain like ours. There were some comprehensive posts written by Hive account@steemcleaners on the topic. This is my personal view and opinion on the matter. Oh, by the way, it is a strange day to write this, as today Hive is rallying!

use (something) to bad effect or for a bad purpose; misuse

Types of Abuse

Plagiarism
Copy & Paste
Tag Spam
Identity Theft/Deception
Known User Verification
Comment Spam
Malware/Virus/Phishing

Back in the steem blockchain, these are the abuse types that were considered in scope for Hive account@steemcleaners, as described in this 2017 post here. There remain the same today I think and continue to be some of the primary threat to the Hive blockchain. However, several things have changed. Hive account@hivewatchers do not have the Steem, INC's delegation any more, because, now Hive is a community project. But tell you what, we will get back to that...

Times have changed since that post above have published. Bid-bots are practically a thing of the past. Although some still exists, not exactly thriving, but they are out there. We have made and are making quite a lot of progress.

I like all that and appreciate the facts. However, at the same time I do not think we have addressed all kind of abuse of this blockchain with the list above. So I like add to that list:

Circle Voting
Revival of the Bid-bots
Vote begging
Vote begging in exchange for Witness votes

These are beyond the capabilities of standard rule based abuse fighting systems. So of it was address by SFR, now Hive-DR. However, many of these are quite controversial and dare I say, political.

Now the relevant people this post is directed towards, they all understand what this previous bullets mean. Also I do not want to make this post an 'encyclopedia of abuse'. I am neither capable nor interested to write such a post.

Modern model of abuse, and how we handle it

First line of defense: Hivewatchers

First of all, we must talk about Hive account@hivewatchers. They are our first line of defense. I think they need our help. Now I am talking to common hive users. I am not sure if you know this, Hive account@hivewatchers do not have the Steem INC.'s delegation anymore, because this ain't steem. That means community must step up to support them, and abuse in general. Now there are certain individuals already helping the cause. People like Hive account@themarkymark and Hive account@theycallmedan have helped the community in a variety of way. I remember Hive account@blocktrades stepped up when Haejin was on rampage. There are countless others to mention as well, especially folks at the old SFR. But with that said, we are in the brave new world at Hive, and below is the delegations to Hive account@hivewatchers

As you can see, that our first line of defense is seriously under-funded. There used to be 1M plus delegation into these accounts. There amount of spam these accounts handle, this amount of funding is not nearly good enough.

Remedy:

Community can delegate to these accounts (well, first ask Hive account@guiltyparties)
The smart developers at hive can develop a system, where Hive account@hivewatchers can use the idle downvote power of multiple community members

Option - 1 is difficult to accomplish for most users, as Hive account@hivewatchers is not really a curation project, therefore, amount delegated will most likely have to be a donation.

Option - 2, if implemented can be much more useful, as I know for a fact that majority of communities downvote power remains idle (this includes me, although I feel, that I use it a lot)

Second line of defense: Curangel, Hive-DR, OCDB and others

I know back in the steem days Anthony's SFR was quite effective, especially against the bid-bots, so was OCDB. I think both lost some amount of delegation and are in the process of reorganizing, but they remain active and quite effective. There are a group of individuals who rally around these projects and downvote any individual who bought bid-bot votes. There is a recent revival in the form of a program called x30 and the account called Hive account@bot-api. Community must nip this in the bud.

Then we have Hive account@curangel. I delegate to the project. You can find more details about the project here. Regarding abuse fighting, delegators can use a portion of curangel's stake to downvote eligible content proportional to their stake. We are in the process is tightening the system, so that it can't be abused. Currently it is only available to select few community member. But the importance of curangel is that it is very effective to deal with circle voting where other more conventional tools fail.

Last line of defense: You

And me of course. We as community members are the last line of defense against abusers. Unfortunately, we are significantly underused. Last I saw a statistics during the steem days, that only about 7% of the stake is used for downvoting. Likely that number is lower now. Perhaps Hive account@abh12345 can enlighten us with new numbers. The main reason is fear, if I have to guess. It is the fear of relatiation. Especially if the abusing account is a larger account, it is difficult for a common person to raise his/her voice in fear of retaliation.

Only thing I can say about that, is have no fear. There are a huge number of large stakeholder that is out there who can hear a retaliatory downvote. There are excellent examples out there right now in the form of serial abusers who tried retaliatory downvotes to random minnow accounts. Well you can imagine what happened there.

Closing Thoughts

Today there is a serious price jump on Hive. I expect this is probably a precursor of many such price jumps in future. As this new project gains momentum, we can, and we will potentially see higher prices. Higher the price, higher the incentive for abuse. Therefore, it is our duty as a community member to step up. But I will end with a deep thought from a friend of mine. Abuse fighting is not easy, and it can get very thankless, dark and lonely. But again: "it's necessary!"

Friedrich Nietzsche said:
Beware that, when fighting monsters, you yourself do not become a monster... for when you gaze long into the abyss. The abyss gazes also into you.

PS: None of the projects asked me to write this. These are my personal thoughts.

Anatomy of Abuse