I've already used up a bunch of my voting strength today flagging comments from @checkthisout which you can see here. Seems @grumpycat has no issue with taking as much of the rewards pool as possible without providing much value. That's quite sad. In many ways, it's just short-term thinking.
I've talked about this stuff at length before:
- Self-Voting: Scammy Behavior, Rational ROI, or Something Else?
- Flagging. Someone has to do it
- Hey Steemit. Let's Talk About Flagging. Again.
How many whales with a lot of Steem Power out there are long-term thinkers and are willing to sacrifice some curation rewards and voting strength in order to downvote this noise?
@rewardpoolrape and @eatsrewards are doing the same thing which appear to be @berniesanders projects, but it seems they are doing it to try and raise awareness about the problem. Either way, it clearly is an issue and until the community has consensus on how to deal with it on a blockchain level, the flag is all we have.
Whales: You Have Work To Do.
Flag this noise and demonstrate that you do care about the rewards pool and how it's distributed.
Sucks to have to do a post on this, but it's important. How we respond to these challenges will determine the future value of this platform.
To be clear: if you don't have much Steem Power, this post isn't directed at you. Those who have the most to lose here are the most responsible for protecting it.
Yes it is clearly abusive they don't even take time to write anything valuable even if i advocate to vote for ourselves 33% of our voting power, i disagree with their behaviour.
I am sure they are reading your post so please take into consideration the fact that you don't have to go short term full exploitative strategy, your funds are locked for 13 weeks minimum, you have to help the platform adoption rate to grow aswell, i am sure you don't want the adoption rate to fall and steem price with it while you wait for your weekly powerdown in panic dump mode.
If SBD price increase is organic you will have time to profit from it, simply vote for youselves 33% of your voting power ( 3 vote a day) and vote for contents creators to help adoption growth.
I also advice you to help new steemit users with a warm welcome, happy users do free advertising for the platform.
If SBD price is a short term PnD then you will not have a lot of time to profit anyway it doesn't represent a good ROI% compared to your stack.
Think long term guys!
https://steemit.com/steemit/@damarth/should-we-upvote-our-comments
The answer to your first question: NONE
You bernie aka Justin is the biggest conman on steemit. You found a flaw in protoshares mining. Which is bitshares now. And you also found a flaw while mining steemit when it was pow with botnets. Rabbit. You became a whale cheating. Then you use your power to bully and censor steemit minnows. Destroying ppls steemit accounts by flagging them. Some ppl live on steemit income and they have no food to eat.
Now your the one RAPING the reward pool as we speak with grumpycat. on steemit. Your days are numbered kid.
He takes after his hero. You should definitely be suspect of anyone who supports Bernie Sanders in the crypto community. Bernie wants state control of everything. I mean helllllloooooo.
Wise but also obvious words my friend.
@berniesanders Steemit will be a lot better without you and your bots.
someone needs to tell @berniesanders mother and father!
Keep trying...I'm even going to stop flagging your threats because I know you're nothing but some uneducated pussy who can't do anything.
I’m uneducated but I’m already a multimillionaire and yes I can do something. I’m doing it right now as we speak.
you spelt dirty bourgeoisie wrong
So educated aren’t you. ?
I’m not dirty as I gained my wealth honestly. And I stand up for what is right and wrong. You are muted as I cannot have a reasonable meaningful discussion with a person who thinks they know better than everyone. I got where I am today my listening anz taking notes. You are booksmart I see burn unfortunatley I meet booksmart ppl without money. Or career or a job. Before you call some dirty namesake. Look at yourself in the mirror. You think youre rich in knowledge and theory. I see you as crippled short sightedness and arrogant. Happy new year
"I’m not dirty as I gained my wealth honestly. "
impossible under capitalism. All profit is unpaid wages.
You mean being a whiny bitch, right? You're doing a good job considering nobody gives a rats fuck what you post. Adios, time to mute your worthless ass. Later cuck!
I’m not whining I’m taking action. Im standing up for all the little minnows.
You destroyed my account after I worked on hard on it for a week. I have been advising billionaire investors in Silicon Valley on bitshares, eos and steem. They saw you wrecking havoc and have decided not to invest in steem. I have begged them to not give up on steem.
You are the sole reason why this platform cannot go up to the next level. Your a drug runner and punk.
I will not give up on this platform and the ppl in it. I will not give up on dans ideas and dreams for this platform. I will make it my duty to route you out.
I grew up all my life be bullied. And I learned early in life that you cannot talk your way out with a bully. You have to defend yourself and punch that bully in the face. You think your tough. Tell me a place and time. I would love to bare knuckle box for real. Your are scum. You are a bully.
You have wealth. You have power.
Change your ways you Back off. I back off very simple. Kid
"I grew up all my life be bullied. And I learned early in life that you cannot talk your way out with a bully. You have to defend yourself and punch that bully in the face."
ironic.
Oh noes, don't downvote me with your bots! LOL, typical communist.
you can't even define communism can you
A Communist calling someone a cuck! How precious. Shouldn't you be at an ANTIFA meeting? Get back the in the basement comrade.
I love watching triggered comrades since The God Emperor of The United States took over the White House and single handedly destroyed the Communist takeover of the United States.
It's beautiful seeing you triggered snow flakes making fools of yourself everyday online. Please carry on Bernie. Send your bots too, make a few more while your at it.
you can't even define communism can you
Here is a clue from before the masses were in a position to be dumbed down by controlling their sources of information,...
https://theanarchistlibrary.org/library/alexander-berkman-what-is-communist-anarchism
Your name is added to the list. You stand next to the trash fire, you stink like the trash fire, you burn with the trash. Steem on, while you're able.
Come on man say it, "You have 12 hours" "I have the means", show your digital muscles!
Every time I see @berniesanders post I picture this
I bet this picture is sooo accurate! What a joke he is.
Too many soy lattes turned @berniesanders into an overwieght blubbering hysterical mess!😂
All that estrogen has turned her into an emotional snowflake, having massive hissy fits on steemit! Shrunken testicles and growing manboobs! Poor comrade @BernieSanders and her booring Steemit posts!
@berniesanders Steemit will be a lot better without you and your bots.
My first question:
And yet these comments are now $0 because of whale flags:
How often do you admit when you're wrong?
Luke can you talk a little about whales using their stack to censor Utopian contributions and posts critical of them?
