I logged into my Steemd page the other day and noticed that one of my posts had been flagged. As far as I am aware the post is nothing offensive, or spammy - it was about The World Series of Poker. I know I am not the only one to have been targetted by flagging accounts and have read blogs from @johngreenfield about how he has also been attacked by these accounts for no apparent reason. Thought I might investigate the person who flagged me, and also propose some possible reasons for this behaviour. (i'd rather not name them, its more of an informative post/rant).
Checking out their account, they have 15SP (delegated from Steemit), and have only been on Steem for 37 days. This account has a reputation score of 25 - they have created 0 posts or comments (althought they have resteemed alot of posts). Their voting power has been drained to a whopping 19% - which means their flags will be worth pretty much nothing. It seems as though once a day this person logs in and goes on a flagging spree - flagging 10s, if not 100s of posts.
Possible reasons for flag accounts
Lack of education about Steem
The most probably reason for these accounts is a lack of education/knowledge about how the Steem ecosystem works - flagging someone when you only have the 15SP (and 19% VP) will make little to no difference. What they are doing is really a waste of their time and not helping anyone. If you are new to Steem and have little SP and notice someone spamming/scamming then your best bet is to report them to @steemcleaners.
I do my best to educate my followers about the ins and outs of Steem (it can be complicated for new users!) - do we need more people who are knowledgable to edcucate and help out new users?
Attention
It seems that some new accounts do anything to gain some attention, and increase their following. There are so many 'resteem bots' these days who basically started as 'follow for follow' type accounts and have 1000s of followers. The newest theme I have noticed is that more and more new followers are resteeming my posts - again probably in a hope I will follow them - has anyone else noticed this? The account that flagged me has resteemed loads of posts aswell - possibly they are trying to work out the best strategy to gain followers without actually creating content?
So it could be possible that these flagging accounts could be doing this to gain attention and thus more followers? But why would they flag content and not just upvote it?
Conclusion
Because the flag that came to me seems to have been a one off, and didn't come from someone with large SP it didnt affect my account in any way, but I just thought it was interesting to share. Has anyone else been flagged in a similar way? What are your thoughts about why people are doing this?
