how are you protecting the reward pool by flagging a post that was worth just a few SBD, only to reward yourself with >$80 for doing so?? Do you honestly believe you earned that?
Look at the ~95% garbage that @sneaky-ninja sell votes on.
https://steemit.com/@sneaky-ninja/transfers
I consider it more fair to let people who invested into Steem claim their respective share of the reward pool than to let vote selling bots, most of them just renting their Steem power, make money while attracting nothing at stake, opportunist spammers by selling them profitable votes that are harder to flag and currently provides near zero promotional benefits.
Sample chats from "The Resistance" Discord:
Michael David = @neaky-ninja
Did it ever crossed your mind that we can instead, at any time, send tips directly to the authors?
You two can't be trusted to think straight anymore.
Until I have any SP you will remain in my cross-hair.
Reward-pool doesn't suddenly empty out. Maybe a more knowledgeable person like witness @drakos can explain that to you.
Look at that spineless @MichelDavid, flagging this post but too moron to respond anything.
So in the name of "surprise payouts" this guy is unwilling to comply with the 3.5 day rule? Seems fishy.
ETA: Last minute upvotes (from everyone, not just bots) from the last 3 days total 298.33. Comment self-votes from grumpy during the same period total more than 1106.86. In the next 7 days, he's scheduled to make 3,697.65 SBD mainly from self-voted comments.
In all actuality, michaeldavid probably has more of a problem with the rule itself as it is being enforced without any discussion or input from him or anyone else for that matter. Why 3.5? Why not 3.6? Why not 3.25? Why not one? If this "rule" comes from the top of some unknown's head, what's to stop him from suddenly changing his mind? He is not bound to the people he proclaims to govern. Lastly, his solution will do very little by itself to stop the behavior he hopes to eliminate. He has not communicated or committed to any follow on actions on his part. he has not said "If you cut the votes to 3.5 days that will give me enough time to go through and downvote all of the spam." or anything like that to my knowledge. He has resisted efforts to work together with the bots for a solution. That's probably why sneaky won't simply cave to these demands.
He has said that by cutting the votes to 3.5 days that it will give curators enough time to go through and downvote all of the spam. He has said it.
It's not that 3.6 or 3.4 days or 1 day or 1 hour or 1 second. It's that curators would like more than 12 hours to stop plagiarists. It absolutely will make a difference!
A post does not need to be upvoted via a bid-bot on the sixth day. I know some honest people do it to give their voters better curation, as well as surprising unknown quality authors with a last-minute payout.
I watch plagiarists do this all the time. Having 12 hours to get the word out is not enough time. By the time any waves are made, the abuser has already been paid.
From the second a post is made, the community has 7 days to determine if it's original and not overpaid. When someone sneaks in and upvotes last minute on an obviously stolen picture or video, it gives less than 12 hours for a post that was buried and nobody paid it any attention. The plagiarist is not happy with his false efforts, so he pays for an upvote and benefits from the rewards paying out 12 hours later.
They would be less likely to use upvote bots, and more likely to find a different way to exploit so as to not get caught, but at least the bidbots would be cleaned up a bit.
Where is the discussion from the curators in which the 3.5 line was determined? Shouldn't the bot owners also have a say in that discussion? Also, why limit such a target to bots? Don't regular users like sweetsjj or whatever her name is do the same thing? What about solutions the bots have already implemented such as a 5 day limit? Is 12 hours enough time to get word to the bot owners themselves? I would think so. Has grumpy enlisted their help before trying to bully them into submission?
I am a curator and did discuss it with myself.
Self-curator discussing things with yourself?
My point exactly. You haven't proven yourself to be a rational decision maker in a vacuum. You need help. Just ask any of your victims.
His idea to stop the abuse is rational. His decision to take matters into his own hands, when nobody is doing anything about it is also rational.
Or are you saying that doing nothing is rational?
Once again. sticks head in sand
It is irrational to damage others in order to damage an entity you haven't tried to engage with to come up with a solution to your perceived problem.
I think those who believe nobody is doing anything about it are the ones with their heads in the sand.
If you were paying attention you would realize that plenty of people are in fact doing a lot about it. Those of us that are have even offered countless times for him too join us in the fight against bot abuse. Proof? Read sneaky ninjas last post.