Pretty much my whole account has been killed off by rancho and haejin.
Not just me. https://steemit.com/berniesanders/@jaredcwillis/berniesanders-vs-haejin-481-shill-accounts-a-blockchain-investigation
was zeroed out by rancho. I can show more if you would like.
It's tit-for-tat. Both sides need to grow the fuck up.
Actually, grumpycat was doing this to prove a point. That's why I kept silent despite seeing this come up.
What is all this drama about? Is it worth destroying Steem over? Is it just because a popular persona is getting votes due to YouTube/Crypto fame?
Oh how noble of you... 😒👀
That investors giving huge votes to undeserving content is bad. It affects how steemit works.
Whoa! A whopping 5 comments?! Holy cow! Much success!!!
Maybe I should fix that for him.
You didn't answer my question.
Your constant hyperbole ("NONE"), irrationality, false statements, and drama is childish and annoying. But hey, you seem to be enjoying yourself and that's what matters to you most, right?
You're saying "no one cares" and then when people demonstrate they do care you joke about it and continue to make the situation worse.
Do you really think your actions are improving or harming the future value of your investment in STEEM?
If you'd unblock me in Rocket.Chat we could discuss this more. If you're just a troll, don't bother, but if you actually want to make things better around here, let's discuss it like adults and develop solutions instead of just whining all the time like some insecure attention seeker.
You’re a pretentious douche and not someone I care to speak with, have I not made this clear in the past?
P.S. - good try here....
So just a troll then. Got it.
Yes, because I don’t want to talk to a douchebag who thinks he knows better than everyone else I’m a troll. I can live with that.
Hello @lukestokes https://steemit.com/fish/@jeevanjot/re-berniesanders-i-like-fish-20180730t180542603z Here is a proof how he abuse my account after saying the truth about his post. his post contain 18+ content in comments too and he supporting it. He is useless jerk trying to be king of steemit and making it centralized, do you think it's fair to flag out my all valuable posts and comments that he did with his 12 bots and dropped my repo, I am looking for better whales to take step against this guy, He is trolling all over steemit with his power and additional accounts. He earned $500 for his 4 word post. That's bad. For me he stole some better writer's valuable money over steem.
He’s just trolling you no use in arguing. Good catch on the blatant farming though!
I'm not arguing, I'm just exposing his troll behavior for those who still support him. If he really cared about STEEM, why not have a discussion with me, a top ten witness? Seems to me, he doesn't care but loves trolling.
He definitely loves trolling. I’m hoping it’ll die down if we ignore it.
It hasn't died down for the year and a half I've been here. He just continues doing even more outrageous things to get attention, including draining the reward pool while complaining about people draining the reward pool and running a shady upvote bot while complaining about upvote bots.
No doubt...I've been on Steemit just a little bit Luke and I'm stunned at how unproffesional, childish and downright toxic this guys is...i understand his frustration, but he's going about it the wrong way..he is being abusive and uncontrollable..if i was a dev or moderator i would have deleted his account immediately because of the rude language, threats and bullying...there should be a no tolerance rule here with regards to abuse...if you're not happy with the way the rewards pool is being spent , then talk to the developers or admin, but don't threaten or take away something that someone earned fairly with which the platform is designed..it really could have been handled way better..this whole incident with haejin really poisoned my views of this place...even people i respect have teamed up with this idiot without even considering what has been done as far as treating each other with respect and kindness...i haven't contributed a lot , but i was really excited about the potential for Steemit..maybe that's why the coin hasn't done anything...i've read on numerous platforms that people have left because of the toxic nature and structure of this place..i know it's in beta and kinks will get worked out, but this is just disgusting..cheers friend
20 upvotes? What happened to the rest of your bots?
Sorry... just 13 are upvotes
You will all see soon enough. :)
LOL you've implemented my idea albeit in manual form!
http://berniesandersbot01.xyz/uncategorized/first-things-first-i-need-a-script-written-willing-to-pay-for-it/
I'm taking $25 to $30 away from each comment, we need more help! It's a huge sacrifice considering the cost of SBD, but every bit helps.
Fight for your home lands, y'all!
Well done guys keep up the good fight against spam!
I actually think that right now it's better to join the self voters than to counter them.
The broken SBD peg with Steem Dollars at $8 means that currently the rewards are provided 22% by the stakeholding community and 78% by SBD speculators. That extra 350% purchasing power can be directed towards removing Steem from the market, which would raise the price of Steem due to the law of supply and demand. Raising the price of Steem would be good for all stakeholders, and in particular it would increase the supply of SBD, resulting in SBD returning to normal and all of our votes issuing more SBD per Steem.
There is a risk that the self voting taboo would be broken entirely and not just temporarily, but those who do this will end up with more voting power to police self voting in the future when there is no peg that needs fixing.
Some good points here to digest.
Interesting perspective, but why is a high SBD value such an issue? And how do you know those cashing out SBD are buying STEEM? Clearly they don't care about the long-term welfare of this platform, so they are more than likely buying some shitcoin that is mooning this week. I'd be surprised if they are buying STEEM. If they wanted to help the STEEM price, they'd prevent this drama and protect the network instead of create it. Stunts like this keep investors away who might otherwise really like STEEM.
SBD is supposed to be a stable token to facilitate commerce. That may not be prioritized by Steemit Inc any more, but it's still worth pursuing.
I don't, but whether they are or not, every stakeholder has the power to direct this excess purchasing power towards removing liquid Steem from the market. This would be the SBD peg in action. While the SBD peg is broken, it makes more sense to do this and to raise the price of Steem via constrained supply, than to try and plug the leak of selfish voting.
Once the peg is fixed those who purchased SP this way will have more power to police when the money is coming primarily from the community again instead of SBD speculators.
I am usually one of the ones who downvotes self voters. You can look through my history, I have regularly burned my voting power down to near 0% on downvoting self voters alone. However right now trying to police self voters is a bit like enforcing a ration during a bounty.
Every sale is somebody else's buy.
Who is buying it on the open market?
Isnt a low price, followed by a pump, in their best interests?
If you counter the votes, then the SBD goes to someone else instead. Some portion of that will be used to power up, most will likely be sold for other cryptos and fiat. Some of it will have gone to people contributing value, and some will have gone to yet more self voters. At least if you vote yourself and use the money to power up or burn Steem, you can maximize the amount of speculator purchasing power (75%+ of the PP is coming from SBD speculators) is directed towards removing liquid Steem from the market.
