@berniesanders vs. @haejin: 481 Accounts That Only Vote For @haejin - A blockchain investigation

in #berniesanders6 years ago (edited)

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Well-known whale and Steemit contributor, @berniesanders, recently posted about another user, @haejin, who is receiving enormous payouts for posts that seem suspect.

@berniesanders has been a force for good on this platform and has usually had the best interests of Steemit in mind. I was interested to see what blockchain data could reveal about @haejin.

In the comments section, @haejin was accused of using shill accounts to defend himself and upvote his posts.

Using SteemData and steem-python, I discovered 481 accounts that, throughout their history have only ever voted for @haejin.

Of these accounts, the account with the highest reputation is @letstalkcrypto with a reputation of 36. None of the other accounts have reputations higher than 30. I've compiled an alphabetical list of every account that has only voted for @haejin.

Additionally, there were two other accounts that were frequently voted among @haejin supporters. Aside from the 481 voters that only vote for @haejin, there were 50 voters that only ever voted for @haejin and @crypto-bot, 27 voters that voted only for @haejin and @scarlet7, and 14 voters that only voted for @haejin, @crypto-bot, and @scarlet7.

Disclaimer:
By sharing this data, I am not saying beyond a shadow of a doubt that @haejin is gaming the system. My motivation for writing this post is purely informational, as I have had no interaction with @haejin on this platform. I am open to the possibility that there is an explanation for this activity that is outside the realm of bad behavior.

I am also open to the possibility that I have processed the data incorrectly, as the data has gone through a lot of steps to get to a point that made it easier to interpret. However, I am confident that any error on my part would not have significantly changed the scope of these activities, as the data on the blockchain was not altered beyond rearranging for easier manipulation.

Having said all that, I have made some CSV files available on my Git, so that other users can view them and manipulate them as they wish. You can find them here: https://github.com/jaredcwillis/haejin_investigation.

I have also taken the liberty of creating a table with all 481 accounts that only vote for @haejin, with the name of each account, along with the age of each account, number of authors they are following, and the number of votes they have cast.:
Screen Shot 2017-12-27 at 9.43.23 AM.png

You can find the full table here: http://www.jaredwillis.net/haejin-single-voters/

I'll leave it up to the users to interpret the data.


If you like my work, check out @witnesswatch, where I explore data on the blockchain so that Steemians can cast informed votes for Witnesses!

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Accounts methodically upvoting heajin..PNG
Accounts Methodically upvoting Heajin2.PNG
3.PNG

Haejin can't stop down voting me. I am the fifth most down voted person by him.

So I look at his Steemd sometimes to see what he is down voting vs up voting.

Randomly, while refreshing after a period from which he down voted me, a bunch of accounts started spam up voting all the posts they could.

From an outside perspective, how could I not believe that this is some sort of script, logging in and up voting Heajin.

The problem, regardless of which side you choose, is that it's hard or impossible to prove which is the truth. One side points out the admittedly large amount of 'empty' accounts upvoting, while the other one claims these are legitimate accounts. There's just no way to know with absolute certainty which is the truth.

This is the one main problem Steem really faces: the lack of digital identity. There is no way to combat account spamming or similar abuse, and no way to identify an honest account from a duplicate one.

The best solution that the community has come up with so far, that I've seen, is the 'force people to take a selfie or else' approach, and that seems highly unlikely to work with 400+ accounts.

Maybe the voting-power of users on Steemit should be weighted according to their activity on the platform?
Active Steemian = high upvote power,
Non-active Steemian = nearly non-existant upvote power.

Steem power for those who Steem? Proof-of-Activity? Just my thoughts.

How would you define 'active'? Aren't spammers 'active' as well?

Very interesting points, and I'm inclined to agree. We may never know whether the accounts are legitimate or not, but my aim was to inform users by showing that they exist. I don't know, however, that this is a function of a lack of identity. I think the problem may lie in the potential ease of creating these accounts, the lack of enforcement of this kind of abuse, and the removal of post limits. I am open to the possibility that these accounts are perfectly legitimate, what is more concerning to me is that there is a distinct possibility that they are not, and that even if this case is legitimate, there is always the chance that someone else could be abusing the system because there is no failsafe for this behavior.

This is the one main problem Steem really faces: the lack of digital identity.

I am hoping for a good SMT for this.

Sorry to have to ask you to explain, but what is SMT?

im really interested in learning more

That is a great idea, with the current system being so capitalistic.

For a platform like this to succeed, it CAN'T be dominated by only the few people who invest larger stakes in the coin. This drives outsiders away.

