I have been the target of abuse of power by a rich ruler who can remove any amount of rewards I get just because he wants to. This new Hardfork 19 gives the rich rulers even more power to abuse content posters and get away with it, because the overall mindset of the big shots on Steemit is that they don't seem to recognize the issue with flagging enough to want to deal with it.
Here are some of the sections in this long post:
- Three months of flagging abuses
- Leaving the bullshit injustice for a week
- Come back to post with flags to welcome me
- How would you like it?
- Rich rulers have the power to decide who gets the most rewards, and who gets to keep rewards
- Steemit: where you can flag for any reason, just call it "over rewarded" to justify it
- Coming back to regular posting after over 2 months in protest
- Hardfork 19 has worse flagging power abuse
- Bernie rich ruler abusing more users
- Bernie's sock-puppet accounts
- Change?
- Posts on the Flagging and Centralization of Power Issues
- Other posts on Concentration of Power and Flagging Issue
- Solutions
Three months of flagging abuses
This has been ongoing for over 3 months. I challenged the plutocratic rich rulers who get to do whatever they want with respect to flagging people and removing their rewards for whatever reason they want to make up and never need to explain themselves. I was met with more flags after doing that, targeted more for speaking up about an issue of abuse of power, and even allies turned on me.
Some whales (smooth) didn't like my posts on consciousness or morality, seeing those posts as "not the type of content that will help steemit attract, retain or grow a user base,", so my posts was flagged because it was rewarded more than others posts they want to get rewarded. It's that simple, but they try to validate it with BS justifications that are irrational, inconsistent and hypocritical (as the post above explains).
Scroll back 4 months ago to the end of February if you want to see it in my timeline.
Leaving the bullshit injustice for a week
After trying to tackle the flagging abuse for a week or two, I left for a week to get away from betrayals and a largely apathetic community with few supporters for the flagging issue. I didn't much feel like posting content to a social-media content platform where I was being treated this way. So I dissociated from Steemit for a week.
Come back to post with flags to welcome me
Then I posted 1 post, and it was flagged. I waited another week and did another test of posting for a week this time, to see if I would get flagged. I was flagged on 66% of my posts in that week.
I could not benefit from Steemit like other people could. How would like you to have this happen to you?
How would you like it?
Imagine posting for months on different things and earning a following of supporters that chose to upvote your content. Everything was working on that positive-allocation of rewards. It's like each time someone upvotes content you produced, they are "buying" the content. Then imagine a rich ruler comes around and "unbuys" the "buying" votes others have allocated to your content. People can like your content and upvote you to allocate rewards according to their SP. But then someone who doesn't like you, or your post, can come around and take away that support. They can take away all the upvoted rewards if the have the SP to do it.
That's a real solid economic model to attract people. Come to Steemit, where you the content you produce can get a "buy" from an upvote in a way, and then other people, like rich people, can take away those "buys" and "unbuy" what they want. It seems like some sort of negative-economics!
This is the reality of Steemit. The rich rulers can take away your rewards without any measure of appeal or justice for abuses.
Rich rulers have the power to decide who gets the most rewards, and who gets to keep rewards
Rich rulers can take your rewards away, anytime, because they want to. That's what the code in Steemit allows. Can you do anything about it? Nope. The rich powerful rulers are free to abuse their power any way they see fit. It mostly goes unnoticed because it doesn't happen often, and most people don't have many followers to pay attention to the problem, and most people on Steemit are too busy with their own posting and making money to care about the flagging issue. Many were all too happy to have someone that has more rewards than them have those rewards taken away and put back into the reward pool for them to get a piece of.
Overall, people cared more about making more money than recognizing how bad this flagging issue is for the platform. Only when they get flagged does it become an issue. I have been flagged for 3 months now on nearly ever single post. I even flagged some people who were friends with or supported by the abusive rich ruler to show them how fun it is, and they got upset when little-old-me flagged them with my tiny SP amount compared to bernie's sock-puppet whale accounts. They don't care when someone keeps getting abused and stands up to speak about it, yet they get upset when they get flagged to prove the point of how flawed this is.
I felt like hardly anyone cared since they weren't affected, and few actually want a solution to be implemented. Steemit Inc. certainly doesn't view it as a priority.
Steemit: where you can flag for any reason, just call it "over rewarded" to justify it
Did you know no one used to flag for any reason they wanted? Did you know there used to be no "over rewarded" justification as a co-out to flag any high-earning posts you don't like?
It would seem like a simple solution to remove the justification for flagging for "over rewarded" since it's a BS excuse used to flag things you don't want to have rewards.
"I don't like you, your post, or the person who upvoted you, so I'm flagging away some or all of your rewards."
