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RE: Fantastic Witnesses And How To Find Them
I removed my vote for you for witness when I saw you upvoting
@chbartist Anyone who upvotes that shit is not someone who shares my vision of what steem should be. Sorry
Read this post
I didn't upvote it normally, but the vote was sold. Post promotion is a tool, which is neither good nor bad. Some people abuse it and they get blacklisted.
And please: if you don't fully read my posts, then don't bother commenting. Especially when you accuse me of wrong facts, without giving me the benefit of the doubt or at least asking me about it.
Hi @therealwolf & @viraldrome !
First, @therealwolf: solid post. It's informative, well-written,and personally I think there should be much more public awareness regarding the importance of witness voting, so well-written content like this post of yours serves that purpose. Do continue, I'd say!
Second, suggesting @viraldrome hasn't fully read your post is not entirely fair; not reading well is something else as not having noticed/read all your posts. (Personally, I read a lot of posts, but it is impossible to read them all.)
Third, I think @viraldrome indeed has a point! The real question he's implicitly addressing is:
Should a top-50 (well-known) witness be allowed to run a top bid bot (sorry: Promotion Service) as well?. And that is quite interesting.
Yes, @therealwolf recently publicly announced to blacklist @chbartist for using the SmartSteem / SmartMarket promotional services. Personally, I think publicly posting about that is wrong, especially being a witness as well. If you wanted to stop promoting @chbartist 's content, you could have done so by notifying him only via DM. Publicly scapegoating somebody - your customer in fact - after you have allowed him to use your service for quite some time, is not really ethical, I think.
Now, many people have outed their opinion already regarding the current Trending Page, which is dominated by Promoted Posts, and not by content quality. This exact post has also risen to the top, and is an exception: this is a high-quality post that people should see and read. But there are many others on trending that surely do not deserve that much visibility (for lack of quality).
And surely the Steem Promotion Service have a huge responsibility on what they allow to be upvoted all the way to trending!
And because so many Promoted ShitPosts dominate the Trending Page, I argue that that places the platform Steem in a bad light: it's quite possible that the Trending Page is being read a lot by not-logged in users, and non-Steemians exploring the platform as well. If they "identify" the Steem platform with "ShitPosts" shown on Trending, chances are they identify Steem itself as "Shit".
And exactly that: how Steem is seen in the eyes of all should be a big concern to top witnesses!
So, I ask you, and everybody reading this: if the witnesses are, or should be to some extent, "responsible" for the "credibility and reputation" of Steem-as-a-Platform, while at the same time the Promotion Services are to a high degree responsible for what is shown on Trending, then is it just that the same person is running both a Promotion Service and is a top-50 witness???
This system is based on anarchic principles and 'free market' design, which means that there is no problem with the situation from a network perspective (albeit that the unenforced terms and conditions of steemit.com prohibit ALL bots).
I see that there are three main problems with the situation:
Bid bots do indeed invalidate 'proof of brain' and replace it with 'proof of wallet', which basically denies and blocks the magic of the Steem concept that draws so many in and who leave rapidly once they realise what is going on.
The platform is sold as being decentralised, yet top witnesses constantly receive large amounts of funds and by selling votes using bid bots, we have a situation where power is centralised among witnesses and bid bot operators (mostly). This is quite a reflection of the way that corporatocracy and crony capitalism has taken over the offline world. A key difference is that people can opt out of the steem network (and find it tougher to do the same in the offline world - except live in whatever jungles remain until the crapitalists destroy them all in their quest to 'win').
When top witnesses get to choose hard forks and those witnesses are engaged in industrial scale vote selling, this is not much different to politicians in our world who operate rigged elections (Which is most of them BTW). The network will gradually descend into one that favours the bot operator's methods and makes it ever more difficult to gain exposure without them. This is obvious to anyone with enough experience in the 'real world' to know how these situations play out over and over again in life.
It would be ideal, from my perspective, if the witnesses and community in general recognised this and took the necessary steps to resolve it.. But so far there is a kind of stand-off with a lot of frustration building up and little being done outwardly. Eventually there will either be a split or a collapse IMO... Unless, responsible change happens ASAP.
One solution has been to say that bot voted posts get moved to the 'promoted' list and/or that users have a button they can press to simply block out all promoted posts. The problem is that people could nefariously pay to upvote someone's post to hide it. So there would have to be a maximum allowable paid upvote amount, below which posts can stay in the trending page.. Maybe $20USD or something like that.
I am all for creativity - but recreating the problems of the offline world in a space that was intended to be truly innovative is not really helping anyone.
