We implemented this out of common sense at steemstem, with no single individual (including curators, managers, founders, but not including the community account which adds funds to VP etc) able to pass 2.75% of out total curation weight. If one reaches that, we either give minimal upvotes or none until they fall back down based on the steemreports 14 day average.
I am going to assume you have not read the whitepaper, otherwise you wouldn't have made that statement.
In the white paper in the subsection named voter abuse under the section voting to distribute the currency (I believe thats what its called, could be wrong but I am going off of memory) it states something along the following:
If a large stakeholder is abusing their voting share than many smaller shareholders can work together to nullify the rewards.
It also says in that section (above this) that negative-voting (downvote/flag) is there to stop such abuse such as: collusive voting, self-voting, etc.
It is really a good read for the hypothetical situation at what steem was intended to be and you should probably read it. I mean, steem is a lot different than what was initially planned but still. Even still it is a good read!
No whale has 125 million SP, many would fight to prevent a whale from getting 125 million SP.... As well, due to how rewards are given, if a whale had 125 million SP... His vote would be worth around $1, why? Because the reward pool would be gone.
Right, when you can't get 100 people to upvote a post encouraging people to manage their own votes, you're going to get enough votes to correct a bernie, or a grumpycat? Good luck with that. If you figure out how, please share.
There are whales out there upvoting themselves to $300+ and you are concerned with someone that voted themselves to around $30 and got another $14 from their followers...
Anyways large pools of voters do go after and attempt to counter whale votes, some go after grumpycat, some go after bernie, and some go after others. The problem in most cases isn't that people don't want to vote, its that some groups of people are dumb enough to say "Flagging is violent and stealing" which convinces many that it is evil when it isn't. Maybe if people were educated, from day 1, that voting on something, up or down, is something they choose to do. If they think that a post is overvalued to negatively vote it and if its undervalued to positively vote it, as well to accurately teach them about curation (a lot of things I see still tell people to vote on posts that are valued high because they are more likely to gain curation rewards) and so much more... then when they do learn the truth about these things they feel cheated.
Ever thought that those posts encouraging people to manage their votes just weren't that good and didn't deserve that much for rewards, in other peoples eyes? Like there are so many reasons why people do and don't vote stuff, and quite often they are more likely to vote on controversial issues where you can get their heart into it, like say some user is raping the reward pool (gets a lot of people triggered enough to go vote)
Maybe this argument will make more sense if I use my main account. I'm not a beginner here. I've been around a while. And yeah, I'm concerned about vote buying.
The top trending articles in nearly every category are further enriching those same whales, there are two up there today, at least, that have over $300 in votes purchased, and it's 17% of the total prize pool being awarded to purchased votes, so, yes, And that whale profit can't be downvoted.
Well Grumpycat has gotten many of the major bidbots to change to the 3 day thing, which while doesn't solve the problem does give us a lot more freedom in flagging trash posts that don't deserve rewards. So while I may not be able to convince a bidbot to change on my own, some people (and groups) can bring about change.
I agree with that, but without reigning in the "reward laundering" where the whales do not subject themselves to scrutiny through self-voting, the bottom of the platform and the top of the platform will continue to grow further apart as users see buying votes the only way to succeed.
No, we manually create, and keep an eye on it. It wouldnt be hard if we wanted to simply stop votes after a certain % has been passed, such as a discord bot (which we do use to for more convenient curating methods)
Well exactly my thought, would make sense If some interesting new faces with good content can trend so that people can at least consume quality content and get to know people who are really putting out their bests,
It's such fantastic idea and well apart from flagging, maybe there can also be a way it could happen as well.
I agree that the trending tab is pure crap for the most part. I did a post about this maybe a month ago. My suggestion is to make a truly organic trending tab the disqualifies anyone from showing up who uses voting bots. If you use voting bots you should show up under promoted. Also, I’d like to see a notification such as “sponsored” to be easily visible to let everyone know votes have been purchased to promote the post. I’m not against vote buying, we just need more transparent disclosure and sorting. Thanks for the post!
All of your ideas you present here are good ones, and old ones. In conversations with top witnesses, and Stinc, I have seen them handwaved away and brushed off. There's a reason for this, and it isn't given, so we have to make our best guess.
