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Given the behavior, the question is, why is he a protected species ?

Why does @nextgencrypto receive such support from other witnesses ?? Perhaps we should be putting pressure on them for this to end ?

To see @justineh run to his defense and just blame the victims is just baffling. I was particularly disgusted with his treatment of @lyndsaybowes. What was her supposed crime ??

Is there anyone out there can actually explain how this bullying petty childish character, who frankly adds nothing to the platform, is not only not opposed but instead downplayed, supported and defended ?

Serious, what am I missing here ?!

Every time I think of plowing some money into this platform, I just look this corruption, the frustration anger and turmoil it creates, and think... Nahhh.

I think there is an answer to all your questions, and it's profiteering. There are two different routes to ROI: sucking the money out of a business, or profiteering, and building a business up until the stock is worth more than it was when you bought it, or investing.

The two are diametrically opposed philosophically, morally, and really, as in bricks and mortar reality. We observe that Steem is built on profiteering. The rhetoric of profiteers is never forthright, stating they intend to destroy the goose that lays the golden egg because they can just seize the broken shells and move on and profit, but ever seeks to get people to invest. What people invest they take.

Until posts are no longer able to be manipulated to create unlimited rewards, profiteers will be able to manipulate the financial mechanisms and extract unlimited rewards from the pool using posts as a vector. I have proposed implementation of the Huey Long algorithm, that will limit the payout on posts to no less than 3% of median payout, and no more than 300%, which is three orders of magnitude, but too little to enable profiteering via financial manipulation using stake as a weapon.

No one wants to limit payouts, because everyone dreams of whale votes and sudden riches who isn't a whale using such votes to suck the vast majority of the rewards pool into their wallet. This is as short sighted as gamblers betting their last dime. Les Miserables were Napolean's soldiers and prisoners of war that gambled away their clothes in English prisons, so this is not a new psychological phenomenon.

Steem is designed for maximum ROI for ninjaminers, not for creating a society that burgeons over time, despite the mechanism underlying Steem enabling that. However, as Steem value falls, and the market collapses due to the financial benefits inuring only to a few whales, eventually those whales need to move on and invest in new vehicles for profit.

At that time, a HF that implements something like the Huey Long algorithm can transform Steem from a vehicle for profiteering into a vehicle for investors, swapping parasitization of production for long term growth and capital gains.

I await the departure of the whales, so that the new paradigm of government Steem enables can be invested in, grow, and flourish without vampires sucking it's life's blood into their yawning maws. That day approaches, and the lower the price of Steem, the sooner it comes.

Bernie is one of the original ninjaminers. He invented the bidbot with @randowhale. He's not dumb, he's just consumed with avarice, and his poor impulse control renders him incapable of investment (as far as I can tell, anyway). When he sees an opportunity off chain that enables him to swap his stake, or the fiat he's sold stake for, for another target he can mine for ROI, he'll be gone. The problem is doing so will crash the price of Steem because he has so much of it, and the community will be strongly motivated to seek redress for the many torts he's committed. Then the blockchain will be evidence that will cost him money, and lots of it.

He wants it deleted, and then he can move on, he thinks. It won't be. I am pretty sure some folks have mirrors of the chain that keep them off chain and private, and killing Steem won't set him free from the evidence of his criminal acts.

Also, he's just the face of a community of profiteers, not the only one. Looking at steemd, you can see the relationships between he and other witnesses, substantial stakeholders, and bidbot owners like @markymark. He is the visible face of predation, but they all work together to consume the value of the content creators provide. This is why he's not crushed by the collective weight of the other profiteers, and why @dan flagging him to -16 rep was significant.

I expected the downvote pool to be used by him to make Steem social media a void wasteland, crashing the price so the whales could move on to greener pastures. While that hasn't yet happened, it's early days.

We shall see what comes, when it comes. Either way I am not focused on my stake, but on the underlying mechanism of Steem that enables voluntarist government.

Thanks!

I agree with many of your points, and often learn from you as well. This isn't one of those times.

I could be wrong, but it seems there are separate issues that are getting blurred. I know people are tired of hearing this, but Steemit (the main faucet for Steem) is not Steem. It is an interface that happens to be privately owned by those involved in the creation of the chain. I'm not sure of their, or any witnesses, liability in any legal sense to spend their energy and holdings to fight off moves by others of large stake that are harsh and rude.

For many chains, there is only one way to profit primarily. You buy and either sell quick on pumps or hodl and hope for long term growth due to a growth in adoption.

This chain has the added feature of a growing stake to offset loss from inflation coupled with a faucet that is powered by those with stake. That feature in no way negates the normal method most chains offer as a possibility for returns (pump or hodl).

It is your right (as it is all stakeholders rights) to express your thoughts and seek to sway action one way or another, but that is where that right ends. I'm not sure where you are seeing a legal liability when the very nature of a stake based system allows/insists for this dynamic.

This is just a surface look. Looking deeper, they have no real ability to take any action against most people. If a person was determined and had their account(s) banned, nothing would stop them from pulling their stake to exchanges and bringing it back into new accounts. How much energy would one, in your estimation, be legally obligated to expending to play whack a mole?

None of this is an endorsement of actions that have hit several I hold in high esteem hard. It is an honest look and assessment at what is. I have pointed out before, there is nothing stopping those who have had enough from starting their own chain/forking this one and running it the way they see fit. But even then, not sure how one would curb the stake issue. Stake/might makes right. That's the essence of the stake based system.

It seems to me that if it reaches a point where it causes so much grief, the common sense thing to do would be leave, and/or start your own chain.

One can either designate it to being like other chains whose investment potential is through pump/hodl, and perhaps keep what one has staked even to grow from the pool payouts to offset inflation.

Or, sell it all and invest in something else (or blow it all, whatever floats the boat).

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Failure to act to prevent and limit the harm this botnet does Steem renders the rhetoric of spam fighting organizations, Stinc itself, and proponents of onboarding users and marketing Steem, hollow and duplicitous.

Well stated.

I love reading censored posts!

Censored posts have struck the target, so I always read all of them I find. They invevitably reveal the soft white underbelly of the censors.

I note the mass flagging of the botnet under discussion seemed to end immediately following this post. It may not have generated massive rewards, but it achieved it's goal of ending the terrible impact on user retention that botnet has had.

Thanks!

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