RE: Liquid STEEM Report Feb 17, 2020
I've had friends that have gotten into trouble as well. It is very easy to fall into the habit to copy articles and paste the information (plagiarism). There are plenty of other ways to scam the system. I remember that there was one guy that would go around and follow Steemcleaners and comment 10 times a day. Then after a few days, they would self vote their own comment 100% to try to scam the system. I do believe the reward pool would be depleted by hundreds of thousands of micro accounts and individuals if there was no police. Then there would be almost no rewards for those that actually create authentic content. The Steemcleaners system requires servers and people to manage which costs plenty of money to operate and maintain. It is not just good content that is rewarded, but it can also be services such as Steemcleaners.
To answer your question, If there were no downvoting at all, then scamming the sytem will be so high that no one will be able to earn, because there would be millions of bot accounts sucking the reward pool dry. Not only will top earners be greatly impacted, but small accounts will not be able to make any earnings at all. Not only will the top earners be crushed, but no one will ever use STEEM.
If you reduce the payout to something of no value, then you have a social media platform like Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, etc. This is where none of the low popular accounts will earn anything. There would be one difference, unlike those other social media platforms, the highly popular accounts would not make any money either. Thus there would be no incentive to make any good content and develop a following or for that matter to use STEEM social media platform.
But wouldn't that create a fairer distribution of steem for all the plankton? And wouldn't that spur adoption?
When I first started, I thought, oh, I can just get a free account and start posting interesting stuff and I'll accumulate a little steem. It took me about 30 days to figure out that my vote was basically worthless (below minimum) and only the most charitable of steemians (@futuremind) would take pitty on me (a lowly newb).
Perhaps, but, if you can, I'd like to see the actual numbers.
I'm kind of a data wonk.
Also, even though the rewards would be smaller, if adoption is accelerated, the market-value of steem would be boosted to compensate.
Nobody's "making a living" on this yet, (even the TOP-EARNERS are only making about $500 USD a month) so it's basically a hobby.
It's extremely discouraging for newbz when they realize that the whole system is geared to force-feed those who are already successful.
The only "problem" with the "millions of bots" is because they get free delegated 15 steem from @steem.
Just kill the free delegation for newbz (which would essentially make steem "invite only" because you'd need a sponsor), and the "millions of bots" problem evaporates.
I thought the witnesses already got a pre-voting cut of the reward-pool.
Wouldn't the small accounts make more if the minimum payout was dropped?
I thought you said the reward-pool was a "vast ocean".
Do you have any data to support that claim?
Aren't rewards proportional to steem-power investment?
If you dropped the minimum payout, sure, the rewards might be small, but they wouldn't "drop to zero".
I think this is the key misconception.
I post on steem because I don't have to divulge any personal or credit-card info.
I post on steem because I enjoy having conversations with people from different walks-of-life.
The voting dust is nice, but there are much better ways to support the bloggers you like.
For example, imagine steem without voting. Imagine they just Hard-Forked voting right out of the whole thing altogether.
What's left?
A lot of really awesome stuff, that's what!!
The delegation system is amazing (way better than pa.treon). The steem-token transfer system is amazing (way better than v.enmo or credit-cards or banks). The blogging system is amazing (way better than tw.itter or fa.cebuk). It's all super-awesome!!