Oh, there are more examples for sure. I could see this building up a long time ago with these groups and some of the seriously shady behaviour (including direct confrontations in the past) that tried/convinced many to give them their delegations in return for "rewards" or ROI. That's how it always works. If you know how to psychologically manipulate the masses with a rewards based system, then it's all easy peasy from there. Remind you of something 😉. The very same tactics used by the peoples enemies are being deployed on these platforms as well. Not much you can do about it, and it's a natural part of how these platforms work, and the rewards system that incentivises this type of behaviour.

There are plenty of other shady tactics that are used, but we will leave that alone for now.

It's sad to say that's it's basically too late to rectify any of this at a fundamental level, unless the entire rewards system is completely overhauled. Changing the rewards distribution from 75/25 for author vs curator to 50/50, only made this worse. Most people have no choice now, but to grovel at the feet of these curation groups/or influencers, or make content that only suits their "communities" that mostly benefits them in the end. Basically group think for rewards in return.

It's a real shame, because I still really like these platforms, and the entire idea behind them.

If you haven't already done so, go and read Dan's last few posts. They are very revealing about some of these facts, but are stated in a "diplomatic" manner.