If steems focus is money as an incentive to create higher quality content, it needs to be a more communal system. If their goal is a couple of people buying a bunch of steem power and taking over the entire platform, then they've succeeded.

Some users are claiming that they are only here because of haejin - but that just begs the question. Do we want Steemit users that don't engage with the community? Are those users valuable? Is a Facebook account that is only friends with one person useful? I'd say no. It's great if haejin is driving new users to the site, but if the users don't contribute outside of upvoting him, then not so much.

When people say "I'm only here because of haejin," that doesn't necessarily mean that they're not interested in being an active participant. It could mean that they would have never would have bothered learning anything about steemit if haejin hadn't introduced them to the platform.

I think a greater risk is alienating all the new users who initially came to steemit because of haejin (or whoever's on some whale's shitlist this week). I've been here a little over 2 months and I've had quite a few poor experiences because people look down on new users so much. I was banned from the @SPL because someone thinks I'm colluding to screw them out of money, I've seen massive amounts of unwarranted censorship of new users by whales for expressing an opinion civilly, rampant bullying, botnets used to decimate the reps of new users for no good reason, and generally a huge amount of hate and drama around the choices that new users make regarding who they upvote or support.

It definitely takes a long time to get some traction here as a new user and it's a painful and intimidating process. I would love to express my opinion regarding some of the abuse I see on here, but fear of retribution keeps me from participating in that part of the community.

Until steemit starts making new users feel like valued members of the community, new users aren't going to expend the effort to be a meaningful part of the community. If these issues aren't addressed, there's going to be a huge amount of attrition from users who show up and immediately leave with a bad taste in their mouth, which will be much to the detriment of the community in the long run.

I agree, it's nice to have more people on the site, but if they aren't actually interacting other than upvoting him, what's the point? Also, I find it unlikely they are new people. Legitimate new people would have signed up through the Steemit channel, and been given delegation power. No one who is legitimately new would go through the trouble of buying steem on an exchange and setting up their account manually on the blockchain. Why would you?

reidlist, I for one am fairly new, having come to steemit to follow haejin's posts at the recommendation of a good friend. I am exceedingly happy that I've done so as his technical analysis has profited me thousands of dollars. I've since followed a few other posters who post along similar lines as haejin.

With regard to Steemit, I still have absolutely no idea as to the workings of this website, nor am I inclined to dig into them having a limited amount of time during the day.

Just wanted to let you know that there is at least one individual here simply to follow haejin.

Regards,

I would say that the obvious explanation, aside from the gaming theory is that these are the people coming over from youtube. If I do a quick calculation (after a few drinks) I see this as around 7% of @haejin followers. That doesn't seem overly high to me for someone that has joined steemit in the last few months and carried a lot of people over from youtube. In fact if you look at me I voted mainly for the youtuber that attracted me to the platform at first. I wonder if you run the same calculation against other users with say over 1k followers would 7% be especially high?

Congratulations @jaredcwillis, this post is the seventh most rewarded post (based on pending payouts) in the last 12 hours written by a User account holder (accounts that hold between 0.1 and 1.0 Mega Vests). The total number of posts by User account holders during this period was 3481 and the total pending payments to posts in this category was $5261.63. To see the full list of highest paid posts across all accounts categories, click here.

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not anymore it's not

I have been reading the TA articles @haejin posts on steemit for a few weeks (with no account) and on his request for up-vote support on his very insightful TA posts I created a steemit account on 23 Dec and only activated it now. o my unfortunate dismey however, I activated it to reply to this bullshit social media BULLSHIT going on. So, yes... i'm one of those that came here because of @haejin . I am not that single upvoter list, mined out of the blockchain by @witnesswatch who says it is uncertain if it's even correct. LOL. WTF? 4real? what a joke .... steemit is just another platform that wastes precious time and and ultimately is in the business of gaining marketshare of "people's attention" in their 24 hour day. (the platform is a great mechanism and evolution of social media carrots in exchange for time, redirection of attention and distraction". I've wasted enough time on this post, the @berniesanders bullshit and will proceed to look for the delete account button. ... SBD : "Some Bullshit Distraction" ? (e.g.
bullshit placeholder post that is rewarded with $$ : https://steemit.com/sbd/@checkthisout/sbd-correction WTF? )

@haejin, great TA posts, great Elliot Wave tutorials and great essay (https://steemit.com/bitcoin/@haejin/essay-is-technical-analysis-a-quantum-event).
The bad energy here is not worth it, see the bigger picture!?! Reflect on your #12, #14 and #15 in your trade nuggets list. Move on ! Mentor elsewhere. Mentees (& protégés) will follow.

