There's nothing more disheartening than delegating to a project only to find out a few months later that the leader has gone AWOL and was selling his free delegation votes through a bid bot.
Glad you picked up on this. Too many scam artists involved with anything to do with free stuff. As soon as the bad guys win the support, they feel like they earned it and already 'proved' their idea.
All too common unfortunately and then it is coupled with, "now proven, time to get paid and extract".
Yup, delegations and support definitely need to have strings attached. I like the Steem.dao for proposals because if they stop doing stuff I can cancel my vote. A lot of these projects aren't even openly critized because people are worried about the consequences. They are given chance after chance after chance, but until they are hit where it hurts (a reduced or removal of delegations), why would they do anything?
Reminded me of a #gaming community here on steem. After gaining our trust the founder asked many of us for money to support the project and then ran away. Well, it's our fault that we trusted him but you get the point.
Gaming or gambling?
Gaming... He requested the money for bid bots for the main community account (when bid bots were a thing.) He didn't request a huge amount only $5 from each user (I think he asked more from the big users,) but he did so with each one in private and we didn't know he asked the others until he ran away.
Lol.
I Lol'd, too. People should be suspicious when asked for money via DM in discord or something. If they don't make a post about it and communicate the information openly, it's naive to trust. Sadly, shame prevents people from sharing until they've scammed more and more people.
Yep, one of the earliest pieces of advice once I went into chats, don't give anyone money. I have actually given friends loans and the like over the years in quite significant amounts, but I am careful with who. This is pseudonymous crypto, trust no one :D
Has happened way too often unfortunately.
There are also a few review websites that basically did nothing after they got funding. Why develop further if you reached your real goal to get a massive delegation?
Yeah, that's sad.