Here's some information which can inform your best guess as to why the system is the way it is today. Almost all the stake in Steem that exists was mined before Steemit, or any other front ends, were public. Almost all upvote bots buy delegations from those mined stakes, or are run by those accounts directly, which makes upvote bots and delegations the primary mechanism that produces ROI for whales. 35 of them control the vast majority of Steem extant.
Stinc and the top witnesses are dependent on that stake. Witness votes are stake-weighted, so the whales control the witnesses, and Stinc's market is those whales, who have all the Steem.
Transparent disclosure and sorting is a threat to whales profits, so how likely is it for Stinc and the top witnesses to make that happen?
It's not by mistake that the system is the way it is now.
Maybe someone can make a Front End steemit website implementing this suggestion (like mspsteem or busy.org), I don't think it's that hard for a professional.
The only problem is technically no one gets paid to do that type of stuff directly.The may get votes and in turn make more money, but not directly. To have a dedicated team, in my opinion someone has to be taking a cut of the payouts like DTube at 25%. This way incentives are directly aligned across the board. Steemit was and is a proof of concept. What I’m concerned with is what happens to Steem Power when other platforms using SMTs take off and Steemit.com may not? Steem Power is a direct investment into STEEM. If SMTs do well then I would assume STEEM is doing well...which means my Steem Power is doing well. But, where do I access my Steem Power, STEEM and SBD outside of Steemit.com? Any thoughts?
I didn't think that far... I never thought of this problem SMT can make, though only if Steemit was the in the lower end of popularity between the STEEM sites right?
If that happened, wouldn't STEEM be like the Bitcoin to Altcoins now? Used more than store value and "a price base" than it's initial use as currency.
I don’t think it takes away the allure to tap into STEEMs daily inflation payouts. Steemit might be an easy way for a community to tap into to the cash flow without having to do much. Why mess with that? I’m not sure if all STEEM based apps would go away to start their own SMT. But, I almost have to believe the way it works would be that your Steem Power is accepted across the board. So any app that doesn’t do a SMT will use your current stake of Steem Power to determin your influence on the site. The only way to avoid the current entrenched whale voting groups from influencing your audience and content, you have to create a SMT. Still a lot of confusion there for me, but I’m trying to get a better grasp in it over the coming months. Thanks for the comment!
Which is what happened over a year ago when they introduced promoted posts. People got pissed, and didn't want them in their feed competing. But, somehow, there hasn't been as much of an outcry over this.
As far as I know... Never. It's one of the necessary flaws of the system... But we can still dream, right? It's not totally impossible but almost hard to make it happen if we have a plan. We didn't find one yet.
Has the trending page even been about quality content in the history of Steem?
I could think of at least 3 different effective ways to get the focus on quality content within the Steem eco-system, but there will never be consensus about that, because such routes are usually not attractive for whales.
It's the whales that determine what's trending (simply from calculating the total SP that is backing upvotes, whether the whales delegate or not, it's still their SP and therefore their choice and their responsibility).
I would argue that the accounts powering the bots (delegating their SP) are the true bot owners. Just like berniesanders' accounts power randowhale.
My favourite solution is to upgrade the reputation system and limit maximum rewards based on reputation. Reputation should be determined like we determine our witness votes (https://steemit.com/~witnesses), so instead of reputation gained by massive (bought) upvotes on a post, it's something that can be given and taken-away depending on your actions. When voting for someone as "Good Content Creator" you are vouching for someone. It should also come with a negative option "Bad Actor", which would instantly destroy spammers, scammers and the likes.
This could be good idea actually, I like the reputation system of steamtrades. But the rep in there is basing on only one thing it won't fit with steemit system.
Your idea of voting like a witness is better, I think it can be easily abused (make +1000 accounts and make them +rep people you like and -rep people you don't like.) But it's still a good proposal.
Well, I'm here to tell you, I never had enough SP to upvote myself to 70 and my few experiments with vote buying (very recently and very small) were not helpful in that regard either. I earned every single point in the open market.
Well what would you consider to be true consensus? 1 vote 1 count (the democratic way) isn't going to work either under the current circumstances, since some people have multiple accounts.