That's the real reason many people flag rewards away from others. It's just bully behavior that isn't supposed to be in-line with the community-driven philosophy that Steemit alleges to be about. What kind of social-media community would support this behavior, where rich rulers can go around flagging people and taking away rewards their supporters allocated for their content? And they get away with it, no consequences. The Steemit whitepaper posited that "good whales" step in to mediate "bad whale" behavior, but no, it doesn't happen. That's all voluntary. If no one wants to counter a bad-whale behavior, the bad-whale behavior goes on with impunity. This is the plutocratic state of Steemit.
Why can't I keep the rewards on my posts?
Does it makes sense to you?
Would you like this to happen to you or others? It can. And as you see, it does (read below for a recent example of the abuse of others).
At this point I could have kept posting and just taking it, dealing with it, saying nothing, and just keep the rewards I get while nothing changed. But I was very dissatisfied with Steemit and how many people supported this flagging, and how others simply accepted it without objecting. Few people could recognize the issue. I dissociated from the platform that I no longer felt very connected to, and protested the flagging issue by no longer posting regular posts (which only hurt me).
I continued to post every few weeks here and there about the flagging abuse and how this behavior is not good to keep users, or attract new ones. But I was told to stop complaining, stop whining, and talk about solutions instead. Yet, my previous attempt at talking about solutions was called out by the rich rulers as more complaining and whining, to which their supporters complimented this mindset. These people don't want to hear solutions from me. I will try to provide solutions again, starting here at the bottom of the post, and in more posts until this is resolved.
Coming back to regular posting after over 2 months in protest
In June, I checked Steem and saw the price of payouts had gone up. I decided to try posting again. I said to myself maybe now I won't get flagged? I will wait to see if the flagging stops (at least I get to keep some more SBD compared to months ago...) If not, I will bring up the flagging issue and continue to post rather than stop posting like last time which only hurt me in terms of losing supporters and not gaining new followers, and of course the rewards lost.
So I posted. And sure enough, 12 hours before payout, bernisanders and his sock-puppet accounts (along with some lackey followers maybe) start to flag all my posts as they reach payout (minus 2 or 3).
My whole blog page is filled with flags on each post pretty much.
He even flagged my one post today, rather than wait the 7 days... He took 2/3 of the post payout away...
Hardfork 19 has worse flagging power abuse
I went from being flagged down 50% or more like being flagged 100% down to $0.
I called out the "Equality" hardfork 19 as a joke for real equality of the platform because all the rich rulers still have all the centralized power to decide who gets to keep their rewards. The recent hardfork proves that they now have even more power than before to flag people. When the hardfork hit, my post that was already flagged went from having some $xx amount (I don't remember how much), down to $0. That's how much more power the rich-ruling-plutocrats-that-can-do-what-they-want-with-impunity have.
- Flagged to $0
- Prior to flag
Neurotechnological Threats Require an Updated Understanding of Human Rights
Authorities Conflict Over Immigration as the EU Fights for Dominance
Bernie rich ruler abusing more users
berniesnaders has been called out by Ned Scott, the CEO of Steemit, month ago, as being bad for Steemit and he should just leave. berniesnaders has continued to be a problem for the community, despite the false image and appearance of being a "good" person to those who provides his SP power to, such as the curie group who loved bernie for his "good" SP lending power, despite all the other mistreatment he has done to other individuals on the platform since he has been here.
- I'm Calling Bernie Sanders or @dedicatedasshole Out for "Reward Raping" my Blog.
- Why is Flagging the ONLY Non-Transparent Feature On Steemit? Make The Cowards Show Their Faces!
He recently went on a tirade against 
There are more people in the past that he has targeted for flagging, just because he can. He has the psychological profile of a classic adult bully. This is a very sad and broken individual who enjoys being a bully.
Bernie's sock-puppet accounts
Here are the 100% known berniesanders accounts:
- bernisanders
- steemservices
- steemservices1
- thecyclist
- engagement
- nextgencrypto (witness account)
There are probably more.
Suspected bernie accounts since they flag with him (but could just be lackey friends who support bullies):
- theyeti
- thebotkiller
- yougotflagged
He defends this project like his own, so it probably is:
- randowhale
bernie sees himself as a "hero" for Steemit, being a bully and flagging people to "help" Steemit. Yet, he's the one person most responsible for continued bullying, mistreatment, and abuse of power towards other Steemians. He's a liar who make false claims to justify his behavior when he isn't just making up bullshit to justify himself anyways, time and time again. Proof is in his comment, which I have addressed in my first post on the issue. Go look at how much he is a liar on 
This is the two-faced double-dealing behavior bernie does. People think he's so great for the money power they lend him, and how he votes for them, etc. or how he's part of projects like 
Did you now bernie used to have "OG Bad Whale" as the name on his profile? No joke. The bully is proud to be a bully.
