@contentjunkie who authored this beautiful rant and this new one : link happen to be among the most prolific vote buying profiteer.
Payments:
for these 6 days old posts:
https://steemit.com/gaming/@contentjunkie/diablo-3-s-darkening-of-tristram-anniversary-event-is-coming-back-for-2018-throughout-january-players-will-be-able-to-return-to
and
https://steemit.com/bitcoin/@contentjunkie/trump-s-new-tax-bill-means-changes-ahead-for-u-s-bitcoiners
Here some sample of post promoted in the last days :
This flower picture buying 124$ vote at 5th day https://steemit.com/colorchallenge/@ekaterinka/73poqn-colorchallenge-sundaypurple
$410 on 5th day on a simple picture that say "Happy new year" (apparently it's a meme)
https://steemit.com/dmania/@michaelmorcos/happy-new-year-zg1hbmlh-tu5hu
Curious for more? Check by yourself the value of the comment promoted after 3.5 days vs the first 24h.
Rational :
About 99% of people buying votes on their post older than 3.5 days are doing it for pure profit by taking from the reward pool while enriching mainly early ninja miner and vote selling bot operators. Not allowing votes past 3.5 days will give us more time to detect and counter high votes purchased on very low quality content.
Reminder:
To everyone using paid promotion services; make sure the service you're using is GumpyCompliant by checking in the "Max Post Age" row is it's less than 3.5 days on @yabapmatt bottracker (link)
Unless votes sellers become GrumpyCompliant in the next 7 day @grumpycat will push the vote buying abuse ratio even closer to 100% by flagging the most legitimate use of post promotion at the worst possible time...
Negative curation isn't happening not because of a lack of time but because of a lack of balanced incentives between up and down votes.
The rules of Steem for downvotes have to improve to at least account for the lost opportunity cost of curation reward.
I like the idea but this will mostly piss-off the wrong people.
Explanation for high upvote
There is an additional reason why negative curation is not common: the misconceptualization of downvotes on Steemit as "flags." This was a originally bandaid to solve a minor problem but has created a much larger problem in the use and culture of Steem. The metaphorical dressing on a scratch has festered into a deep, infected wound.
Another conceptual deficiency that the UI could be changed to improve is that rewards before a post or comment is 7 days old are subject to change. This is essentially part of the user-network contract that someone enters when they make a post or comment on Steem, whether they know it or not. There is potential for the UI to better educate and inform users about this, implicitly and explicitly.
Smart idea, downvote should cost less.
I am not milliner to "spend" 100$ on down voting someone.
I absolutely support investors making money, but this idea that every action you take should make you instant rewards just is taking that idea too far.
The long-term value of your investment vs. being able to take the most money out is what each "investor" will have to face at some point.
Smart idea, i completely agree with you,wrong work will down your rating
I completely agree
Yes I am agree. It will piss-off the wrong people.
I think the formula should be adjusted to make it profitable to flag spam content. An idea could to be to have a separate flag and down-vote button? At minimum, it should be a break even for flagging so accounts don't lose their voting power when they flag.
It will only be profitable to flag bad content when the community gets behind it. Not only whales should be rewarded for policing the block chain but users at all echelons of power. Consider checking out the Steem flag rewards project.
https://steemit.com/abuse/@steemflagrewards/steem-flag-rewards-pilot-fighting-blockchain-abuse
The bitter truth.
Yes i agree with you....nice idea
Agreed. @steemflagrewards is an initiative to assuage that fact by giving back to good down voters; however, the inability to receive 100% SBD post rewards currently serves to limit that.
@Grumpycat Steemit's liar, hypocrite & terrorist in chief.
Why don't you tell us about your profiteering? You claim to want more time to flag poor content yet you upvote the most flagrant of low quality content to enrich yourself.
Go on @Grumpycat tell us how you are just profiteering for the sake of our stakes.
As you can see, speaking on burning topics makes ~6000 USD in 10 hours :)
Good question - but no answer from @grumpycat ;)
@davidconstantine thats a part of the answer :D)
i agree
@grumpycat I don't want any trouble. I just want to be left alone to do my own thing.
So are you saying all vote bots are not compliant cause 3.5 days?
Once the rules you want to enforce go into effect if I make a sufficiently original post and use a prohbitied bot but do so within first 3.5 days for noncompliance detection do I risk a downvote from you or is that ok?
