RE: Of sock puppets and witch hunts
Jeez. It's really sad to see how fraud can really ruin the environment for everyone. Your story sounds quite plausible, so I suppose it's good to know that the reasons for seeking an anonymous account(s) are legit. Steemit is an experiment and in its infancy. A lot of these issues will be hashed out over and over again, privacy, anonymity, reputation and fraud. This is literally the melting pot for such matters and you got caught up in it. I think if the Msgivings fraud hadn't happened, you would have had an entirely different experience.
I'm very sorry that you had a bad experience, but you obviously have enough insight to understand why many of us feel uneasy about such things, especially when someone is given an account by a whale. In fact, I cannot think of another example of this. Regular users just open their own account, so any deviation from that is uncommon and usually breeds suspicion.
Thank you for telling your side of the events.
The SBI (Steemit board of Identity) is a small group of 7 individuals whos full identification documents are publicly recorded on the steem blockchain. A person who wishes to remain anonymous to the rest of the community can get SBI approved by providing their identification to those 7 individuals.
Those 7 seem to be complete control freaks who want to make this place Orwellian nightmare. Nobody has to identify themselves. Nobody has to do what some small inner-circle group orders. That is like NWO.
yes, nobody has to, but identity is related to reputation, so having an excellent reputation would go along with identification
I agree with @artific. Your group sounds creepy as fuck and it would in my eyes damage the reputation of anyone associated with it. It would also likely label anyone displaying your "stamp of approval" as if it adds value as having at best poor social intelligence.
I'd also question the judgement of anyone who gives their personal information to a self-appointed group of people on the internet who claim they want to protect it. It could quite easily be a honeypot intended for future use as blackmail, or more innocently but perhaps no less harmfully be incompetently run resulting in the information being leaked.
My advice: Stay away. Far away.
@craig-grant... I assume that you are joking about there being a Steemit Board of Identity... right? Right???
the best ideas always start as a joke, the SBI approval is not for everyone, only those who want to remain anonymous and still have a high value reputation to earn thousands of dollars in rewards per month, it's a very small amount of individuals who would fit that profile
The idea of having to give me identity to 7 people I don't know is actually very frightening. I like that it is an option for those who feel safe to use it as I see it contributes to transparency, but it is not an option I would undertake given my particular situation. As someone whose anonymity is the basis for her safety, I do believe the practice of requiring individuals to identify if they are not found to be contributing pre-published materials to be an unnecessary act of control, especially in the data age. I see the value, but I also see it as a dangerous practice and precedent.
Hello Honeyscribe - I personally have 4 different Steemit user accounts. One of which I want to use as a pseudonym to publish my science fiction. I have not done so myself, but I see nothing morally wrong with your two accounts having a conversation with each other in the comments. And using multiple accounts to vote for each other is not immoral either.
@freedomengineer you are a brilliant individual and from what I hear the ladies whisper... sexy as hell! I'd like to buy you a cup of coffee sometime.
@troi, you know we are too lazy to drive all the way to Tim's. Just walk your bitch ass to the kitchen and make US a cup.
(ok I can see how this sock-puppet convo can be weird and disingenuous.)
It is weird. I don't think it would have occurred to me to try it if I hadn't thought it would differentiate my accounts and protect anonymity. I enjoyed your exchange though. Perhaps you are using it as a form of performance art, and because you introduced it with transparency, it would not be considered harmful? I think this forum would care most about upvoting in your case below.
You are absolutely right to feel that way. Ignore this SBI nonsense.
We just started SteemVerify. Kind of a 'soft verification' system.
Frankly @stellabelle this is evidence of only of your ignorance. In such cases you might consider asking questions and trying to learn instead of jumping to conclusions and making incorrect assumptions about what is uncommon or what should 'breed suspicions'.
I have created accounts for many people especially from the cryptocurrency community. They are all "regular users" (whatever that phrase means). If I were actively recruiting writers or others to the platform I would absolutely create accounts for them (which is not to suggest those I have recruited have not written some good posts, because they have; I'm just not actively recruiting people specifically for that purpose). It is easy to do, as a normal fully-supported function of the CLI wallet, and not at all irregular. It also sets up the account with the creator (in this case me) as recovery agent, which is convenient since I know these people outside Steem and I can easily help them get their accounts back if they are ever compromised.
Not to mention its actually almost bothersome to create an account right now if you are in the position of not having a facebook account you can link to or a reddit account with positive karma.
Just yesterday a user wrote me this and I was planning on making a post with this issue included, as it needs fixing as soon as possible for the growth of the userbase.
(open in new window for full res)
@smooth I was wondering if there was one or more person 'homesteading' accounts for people whom they were trying to recruit but who have now showed up and found that their names have already been 'squatted' on; such as @rogerver
I don't know. I created some such accounts very early on for the purpose of giving them to the relevant person (rogerver was not one of them), and I have transferred some of them already. I don't know who owns the others nor their intent(s).
Thank you for reading and sharing your thoughts. I do think I would have had a different experience if I hadn't walked into an already painful situation. Lurking didn't reveal that my situation was terribly unusual or would be viewed as such. I saw that a face and photo was preferred, but I didn't recognize that anonymity was considered suspect. I also didn't know @kushed was a whale, which now seems ridiculous, but I understood that term to apply to @ned and @dantheman (which made it extremely exciting when the latter upvoted one of my early posts as @honeyscribe!). @kushed just seemed like a nice guy. I hope sharing my experience lends to the balance Steemit will find. There is so much potential here.