And the whole DPOS idea is, that if you have more to lose, you will usually be inclined to opt for the things that positively impact the community more than the ones that are not so much "vested".
While rep is gamable, delivered just like financial rewards and can be bought, it is far less fungible, as it isn't tranferrable as is Steem or SBD. That means hordes of bots won't have the rep to Sybil attack the witnesses with if witness votes are based on rep-weighted votes--unlike the current system which requires only money to control the platform.
While the DPOS idea is sound as far as you take it in the above comment, clearly ROI based on circlejerks, delegation, and bots severely compromises it's ability to influence whales to act so as to benefit the platform as a whole.
The trending page is a view into how DPOS is encouraging good content. A better view is to examine how Steem is increasingly concentrated in accounts that have more of it.
DPOS is the best way to encourage profiteering, not content creation.
It was a lot better in the beginning. At least those who rode the top were doing so based on actual votes and it was all out in the open. And there were more faces than now, when there are many times as many users.
Well, it will be better, or worse, not dependent on the platform, but on how we all manage it. So, as we build and grow, we can make positive change, or let things keep going the way they're going. Come follow me, I'll show you what I mean, man.
Bernie once a week I pay to get a post into trending. It's a panel discussion that supports and grows a specific community like artists, musicians, or lets the community hear from witnesses.
I think the metcalf law approach is correct. Double the number of users and quadruple the price. I'm hosting these events because I think it engages people and helps grow and support the various communities. We need these communities.
Here are my last posts where I didn't post a community event.
$24, 38, 16, 36, 44, 40, 46
Pretty sure that doesn't qualify as pool rape or top author category. There's not an event this Saturday. But there is next week. I'm gonna help that post along too.
It's frustrating you see this as troubling behavior, but you're free to do as you will. I doubt I can convince you otherwise.
Have you looked at my page and the resteems on it? That's the content I choose to promote. How many top trending articles do you see on there that I'm upvoting or resteeming? Pretty sure it's mostly new users and a handful of dev projects that are cool.
He is not wrong, he promotes post that do benefit the community and assuming people who are on steemit more than 1 day still view that cesspit of a trending page, that would be something worth seeing. I like how @mobbs states it and that would be the route to go it seems , do not "punish" a select few , you need to "punish" all equally, because the amount of low ranking bot votes that go out on trash if summed up will probably also equal that of those who can afford the big votes and obviously then show on the radar as a result. Example I don't care how nice pinay is if she relied only on her followers she would be taking quite a hit. But ey once you earn more you gotta keep that wage gap anyway you can. Bots are allowed and I would even go so far as to encourage everyone to use them , but a cap should be made so this in itself results in a distribution of wealth instead of it takes money to make money.
My stance is something like this too... I only use bots on my posts I think they deserve more payout or visibility. I wish everyone uses them that way too.
Bots are allowed and I would even go so far as to encourage everyone to use them , but a cap should be made so this in itself results in a distribution of wealth instead of it takes money to make money.
While I see the problems with Bernie's suggestion. I quit voting for your witness and no longer feel excitement for your minnow program for the same reasons.
Why don't you pick a nice minnow out of your pond each week, let them make the annoucement and vote that shit up! I will back you 100%.
But why do you even need to do this? The bots are what created this almost entire lack of human interaction to begin with. Half the accounts you look at now, have delegated steem, they can't upvote shit, because they've rented out their power. That's not what the design of the platform was based on.
How about guys like this that post a picture of an animal, then tell you about how it is an animal and it likes to eat plants, and can be used for meat, lol. A lot of value added there, thanks for the education:
No where is fair then, thought the idea of decentralised social media is to promote equity but now shortcut has been introduced through bit and vote buying.
Vote buying isn't the root source of the inequality, the pre-mine and wealth imbalances that predated steem or steemit contributed more to the distribution of steem. But vote buying and circular voting by already large accounts does ensure that smaller accounts never see the light of day on the trending page.
In what world does allowing people complete freedom and to just manage each other would there ever be equity? The foundation of this system is no different than that of any other social network, the sheep will always praise the wolve .
Or a less paternalistic way might be the option to filter away posts by percentage of bot upvotes on the trending page. So I can choose to only see posts with less than 50% bot upvotes?