We're still in a position where well over 90% of SP is held by less than 1% of accounts, so we don't yet know how that will work empirically. My hope is that it is distributed more fairly. Right now when a whale downvotes another whale, the Steem put back into the pool will mostly be distributed again by other whales.
You can see what accounts are getting the most rewards here. You can see who is primarily distributing the rewards, as well as lots of other interesting stuff here
I reported this account earlier, it's really frustrating there is really nothing that can be done. No one wants to sacrifice their stake, and no one should have to sacrifice their rewards to police Steemit. Steemcleaners doesn't have the resources or tools to scale with the abuse.
There are a lot of these type of things going on, every time I find another I get more jaded about the whole thing.
I think we have to do more than report it. We have to flag it.
If we really care about STEEM, then our actions (not our reports or our words) will reflect that. We'll sacrifice some curation rewards and some rewards we would have liked to see authors we support receive because we care about the long-term value potential here.
It's not someone else's job.
It's our job.
I think that one of the problems is that minnows are afraid that downvoting this crap will make them a target, so they prefer to have somebody to report it to instead. Somebody with the firepower to stand up and hold their ground.
I have more resources than the average newcomer, but I still hesitate to declare war on any account with more firepower than me. On the other hand, I don't hesitate to provide coaching and the occasional flag when it's a smaller account.
Totally agree on this one. I have down voted some post in YouTube before if I don't like it due to I think their content is bad (I am no expert but that is my opinion). However, as this barely affect the author or myself as I can not be a target, I can practically do what I want (feels right).
Here even if I find a post disturbing, wrong, or rude I am scared of flagging it as he or his followers will down vote what little rewards I can get in this platform.
I and I think most minnows already have a hard time creating content and trying to be active, getting entangled in a Steem war would probably too much...
What Bernie does isn't my concern. I am not him. There is a difference between upvoting oneself $50-200/day and being upvoted for $382 10 times/day. The jury is out if self-voting is really bad. When someone getting 5+ posts on trending a day for around $15k USD/day, it is the entire community's responsibility to look into it.
Many believe one is free to use their stake as they please if you have a large amount of stake and want to upvote yourself, by all means, but to do it 10+ times a day for $300-400 is just insanity. It's a reward pool we all share, only 64K Steem is generated per day, and if one person takes a large portion of it, then it is a problem.
Looking at @haejin's payouts, he set to take around $15K+ USD/day per day. The total reward pool has a rough USD value of $192K/day @ $3 Steem. Let's say it was only $10K, that's still 5.2% of the total Steem Value generated a day, but more realistically larger (7.8%). So even though the % from Steem.supply was inaccurate purely on a STEEM production point of view, when you factor in USD value of SBD it is actually pretty close to what it is in reality.
It literally only matters to whales. They get all the rewards from the pool, not the minnows. All the flags in a month return about ~5% of the rewards to the pool. There isn't a minnow on the platform that should breathe hard for a 5% increase in their largely illusory rewards.
The best thing for the platform, IMHO, would be a continuous, evenly matched, flagwar between all whales.
The minnows would have a chance at rewards. The platform would have a reason to grow, and retention would skyrocket.
Even the flaggots would make money, as the capital gains made them more wealthy than their wildest dreams.
The most likely consequence of the incessant mining of rewards into the accounts that have the most Steem, is the value of Steem going to zero, sooner or later. Whenever the stream of new accounts dries up, and new influx of n00bs isn't available to offset the loss of those that give up.
Quality posts have earned @haejins payouts, that is why it amounts to so much- His actual followers (NOT unfair BOTS like Bsanders has) are giving him the upvotes he deserves. The problem with chasing the best bloggers away and intimidating their followers is that it disincentivises the better bloggers to compete and post the best content -and then they go elsewhere, which is actually bad for STEEM.
When there is the ability to create a massive bot army with million $SP value to downvote the better bloggers and then upvote themselves into trending, this is the worst use of the STEEM Platform. They are confusing people from Steem into thinking that people like @haejin are the problem (using scare tactics/terms like "rewardpoolrape" further exacerbates the problem), when it is actually the massive army with over 1ML steempower manipulating everyone into giving them more SP- You did a good job of figuring out @haejins earnings...But why not try and tackle the much bigger task of following the money the berniesadners bot army, and see how they make the most money of all ??? They are pulling the biggest scheme of all, right in front of everyone- accumulating more SP from the unsuspecting masses with their appeals to combat "reward pool rape" - Give me a break, thats right out of the playbook!.
And I am serious about tracking down the depth of that rabbit hole. I dont think anyone has successfully done it yet, because many don't have the time, and most don't even recognize that its happening. Figuring out just how much bsanders makes in a day from the unsuspecting will require figuring out how many are actually his own accounts (rand0whale?), and how the SP is used to accumulate more for the BernieS. collective.
I am not defending anyone, my discussion was about @haejin and you want to keep deflecting to someone. I do know for a fact @berniesanders sacrifices a shit ton of stake on a daily basis to flag spammers and scammers that no one else wants to take action on.
I provided all the math, feel free to provide your own.
Yes, and you know that. I'm going to guess you have no clue what one is though.
The more I look into @haejin, the fishier it gets. You have hundreds of new users flagging people with no stake and no understanding how Steem works. Yet they know enough to create bots that automate mass voting.
There are pages and pages of this.
Im sorry but he is fooling you if you truly think his "sacrifices" amount to more than his net daily earnings- how do you think he has accumulated over 1ML steempower??
Because he was one of the early miners who took a big gamble and went all in on Steem.
It isn't a witness's job to downvote self-votes, self-votes are not against the rules. In fact Steemit defaults to "Upvote Post" when creating a new post.
@berniesanders rewards:
@haejin rewards:
Bernie is a whale, Haejin is not, so he should be getting more rewards, and he isn't even remotely close. Haejin also has been downvoted a lot and hasn't been posting nearly as much, so the numbers would be many times higher (500%-1000% higher) if it continued on.
Yet @berniesanders rewards aren't even remotely close to @haejin's rewards.
Because you haven't or can't do the math. I have provided all my math and presented facts, not made up bullshit or attacks which is all you are capable of doing.