Two things about the time limit...
First, there are simply not enough people curating good or bad posts for it to make a difference.
Second, as grumpy has hypocritically pointed out, it shouldn't be the communities job. It's the responsibility of the bot owners themselves.
Why make you guys spend countless hours combing our lists when we could simply keep an active and shared blacklist? Thus preventing the community from wasting so much time on something that is our job to clean up.
Had grumpy or anyone else bothered to talk to us, they would have found out that before he started his rampage, we had collectively started working on just that.
If you care to know that is finally very close to becoming reality. I've just picked up a list of over 25k abusive accounts from steemcleaners, added it to my blacklist and passed it to any bot owners willing to use it.
The issue here is that all our hard work goes un noticed unless we post about it. Grumpy crusade actually slowed that down because now the community is in an uproar and I'm now having to defend myself instead of work on the issue.
If you took the time to look you would notice that this point is already nearly mute because our lists of bidders has been cleaned up significantly. This is due to all the work that myself and other owners have been doing behind the scenes that we have not had time, or felt the need to post about.
Although I can see the humour in the comment, do you think its worth 76 bucks?!
Did you know it takes 4000 100% self-upvotes to get your investment back instead of power down? Do you think @grumpycat should've invested the over 300k in SP into something else, a voting bot for example, to get more return from the scammers? Do your math, and stop complaining about self-upvoting.
I have a friend who is fed Friskies, I have tried to get her to switch to something better like Ziwi Peak but insists Friskies is the best.
Any suggestions on getting her to switch?
Well it's been an on-going debate/discussion for at least 2 months now. He obviously didn't give a sufficient warning as even to this day not everyone has heard of this new unofficial rule. Let's just call it a guideline with more potential as opposed to a rule. People around here seem to hate rules of any kind.
If I really spent the time I could find countless articles (as well as upvotes, indicating "hey, I agree with this" where people are saying what grumpycat is doing is both good and bad. Even I have said it. Yup, the bully approach sucks. I don't agree with it.
Seems any approach is frowned upon though....
When people are nice about it, the abuser typically laughs while he runs off with his unearned rewards.
When people are mean, wow he's so mean. How dare he act like this.
Sticks head back in sand
So if we as a community (or you) (or the bot owners) (we can exclude me if you want) can't come up with some kind of agreement, then this platform is screwed.
Don't change anything to 3.5 day. Everybody ignore the millionaire cat.
Just ignore the reasons, ignore the abuse. Ignore everything.
Just let him flag and maybe he'll go away after a year or two.
Here’s the thing, though — @grumpycat flat out refuses to work with anyone else to collectively address these issues and find viable solutions.
The abuse is most certainly not being ignored. As far as I’ve seen, no one disagrees that the problem he’s combating is significant — most everyone takes issue with how he’s doing it, particularly his insistence on self-voting.
If the ultimate success of this platform is truly a motivating factor, then why so stubbornly insist on doing it alone? Why refuse to even consider combining forces? When has that ever worked, historically?
I said something nearly identical to your above words just yesterday, in a comment to @berniesanders : if we can’t figure out how to unify around our shared goals, than I fear Steemit’s days are numbered.
Good point! Thanks for your response, I'm glad that I'm not the only one that sees that we need to be more unified. Great minds think alike!
I was being sarcastic when I said ignore the abuse or that it is being completely ignored.
We all have an issue with how he's doing it. I can also say I had an issue with how it was being handled before @grumpycat started his...campaign.
It's a lot of bickering back and forth. If we want steemit to be taken seriously, we need to get serious.
I wasn't fully aware that he was unwilling to work with anyone.
Work with us who are at least willing to work with you, @grumpycat.
I should clarify — he’s (or possibly she) unwilling to work with anyone who doesn’t blindly agree with his approach. As well, if you read my other comments on this thread — we’re inviting him to join a live panel discussion — a healthy debate — so that these things can be openly addressed. Everyone else is ready and willing... @grumpycat flat out refuses. I also invited @berniesanders, whose response was simply ’meh.’