You're 100% right brother
I just made a post that explains a new way to resolve the issue of bid bots without overpowering anyone and thus maintaining a balance:
Bid Bots: Steem's Achilles Heel? I present A New Way To Solve The Bid Bot Issues And Reinstate 'Proof Of Brain'.
Here is my take on this:
A top witness shall be able to run a bot promotion service. Why not? It is a free market, if we impose rules on what one can do or not we will dive into another dangerous black or grey region.
I think that @therealwolf is fair game and even if you can buy and sell votes offline on his platform, you still see that the vote is done via his site. He could hide the sold votes via steemconnect and nobody would be able to trace them.
Before the bid promotion bots, there was a huge offline vote selling. No one could tell if a vote was paid for or not. At least with this services we have an incentive for investors to put money into Steem. Real investors look at services where their stake grows without investing to much time in it. The higher and faster the returns, the better. This is basic economics. Most high rollers don't have the time to lose and an bid promoting bot provides them the appeal to buy Steem. I see that most people who complain about the bots are poeple who never bought Steem and are in constant Power Down modus. This ones are the real killers and the ones who put pressure on the Steem price.
Steem is not only a blogging platform, which a lot of people don't udnerstand. The Steem blockchain has many more uses, one of the most important is being the fastest and cheapest blockchain in the world. Compared to BTC, it has 0 fees and can be used as a real world currency. Imagine to pay in BTC at the supermarket and wait 30 minutes so that the payment comes through. Good luck with that.
Before bid promotion bots have been here, the trending was also shit, pardon my French. There have been the same accounts over and over again.
Also taste can't be defined, what for some might be a highlight for the other one might be trash. I see posts that promote drug consumption. A lot of people will cherrish about it, others will say that this shall be banned.
I see a lot of posts with conspiracies, which make me laugh be cause, like the ones about flat earth. I would rather flag them then give them a vote and this is only because my taste is different from others, and this is good so. The truth lies in the eyes of the beholder.
Coming back to the question: Shall a witness be able to run promotional bots on Steem? Of course. There shall not be a limitation in this. Luckily we are in a free world where can decide and have to live with the consequences of our choices.
We have a lot of top50 witnesses that don't post anything, or do anything else than having the server plugged in, they've been here at the start and received the votes. Are this ones better than the guys who build some tools that incentive investors? I don't think so.
Here is another question: What must a witness do? The main purpose of a witness is to secure the good functioning of the network, or am I wrong here?
As a disclosure, together with @catalincernat we run the witness @ro-witness.
I agree. I didn't state a witness can't run a promotional service at the same time! ;-)
I too think @therealwolf is fair game (although I don't agree with scapegoating @chbartist). The way @smartsteem is funded, pretty de-centralized for that matter, with lots and lots of delegators, is really good, as far as I'm concerned.
... Which does not imply one can't ask, nor publicly discuss, about whether a top witness should be "allowed" to also run a promotional service, of course! I'm really interested in what others think about this!
Well, that he banned @chbartist is his own choice. It is like muting. I don't like a lot of people either in here. Some I constantly flag because I think their rewards are to high, even if they are at 1 cent, but as I said it is my choice. Also @therealwolf developed and invested time and resources in his service, he should be able to decide what he does with his stake and service. I know leftist will not be happy with this statement, but who cares, there are over 7 bilion people on the planet, not all need to like me, I can live in peace with that.
Of course we exchange ideas and discuss about it and I put my statement that we are allowed to do what we want on Steem. The only thing is that we support the consequences.
You're 100% right brother - do you have a plan how to eradicate it and what would you do in his place?
I've seen your comments where you defended him, said he was good for Steemit. Why are trying to downvote my comment away? If you are advertising for why people should vote for you for witness, why can't anyone counter that? You made lots of money off the person who is pretty much the face of rewards pool rape, and then defended him. What part of that is not true?
He's an investor and wanting to buy into Steem (STEEM (!) - NOT STEEMIT). That's why he is good for Steem. But I was always clear about the fact that I didn't support his way of promoting and only defended him as a human being, so he is not being bullied off the platform.
You want a higher Steem price? Then you need investors in Steem.
And I can downvote whatever I want. Especially if the comment is based on wrong facts.
Do you know how much time I'm investing in Steem?
It's 4am and I'm still awake, waiting for my witness nodes to be ready so I can active my witness again to secure the blockchain, after dedicating the whole day to make sure I'm ready once a fix for the bug has been released.
You think this is easy?
Do you even know what makes a good witness? You would if you'd have read the post.
But you're focusing on irrelevant details, based on wrong facts.
You don't like me? Fine.
You don't want to vote me? Cool.
But don't expect that I'll allow you taking a shit on me under my own post, that I've spent hours on writing.
How about you add a 6th image of your weed to your next post.