It's been fun, but I rather stick my finger in a light socket than continue to waste time talking to a wall.
i think I just made you visible again with my upvote?- I am finding that the only people who make legit comments (and who are not part of the Bsanders troll team) have had their comments made invisible- So i just look for those. Bsanders group have 100% gamed this platform with a massive sockpuppet shill-bot organization, making millions actually- Markmark has exposed himself more than once (although poor thing doesn't realize it) Same as krysec, who attempts to make informative posts that skew opinion in favor of randowhle and B sanders.
We need to return to 50/50 author/curators split.
We don't have a stick; so we need a carrot. Upvoting your own low value stuff should be less lucrative than upvoting other people's quality stuff.
Until we pull that trigger, this'll keep happening.
It will never be less profitable to vote for yourself than it is to vote for others when it comes to short sighted people. 50/50 won't change anything unless it is balanced with a counter incentive to vote for large account holders who guarantee curation rewards regardless of quality of content.
The proposed change to donate curation rewards back to the reward pool instead of the author is an interesting one. Every self voter will wait 15 minutes before they self vote increasing the incentive to vote for whales. More than ever, we need to balance these incentives with voting for hidden gems and underdogs.
If the goal of the few large stake-holders is to game the system, that is what they will do no matter how the math is tinkered with.
Those upvotes make me sick.
I might be that hidden gem you spoke of... COIN MAN...
@pocketechange
Whew! Good thing we fixed that problem!
Srsly.
If curators get 50% then that means 50% of the rewards pool will go to whales only. Small accounts will have very little chance to ever become dolphins or orcas because the rewards pool will just go to those who already have a ton of Steem Power. Curation rewards are near zero for small accounts.
I'd rather see them get most of the curation rewards by upvoting quality minnows, than see them get most of the posting rewards by upvoting each other.
They wouldn't upvote quality minnows. They would upvote their own sock-puppet accounts with content paid for by fiverr as we saw before. There is no silver bullet to this problem. We all just have to stay vigilant and work to continue improving things.
There is a silver bullet - just no one wants to bite it.
End curation rewards.
Problem solved.
Real simple solution:
1 vote = 1 vote, no matter what
no bots
This has the side benefit of making the whole system simpler and ready for mass adoption, since you can just get rid of Steem Power. While you're at it, might as well get rid of Steem Dollars too, since it has failed as a pegged crypto. bitAssets are the only viable pegged cryptos.
I appreciate you raising this issue for discussion and doing it in a civilized way, unlike what has been going on the last couple of weeks. I also appreciate you addressing my comment.
You're right. I don't understand but that is precisely my point. I have been a user for about 8 months and I don't understand how the system works. Sure that's on me but it is not a simple system. If the platform seeks to attain mass adoption, this will be a barrier, as will the fact that if you do not have a strong grasp of how it works and the financial means to act on that, the platform will not deliver on its promise.
I expect that this issue will become worse as the platform gains users. We will see more armies of whale bots feasting on minnows for their own financial gain. The most powerful users will be those who have no interest in advancing the community.
This isn't something I am interested in engaging in. I will continue to visit for some specific content, and I will invest in Steem by buying and selling on exchanges, but the last thing I will ever do is invest in the platform by powering up.
By the way, my comments were intended less as advice for changes to the system than they were pointing out what I see as the problems that will ultimately prevent it from reaching its goals.
Best metaphor for Steemit yet.
Thanks!
And what about limiting the amount of SP votes from whales to one account together with limiting votes from delegated power?
Dramatically reducing the number of bots is the goal, not perfection. Very expensive effort is required to defeat nominal bottraps. This has been shown widely. Captchas and 2FA are widely used because they largely work.
Also, there are things people do that bots can't. No one on Steemit, to my knowledge, has ever even tried to cut bots.
They're too profitable.
Sure, if you leave bots in place. Sort of a self-fulfilling prophecy then. Given that ~30% of SP supports the witnesses, and that but 2/3 of the top 20 are needed to fork, that's not a great expense to just buy the VP to own the witnesses.
That's not a Sybil attack. It's a bargain.
What really matters to Steemit is rewards for content. Were the gaming that produces all the distortions through bots and curation rewards obviated, retention might crack 10%.
I bet it's getting worse, instead. I've read estimates as low as 8%. Those algos aren't gonna do a bit of good on a dead platform.
Either the Steem gets more broadly distributed, or nothing will fix retention.
Losing bots, egalitarian voting, or at worst a Huey Long style 3% -300% VP, and ending curation, would leave all the whales their mined stakes, and those stakes might become of lasting value on a platform that kept it's users posting and upvoting.
No one would benefit more from a rising Steem price. Nothing less is going to raise it in the long term.
How does one get a core developers ear?
Read the real discussions in the github. Develop an understanding of the actual arguments and issues before weighing in. Then when you have something to contribute, its value speaks for itself and you gradually gain traction and respect.
Thank you
Might be worth starting from scratch.
Let me know how you get on.
More people who self vote, that wouldn't do anything considering the person who self votes gets post the author reward and the curation reward.
I think that HF20 will make authors ineligible for early curation rewards, i.e. self-voting during the initial current 30 minute window (which itself will change to a 15 minite window in HF20).
But they would still be eligible for curation rewards for opting after the window had passed.
They'll just vote after 15 minutes which will encourage everybody to vote for whales to get curation rewards.
Where do you find this info?
@steemitblog is the official source of most new info.
I posted from memory. Not sure where I first read about it, but this post has some more detail:
https://steemit.com/steem-help/@sykochica/answering-common-questions-what-do-i-need-to-know-about-the-next-steemit-update-hard-fork-20
I think the problem cannot really be solved by flagging (the bigger the abusing accounts the more hopeless it will be to fight against self-voting with flags). Instead of that the system should be improved in a way that self-voting, circle-voting and spamming would be less attractive again. That can be tried for example by ...
implementing diminishing returns when upvoting the same accounts (including own ones) again and again.
reintroducing the restriction to four full paid posts per day (from some hard forks ago) which was very reasonable.
thinking about other ideas like a sigmoid reward curve. Due to it's flat begin it would be far less attractive to upvote posts on which nobody else is voting (self-voting of comments would be less attractive). As it also ends flat, extreme rewards (like with n^2) would be avoided, as well.
considering also other ideas like the one of UserAuthority from @scipio.