The problem isn't the bots or the existence of whales. The problem is much deeper and it is systemic - what can these whales and their bots do with that power?
Well the answer is obvious - they can use it to amass even more power and at a faster rate than those below them. It is a positive feedback loop which is bound to destroy Steem as it would any other community.
In other words, a comunity where "might is right" is the primary law of the land isn't really a community... It can barely be called a society.
It is not the whales fault, they simply do what is required to survive and prosper in the conditions given to them. And if they refuse to do so, someone else will. Yes, natural selection is a bitch.
So the problem lies firmly in the system, the conditions given to those evolutionary units we call "users", the rules of the game they play. And my prime question is, is it possible to change these rules at this late date? I dont know how steem blockchain relly works under the hood and if it is possible to change how upvotes and (especially) flags function vis-a-vis rewards? Because therein lies the crux of the problem. If the answer is no then I don't see any hope for the platform as the rules of the social game set by it are unsustainable for any social system. Can anyone more knowledgeable provide me with an answer to this question?
All the rules of blockchains and social media platforms are the code. Code is infinitely mutable. The code is what it is, however, for reasons. This is the code those that control the top witnesses want, because it is what makes it possible for them to concentrate more and more Steem into their accounts.
The question isn't really 'can the code be changed', but 'why would they want to change it?'.
Well, it is Game Theory again, isn't it?
The old sheep and wolves equation....
At one point the wolves must stop ravaging the sheep otherwise they will be left without food and starve. At the moment, the sheep seem to be willing to come in, but this can change quite rapidly. It would be interesting to see what are the retention rates for the platform.
(btw "sheep and wolves" isn't anything derogatory. Sheep are members of the society who tend towards altruism while wolves tend towards selfishness. Any healthy and stable society needs both in order to survive and progress.)
The system has been gamed for the wolves, from the beginning. Now it is all up to them - either they realize that it is to their best interest to be at least a bit altruistic and so keep the equilibrium or they will self-destruct. In this case history can't help us in our predictions because it can really go either way... Rapa Nui or Byzantium. Who knows? Whatever happens I don't think it will go quietly, without some kind of upheaval or revolution. That is the only historical constant in similar societal cases.
The bot owners are seeking maximum profitability for their wallets.. I guess they won't do anything to lose some of their income unless you offer them an alternative option?
We implemented this out of common sense at steemstem, with no single individual (including curators, managers, founders, but not including the community account which adds funds to VP etc) able to pass 2.75% of out total curation weight. If one reaches that, we either give minimal upvotes or none until they fall back down based on the steemreports 14 day average.
It ain't that hard
Makes good sense unless someone is a big fat bloated greedy whale.
Then we work together as a group and flag the greedy whale, just as stated in the white paper.
Except if the whale has more steem power than you.
I am going to assume you have not read the whitepaper, otherwise you wouldn't have made that statement.
In the white paper in the subsection named voter abuse under the section voting to distribute the currency (I believe thats what its called, could be wrong but I am going off of memory) it states something along the following:
If a large stakeholder is abusing their voting share than many smaller shareholders can work together to nullify the rewards.
It also says in that section (above this) that negative-voting (downvote/flag) is there to stop such abuse such as: collusive voting, self-voting, etc.
It is really a good read for the hypothetical situation at what steem was intended to be and you should probably read it. I mean, steem is a lot different than what was initially planned but still. Even still it is a good read!
No, they can't, a 50.01% share of the stake would be invincible. Nothing you said negates his point.
No whale has 125 million SP, many would fight to prevent a whale from getting 125 million SP.... As well, due to how rewards are given, if a whale had 125 million SP... His vote would be worth around $1, why? Because the reward pool would be gone.
You have some errors in your basic assumptions of how the reward pool works.
More than all the minnows put together.
I was looking for this information. Thanks for the scale!
Right, when you can't get 100 people to upvote a post encouraging people to manage their own votes, you're going to get enough votes to correct a bernie, or a grumpycat? Good luck with that. If you figure out how, please share.
There are whales out there upvoting themselves to $300+ and you are concerned with someone that voted themselves to around $30 and got another $14 from their followers...
