When I joined Steemit in August 2016 I could immediately see massive potential to help people around the world to earn extra income. Here was a platform that didn't rely on advertising and where the community got to decide where the rewards would go. As there are very few rules the system is open to abuse and it's up to that same community to deal with it.

You get to use your voting power, based on the Steem Power you hold, to adjust the payout for any post or comment. This is the 'proof of brain' principle described in the Steem blue paper.

From a fairly early point I flagged some posts that I thought were abusing the system for personal gain. Of course everyone wants to earn something here, but I think we should all play a part in making the Steem platform better for all. That means not just voting for yourself, not plagiarising the work of others and generally trying to make it better and not worse. When you flag a post the popup below appears with some suggested reasons why you might flag. These are not totally definitive and it is a personal choice. The first is the main reason I flag.

When you flag you take a risk as the recipient may decide to retaliate and you don't get any curation rewards for doing it. I experienced this when I flagged one of the biggest abusers of this platform. He used his own considerable SP and that of another account he controlled to give himself massive rewards every day. My flags had very little impact, but he felt justified in wiping out my small rewards for that week. Happily I had a lot of support from others to undo some of the damage.

It was through the efforts to deal with that account that I met some of the other people who were trying to deal with abuse. They worked together in a community based around the @SteemFlagRewards account and associated Discord channel. This incentivises flagging by voting up those who do so. You just need to leave a comment on whatever you flag stating the reason and, if that is accepted by the moderators, you get a vote. What you get is pretty much what you could earn by self-voting your own work, but in this case you have freed up some rewards for the pool that would otherwise have gone to undeserving work. I have seen many cases where this has persuaded the perpetrators to stop continuing their abuse.

Of course some people take this flagging personally and I've seen some say it's a 'crime'. They obviously don't understand how Steem is intended to work. Your rewards do not become yours until 7 days after the post and anyone can adjust them before then.

So why does this team of moderators mostly go after small accounts? It's because those are the winnable battles. There are some big accounts that make tens or even hundreds of dollars each day by abusing the system in various ways, but they can only be tackled by other whales. Most of the SFR crew only have hundreds of SP and so can only remove cents from a post. Even so, they can get retaliation that reduces their rewards and still they continue. For the effort they put in their rewards are pretty small anyway.

If you have less than a few hundred SP then there's not too much you can do on the flagging front, but you can still support the efforts of others whilst you build your account.

I do most of my flagging by checking what @SteemFlagRewards has commented on or by seeing what people are reporting on Discord. It think we need multiple people to flag each post to show it's really a community effort. We have the support of some witnesses including @pjau, @themarkymark and @patrice (who you should vote for). They also help to get bad accounts blacklisted by the more responsible vote sellers.

I've said plenty about buying votes before. In general I consider them a detriment to Steem, but there's nothing I can do. They are businesses who operate on this blockchain for profit. I prefer to see votes earned by real interaction. I do receive votes from various schemes that I have delegated to, but I think they do good work for Steem in general. If I see an account getting almost all its rewards by buying votes then I will consider flagging as they are reducing what others can get.

This post is part of a general effort to encourage productive curation for the good of Steem. If we want it to grow then we need to do what we can to improve the quality of the content new visitors see. Here are some other posts you may want to read:

• What is Steem Flag Rewards by @anthonyadavisii.
• Defintitions of spam by @Lovenfreedom.
• Flagging comment spam by @steemseph.
• Bid bot abuse by @iamstan. He's the one working with Utopian to build the effort against abuse.
• Plagiarism by @enforcer48.
• Fighting abuse by @freebornangel.

Some of those may be already paid out, but check for more recent posts you can vote on to show support. If you increase their SP then they can do even more. I would encourage you to vote on the comments they leave on spam too.

Steem is still pretty small. If it grows to millions of active users then these issues are likely to get even worse. We can at least try to set a good example and steer users to a better path that has more of a future.

Let's make Steem great! If you're going to be at Steemfest then I'll be happy to discuss this further.

I'm Steve, the geeky guitarist.

• I'll buy guitar picks for Steem
• Get a Wirex Debit Card to spend your crypto.
• Get some passive income with Mannabase
• Get paid to search at Presearch

Spam comments may be flagged. Beware of the Commentphant!