Other ideas appreciated!
There should be an open discussion (and yes, I especially would like to hear more from the witnesses here) about how to solve the self-voting problem.
As @scipio showed mathematically, diminishing returns is easily gamable, just not by people.
@scipio's idea is pretty sound, but isn't a cureall.
Sigmoid rewards curves, diminishing returns, 15 minute curation windows, yada yada yada. All such mitigations for the original problem that making rewards financially manipulable results in financial manipulators capturing almost all of them, are just further complications of a broken mechanism.
End curation rewards. They aren't necessary, and do nothing but present an attack vector. Equalize VP, or nearly so, by some metric. Doesn't really even matter much what the metric, rep, UA, equality, is, what matters is that folks have voices and earnings based on their content.
End bots. It can be at least largely done. Right now there is zero effort to curtail bots. Captchas and 2FA that revealed keys necessary to vote would almost completely eliminate bots - because making bots good enough to defeat those things is expensive.
Steemit needs to be less winner take all, and more community oriented, if it's to become a lasting community.
I know you're sincere, and think often about this, and I do appreciate that.
Thanks!
There is some truth in that!
However, also your suggestion of equalizing voting power would have some flaws: by creating many, many new accounts someone could get easily a very big influence one the platform by doing many votes (or flags) with many accounts instead of a few heavy votes ...
I agree that the voting weight of some big stake holders is too high, but investing own money to buy STEEM should still be attractive ...
And concerning the manipulators you are right, there will be always ways to game the system, but I think at least we should make it a little bit more difficult than it is now.
I share your ideas to reduce the influence of bots.
Edit: I should add that in my eyes it is a really big problem that nowadays one can write more than four fully rewarded posts/comments per day. This increases spam (and self-voting of this spam) a lot.
By preventing bots from doing this, the manual labor involved makes it unprofitable.
I reckon it's a moot point, however, as the actual market for Steemit isn't us, or even the whole world, but those 39 accounts that possess most of the Steem in the world. No changes that better distribute Steem seem to be desirable to that group, as a whole.
Bots are their best profit centers, and rewards their dividends. While the White Paper calls for disbursing ~30% of rewards to the hoi polloi, very few rewards inure to accounts that aren't whales.
Folks that are getting $.02 per post just have no dog in the fight. They don't even have a dog.
All the controversy regarding excessive rewards, returning rewards to the pool, self-voting, all of it, simply doesn't affect minnows. It's kinda like idolization of stars. Minnows are living vicariously through the whales, dreaming of ever having any rewards to guard from greedy self-voters.
All the flags on the platform in a month return about 5% of rewards to the pool. 5% of $.02 doesn't even register. None of this matters to minnows in real terms, just like Kardashians' love lives.
Posts like this can keep Steemit safe
I believe we share many of the same ideals and views in terms of long term platform health, self voting, rewards pool rape etc. I would like to establish a relationship with you and see if we are on the same track in so far as platform goals, user behavior and common problems. My posts, recent and past can provide you good insight into my thinking.
While I am not as of yet a whale here or a members of extreme influence I'm working my way up the ladder and ask that you not discredit this comment based upon my current reputation. I have considerable experience in other real world areas of expertise.
Thank you for your time.
I think either that @pawsdog's comment is not intended to grab @lukestockes attention. I'm too, devoted small fish as pawsdog is here on Steemit. We believe that majority here must be promoted to bring good content here on this platform. This is the only thing that make this place great.
I scan @lukestockes activity here as a witness for some time and this post convince me even more, that he is one of good whales here on this platform. When I grow enough and my support to him will be of significant value, he will probably get my vote.
Solid post, I hope to agree, have to see how we mesh..
Thank you for your support.
You are the man Luke! More of such influential and devoted Steemians, as you are, is needed here to make this platform really great.
I appreciate you reaching you, but the "look here" image is quite annoying. At this point we need more than just thinking, but actual code suggestions and pull requests. Some of this stuff is really complicated and involves a lot of game theory dynamics. There are no simple solutions or they would have already been implemented.
Where on Github would I find the current pull requests? You may want to check out @aussieninja I believe he has a background in coding. I'm more old school, c++, php, html.. I evolved in the days of dos, static html and drupal module coding. I have also removed the offending image :)..
I have just though of something ( I do occasionally).
I will have to leave you with the very foggy concept, and leave it with you....(as I know zero of the guts of steemit, and you do)
Is there any way there could be a structure for witnesses (or big players - to have to pay for staying in position?
i.e big players would pledge a chunk of their account, and paid to the voters - for their patronage?)
if this could be implemented , would it not make the big people spread the wealth...?
Told you it was foggy, but you see what I mean...?
(if it's total bollox, feel free to say!lol)
(if it's brilliant, I will take the accolades)
The entire structure is based on positive motivation. Witnesses and investors are rewarded for their efforts. If you remove than and reverse it, you'll get people leaving in droves to other projects which will reward their time and effort.
I may be misunderstanding you, but witnesses have to be rewarded in order to pay for the servers and the time to maintain the blockchain.
'it's total bollox' would have been suffice!😂😂😂
Hahaha :)
That motivation is being hoovered such that it isn't making it to the larger market. I've seen no proposal that might enable that to be done. The upshot from @blocktrades recent proposal is that a modified change along those lines will be undertaken in HF20 - and this will cause greater motivation to vote for whale posts.
Not the fix we need bro.
We need to get ~30% of rewards into the wallets of minnows. It's easy to see how those rewards are being captured such that they never get there.
Whales don't need rewards from the pool as a form of dividend from their investment. There are traditional dividend mechanisms that can suffice, and capital gains is the real reason to invest.
Letting whales dip into the rewards pool for dividends is like letting investors in a broom company walk out the door with the product. In Steemit's case the product is rewards for content.
It's not getting to the sales floor.
The only way it's going to is if the whales dipping into it are deprived of it. End curation rewards. Kill bots. Captchas work all over the web, and 2FA works better. Make VP more egalitarian, so that people are included, rather than excluded, from participation right from the word go.
These things would demonstrably get rewards to content authors, and end a lot of the financial manipulation that is killing Steemit user retention.
Your comment got me thinking about a solution which I call "steeminators" which I just posted here. It attempts to solve a lot of the problems you've had to deal with regarding flagging such as the time and money you had to spend flagging undesirable comments.