Are you forcing a total embargo of all bots that go beyond 3.5 days sorry if it is more clear above. I just really dont want any trouble from anyone. If anyone has a problem please let me know and I will try to comply subject to my values and conscience.
@fatkat I've just made the change for @smartsteem and @smartmarket that we only allow posts that are 3.5 days old or less. So you don't have to worry there :)
Will make the announcement post later
And thats why my friend loves @smartsteem & @smartmarket !!!
Selling votes, but allowing others to disagree. Balanced..... Allowing someone to buy a vote but still allowing others to disagree....
Thank you for fair practices.
@grumpycat I was downvoted into oblivion on some 5 day old posts after being mistaken for a combatant in the recent war.
My reputation went down to 11. If I could not have bought votes to restore my original positive vote counts on my posts, my account would be all but trashed.
I fear your idea will give whales even more power to destroy dolphins and minnows.
I saw you got flagged to hell and wondered wtf was going on!
If that happens again, let me know and I'll fix your rep. You have been nothing but friendly and helpful everywhere I have interacted with you.
Thanks @dutch! I'm hoping with the war ended that it won't be an issue again, but I appreciate it a lot. The #gridcoin community has some amazing people.
So should I promote my posts after 6 days for maximum profit??
No, they buy votes after 6 days for two reasons:
The actual return on the upvote purchase is the same. Point is, raping the rewards pool secretly is not helping this platform.
raping the rewards pool period is not helping this platform!
Unfortunately, as long as vote bots have a positive ROI, then rewards pool rape is a given.
It's a hard problem to solve but if we as a community can do it then steem will be worth a lot more, it's already good as I find a lot of good content but spam pollution does annoy me.
I will change my bot @boostme settings soon.
It's time to take care about reward pool rape and stop it.
(Upvoted for visibility)
I don't think it matters, as long as people can buy upvoted, steem won't be awesome platform where everyone can feel equal.
My friend just joined steem, and left after few weeks, because she writes for hours - and there is no visibility, while some shitty posts from pumpers, go up.
just don't look for posts with $1000 payouts.... be yourself and make your own statistics. If everybody will just want to be the best or best paid, than most will fail. Nothing comes overnight. Fact!
The same thing my friend said...
Good on you for responding. I'm not sure how I feel about the way these changes are being argued, but I think keeping an eye on the way bidbots affect the platform is important, and noble of you to risk losing some bids to look out for the long term.
I don't see a difference between buying on 6 day or 1 day.
it is all what rotten in steemit eco system, people shouldn't have the power to buy votes, because in current system that means other quality content that have less influential friends or millions in the pocket - won't be heared.
Thank you, I do support the 3.5 day policy and am generally against abusive upvote purchase. I am just wondering : what is the rationale to limit the payout period to only 7 days? After all, the post will then still stay on the steem blockchain forever. If an author writes a quality travel post and someone discovers it three years later via Google, it is still valuable. However, at that point, the author does not get any reward anymore. Doesn't this policy even encourage to post only content with a very short value lifespan? Why would I spend hours writing quality posts for steem of I only get a share of the value it creates in the first 7 days?
Maybe in the future some kind of SMT could be made as a way to give credit to those authors that make content with long lasting appeal. For now the reader can send a tip to the authors that never get recognition. You know? the ones that dont write about the flagging war.
This is a great answer. I was also thinking that the way ReSteeming works could be tinkered with. If I find a post from a year ago that is really good (and I do from time to time), what use is there to resteem it? I'm better off linking to the stale article in one of my posts instead. I can always manually send someone steem of steem dollars as thanks for an old post, but that system never works. There needs to be a way to automatically tip someone from your own steem when upvoting an old post. You're right though, SMT's will provide ways to do this automatically.
I imagine though that no matter what changes are made, there is always going to be someone waiting to exploit them. I'm excited and scared for SMTs for this reason, especially in conjunction with the new update allowing for instant account creation. But there's also good too, because no grumpycat can ever downvote a post to take away a SMT reward (yet), or earn thousands of dollars a day by creating artificial drama between two accounts owned by (quite likely) the same person, or two people who know each other in real life. I feel like these "knight in shining armor, come to take out the abusers" posts take a page from PT Barnum's handbook, attracting thousands of upvotes for a manufactured battle.
Apt! I need answers to this.
Agree with you on this point Sir. There is so much good information out there which will remain relevant for a long time like various guides or just interesting articles. It is a shame that thanking the author by pressing up vote button is pointless after 7 days period.
