Is this a place for creative people? What can be done about the tyrants on Steemit?
I continue to find myself being automatically downvoted as a new member to Steemit. I know it is not the quality of my content that is the problem, nor is it the transactions in my wallet. I haven't taken anything out.
I got caught in the middle of @berniesanders bot army for nothing other than commenting on a post of someone that he disagrees with.
How do we get rid of this guy? He is a digital Stalin. It's hard to imagine investing in this community at all when I've been under attack virtually from day one. Is there not a mechanism on the blockchain for dealing with such abuses?
I thought this was a place for creative people. I'm in the process of writing for a contest being put on by @jerrybanfield. It takes considerable effort to write this way, and to know that I'm just going to get heavy downvotes from accounts that aren't even reading my posts is discouraging.
Not that it will stop me, but until I see that there is a mechanism in place for protecting the integrity of the community from such abusers, I'm certainly not going to invest any more money into it.
Does anyone know of a way to protect ourselves from such behavior?
As much as I hate to admit it, I'm keeping an eye out for the social media platform that will be developed on EOS, which is Dan Larimer's latest project (he created Steemit). These trolls have taken the fun out of Steemit. I'm sure Steemit will be successful, overall, but there's got to be a better way. I'm also interested in writing and having a creative outlet on Steemit, but I've been downvoted too many times to really think that this is the platform for me. I'll have to see how things go over the next few days/weeks/months.
@haejin just pulled this one out of the drink. He is counteracting the "Bad Whale" and his bot army and preserving the author and curation rewards for us.
Hello my friend,
I started yesterday in the steemit community, I'm Venezuelan, with respect to your tyrannical comment on a digital character, I can tell you that the best way to avoid tyranny is to ignore it, be who you are, transmit your essence, that being that is you, transmit what you like, show that being that makes you be human, do it from love, without condition.
It feels a great strength in you a human power, transnmitelo many people need it ... the tyrants are over when our porder, essence, purpose shines.
happy and blessed day
Thank you for the thoughtful comment. I'm sure you're right. I could just ignore him. It seems that he is not flagging my posts and comments on automatic anymore.
I didn't know about this would actually happened here... Like you I expect more people here are responsible ang matured enough...
It is in your own will on what to post... and joining contest thought a healthy competition here...
Hope this wouldn't happen again to anybody...
I'm also new here in steemit but from my experience I enjoyed having new friends and those Steemians who are very supportive like @surpassinggoogle and many others...
Out of curiosity, what determines tyranny?
You say "I don't like what berniesanders is doing SO WE NEED TO GET RID OF HIM".
That sounds like real dictator talk. They do get rid of people who they don't agree with.
Thanks for the comment, but you're reaching. My comments are directed at a single individual. I am not indiscriminately flagging people simply because they comment on his posts. I'm not using an army of bots or considerable voting power in a way that reduces the Steem market cap while enriching myself.
Every flag is deflationary. It removes "proof-of-brain" from the blockchain. It shrinks the economy. This is not to say that some flags are not justifiable, but using them as a political instrument is not.
It does this in two ways... it effectively deletes author and curation rewards that would have otherwise gone into circulation, and the voting power wasted on flagging could've been used to upvote quality content and bring new author and curation rewards into existence.
What's worse is he is making a lot of money doing it. His (-18) reputation was granted to him by Dan Larimer (@dan), the founding engineer of the Steem blockchain. He dubbed him the "Bad Whale."
I've done a lot of digging on http://steem.supply. I suggest you have a look at his account. ;)
As far as I know, the flags are not removing anything from the blockchain or reducing the economy in total. It harms the potential economy of a single user, but not in total. As far as I understand, there is only a certain amount of Steem created constantly and while someone loses their potential rewards due to flagging, it will be seen as a slight increase in the potential payout of others.
I usually avoid flagging and I'm hoping to do it for right reasons, but we are different and as all of us have the power to flag, I personally don't say I can determine why others are flagging some other users.
Flagging is not really bringing any loads of money to him, not at least directly. I can't see him and his flagging as harmful for platform, as more harmful are whales upvoting themselves to use their SP only on themselves, like some users are doing. That's in their power, though.
He is making hundreds of dollars a day on his main account alone just from posting the same comment over and over again, and for bashing people left and right. He can be seen calling someone a "fucking retard" simply because he feels like their post is a conspiracy theory, and the flags the rewards for into oblivion.
Also... he does this to many people, and they don't have to be guilty of anything other than commenting on the post of someone he disagrees with or posting on a subject he doesn't like. There is a reason his reputation is (-17)... looks like it just came up from (-18) today. The only reason he has any power here is because he was an early adopter and probably has some technical skills.
He doesn't demonstrate the maturity of someone who should have the sort of authority he's granted himself.
So far this platform is mostly attracting get-rich-quick people. Abusing things like delegated SP (used to upvote oneself), voting bots, and single users controlling multiple accounts, are what is most embarrassing about this platform. A prime example of these abuses is over on Dmania, where if you look at the highest pay-out accounts, the memes they post are all garbage; the source of the pay-outs is from voting bots, etc., not the quality of the meme.
Anyway, I've started to stop worrying about pay-outs on my posts (mostly memes), and I'm just looking for views and upvotes on them (which don't happen). Maybe my memes suck too, but in the end I believe people choose to vote according to expected pay-out, not according to quality, or creativity. So if you have good content, it's likely no one will even look at it here because everyone's activity on Steemit is focused on getting rich, not on finding creative or quality content.
Thank you for your comment, but I don't share your assessment. There are certainly people gaming the system, but it is important to understand the upvoting bots are a risky investment. People who appear to be making money with them have often spent more for the upvote than they received for the rewards.
It happens all the time. You can look at their activity and see how much they paid the bot, and how much the rewards were for the upvote. It's frequent that they lose money, or their profit is on the order of 1%. It does sometimes work out for them, though. It's basically gambling.
Also, your reputation score is 30. The higher that number gets, and the more followers you have, the more traction your memes will get. There are plenty of people here producing quality content aside from the get-rich-quick crowd.
You'll only get this if you use the Esteem app.
My dear one was to avoid this is to mind your business. That way you dont have to be in btw their disagreement. Its really bad tho that this stuff happens here, one Is supposed to have right to talk to speech . Thats what happens when power gets to wrong hands