So — we’ve got at least a couple powerful whales championing their causes alone, complaining that no one else is willing to properly address their chosen battles, yet patently refusing to discuss the issues openly, in any kind of productive manner.
Instead, we have all these disjointed, peripheral threads of petty flag wars and mudslinging — like we’re in fucking high school.
To the less seasoned Steemians among us, it just looks like a buncha insecure teenagers, all vying for king of the mountain, shoving everyone else aside as they jostle their way to the top.
I'm glad I'm not the only person that thinks tipping is a more sustainable alternative to a reward pool allocated to authors and curators.
In it's current form, $65 Million USD is paid to authors and curators in a single year. I wonder how much of it ends up in the hands of abusers? I wonder how long is this sustainable?
Replacing the reward pool for authors and curators system with a tipping system could save the future of Steemit. I know it's a unpopular idea among authors and curators, but if the whole system collapses within a few years, you won't have any reward pool at all to receive a share from.
What would be the incentive to invest?
I see three stages of the tipping system.
Stage 1: Investors tip authors to incentivize the production of quality content.
Stage 2: General public is drawn to the quality content. Some of them buy Steem to be able to participate more than it is possible for the initial 0.50 Steem.
Stage 3: Corporations, institutions, even governments start using Steemit to influence the general public. They need to buy Steem to promote their content.
When conflicting interests start to battle on Steemit, it comes down to who spends more Steem to get to the trending tab and the homepage of Steemit. Think about the elections, candidates, and their supporters.
That interest increases the demand on Steem and higher demand results in higher Steem prices. That's how investors profit from this cycle.
I explained this in greater detail in a post called How to Solve the Reward Pool Abuse Problem Once and For All and that post ignited some discussions so far in the comment section.
I'll head over to that thread some time today. My initial questions and concerns are:
This site currently gives money away for free. I am skeptical as to whether content quality will draw more to it. Why would they need Steem to do this model? Why not institute it with FIAT?
Money is value. Quality content is value as well. Also, it takes significant money to make significant money here. Many newbies realize that after their first week here.
I think you underestimate the amount of people on here now because of the free money who have became crypto enthusiasts after joining Steem/Steemit. I wonder if they would have come if they were told "They give you a little of money to tip with, then you have to buy it yourself."
The incentive for me to invest in crypto for the purposes of giving it away are slim. I'd rather they just have a paypal account and I could send it to them directly rather than having to go through an exchange (fees) for the purpose of donating it to content I like.
The speculative nature of the coin can only last for so long before it levels out, when it does, so does the site.
It depends on perspective. I know a lot of people in other countries find the money earned to be rather agreeable. I consider my earnings so far to be rather significant considering my super duper small monetary investment. Of course, I do not depend on income from Steem in any way.
I agree that content has value, but not as much as relationships. The current system encourages relationships much more than yours would.
I know it seems like I'm being rather negative...and I guess I am, but I do appreciate this out of the box thinking. I just have my doubts about its feasibility.
Have you ever tried to get data from @tipu? They basically run a similar service here on Steem already. Perhaps they will be willing to give you data on their usership.
@grumpycat — hello again. I sent you a message on discord but you’ve gone silent there. Sooo — I’m bringin’ it here, in hopes it’ll reach you.
That thing I suggested in my last reply...about a public discussion — everyone’s on board but you. All agree that your voice is important and should be present, however, we may proceed with a panel, with or without your participation, to discuss the issues that I know you care deeply about. I realize you may be averse to anything that might reveal who you are, so likelihood is low that you’ll agree, but I really do hope you’ll consider it. You have valid motivations and reasons for acting as you do. Perhaps folks will feel less defensive and appalled if they hear your explanations — if they hear the human behind the meme.
I’ll say it again — ultimately, we all want Steemit to thrive — I’m certain we can at least agree on that. To that end, all this passive/aggressive back and forth via comments and replies is unproductive. Can’t we at least try to find the similarities behind our differences?
@drakos @michaeldavid @aggroed — thoughts?
There is no debate to be had, ignorant customers are paying for the stubbornness of a few greedy and irresponsible bot owner.
Take the sum of my comments and line them up again't these bots argument if you think there is interest. Would upvote that.
