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In a nutshell, there is a limited supply of money available to pay content producers. The trolls believe that @haejin is "taking" too much of this money, and they downvote him full-force in order to remove some of his rewards. They can do this because they hold a large amount of stake in the platform. @haejin also seems to hold a sizeable stake, but more importantly has support from another whale, @ranchorelaxo, to regain the rewards he has earned organically through the support of many thousands of followers who upvote every post he makes. I will gladly continue to upvote every post not only to stick my thumb in the trolls' eyes (although that's a big part of it at this point) but because the information presented here, especially the tutorials and the daily insights into TA and EW, hold incalculable value.

@ranchorelaxo, to regain the rewards he has earned organically through the support of many thousands of followers who upvote every post he makes.

In actuality, the whole war started because that whale started upvoting him indiscriminately essentially spamming all trending pages. Steemians who would otherwise simply ignore were forced to adjust his earnings. this is in line with the design of steemit and is detailed on page 14 of the whitepaper.

Any widespread abuse of the scoring system could cause community
members to lose faith in the perceived fairness of the economic system.
-Page 17

Fortunately, any work that is getting a large concentration of votes is also gaining the most scrutiny (publicity). Through the addition of negative-voting it is possible for many smaller stakeholders to nullify the voting power of collusive groups or defecting large stakeholders.

Haejin and Rancho represent a collusive group. The community responded to that group as expected and that's why you have the flag war.

That's not how I remember it going down. Rancho didn't come in for backup until long after burnee was reducing haejin's posts to nothing.

The site won't even load haejin's posts that are over 2 months old so I can't offer hard evidence to prove you wrong. But haejin made a post in mid December after a few weeks of a flag war where he announced that he and @ranchorelaxo had made a deal to nullify the downvotes he had been receiving from burnie. This likely precedes the post you just shared. I had no knowledge of @ranchorelaxo as a user prior to that post by @haejin, and there was certainly no mention of him by burnie in his daily lunatic ravings.

Even now, just look at the demeanor of the two. All flaggings being equal, look at the name-calling and character assassination being done by burnie's crew. The man is completely obsessed with beastiality and excrement. Are these the kinds of people you want to associate yourself with?

Here, let me help you...

The first time haejin ever flagged Bernie was on 20 December of 2017, guess which post he flagged?

The first time Bernie flagged upvoted Haejin was 15 Oct, then 15 days later, then 27 days later, then 21 days later, the day before he made that post, he flagged haejin for the first time. They each flagged each other almost daily after that. I got involved on that day 20 December and started trying to understand who this whale was. Haejin seemed to deliberately avoid saying his name. He never mentioned to his followers that the whale was upvoting all of his posts for over three hundred dollars. In his you tube videos, he would mention the downvoters, but not the whale who was the cause of his recent wealth. If it were me, I would be thanking this whale every video. I would be so ecstatic. I would also be imploring the downvoters to reach out to him and would even have asked him to upvote others too if it would have made my life easier. I mean it was free and unexpected money, right? Well, maybe it wasn't so unexpected, maybe it wasn't so free. Maybe that's why he refused to name him until he relented and started using him to downvote others.

Think about it. Why wouldn't rancho just come on steemit and say he meant nothing by it. Why wouldn't he simply tell his story about maybe Haejin's advice making him rich? I mean that's what you would do isn't it? You feel so gracious to this man that you obediently send him at least $2100 that you could send to yourself daily, but you can't get online and say a few words to clear his name? Instead you would rather wait 3 weeks get involved (yet still continuously upvote him) in an internet flag war? You're a millionaire with enough money to put several million aside in a volatile crypto-market and you would rather spend your time flagging people than simply explaining yourself? It just doesn't pass the sniff test for me.

Are these the kinds of people you want to associate yourself with?

I don't associate myself with anyone. Bernie doesn't tell me what to say. i have expressed my disagreement with the way he handles minnows who argue with him in the past. I just happened to reach the same conclusions as him regarding this matter.

That actually makes sense, IF your one main assumption is correct. You're assuming that all of haejin's rewards were coming from a single user before the flagging wars. Do you have proof that this is the case? I've never seen any. The only information I've ever seen regarding the percentage of upvotes going to haejin were from burnie's posts AFTER late December. Burnie is still posting that 90% of haejin's votes are self-votes, but burnie's own account gets upvoted by his bots to the tune of 85% of his payout. Even if you are both right about @haejin, burnie is still the bigger problem with near-equivalent self-upvoting and downvoting of thousands of new members of steemit.

But according to you burnie did actually begin the flag wars. No, we don't use his name here because he abuses his power to downvote. He took my account from a 36 to a 15 in one day for calling out his lying about his own self-upvoting stats (he omitted the bots, which made most of the self-upvotes), even going so far as to downvote a comment I made to @steemitdev freely offering my skills as a developer to help move this platform along and fix some of the issues I mentioned in my previous comments. Even if he is right, he is not helping his cause and he is certainly not helping the platform.

You're assuming that all of haejin's rewards were coming from a single user before the flagging wars. Do you have proof that this is the case? I've never seen any.

Yes, but first, I want to clarify that not all, but most of his rewards before the war came from rancho.

I show his first upvote as being 12/9/2017. This is confirmed by haejin himself via a transfer memo on that same date thanking him and verifying that he knew his steemit name.

Even if he is right, he is not helping his cause and he is certainly not helping the platform.

Well, I agree that actions like taking your rep down do nothing but galvanize the resistance against him and the cause. Of course, without him, I doubt there would be a cause.

Actually, looking at it again, the first votes from Bernie were actually upvotes! The first flag didn't come until 12/19. If you have trouble seeing it, right click then open in new tab.

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Oh, normally, you can use steemworld to get you a percentage on recent posts. Busy . Org will also give you the upvote figure for each voter.

Bernie began the flag war, rancho came after that to support haejin.
Bernie's responsible for that war.

I just proved otherwise.

https://steemit.com/steem/@berniesanders/join-me-in-flagging-haejin-46k-in-abuse-rewards

That is the first time Bernie ever mentioned haejin.
Rancho was already in the picture and was the cause of the war. Everything is on the blockchain. You can see for yourself.

While I appreciate your diligence (it must have taken forever to drag this post up) showing where bernie first called for his followers to flag @haejin is not proof of anything at all. The flag war began long before this post. I am currently scrolling through @haejin's posts to present a clearer picture of when this all began. But because of the limitations of the steemit platform, it may take me a while. It may take me so long it might not be worth the trouble...

It may take me so long it might not be worth the trouble.

LOL, that's because it doesn't exist. That is the start. Trust me.

It didn't take me long to dig that up. I was there when it happened. I remembered it. Nobody had to tell me about it.

It doesn't exist on the platform anymore, but not because it didn't happen. The oldest of haejin's posts that are available were from the end of december, long after rancho had gotten involved. You clearly were not reading this blog in mid-december when this all happened. If burnie had actually made that post before the flag war (which he did not) then it would have had to have been in early December and would say "3 months ago" but instead it says "2 months ago" just like @haejin's oldest posts.

I just gave you a link so you could find it. Google would've probably worked too. Trust me. The first battle of the haejin bernie war was 12/20.

Yes and anyone who was actually watching (and didn't hear about it after the fact from burnie's blog) knows that this is true. I can't believe this is even still going on. It's all just jealousy.