Very good investigation, we need more people like you. upvoted

we hate spam, I guess

That's a pity.. Such a great platform being slightly abused :(

Nice investigative work nonetheless @lexiconical.

I absolutely agree! I JUST finished a post explaining that the reward abuse has to stop. We need more people willing to flag this type of spam, because it's doing nothing but taking rewards from posts that deserve it.

Trending page is set for the amount of money a post has earned so if more than one whale votes on a shitty post it's bound to go on the trending page @lexiconical . And the people who work hard for their posts rarely get an upvote from a whale.

I hate to see that some nonsense earns $XXX while other quality posts don't earn even $1.

I did see that post and I'm like... why upvote this. Shesh!

great post mate..keep it up...i like make good friendship with you...great..

very good strategy  you must be up voit

Yeah, I think this kind of thing is a long term problem for steemit that needs to be fixed. Otherwise the currency won't last and grow.

Whoa, that is quite a revelation. I skipped the post many times, but it shows up in trending anyway. Amazed to see the income for the adverts! Nicely exposed.

I read about a Steemit drama between whales before reading this article and the comments above. It's scary to see these whales coming after us and flagging everything to oblivion. Ruining all the efforts to build our presence here.
 
Well, money really is power afterall. Stay safe, @lexiconical. And thanks for this expose article

Very great post! I would have not found this post if I were not checking out the comments on the jerry's post. Actually this post should be in trending! And people should find out this post.

Congratulations @lexiconical! You have completed some achievement on Steemit and have been rewarded with new badge(s) :

[![](https://steemitimages.com/70x80/http://steemitboard.com/notifications/commented.png)](http://steemitboard.com/@lexiconical) Award for the number of comments received

Click on any badge to view your own Board of Honnor on SteemitBoard.
For more information about SteemitBoard, click [here](https://steemit.com/@steemitboard)

If you no longer want to receive notifications, reply to this comment with the word `STOP`

By upvoting this notification, you can help all Steemit users. Learn how [here](https://steemit.com/steemitboard/@steemitboard/http-i-cubeupload-com-7ciqeo-png)!

Hey can you change your First Name on <a href="http://www.bluffave.com/steemit">the Poker League</a> to your Steemit username with the "@" sign included please. Thanks!

there's always somebody who's trying to 'game the system' - steemit unfortunately is not immune to such shinenigans.  there are a lot of people that have come onto the platform with wallets full of money and buy a bunch of steem power just to upvote themselves and get others to follow the 'trend'. it's a deplorable practice but inherent in the freedoms the blockchain allows us

Part of the original and current potential use case for purchasing and holding SP is for promotion. 

All Steem stakeholders have the ability to use positively weighted votes (upvotes) or negatively weighted votes (downvotes--mislabeled as "flag" on steemit.com) to influence a post or comment's potential payout for 7 days after it has been created.

Unfortunately for us, this is a "pay to win" platform, and if you're not playing the game... you will surely lose.

that s a shit...

Never really thought about it or looked into the matter, but I completely agree with you.  Companies who throw money into the platform will only dilute the effectiveness of a newbie trying to get situated and actually produce solid, valuable content.  It's a difficult problem with no apparent solution.  That being said, the devs need to consider this when approving these account.  Anything with a username of ___.com should probably be rejected.

so true bro!!! a lot of different groups are forming on steemit just for this reason

@lexiconical
Me too stumbled on their post.  I was really shocked with their results and and commented here:
https://steemit.com/money/@bookingteam.com/how-can-you-actually-save-money-on-managing-your-rental-property#@chandu91/re-bookingteamcom-how-can-you-actually-save-money-on-managing-your-rental-property-20170623t120218491z

Asking with a screenshot posted that **they earned $1700 in 25 mins with 30 uptoes** ???
![](https://steemitimages.com/DQme6eDnM8ooZm5TxtfRL1oSES9nBnAhMsgnmCprr9tHoiG/image.png)
They never replied i did all this exercise and found what exactly you have done.

But you made a right step to post all this analysis.
Glad to meet like-minded fellow steemian.

The opposite of this is Facebook where I was one of the original users and spent over $100,000 in ads only to have my posts get 5 or 10 likes on them.  I prefer the relationship with the amount invested and if we get some circle jerks going on, I think that is up to the community to regulate.  In all fairness I have one going with my friends I talk to them about the posts I most want to see and vote their posts up all the time to help motivate them to keep contributing.  If we want better results I think the answer is to encourage ideal formatting and highest quality within whatever friend voting circle jerk groups exist!  I gave it to my friends straight because I have the most valuable account that I am not voting shit up.  They better do a good job and they get a vote proportional to the quality.  If others have lower standards and paid to play, we can help encourage higher quality or help discovery of posts work more effectively than just the trending page and tags.

This is how I imagine you.
![hqdefault.jpg](https://steemitimages.com/DQmPqpbytxeJweKmdm26HDXUi7bzVVJnJppkWACHA8i85M5/hqdefault.jpg)

Well done exposing this crap btw.

I was thinking about this whole time, so happy you made post about this! This post should be on trending!!

Truth has been  spoken. Now I am quitting Steemit. Thanks for this useful information. 

Well, one more thing can we make fake Steemit accounts by their(who are earning thousands by shity posts) names and start making money ?

We need  human judges the same as we have witnesses to evaluate and moderate this kind of posts manually or between verified trusted ones, with penalization for abuse, steemit supposed to be better than Reddit, protected by wise big ones that do not tolerate scams, spam, and wasting our attention and time...

Thanks for exposing this @lexiconical. That is really quite unfortunate when we know there is a limited pool of rewards and so much great content out there. I was really excited when I discovered Steemit and I still plan on contributing regularly - for a while at least - but it's hard to stay enthusiastic when you see that the site actually does not run on quality at all, but merely on a system where the rich reap all the rewards.

I care 🤗

No @berniesanders needed for this, the trending algorithm can be changed, just have to dip into the code and do it.

For what it's worth I agree with you on this, both in ending the circle jerk and updating trending page algorithm.

Looks like there is a whole robot city behind those vacation rental posts!