Anyways large pools of voters do go after and attempt to counter whale votes, some go after grumpycat, some go after bernie, and some go after others. The problem in most cases isn't that people don't want to vote, its that some groups of people are dumb enough to say "Flagging is violent and stealing" which convinces many that it is evil when it isn't. Maybe if people were educated, from day 1, that voting on something, up or down, is something they choose to do. If they think that a post is overvalued to negatively vote it and if its undervalued to positively vote it, as well to accurately teach them about curation (a lot of things I see still tell people to vote on posts that are valued high because they are more likely to gain curation rewards) and so much more... then when they do learn the truth about these things they feel cheated.
Ever thought that those posts encouraging people to manage their votes just weren't that good and didn't deserve that much for rewards, in other peoples eyes? Like there are so many reasons why people do and don't vote stuff, and quite often they are more likely to vote on controversial issues where you can get their heart into it, like say some user is raping the reward pool (gets a lot of people triggered enough to go vote)
Play your articles to the crowd.
Maybe this argument will make more sense if I use my main account. I'm not a beginner here. I've been around a while. And yeah, I'm concerned about vote buying.
The top trending articles in nearly every category are further enriching those same whales, there are two up there today, at least, that have over $300 in votes purchased, and it's 17% of the total prize pool being awarded to purchased votes, so, yes, And that whale profit can't be downvoted.
Well Grumpycat has gotten many of the major bidbots to change to the 3 day thing, which while doesn't solve the problem does give us a lot more freedom in flagging trash posts that don't deserve rewards. So while I may not be able to convince a bidbot to change on my own, some people (and groups) can bring about change.
I agree with that, but without reigning in the "reward laundering" where the whales do not subject themselves to scrutiny through self-voting, the bottom of the platform and the top of the platform will continue to grow further apart as users see buying votes the only way to succeed.
you should make this comment into a "how to be successful in steemit" article 5 stars
which bot is this? i may actually use the bot if it is set up like you say. i did not see @steemstem on steembottracker.
No, we manually create, and keep an eye on it. It wouldnt be hard if we wanted to simply stop votes after a certain % has been passed, such as a discord bot (which we do use to for more convenient curating methods)
@mobbs yes but due to low ROI some time bots are not so profitable :(
Posted using Partiko Android
Well exactly my thought, would make sense If some interesting new faces with good content can trend so that people can at least consume quality content and get to know people who are really putting out their bests,
It's such fantastic idea and well apart from flagging, maybe there can also be a way it could happen as well.
I agree that the trending tab is pure crap for the most part. I did a post about this maybe a month ago. My suggestion is to make a truly organic trending tab the disqualifies anyone from showing up who uses voting bots. If you use voting bots you should show up under promoted. Also, I’d like to see a notification such as “sponsored” to be easily visible to let everyone know votes have been purchased to promote the post. I’m not against vote buying, we just need more transparent disclosure and sorting. Thanks for the post!
All of your ideas you present here are good ones, and old ones. In conversations with top witnesses, and Stinc, I have seen them handwaved away and brushed off. There's a reason for this, and it isn't given, so we have to make our best guess.
Here's some information which can inform your best guess as to why the system is the way it is today. Almost all the stake in Steem that exists was mined before Steemit, or any other front ends, were public. Almost all upvote bots buy delegations from those mined stakes, or are run by those accounts directly, which makes upvote bots and delegations the primary mechanism that produces ROI for whales. 35 of them control the vast majority of Steem extant.
Stinc and the top witnesses are dependent on that stake. Witness votes are stake-weighted, so the whales control the witnesses, and Stinc's market is those whales, who have all the Steem.
Transparent disclosure and sorting is a threat to whales profits, so how likely is it for Stinc and the top witnesses to make that happen?
It's not by mistake that the system is the way it is now.
Thanks!
Maybe someone can make a Front End steemit website implementing this suggestion (like mspsteem or busy.org), I don't think it's that hard for a professional.
The only problem is technically no one gets paid to do that type of stuff directly.The may get votes and in turn make more money, but not directly. To have a dedicated team, in my opinion someone has to be taking a cut of the payouts like DTube at 25%. This way incentives are directly aligned across the board. Steemit was and is a proof of concept. What I’m concerned with is what happens to Steem Power when other platforms using SMTs take off and Steemit.com may not? Steem Power is a direct investment into STEEM. If SMTs do well then I would assume STEEM is doing well...which means my Steem Power is doing well. But, where do I access my Steem Power, STEEM and SBD outside of Steemit.com? Any thoughts?