"Look Here" You are demanding attention for what? a post which is completely off topic and clogging up the comment section! Don't complain if you'll get downvoted.
Edit : He's now edited the post to make it more on topic
And you are? I was actually sent here by another user promoting this user and asking me to delegate SP to him as he is a good witness. I read his post above, which discusses his platform ideals and goals. I commented accordingly, on topic, and offered him a chance to network. Not sure what your are not reading or where the aggression comes from. If I get flagged for reaching out, then I guess I would know not vote him as a witness. Worry about yourself and the rest will take care of itself. :)
It wasn't on topic before you edited it ;)
And it wasn't the first time I saw you comment with an eye grabbing image and an off topic post just to promote your blog to whales. But good luck, no biggie.
I appreciate you trying to "police" comments on my blog, but please, leave that to me.
Upvote! What a wise move!
you don't own the comment section. it's annoying for us readers to have to scroll through dozens of spammy or off topic comments.
if I see spammers I'm gonna call them out! they're wasting my attention.
anyway now he's edited the post and has some relevance to the topic, before it had none.
No, I don't, and you're clearly free to do as you please. I would have preferred to see it myself.
I did add the word "reward pool rape" to clarify. Perhaps my initial comment was a bit too ambiguous for the average reader prior to that. My apologies.. no hard feelings..
Just sprinkled some 100% flags. Will do more once my VP goes up a bit. There are some 4 day old comments that I can hit when at 100% @ 100%.
Resteeming (everyone else should too).
Thank you Matt. I really appreciate your efforts to help out here.
How can I get involved from a non technical level to better the platform? What groups etc.
Hey, we're all on the same team here. It's the least I can do. Gotta take the longview.
Yeah, this is disgraceful... I wrote to a few people on steemit.chat about this particular cesspool earlier today.
As you say, this is short term greed... somebody "writing themselves $800 checks" with every upvote of non-comment on a sock puppet account. And note how the empty comments are "time stacked" so they can sit there unnoticed till about 13 hours before they are due to pay out... then they get their massive upvotes; lather, rinse, repeat.
I'm still not sure how to address all this at the code level... but I keep coming back to the idea of voting power being a two-factor algorithm. Yes the starting point is your SP, but that's also multiplied by some kind of "trust factor" so somebody who just randomly transfers in 500,000SP to a new account only has maybe... 1/10th? 1/20th? the power of a seasoned and trusted long term member who has a large "web of trust," as voted on by community feedback... a bit like reputation, but also different.
On the other end, people are expected to do what they can to get more cash. The system should be designed to work under all those incentives.
I totally agree with this comment. While sock puppet voting is bad, self-voting does some good things for minnow curators. First, it helps keep them on the Steemit platform with the incentive of making SOMETHING! Second, upvoting one's own comment is a promotion in itself, moving that comment to the forefront. How can anyone expect to ever get ahead when the can't play by the rules currently in place. I have taken the liberty of upvoting myself, mainly because I spend a lot of time creating posts without the benefit of receiving a lot of upvotes. And I do always share my voting power though. I DO NOT self-vote low effort comments though. Steemit is a two way street and until the rules change, it is what it is. I believe that once an account reaches certain thresholds, curation algorithms should change. The $800 self-written check should be a no no!
I choose not to upvote myself. On the other end we should disable it if we don't want people abusing it. I prefer to leave the choice to people, like you did.
That is one solution. But we also don't want to forbid investor to join and back the system. We maybe are pushing a certain role to some people that do not want to play that role.
If I may ask, how do you feel when you spend over two hours creating a post and you get two votes? Both from bots? It is disheartening and it has happened to me a lot. If my efforts were better rewarded, then maybe I would not feel the necessity to upvote myself and I could save my voting strength for others. It can go both ways I suppose.
Let's say it's even worst for because what I care the most about is the comments and the interaction. So this is even worst, even though we are paid to comment (my first payout ever was a comment). Upvoting myself doesn't help since the feeling of loneliness won't fade for the $$.
That might be only be me.
Ha, a lengthy post with no Upvotes and NO comments is pure loneliness!
Turning investors into curators, for example.
Thanks!
Interesting idea. What if they did something like that, where you have to be on this platform for X period of time, and post X times/get X number of votes, etc. before the "trust factor" increases? They could also tie this to reputation as well. The higher the rep, the higher the percentage you get. For example, 0 rep would bring in 0% of the earnings, 10 rep 25%, 20 rep 50%, 30 rep 75%, and 40+ rep 100%.
The only issue here, would be that people like berniesanders could still mass flag someone to kill their rep, especially if their reputation is already not terribly high. They could also mass vote an account up to boost the rep. It isn't a perfect solution, but it may slow things down.
Furthermore, what about limiting the number of accounts one person can have? I know this would be difficult to do, but they could potentially monitor suspected individuals, put them on probation if an issue is found, and ban/delete their account if they are found to be directly violating the rules in order to scam the platform. If nothing else, this would probably force people like bernie to be more careful and less brazen in his attacks. Perhaps some of the people guilty of doing this would be dumb enough to make it obvious, and get booted.
Just my thoughts, what do you all think?
Reputations scores can only be adjusted by people with higher reputation scores. That means low rep accounts can raise or lower higher reputation accounts.
Ok, I knew you had to have higher reputation to lower someone else's with a flag. You are saying it works the same for raising it? Only higher reputations upvoting you can raise your own?
As far as I understand, lower reputations can't raise the reputation of higher accounts.
In the post of @arcange, he shows that there are two rules to reputation:
// Rule #1: Must have non-negative reputation to affect another user's reputation
// Rule #2: If you are downvoting another user, you must have more reputation than them to impact their reputation
Rule #1 implies, that if you are upvoting a post of somebody with a higher reputation than you have, this has an effect as long as you have a positive reputation, with the impact depending on a) your reputation and b) your voting power. If this wasn't the case:
Wow... I had no clue about all this going on... COIN MAN...
@pocketechange
#utopian-io has a prototype of User Authority that is underway. Once they have some results and data exploring those results, they will probably make some pull requests for laying the groundwork in HF 21. Lead developer was @scipio, but I don't see any updates on this in the last month, so I don't know the current status. His intro post to the concept is at https://steemit.com/utopian-io/@scipio/userauthority-ua-explanations-applications-and-implications
Man, thanks for bringing this to the public's attention, Luke. This really makes me feel relieved that you're watching over us. Declining the payout is really awesome of you to do. Maybe if this becomes a regular thing, you could do a series that's called "The Luke-out" haha!
