Hive account@charles1 - You've touched on one of my big concerns about Steemit. I love the whole concept behind the platform but something must be done to corral the scammers.

My idea for solving the problem should be fairly straightforward to implement. Steemit already has a system whereby users can upvote witnesses. Why not a similar mechanism for ostracizing bad actors?

Here's how it could work ---

Every user gets a single strike that they could apply to, or remove from any other user, at any time. Strikes would be tallied real-time so users would be able to monitor how the community is feeling about them, and hopefully, correct themselves. Offenders with the greatest number of strikes would suffer consequences such as:

• being blocked from posting
• having posts hidden
• losing reputation
• getting shut down

Such a self-policing system could stop the scams while boosting overall content quality. The job of moderating would be made a lot easier too.

Hopefully, this gets read by one of the developers.