I didn't think that far... I never thought of this problem SMT can make, though only if Steemit was the in the lower end of popularity between the STEEM sites right?
If that happened, wouldn't STEEM be like the Bitcoin to Altcoins now? Used more than store value and "a price base" than it's initial use as currency.
I don’t think it takes away the allure to tap into STEEMs daily inflation payouts. Steemit might be an easy way for a community to tap into to the cash flow without having to do much. Why mess with that? I’m not sure if all STEEM based apps would go away to start their own SMT. But, I almost have to believe the way it works would be that your Steem Power is accepted across the board. So any app that doesn’t do a SMT will use your current stake of Steem Power to determin your influence on the site. The only way to avoid the current entrenched whale voting groups from influencing your audience and content, you have to create a SMT. Still a lot of confusion there for me, but I’m trying to get a better grasp in it over the coming months. Thanks for the comment!
Which is what happened over a year ago when they introduced promoted posts. People got pissed, and didn't want them in their feed competing. But, somehow, there hasn't been as much of an outcry over this.
Has the trending page even been about quality content in the history of Steem?
Or are we longing back to days that never even existed?
As far as I know... Never. It's one of the necessary flaws of the system... But we can still dream, right? It's not totally impossible but almost hard to make it happen if we have a plan. We didn't find one yet.
Necessary flaws?
I could think of at least 3 different effective ways to get the focus on quality content within the Steem eco-system, but there will never be consensus about that, because such routes are usually not attractive for whales.
It's the whales that determine what's trending (simply from calculating the total SP that is backing upvotes, whether the whales delegate or not, it's still their SP and therefore their choice and their responsibility).
I would argue that the accounts powering the bots (delegating their SP) are the true bot owners. Just like berniesanders' accounts power randowhale.
That's part of what I meant... But you made a good point:
Can you tell me about them briefly? or give me a link to them if there was any?
Because I have ideas too, myself but rather than focusing on good content, they would just make the bad content easier to ignore.
My favourite solution is to upgrade the reputation system and limit maximum rewards based on reputation. Reputation should be determined like we determine our witness votes (https://steemit.com/~witnesses), so instead of reputation gained by massive (bought) upvotes on a post, it's something that can be given and taken-away depending on your actions. When voting for someone as "Good Content Creator" you are vouching for someone. It should also come with a negative option "Bad Actor", which would instantly destroy spammers, scammers and the likes.
https://steemit.com/utopian-io/@fitzgibbon/proposal-maximum-rewards-based-on-reputation
This could be good idea actually, I like the reputation system of steamtrades. But the rep in there is basing on only one thing it won't fit with steemit system.
Your idea of voting like a witness is better, I think it can be easily abused (make +1000 accounts and make them +rep people you like and -rep people you don't like.) But it's still a good proposal.
Witness votes are stake-weighted, and 'Good Quality Content Creator' would also be stake weighted.
Create 1000 accounts and you have gained no extra reputation.
Did you check how witness votes work in Steem right now?
No I didn't ... I thought everyone had the same input. Maybe I should research it sometime.
Well, I'm here to tell you, I never had enough SP to upvote myself to 70 and my few experiments with vote buying (very recently and very small) were not helpful in that regard either. I earned every single point in the open market.
Well then Mark, you seem to be the exception. Maybe I was generalizing, so good point!
Oh and well done by the way!
The only reason there can never be true consensus on steemit, is the weighted vote prevents it.
Well what would you consider to be true consensus? 1 vote 1 count (the democratic way) isn't going to work either under the current circumstances, since some people have multiple accounts.
And the whole DPOS idea is, that if you have more to lose, you will usually be inclined to opt for the things that positively impact the community more than the ones that are not so much "vested".
While rep is gamable, delivered just like financial rewards and can be bought, it is far less fungible, as it isn't tranferrable as is Steem or SBD. That means hordes of bots won't have the rep to Sybil attack the witnesses with if witness votes are based on rep-weighted votes--unlike the current system which requires only money to control the platform.