As I also said above:
Fuck you GrumpyCat. Hope your power down is going well. Someone is talking about you, and I overheard that you dug your own grave by posting that real GrumpyCat lawsuit article. Now they have been turned onto the idea of pressing similar charges on you....and look at all that profit you have for them to scoop up. Hmm....I wonder if the court could freeze your account until it's all settled in a couple years?
Something blockchain something something.
Something bittrex something something.
And what are you going to do?
That may hide his identity, but it doesn't stop steemit from being forced to freeze his assets. Guess he would have to show himself if he wanted the assets to be claimed as his/her own.
Hey lickass why are you getting involved in something that is not your business, I am going to start flagging you from my other account that has more that 35,000 followers, so that close your mouth, or open it and go lick the Korean's ass for pennies.
Chinese Scammer @haejin Is A Little Japanese Fudge Packer (Flag @haejin Jackass)
https://steemit.com/life/@emmajoy/chinese-scammer-haejin-is-a-japanese-little-fudge-packer
p.s. Go freeze the Korean @haejin Jackass.
Grumpy,
I know you probably want to protect your position in the witness ranks, but at some point you have to stand up for what you believe in. You can't do that cowering behind a fake personna. At some point, you will have to take the honorable route. If you believe in your cause, don't be afraid to stand up, put your name on it, and engage in the debate. State your piece. Stop running away and hiding behind your money.
Smart...
https://steemit.com/serious-security/@fyrstikken/the-joy-of-flashing-the-steem-account-value
So you ARE a pussy, I got that one right.
ChumpyFAT
lmao
No cat, spineless is plagiarizing somebody's famous cat pic, and being an anonymous fucking coward like YOU bitch!
@grumpycat
This is from the Steem Whitepaper:
Maybe a more knowledgeable person like witness @drakos, or me, or just about anybody who took the time to RTFM before appointing themselves chief of steem police could explain that to you. If you had been more proactive in your investigation, you would realize that most investors lose on their investment but like @zipporah chose as a last resort to buy anyway in hopes of some exposure. See, though equal, in order for us to "claim our respective share of the reward pool" we need collaboration from other users. Since you whales are too busy claiming your shares to worry about us, we must resort to such tools in order to gain exposure for the equity we've put in.
When you use bystanders as pawns in your ill-planned scheme to change behavior, you can expect that they take that as an insult. So you should trust that they will be inclined to insult you in return.
ETA: upvoted for visibility. I will reverse my upvote in a few days. Feel free to remind me.
Posts get near zero extra exposure by buying votes after 2 days, imagine at the 3.5 to 6th...
Will for sure remind you.
It depends on how you're looking at it. If I were checking out @zipporah's blog 8 days ago, I would probably notice that "Choosing Life" was considerably higher than her other posts at that time. Seeing that, I might be inclined to look at it more deeply. I'm not saying it's always right, it's probably wrong more than right, but I'm against such sweeping reforms which sweep up the insignificant innocent along with the weeds. Anyway, my point was that you could get rid of the bots altogether if it wasn't so difficult for good content to get noticed. You're fighting for a bandaid to use on a small cut instead of searching for a pressure point to stop the bleeding.
No need. It's done. It would be nice if you did the same. I personally feel the sweat equity for my comment far outweighs any value added by yours. You lose a lot of credibility talking about abuse when you are steadily upvoting such small comments for 80 bucks. Frankly, I'd rather reward the scammers, at least they're likely to increase usership.
Upvoted for more visibility
FD.
We "can't be trusted to think straight anymore"? Funny cat, your hypocrisy amuses me. Why don't you become a witness and share you magnificent wisdom with the rest of us. We'll see who will vote for you.
P.S. I'd like to see you flex your muscles against someone bigger than you who is using the same bid bots like the rest, and upvoting shit posts every day. You know who I'm talking about. But you are spineless and prefer to bully the weak.
no
Show your face, coward pussy fucktard, come on, pussy, you can even bring your mom to hide behind, tho she too should be fucking called out for not aborting you.
Yeah cowardly little child, as repeatedly demonstrated.
NO BALLS is why we call you a PUSSY!
Oh so you are an admitted moron?
See – I knew you were a reasonable human beneath your gruff exterior. Thank you for showing up – for answering me – for demonstrating your ability to avoid being petty. I sincerely appreciate your willingness to clarify.