Do you think Flagging with SAVE Steemit?
Sounds like a BRILLIANT plan to me! What about you?
I see more and more people wanting to be part of platform that support this behavior by condoning it.
What a community chooses to ignore and allow, is what is de-facto automatically supported by letting it continue with impunity. Steemit is a platform that allows flagging people for any reason to take their rewards, it's just frowned upon as behavior because you won't get many supporters or be liked for doing that. Yet, the rich rulers can abuse their powers and even get people to support them in this bad behavior.
That's the sad state of consciousness for many on the Steemit platform: they support bullies and abuses of power. Many people join in on targeting those victims the rich ruling abusers target. Many people, or most, follow those with the money and support the behavior of those with the money. They aren't detaching from their subjectivity of disliking someone they approve of being flagged, to see the flag-issue as a platform-issue.
Change?
When will it change? When enough people demand a stop to this. It didn't used to happen. Undoing the voluntary "rules" won't resolve the issue, so no point is removing "over rewarded" flags for people like berniesander who don't give a shit about the rules anyways. He's been voting on posts as a sock-puppet whale with many accounts since the "no-whale-vote" experiment started, despite that being a new rule the whales were supposd to adhere to. He cheated the rules through sock-puppet accounts.
Steemit isn't a real functional community that can deal with injustice, abuses, and other problems of behavior. It takes numbers of people to untie together against injustice when the "managers" or "rulers" won't do anything about it.
Can we change this? Can Steemit be a real place for community development, or are we always at the whim of allegedly "benevolent" and "wise" managing rich rulers of the platform? Or are we just to accept things as they are and not let certain individuals be targeted by rich rulers who like to bully others around?
Letting whales flag content, reduce visibility, because it doesn't have a view quota; or goes over a reward quota for content they don't recognize value it provides to Steemit or in people's lives; or is voted on by whales they don't like; is an irrational and ridiculous code of conduct to engage in and will not help the success of Steemit. If you don't have the right # of views, comments or some other criteria, bernie thinks thats a good reason to flag someone and take their rewards. Yet he only does this to people or posts he doesn't like. That's some real consistency and integrity for ya! A real thinker... He's not the only whale to act in a hypocritical and inconsistent way.
Trying to punish content that adds value to Steemit, or individuals lives, is not a path to success for a platform, nor a way to retain content creators or promote more content creators from joining Steemit. This is bad whale behavior. This needs to change.
Posts on the Flagging and Centralization of Power Issues
Here is the chronological list of my posts since I started to call this issue out. It's a shit load of crap if you want to see how the rich can flag you for any reason they want and get away with it. Most of these were in the first week of dealing with the issue.
- Bad Whales Flagging Content with False, Irrational and Hypocritical Excuses
- Bad Whales Pt.2 @bernisanders Flagging Posts for No Real Reason
- Hey Asshole, Stop Working More Than Us, You Get Paid Too Much!
- Bad Bully Whales Pt.3 @berniesanders Being a Bully and Flagging More - Calling on Good Whales to Help Stop This...
- OVERREWARDED WHALE SWARM ALERT Calling smooth police... oops he's one of them...
- Muh! KrNel Only Cares About the Money! He Doesn't Even Respond to Comments!
- What Happens When No One Cares About Wrong-Doings in a Community? Nothing! Exactly!
- Vote Negation? Flag Review Council? Other Solutions?
- Bully Whales Pt.4 - Post On Flagging Solutions? DENIED @smooth: I will be flagging this post if it still has significant rewards ($11)
- Raise a Little Hell - Fight for What's Right!
- Payouts Over $50 vs. Flags Applied (Feb. 18-24)
- Community Decisions to Establish Rules vs. "It's in the Code = LAW", and the Battle for Decentralization
- Who is Best Suited to Manage a Community and Make Decisions?
- Motivating Quotes to Take a Stand and Speak Up
- Psychological Material for Standing Up to Create Change
- Bad Whale Harassment - berniesanders flagging again to keep me down
- Whales upvoting chosen accounts crap for the rewards is one thing, attacking the rewards of a genuinely productive account is utter madness
- downvoting from anyone that reduces payout because they think the post isn't deserving is wrong
- Do You Want a Corporate Governing Culture, or a Socially Self-Governing Community?
- A whale comes along and downvotes that post thinking it is undeserving, and the inspiration is gone
All you have to do is UPVOTE CONTENT YOU THINK IS WORTHY- Consensus exists only in equalitarian groups, where everybody has the same rights to express their will by influence and be influenced by all the others
- https://steemit.com/philosophy/@krnel/caring-for-right-over-wrong
- hat's in a Real Community?