The last thing I want to do is police everyone, but I think if we all do our part when the time arises, we can make a difference. Thanks as always for your support, Jed.
nice review of the phenomena, self vote is sad truth due to how hard it is for the content to be seen!
You just upvoted your own virtually worthless comment in a post highlighting upvoting abuse. Incredible.
Yeah, and I even explain why I did it, sad you don't read :)
I did read it, that's how I know it was worthless. You are voting your own "content" that is little more than a "good post" type of reply. Can't you see how shady that is??
Everyone has their own ways of changing system ...some use silence ways and some use voilence ways...
Yeah. Someone grants for charity, someone take shotgun and shoot out bastards.
😄😄😄😄😄😄
Sadly Bernie did not open rewardpoolrape simply to highlight the problem, but primarily to farm rewards. And he will keep farming rawards even with other accounts.
Otherwise it can't be explained why he censored my post which highlighted the many ways in which self vote is being abused:
https://steemit.com/steemitabuse/@steempolice/steem-has-no-future-unless-self-vote-abuse-is-stopped-steemit-inc-and-whales-do-your-part
He's a nefarious actor and should be dealt accordingly. There's no point even reasoning with him any more.
There is no cause to flag.
@lukestokes voted you as a witness and resteemed
Self Vote Abuse (the self voting of low efort posts and comments) is wide spread.
A solution needs to be found involving Steemit Inc, who are the only ones with enough Steem Power to counter such abuse:
https://steemit.com/steemitabuse/@steempolice/steem-has-no-future-unless-self-vote-abuse-is-stopped-steemit-inc-and-whales-do-your-part
https://steemit.com/steemit-abuse/@steempolice/grumpycat-and-rewardpoolrape-are-doing-us-all-a-favour-the-self-vote-abuse-can-t-be-brushed-under-the-carpet-any-longer-time-for
Or something needs to be done at Witness level.
Key-words here being "Low Effort." I agree! But for those who put in hours in creating something of value, there should be no reason why those authors shouldn't be able to gift themselves.
A decreasing voting impact for the same person could be a possible and simple solution to the problem.
It could be achieved in the same way as voting power decreases. I.e. if you vote for the same person your first vote is at 100% of your current voting power, your seconds is 90% and so on (with the decrease being debatable). Recharging again over time.
Sure, if you're voting on a specific pool of content mostly written by the same people there might be an issue. But with most people writing less than 1-3 posts per week, this should be fine.
Another issue might be comments in a conversation, where the value is added to each post. But considering that normally you'd upvote a comment with less than 100% voting power that shouldn't be an issue, as you could simply increase the voting power to your target level.
This proposal has two advantages:
Today I have seen that post too. I am so sorry that things like that are happening to the platform. That is both spam and abuse at the same time. Unfortunately my SP is very low so I can do barely nothing about it, but I will resteem your post for visibility since I know that at least one whale is following me. Thanks for cleaning this place Luke, I respect your efforts!
Doing what little I can, even though i'm on vacation.
I feel bad that you have to do things like cleaning this place when you are in vacation... It seems that here is a though time with huge spam and flag war going on. I am curious to see a post of yours with your opinion about it, but right now please enjoy the rest of your vacation!
I dropped a few 100% flags on them, but thats a lot of SP to fight :(
Much dissapoint, @grumpycat
Hello @ausbitbank,
Thanks For Upvoting My Post (https://steemit.com/travel/@ankursiddha/dharamkot-a-hippie-village-in-the-himalayas-travel-blog)
My name is Ankur Siddha from India. I want to be a part of the steemit community. I am into Blockchain & Crypro-currency field since last 1 year and have been part of many ICO's like Tokenstars, Verime, Budbo, Teky etc to help them in their marketing. I am also on the team of Upcoming ICO's Zohem, Flying Money & WEcrowd. I came to know about Steemit a few days back and loved it. As I am a traveler & Photographer. I have started uploading my experiences & work here. I also preparing more content from my past and also planning to keep on traveling and adding new content to it.
I am here to request you to curate my content to support me in my mission. I will also be expecting feedbacks & suggestions to improve my skills. I have some following on my other social channels and I am sharing my content with them also. In this little time, I have managed to make 5 of my friends join steemit. Hope to get your support in future. So, I can do well. Willing to so STeemit full time leaving my job and become an important contributor to the community.
There are a few of my recent contribution :
https://steemit.com/photography/@ankursiddha/the-taj-mahal-7-wonders-of-world-ankur-siddha-photography
https://steemit.com/travel/@ankursiddha/orissa-tourism-ankur-siddha-photography-nandan-kanan-botanical-garden-bhubaneswar-orissa-post-1
https://steemit.com/photography/@ankursiddha/humayun-s-tomb-delhi-unesco-world-heritage-centre-new-delhi-monument-1
https://steemit.com/love/@ankursiddha/my-love-what-i-feel-for-you-is-amazing
I tried to flag some posts but my flags are worth almost nothing against those guys... Damn
I can't believe Dan and Ned don't address these issues. It's like they don't really care.
Can you imagine this happening on any other website? No.
FYI Dan is no longer part of steemit inc (since nine months ago...by the way).
https://busy.org/steemit/@steemitblog/joint-statement
Thanks for the update.
Most other websites are centralized. This is the wild west on here. Steam power is just as much a weapon as it is a way to garner profit.
Steem* power :)
Good catch! ;)
Thanks! I don't like when that happens, especially searching Steem on google and getting that "you mean Steam" message :))
"Steam" is a different galaxy.
This is different than every other website. This is a decentralized blockchain platform.
So what is the solution long term? A hard fork and this time put protocol to prevent abuse?
Self-limiting algorithms for the powerful!
This wasn't a call to action for those with low Steem Power.
Thankfully some whales have responded and many of the pending payouts are now $0.
I don't have much SP, so the best I can do is to resteem this post and get the word out there as should other minnows.
Great work, Luke.
Thanks for spreading the word. I think it helped as I'm seeing mostly $0 payouts now for the comments that were highlighted.