While the DPOS idea is sound as far as you take it in the above comment, clearly ROI based on circlejerks, delegation, and bots severely compromises it's ability to influence whales to act so as to benefit the platform as a whole.
The trending page is a view into how DPOS is encouraging good content. A better view is to examine how Steem is increasingly concentrated in accounts that have more of it.
DPOS is the best way to encourage profiteering, not content creation.
Too bad I can't resteem a comment.
I'm not even looking for consensus on post votes, but there should be a better way for us to weigh in on the platform and how it's run.
It was a lot better in the beginning. At least those who rode the top were doing so based on actual votes and it was all out in the open. And there were more faces than now, when there are many times as many users.
I wish I was around at Steemit in 2016! Feels like I'm late to the party, I don't always feel the best is yet to come!
I do usually think the best is yet to come for Steem, but sometimes I see things here that make me doubt my confirmation bias.
Well, it will be better, or worse, not dependent on the platform, but on how we all manage it. So, as we build and grow, we can make positive change, or let things keep going the way they're going. Come follow me, I'll show you what I mean, man.
I follow you Mark, lead me into fields of gold and realms where content is king!
BAHAHAHAHAHAHA! If you find it, send me gps coordinates, I seem to be lost at the moment.
Bernie once a week I pay to get a post into trending. It's a panel discussion that supports and grows a specific community like artists, musicians, or lets the community hear from witnesses.
I think the metcalf law approach is correct. Double the number of users and quadruple the price. I'm hosting these events because I think it engages people and helps grow and support the various communities. We need these communities.
Here are my last posts where I didn't post a community event.
$24, 38, 16, 36, 44, 40, 46
Pretty sure that doesn't qualify as pool rape or top author category. There's not an event this Saturday. But there is next week. I'm gonna help that post along too.
It's frustrating you see this as troubling behavior, but you're free to do as you will. I doubt I can convince you otherwise.
You can’t, mainly because I don’t see circle jerk content at the top of trending contributing to what you claim you’re trying to accomplish here.
And THAT is the content you choose to promote.
Have you looked at my page and the resteems on it? That's the content I choose to promote. How many top trending articles do you see on there that I'm upvoting or resteeming? Pretty sure it's mostly new users and a handful of dev projects that are cool.
I stopped looking at your page once I realized your true intentions here.
My true intentions? what are those Bernie?
You can view how I delegate 70k+ of my 80k SP here: http://steemreports.com/delegation-info/?account=aggroed
You can view how I control a 120k SP account and don't use it to self vote. There's exactly 1 self-vote in the last two weeks, and I actually think it's a mistake by one of the mods with access:
http://steemreports.com/outgoing-votes-info/?account=minnowsupport&days=14
A lot of what you do is solid. This attack is just weird...
And the other 99% go to Steemit circle-jerk content, I actually wish I didn't take look at your page now...
Can you site examples here Bernie? My wall is filled with minnow resteems and votes. You're barking up the wrong tree here.
I think this one being in your feed says enough... https://steemit.com/steem/@timcliff/the-steem-shilling-contest-round-2-300-steem-in-prizes
Did you read the post? Do you encourage your followers to "shill" something like this, misleading people into coming here?
"Steem has paid out over $20,000,000 in rewards to users since June 2016."
He is not wrong, he promotes post that do benefit the community and assuming people who are on steemit more than 1 day still view that cesspit of a trending page, that would be something worth seeing. I like how @mobbs states it and that would be the route to go it seems , do not "punish" a select few , you need to "punish" all equally, because the amount of low ranking bot votes that go out on trash if summed up will probably also equal that of those who can afford the big votes and obviously then show on the radar as a result. Example I don't care how nice pinay is if she relied only on her followers she would be taking quite a hit. But ey once you earn more you gotta keep that wage gap anyway you can. Bots are allowed and I would even go so far as to encourage everyone to use them , but a cap should be made so this in itself results in a distribution of wealth instead of it takes money to make money.
My stance is something like this too... I only use bots on my posts I think they deserve more payout or visibility. I wish everyone uses them that way too.
While I see the problems with Bernie's suggestion. I quit voting for your witness and no longer feel excitement for your minnow program for the same reasons.