- The False Appearance of 'Good' Prevents Action to Change for the Better
- How is the Flagging Whale-Votes Experiment Going?
- Steemit Will Never Go 'Big' in It's Current Broken Form
- People ignore the flagging proglem... until you show them how 'great' it is by flagging them... LOL
- I Love Flag, Flag Loves Me, We're a Big Flagging Family!
- Plutocracy - Rule by the Wealthy - The State of Steemit
- Steemit: Where the Petty Rich Rulers and their Lackeys Gang Up to Flag You - What a Great Platform! Feel the Love!
- A Steemit Test: Can I Keep The Rewards from My Supporters Like Other Users?
Other posts on Concentration of Power and Flagging Issue
- Why flagging a post "that makes too much" is a bad strategy (with mathematical proof)
- Im Taking a Break From Steemit / Downvoted By Smooth for No reason / WARNING TO NEW MEMBERS !
- Repost & Reminder: The Rise and Fall of Digg.com, a lesson for Steemit
- The Free Marketplace Of Ideas: Why I Believe That Steemit Will Ultimately Fail
- Fun with Flags
- Gamification, influence: Importance of a level playing field
- Sunday Musings: Does Steemit have Kids Running with Scissors? No, WHALES running with FLAGS!
- The Peter Principle, Ortega y Gasset and the Self-Determination of Steemit
- Why steemit.com is an ant colony or a bee hive, though it should not be. I am yet to see a post by an ant!
- Why Flagging Is Bringing Down The Value of Steem, As A Currency
- A case for eliminating curation rewards
- YAVAP - Yet Another Voting Algorithm Proposal - Or What I Actually Understand By Proof O Stake
- Components of a Healthy Culture - The Nine Noble Virtues
Solutions
Vote negation is a horrible idea, and a flag council can be part of a regular site, but not so much a blockchain like Steem but it could work at least from the main Steemit site. Anyways, forget about these two things.
Penalties
There are posts as far back as 3-4 months ago about flag/downvote penalties to voting power. Why not implement this? There are various schemas for penalties, from voting power deduction to actual STEEM/SP costs to remove rewards from someone.
Threshold for Flag Acceptance
There is also a threshold that can be set for flags to apply based on # of users who have a criteria like X amount of SP, for example 5k. If a post is an issue and 30 people flag who have more than 5k SP, then it gets that SP applied based on a consensus. This way abuses of single power players cant be applied unless there is more consensus that there is an issue in the first place. Instead of 1 single person decided who can or cant keep their rewards, there will need to be more people to validate such action taken. The same can be applied to upvotes if desired.
So there are some good better "solutions"!
If you have a better one, AWESOME! Bring it! Let's at least make flagging harder for bullies to abuse!
Is the part of the community that doesn't like me going to pay more attention to the flagging issue now that I mention real viable solutions?
Is Steemit Inc going to pay attention to solutions and implement them?
What will it take?
I don't know. It's been three months and no real movement has been done on the part Steemit Inc. to resolve this issue (HF19 is not part of a flagging solution lol, see above). It's not like it's hard to see that it is a problem. Add a fix on the next hardfork and see how it goes, just like all other changes Steemit Inc. puts for hardforks.
Steemit Inc, add a flag correction to the next hardfork and see if it's rejected or accepted. Pick anything that can act to correct this issue, like a penalty or threshold, and see how it goes. It's better than continuing to do nothing about it.
I'm going to keep posting about this each day, and more and more people can see what Steemit stands for and allows until it changes. Nothing is going to change unless more people get involved and care to change the flawed state of Steemit. I will keep talking about this negative issue in Steemit until people recognize it enough to demand this change from Steemit Inc. One or a few people doesn't cut it, nothing changes. More people need to get involved. If you're worried about this "bad-mouthing" and giving a bad-image to Steemit. Well maybe you should be worried about the actual problem and fix it to give Steemit the right image that people are proud to belong to. I am not proud of Steemit for how this flagging issue keeps on going.
Who is with me on this?
The more we all talk about it, the more Steemit Inc will pay attention and get something done about it.
Thank you for your time and attention! I appreciate the knowledge reaching more people. It's a real issue that more people need to be aware of as it represents the state of how Steemit functions.
Take care. Peace.
Please consider supporting me as a Steem Witness by voting for me at the bottom of the Witness page; or just click on the upvote button if I am in the top 50.
I stand for what's right. I try to help change the world for the better by changing minds with knowledge, and this applies even on Steemit. We need to change the flagging situation!