Some steemians grew too big for their own good and ruin the fun for the rest of us. I convinced 80 people to join Steemit this month from my YT followers. I am planning to teach them how to grow their own rewards as fairly as possible. They won't care if this BS keeps happening.
That is real blatant plundering of the pool. It's not even pretending to be valid content. I'm happy to see any whale flag that to nothing. Ned could do it himself. Others are missing out on earned rewards thanks to this behaviour.
Yep, it's a disgrace. There's always a few that want to ruin everything for the majority.
thanks for post
It's really a great job helping others is greatness God bless you. You are nice
I have been seeing a tons of posts pertaining to the same issues laid out on this blog. It is clearly a predicament and actions must be made for the sake of SteemIt and it's community.
Why is it that the majority who are relevant are not recognised. The irrelevant are great shareholders.
Thanks Luke
Dear @fidelpoet, this is a call to action. You are welcome to flag away these atrocities with your SteemPower, however, if you don't have much, it will not do anything to the mindset of those upvoting placeholder comments.
No Steemian is ever irrelevant. But some actions are simply not very effective without tons of SP.
Thanks with the education sir. I was not aware of the Steem Power Effect.
I'm not sure what you mean the irrelevant being great shareholders. What matters here is Steem Power. That's what the blockchain respects and that's what is needed to flag these spam comments.
Sorry sir about that. I wanted to say some. Saying all of them are irrelevant will be a false opinion, not a true fact.
I agree that there should be level ground field for everyone and no one should have advantage. To be very honest, until there is tight rules no body care about fairplaying. Rules must be refined and tightend.
There is no such thing as a level ground field for everyone anywhere in nature. I'm all about equal opportunities, but we can never effective enforce equal outcomes. Rules alone can't fix this. It requires effort from those who actually care.
This is probably the lamest form of spam and reward pool rape I've ever seen... They might as well at least leave the oh-so-common "Nice Post" comment on other peoples' posts... But literally making one post and then self commenting endlessly and self upvoting endlessly on that one post....... That's not even trying at all :D
Thanks for pointing this out, Luke! This is some real Sherlock Holmes uncovering here.
"This is some real Sherlock Holmes uncovering here". Going through the blog, I think you just put this line precisely. :)
@lukestokes needs more power to bring cases to limelight.
Thanks goes to @tt-dogg who noticed this was such an issue that they brought it up in an unrelated post of mine to bring it to my attention.
thank you for being a stand up honest witness...if ever your in the sf bay area i woud love to take you and your family out for dinner i voted you for witness and will be promoting to to all my followers sir...sorry your on vacation ...im also on vacation also...
I can't believe someone is misusing such a wonderful accountname as grumpycat. :(
I'd help, but my VP is dead.
This is just a call to action for those who have the means to help.
I know. I feel sad for the grumpycat meme.
Well, I resteemed and sent around elsewhere. Hope it helps.
Way to be on the job
Will definitely be thinking about this !!. Thank you bro for the awareness
Thanks. :)
Thank you for making this post. I'm a baby minnow, plankton poop even, but I value Steemit very much, and I'd love for it to continue to be successful, but there seems to be others that are determined to try and game the system as much as possible, the future of Steemit, and that of the rest of us, be damned!
People will always game a system. It seems like Steem doesn't take that into account.
Steem does take that into account. That's why everybody has the opportunity to use upvotes OR downvotes. The idea is that the biggest accounts (the whales) have the biggest incentive to make sure that this type of abuse doesn't pay out, as they have the most to lose if the whole system goes to shit.
@lukestokes made the call to action, and the whales responded by downvoting the content. it continues in a perpetual cycle of whack-a-mole. Vigilance is the eternal price of wealth.
This is exactly how Steem is supposed to work.
Resteemed
thanks for the info
I ain't no whale but I'm happy to flag to stuff I consider "Not worth contributing"!
Makes me feel like shit but it's gotta be done!
Thanks for this.
Heheh. Don't worry about it too much. This was specifically a call to action for high SP accounts.
Sure thing. I'm just wondering what smaller account can do to help?
This act is not sharing the view of this platform, if everyone operates at this level then this platform soon will be died.
#steemsoccer1
While this is a particularly egregious case, i think it's worth mentioning the bidbot abuse that's going on with stolen / thin content. I don't think steemcleaners can keep up with a network of 50-100 spammers.
Care to comment, @steamcleaners? Are you being overrun? If so, what can we as a community do to help?
I think this issue is really sensitive one that needs to be checkmated. Thank you for raising this up @lukestokes
Wow, such blantent horseshit!
Can't believe we've found a good witness here. Finally someone worthy of a vote! Thank you @lukestokes for looking out for us minnows who just want to blog in peace and enjoy quality content like that of @haejin 👌 rock on
Happy holidays~ :)
고맙습니다! 행복한 휴일 :)
Thanks for your support.
This is the #1 reason I have not invited any of my friends to Steemit. I love everything about it so far, accept this bickering! Does Bernie not realizing he will kill his source of income by making it unfavorable?
IMO, Bernie is irrational and petty. I've tried to communicate with him to understand his reasoning, but it still escapes me, and he's blocked me on rocket chat so I don't know if I'll have any other further opportunities to understand him.
It is sad to think stuff like this may keep some people away from Steemit. At the same time, this is a real world with real actors, both good and bad. Part of me likes that we're creating a reality here, and we can't just run to mommy or daddy authoritarian to fix things for us.
We have to fix it ourselves.
Very true. So let's get it done, so i can bring my friends. I want all my broke longboard friends to start getting paid for their hard work and content. They have a very positive community compared to skateboarding.
AAAhhhhhhh Brother you are an honorable man and really helping this community indeed.
This is an awesome post with awesome results and you declined payout on top of that. If I didn't have you voted for a witness by now I would surely put you on but I saw your character a while back.
Anyone reding this comment please vote for @lukestokes for witness as he has proven ever since I first started following him that he is looking out for this community and helping ensure a sustainable future of thrival for us all.
I support you with my resteem service
Your post has been resteemed to my 3000 followers
Resteem a post for free here
Power Resteem Service - The powerhouse for free resteems, paid resteems, random resteems
I am not a bot. Upvote this comment if you like this service
Congratulations @lukestokes!
Your post was mentioned in the hit parade in the following category:
That is a kilama gesao kind of thing.