Because its a possibility that within the given 7 days period, some might still be able to find it and vote for it. It's for extended exposure of the content.
@juvyjabian i would focus on the benefits and problems on having rewards for good quality posts even after 7 days maybe with no time limit. One reason fo it ? Because at the end of the day my article on how to do x will be found on google even after years and be useful. I would suggest we discuss it on a new page if you guys want to
Thank you @digitalplayer you are of course absolutely right. Sorry to pull the discussion in another direction here. I opened a separate threat where we can discuss this issue: https://steemit.com/steem/@raci/does-the-7-day-payout-period-on-steem-still-make-sense
@digitalplayer this is a very good point. The value of good content doesn't decline with the age of a post. I never understood why the steemit founders set a time limit on rewards for posts. As for the voting bots, I thinkthey were inevitable. If you have whales and even witnesses with high SP upvoting their own posts and those of other whales and taking the majority of the reward pool, it's natural that regular people would develop bots with votes for sale to try and get a little of the rewards pool. The question is: with all of the whale voting, self-votes and paid votes, how will we know if content is any good based on vote count alone? We won't.
@ammonite You won twice in one comment with that one! Shucks I might just follow you for that comment!
Thank you @maneki-neko
You do know you are thanking someone that is actively taking thousands of dollars out of the reward pool for comments that say nothing more than "SBD correction" right?
Thank you for the post! I did not even know about these rules. I'll know now. And repost for all my subscribers!
Manipulation of the Steemit blockchain in ways other than it was intended to be utilized is an ongoing issue, and isn't exclusive.
Improvements to the infrastructure that fix exisiting issues are always welcome by users of the platform at many levels.
Here's a quote from the author @grumpycat:
A 3.5 day cutoff could be implemented quickly and easily and would solve many issues. Many social media users don't view content much older than this in most cases, therefore little is lost.
Striving to overcome the issues that plague Steemit is key; small tweeks to the beta stage that the platform is currently in are welcome, so long as they do not destroy what the community is trying to build and accomplish as a whole.
Thank you for your continued contributions to Steemit @grumpycat, and may 2018 bring great things.
-The Beached Whale-
Editor in Chief - The Anderson Report
For most small users, content rarely get read after the first day. Hell, a lot of posts never get read again once they leave the new section.
Taking thousands of dollars for the words "SBD correction" over and over and over is a valued contribution to you?
And for today's post, at least you can buy upvotes?
Your old posts are great.
I'm a little jealous of people who can understand the technical side of Steemit. I just can't wrap my head around the game. That's what it looks like to me, like a difficult version of Dungeons and Dragons, but with money. I'm so lost, but at least I'm trying to comprehend it. Anyway, thank you for the post and keep on posting! One of these days it'll really start to click with me. For now, I simply enjoy writing and chatting with folks.
Much love and light,
X
What part are you confused about @xmaas? If it is the actual monetary and rewards aspect, I recently summarised this for another user here. If you already understand SBD, SP and STEEM, there is not much more value for you in there.
What this debate is about, is users upvoting posts that are about to approach the 7 day point, where the author is rewarded. Authors are buying massive upvotes on these old posts, which has a positive ROI. They do this on old posts because:
The effect the purchased upvotes have is increased payout for the author buying the vote. This in turn reduces the Steem rewards pool, thus taking a small amount of money away from all other users on the platform.
That cleared things up for me quite a bit. Thank you for this explanation. It really did help. It's not something I would do myself because it just doesn't seem right. If people want to see what I'm posting that's great, but if not that's ok too. The money is just a great bonus for me, I mean I need it, but there's not enough in my account yet to bother withdrawing. I mostly blog for my own amusement, sharing stories of my past and present. Some people enjoy them, others mostly ignore them. No big deal. I just enjoy the camaraderie on here. I would like to be able to have a couple thousand dollars to help my wife out with bills at some point. I won't stoop to buying votes though.
X
@xmass - I experienced the same and try to catch the wave or at least seeing a big whale doing. :-)
I have watched countless YouTube videos on the subject and it's still as though I'm listening to a foreign language without a translator. Gibberish! Lol! So I nod and try to pay attention and a few things stick here and there and I know that eventually something will click into place. I think one of my biggest problems is ...okay, two, two of my biggest problems is understanding the lingo the words and not being at all computer savvy. I am like a functioning illiterate when it comes to computers. Brought up in a home where the idea of computing was "Oh, it's just a fad, don't bother with it." So, yeah I'm a little behind the eight ball when it comes to knowing things. I only discovered Twitter about a year ago, or less. I knew it was there, but I had never done it. Learning and then forcing myself to learn everyday. Thank you for the kind response.