MORE BULLSHIT:
Can I delete or deactivate my account?
Accounts can not be deactivated or deleted. The account along with all of its activity is permanently stored in the blockchain.

Wooop woop ; pooop pooop !!!

Thank you for sharing. I had missed your post. @patrice shared it with me. I'm now following you and witnesswatch.

Thanks for reading! I'm glad you enjoyed it and thank you for following! @patrice is great!

Thank you for sharing. I had missed your post. @patrice shared it with me. I'm now following you and witnesswatch.

Thanks for your support!

So basicly you say 481 accounts from his aprox 7000 followers only voted him.

Probably they are really those who came to steemit only because of him.

I was curious why i did not find my own name on the list.

Am really curious about some small thing ... if you have time of course ... "@berniesanders has been a force for good on this platform and has usually had the best interests of Steemit in mind" -- would you please show tell me in few words what that contribution would be ??

I really could not find any contribution, exept maybe a reverse RobinHood thingy, taking from the poor and giving to the rich kind of thing.

I can tell you that Bernie was very generous in supporting and helping @steemcleaners in the beginning, so that is definitely a positive contribution.

Great point! I didn't even answer that question. Anyone who has been on the platform for any length of time knows that Bernie has made some significant contributions.

Maybe he has done some good for the steem community. That being said, in the past months all of his posts are whining and complaining with no solution to any of the problems he is presenting/creating.

I'm sorry bernie downvoted you @studgriffin. There is a community of us enjoying funny post, come join us. You'll recover your rep quickly especially if you enjoy 'funny shit'

I don't know that I've ever been downvoted by bernie. I just don't see why people enjoy in his content.

I have only seen brigading and hate mongering from his posts. None of them have made me laugh.

?

I don't know that I've ever been downvoted by bernie. I >just don't see why people enjoy in his content.

I have only seen brigading and hate mongering from his >posts. None of them have made me laugh.

I have read your post, you claim to be good at 'shit' post
hence you would be very familiar with sarcasm, wry, irony, satrical, macabre, or maybe dark humor.

could you point me out to a link outside Steemit where you have done your 'shit' post?

who is this leader you are referring to?

do you have a leader you follow?

honestly, I was just extending you an sincere invitation before your strange respond, if you're just a shill or represent something else, I apologize for even replying to you, go do your thing, it's all good.

Also, don't worry people won't look at my respond, it's overflow to the next page anyways. All the best.

?

Oh I just checked my account, I HAVE been downvoted by bernie!

If anything, that goes to show what a child he is.

how does one get downvoted, drop below rep 25 and not notice?

Because my life doesn't revolve around steemit!
I don't care what my rep is lmao, I am making money in better ways

Probably they are really those who came to steemit only because of him.

Again, I am open to this possibility. Where would they have come from though? What social media account, youtube channel, blog can you point me to that would explain this?

I have personally sent the link to haejins blog to a couple of my friends, it has helped us all greatly. I wouldn't be surprised if others have done the same. I had barely used steem before I found haejin, i'm sure there are many on the same boat. I'm a little doubtful the dude would create bots to promote himself, that sounds more like a berniesanders move.

Can you provide the link here?

link to what, sorry?

...haejins blog?

I was asking for outside sources. Not his Steemit blog.

I came to him via youtube and have only joined steemit to support him for his quality content. Also I've shared his link whenever I could on youtube and on reddit.

try again

Can you provide the link to his Youtube channel?

just search for haejin lee on youtube

btw: very poor research on which you've built this accusation. typing haejin lee in youtube or at least watching one of his blogs from which he always refers to youtube shouldn't be too difficult.

No accusations were made. The research was based on activity on the blockchain, not on his outside following. I even stated that I was open to the possibility of the accounts being legitimate. Everything that I stated in my post was factual and could be verified by anyone with access to the blockchain.

still you call it an investigation and bring up some questions which you really very easily could answer by yourself. This clearly proves that you are biased, good luck with your next investigation, hopefully this motivates you to do better research next time.

Best

Ok, while we're investigating, why don't you explain why you've delegated all but 25 SP to @haejin, and why you have never created anything original but instead have just resteemed @haejin's posts?

Yep, this is why I don't understand why have you been flagged. For saying the truth? I feel that we are starting to have a problem here... are haejin followers disturbed by truth?

bernisanders flags people for positive comments on haejins posts and any comments sticking up for haejin in his posts. Is he disturbed by truth?