Why don't you pick a nice minnow out of your pond each week, let them make the annoucement and vote that shit up! I will back you 100%.
Anyway, none of my business, but it is annoying.
But why do you even need to do this? The bots are what created this almost entire lack of human interaction to begin with. Half the accounts you look at now, have delegated steem, they can't upvote shit, because they've rented out their power. That's not what the design of the platform was based on.
How about guys like this that post a picture of an animal, then tell you about how it is an animal and it likes to eat plants, and can be used for meat, lol. A lot of value added there, thanks for the education:
https://steemit.com/@saleem12
Haha! This is camel, camel has hump! Riveting!
Could be a plan. Tough to list the 'top 50 rewarded' authors as I guess it changes week to week - or perhaps not!?
A 'non-promoted' trending/hot page would be nice too?
This list rarely changes. It’s been the same people for the past year at this point.
No where is fair then, thought the idea of decentralised social media is to promote equity but now shortcut has been introduced through bit and vote buying.
Vote buying isn't the root source of the inequality, the pre-mine and wealth imbalances that predated steem or steemit contributed more to the distribution of steem. But vote buying and circular voting by already large accounts does ensure that smaller accounts never see the light of day on the trending page.
In what world does allowing people complete freedom and to just manage each other would there ever be equity? The foundation of this system is no different than that of any other social network, the sheep will always praise the wolve .
Not sure how to solve this issue, but there definitely is a problem.
Or a less paternalistic way might be the option to filter away posts by percentage of bot upvotes on the trending page. So I can choose to only see posts with less than 50% bot upvotes?
The problem isn't the bots or the existence of whales. The problem is much deeper and it is systemic - what can these whales and their bots do with that power?
Well the answer is obvious - they can use it to amass even more power and at a faster rate than those below them. It is a positive feedback loop which is bound to destroy Steem as it would any other community.
In other words, a comunity where "might is right" is the primary law of the land isn't really a community... It can barely be called a society.
It is not the whales fault, they simply do what is required to survive and prosper in the conditions given to them. And if they refuse to do so, someone else will. Yes, natural selection is a bitch.
So the problem lies firmly in the system, the conditions given to those evolutionary units we call "users", the rules of the game they play. And my prime question is, is it possible to change these rules at this late date? I dont know how steem blockchain relly works under the hood and if it is possible to change how upvotes and (especially) flags function vis-a-vis rewards? Because therein lies the crux of the problem. If the answer is no then I don't see any hope for the platform as the rules of the social game set by it are unsustainable for any social system. Can anyone more knowledgeable provide me with an answer to this question?
All the rules of blockchains and social media platforms are the code. Code is infinitely mutable. The code is what it is, however, for reasons. This is the code those that control the top witnesses want, because it is what makes it possible for them to concentrate more and more Steem into their accounts.
The question isn't really 'can the code be changed', but 'why would they want to change it?'.
Well, it is Game Theory again, isn't it?
The old sheep and wolves equation....
At one point the wolves must stop ravaging the sheep otherwise they will be left without food and starve. At the moment, the sheep seem to be willing to come in, but this can change quite rapidly. It would be interesting to see what are the retention rates for the platform.
(btw "sheep and wolves" isn't anything derogatory. Sheep are members of the society who tend towards altruism while wolves tend towards selfishness. Any healthy and stable society needs both in order to survive and progress.)
The system has been gamed for the wolves, from the beginning. Now it is all up to them - either they realize that it is to their best interest to be at least a bit altruistic and so keep the equilibrium or they will self-destruct. In this case history can't help us in our predictions because it can really go either way... Rapa Nui or Byzantium. Who knows? Whatever happens I don't think it will go quietly, without some kind of upheaval or revolution. That is the only historical constant in similar societal cases.
Hey Bernie, what do you think of this idea/solution to your problem, maybe?
https://steemit.com/steemit/@friendly-fenix/proposal-of-features-for-steemit-difficulty-levels
Congratulations @friendly-fenix! You have received a vote as part of @friendly-fenix donation to this project.
I will be able to help more #minnows
The bot owners are seeking maximum profitability for their wallets.. I guess they won't do anything to lose some of their income unless you offer them an alternative option?