This whole thing has taught / is teaching me so much. I've got a lot to learn about how this all works and how best to conduct myself on this platform. Still, I do think it's dangerous to take bits of a private chat and share them, out-of-context – regardless who's 'right' or 'wrong.' That is true no matter the platform or circumstance. It's far too easy to extract only the bits that support your argument, while conveniently leaving out the parts that don't.
I was actually present during the above dialogue and the breadth of it did not read as negatively as these screenshots seem to insinuate. Of course, I'm not nearly as invested as you are here, so my perception is perhaps not as fueled by a need to protect my stake, as yours must understandably be.
To be honest – as someone just entering into this game, one who retains something of a broader perspective – I think my lack of stake may afford me a decidedly less emotional view.
No – I don't really know either of you (GC nor SN), but...I sincerely believe you're battling over a misunderstanding of one another's motives. I think you're actually on the same team. Perhaps you approach things from different angles, but – to a humble redfish such as myself – you appear to be far more alike than you are different.
All this peripheral bickering isn't really productive. Perhaps it's time for some kind of public gathering of apparently opposing sides – to directly address and confront the issues together? Maybe a debate style panel on @msp-waves? I know I'd be the first to show up and listen to that. Think of how far that could go to even the playing field – to openly discuss options and hash out differing ideas about best practices.
I just can't shake this feeling that, differences aside – we all want the same thing – for Steemit to continue growing and become a tremendous success. Whatever we can do to unite around that truth...let's do that.
Maybe I have too much faith in our collective humanity. What can I say – I didn't earn the nickname 'the ziplomat' for nothin'.
There is no debate to be had, ignorant customers are paying for the stubbornness of a few greedy and irresponsible bot owner.
Take the sum of my comments and line them up again't these bots argument if you think there is interest. Would upvote that.
To clarify — it’s not the issues themselves that require debate, but how best to combat/handle them. As no one is technically in charge, shouldn’t we collectively be proposing/agreeing upon solutions? If our underlying goals are the same, which I sincerely believe they are — wouldn’t we be wise to combine our efforts rather than fight over who’s approach is best?
Not interested.
Not interested because...? You believe you’ve found the only and best way to deal with ’the bad guys’? Or...you disagree that we all want Steemit to succeed?
ps — there’s a marked difference between argument and debate — the former is petty and unwilling to consider alternatives — the latter is (ideally) much more grounded, open to hearing perspectives that may not reflect those of a given side.
The sum of your comments still produces a divide by zero error, you fucking ZERO.
The sum of your reward pool robbing ignorance is STILL ZERO brain cells and a stolen name because you are nothing but a shitfaced thief and scumbag piece of rat fecal matter.
In your last 10 comments you sound like that dumb old cat.
Qapla'
LOL
Hey cat add another witness to the list out to ensure your early demise. Fuck off maybe "pussy" ?
Your point? Are you also too clueless to know that the reward pool doesn't just empty out because @Grumpycat makes so many valuable comments?
Hey, I'm not the anonymous pussy scaredy cat, assfacecat, My name and face are here for you, so show your face or get the fuck out fucktwat. You are a pedantic, petulant little fuck with what, some money? Like I give a flying FUCK about your money?
Show your face, pussy. Show it.
OR SHUT THE FUCK UP.
LOL
@grumpycat, this is a real constructive idea! Since you have such ideas and people that are ready to listen to you, why all these destruction?
Why the terror methods and robbed minnows?
With all these ongoing, how can you expect people to respect you to consider your ideas?
Unless you stop hurting innocents you only will find The Resistance.
FD.
Do I earn a Nobel prize for thinking of transferring money from one account to another?
Sometime I wonder how you manage to tie your shoes in the morning.
I just thought I sensed some kind of reasoning in a cat but I was wrong.
Just fallacy...
I really wonder now how I tie my shoes lol...
FD.
hi @grumpycat
I new played steemit.
I do not understand the rules that apply in the world of steemit.
I have much to learn.
If you want to reply to my comments, I'm very happy.
is there anything we can trust to buy votes?
and who should we choose?
thank you very much @grumpycat