I came because of a friend, who was told by another friend about the 1st class posts he was posting about coins.

I never knew about steemit because of the ICO and the coin, but was never interested in the blogs. Ans the same is true about the friend who told me.

And the only reason why i will buy some steemit and why i want to reward @haejin myself is because of the money he helps everybody make... in my case only a couple of thousands since i only followed him for 1 week or less.

And the only reason why i will buy some steemit and why i want to reward @haejin myself is because of the money he helps everybody make... in my case only a couple of thousands since i only followed him for 1 week or less.

Ok, here is where you lost me. Can you verify that he helped you make $2000?

Read through @haejins posts. If you do not see the value in them, that is your loss.

Learn about technical analysis. See how different trends point towards different outcomes. I am way more confident in myself trading having read the information he has provided. If you want to be ignorant and claim it is impossible to make market predictions, go ahead.
You are the one missing out on the money.

If you want to be ignorant and claim it is impossible to make market predictions, go ahead.

Where did I claim that? I never said that. I asked for proof that his predictions made @mb666bm $2000 in one week. I think we can all agree that $2000/week is an incredible return. That kind of claim needs verification. If you continue to lower the level of discourse in this discussion by making false accusations, I will begin flagging you.

Why do you threaten to flag me? It is part of the system. Just do it.

As I said before, if you do not see value in his posts, you are putting your ego before your brain. The posts will be there forever. Read about technical analysis instead of begging people for proof that they made a measley 2 grand.

I only joined Steem because of @haejin and now this is the first comment I have ever written on Steem because of Haejin. I also invested a lot of bitcoin into steem because of @haejin. There is wayyyyy more people who have made a lot more than $2k of Haejin in a week. I can not believe how there is any doubt when he clearly posts his work in videos daily and then you can just watch the prices increase like he shows with his elliot wave theory TA. I am so confused. There is nothing to even debate, just look at his work!!! If not, that is your own loss. This is hilarious everyone is just arguing and making their own assumptions without actually just quickly checking his posts and checking the market to compare his work with the actual price? Figure it out people. You're missing out on sir Haeijin giving out freee monies!!!!!!!!!

i would have put a screenshow if it would have been possible

but how much i made is not the issue ...

JUST follow @haejin ..... and you will see yourself ....

im up 10k since I started to spread out my holdings based on haejins calls. sure it doesnt need a 200+IQ to get into alts but he brought it up to me plus gave me the tools to continue doing TA on my own. I'm absolutely greatful and I really think you should read more about the person you are "investigating" in

https://steemit.com/money/@haejin/red-coin-rdd-is-doing-a-bullish-correction

i made about 2k on this

12/24/2017 04:02:48 PM 12/22/2017 09:18:37 PM Limit Sell 0.00000154 145891.85625000 145891.85625000 0.00000153 0.22411177
12/22/2017 09:16:37 PM 12/22/2017 09:16:37 PM Limit Buy 0.00000054 145891.85625000 145891.85625000 0.00000053 -0.07897855

copy paste from Bittrex ....

You do not look to be open minded at all. And to call his posts suspect speaks clearly about your IQ.

And btw, his youtube channel is Haejin Lee . And this is where I found him and came to steemit, the same as thousands of his followers. So you see, he is actually the driving force behind the many new steemit users.
And there will be many more !!!

He was discussed in WEX exchange trollbox sometime early December. That's how I found him.
27k active users daily so who knows.

Links to berni bots good deeds please.

Well I am on that list....
I am new to steemit and came here because I wanted to read haejins posts.
Propably like a whole lot of other people who have read in subreddits or I dont know where that haejins predictions are good and that he has good lessons on elliot waves.
If it wasnt for him I wouldnt have started using steemit.
Propably a whole lot of people wouldnt be on here too either.
Isnt that a good thing for the community?
Please correct me if I'm wrong that its a good thing that he brings people on steemit.
If there are any spelling mistakes its because I'm writing this on my cellphone and my fingers are too big for that keyboard.

And adding to that:
This doesnt mean that I wont grow a part of the community but I'm only here for a week or two, have to work and had all the christmas stuff in the past week. That kinda kept me busy.
Maybe to proove that I'm not haejin writing this or that I am not a bot .... ich kann das ganze auch auf deutsch schreiben. Ich denke nicht, dass haejin deutsch schwätzen kann.

If you'd give it some time a lot of the followers he brought hefe will become part of ghe community.... some more some less.

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