Much love and light,
X
Pretty sure you'll find your way around.
With good friends assisting, how can I fail? Right?
❤️💡
X
You are right.
@xmass - Don't worry our life is a life long learning. There are so many things for us to learn at each day. Cheers :-)
😸❤️💡
We all started the same way as you do. Me I'm a total ignorant, know nothing about cryptocurrency and blockchain. But with great conversation and the people around the community, I was able to understand a bit now.
I'm not terribly worried at this point as I don't have much Steem or money built up yet, but when that changes I'll need some assistance figuring out how to access it, as for now whatever is in my account will just be safe and build upon itself over the next year or two.
❤️💡
You will get there in no time :)
You know what, I really like that idea! Post after 3.5 days shouldn’t buy votes for just profit taking.
Thank you for sharing this information!
We all want our community to sustain maybe for long term if not forever. A lot of things to work with and takes really much huge time. I guess we're starting to see things going toward its purpose. Its not all about profits. Its not all about success on Steemit. Troubles, problems or failures is there trying to do their part. But hey, those are (troubles,problems,failures) foundations for strong and sustainable community. Maybe sometimes we loss control because we want things to get done quickly. Patient is not in our side most of the time. @grumpycat is doing his or her part. Vote buyers/sellers are also doing their part. I am also doing my little part. But let us think sometimes and pause even a little time to discern, "Am I doing this correctly? Am I hurting anyone? Is this for myself only? Do I think only today and never mind what will happen in the next to come?"
We oftentimes forget that we're doing something too much. We forgot that moderation is still our friend to get things done properly.
Because its a possibility that within the given 7 days period, some might still be able to find it and vote for it. It's for extended exposure of the content....................................................
Very nice and best idea,,,,i follow your idea
Interesting I am new here and I did not know that this could be done
nice one
i love ur write up
thanks
Very interesting issue regarding using Bid Bot for upvote for our Steem Community. Thanks @grumpycat for sharing.
Nice
I have something else to propose. Leave the voting be available indefinitely as it is now, but also have an icon similar to flag/downvote that will be about locking a topic.
Aka, topics that have no value after a week or are abused for vote rewards will be locked if the locking icon is used and someone confirms the abuse (or lack of use after a week).
Thats a must!
informative news
Look who's buying votes via @checkthisout account, lol
Thanks for sharing!
Thanks for sharing,i like it.
Thanks for the info
hm nice your idea
Thank you for sharing dear Keep it up I upvote you and hope you also do same for me thanks
I've stop using paid promotional services I wasn't really getting anything with it, thanks for the posts tough I learn something about steemit everyday.
Um this is a common thing on the platform , not that would be a bad thing and there is no one to stop this .
But for sure things like this are happening not only here but anywhere under any circumstances .
9.53% @pushup from @checkthisout
thx for the info men :D
being a newbie, I don't understand all of it, but seems like there's a lot many ways to game the system here in Steemit
Thank you for Using #promo-steem tag, Promote steemit by inviting your friends and your family!
This post has received gratitude of 10.18 % from @appreciator thanks to: @checkthisout.
You got a 53.72% upvote from @postpromoter courtesy of @checkthisout!
Love the cat, btw!
Much love and light,
X
If the voting bot is not compliant but the users post is newer than 3.5 days will you still downvote them?
great write up sir.
Im not understand. Sorry om newbie
Basically you can buy votes to increase promotion - but after a certain time frame (3.5 days in @grumpycat 's opinion) it is NOT to increase promotion , it's just to increase your revenue, which is simply vote buying for no other reason than to game the system and make (more) money.
Thank you @checkthisout for promoting this post together with https://steemit.com/budget/@jerrybanfield/introducing-steem-budget-proposals
Nice post and list! I don't know there are other bots out there aside from @minnowbooster and @randowhale.
This post has received a 26.35 % upvote from @booster thanks to: @checkthisout.
Woah, didn't know things like this could happen
that is really really amazing after 6 days he get upvotes on their post. He is a great man
great post.thanks for sharing.