STEP 1: Create An Auto Comment Bot
STEP 2: Program Another Bot To Upvote All Your Own Comments
STEP 3: Rinse, Repeat
You will quickly notice things begin to happen:
You will start to earn short-term gains in the form of Steem Dollars. This will make you feel good, as if you were snorting some cocaine.
Then, you'll notice that others will copy your methods.
Then, you'll find your name listed in @personz's analytical posts, and you'll see your name prominently displayed in @calamus056's posts as well.
Top 10 accounts with the highest percentage of self-votes of SBD:
image by @calamus056
After others copy your methods, you'll see the Steem price drop, as more and more users just start voting for themselves.
Pretty soon, instead of 1/3 of the rewards going to self-voters, it will become 100% and we will be left with this scenario:
NO ONE WILL WANT TO JOIN STEEMIT AS BY THIS TIME IT WILL BE VERY WELL KNOWN AS A SCAM, AN UPVOTE RING.
Then Dan Larimer rolls over in his grave, because when he first created Steem, he had feared this self-voting behaviour, and had created the algorithm to deal with it effectively. It was only HF19 (which all of us were wanting) that reversed this, and made the self-voting possible to the extent we see now.
I support changing the comment rules to this, as @transisto and @personz have outlined:
Users can still upvote their own comments, but no monetary rewards will be gained from doing so. It will still help comments gain visibility, but the monetary element will be removed. I AM 100% IN SUPPORT OF THIS.
Read more about this HF policy change that @transisto posted: https://steemit.com/steem/@transisto/two-proposed-hf-policy-change-for-countering-reward-based-abuses
I think I represent the average Steemian, since I upvote all my own posts, but rarely do I upvote my own inane comments. Upvoting all your own comments is viewed as abuse by the majority of Steemians, and I am going to actively discourage people from following those who do. You know who you are. If you're voting for yourself more than 50% of the rewards, you're actively destroying the value of Steem and the entire concept of this ecosystem. Gaining followers will become more difficult, and like a drug addict, you will start to feel the hangovers more and more over time. You will lose friends too............Just an FYI...
And most importantly, you will not be in the Yunkosphere. Your Yunk standing will become ghost-like.
FUN STEEMIT FACT OF THE DAY: The word, "YUNK" is now in the Urban Dictionary: http://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=Yunk
This is yuuuuuge people! This means that more and more people will become curious about Steemit! A viral trend like a brand-new word spreading on the internet is exactly what we need!
This is exactly what I want. Sometimes I really would like to push my own comment a little bit so it gets noticed by more people. But I don't do it (99% of the time) because I have a bad feeling about it. Removing the monetary reward would be perfect. Although maybe then all comments will have at least 1 upvote.
I also like the idea. Others could still reward your comment.
I know because I feel the same way! I want to upvote my GIF, or whatever, but I don't want the money......
OMG... this seems to be even more relevant if an upvote is worth $10.... :D Thank you!
But when I think about it... one could upvote an own comment with only 1%, reducing the payout. I've even seen upvotes of less than 1%... I wonder how this is possible. Can you go under 1% if you're bigger?
(Oh and also thanks for raising my reputation score... :D)
hey, you did this all yourself, by adding some logic and care to my post! I can upvote with 1%, sure. I decided to upvote at full strength, to prove a point....rewarding others is the ORIGINAL REASON THIS PLATFORM WAS CREATED. We cannot judge our own comments, and even our own posts. We also cannot give ourselves our reputation score. That is GIVEN BY OTHERS. People need reminding of these basics.....and understanding that PEOPLE ON HERE WHO STARTED OUT WITH NOTHING BECAME INFLUENTIAL (and earned Steem IN THE PROCESS). I didn't become influential by upvoting my own comments. That is NOT THE WAY.
I feel like I am clawing my way to higher rep and higher SP and it feels great! It's the same feeling when you start a garden. You clear the area (laying the foundation), plant your seeds (gaining friends and posting), and reap the bounty! The work doesnt stop there though. You have to keep it up. The bounty keeps coming over time and work.
I have been down with yunk from almost the very start when it was just whispered in the chat room! HEee HEEe
Yunktastic idea
It can be a noun, verb, adjective! But it goes deeper than that as we see here :0) Happy it's gaining transaction here to support.
At one percent, I'm now at $.18
$.08 at 100% (88% voting power) :D
@stellabelle how did you end up with that much SD?
Just followed you!
Thanks stellabelle this what I am doing now, blogged is a bit hard for me so you can see me most on commenting.
Good rules to follow, followed you also. Commenting is more harder for me than blogging i don't get it, but i am learning.
She has been around since the beginning and actually added value to the system. That is why she has such a high voting power(FYI).
your real questions should be: how did you end up with 74 rep score.... these are interrelated.
Everyone discounts the true value here: social capital.
So how did you end up with 74 as your rep score?
Upvoting your own comments without any monetary rewards would fix this a lot ! Would love to see this happen.
Even upvoting your own comments without any monetary reward shouldn't be a feature if it gets pushed up according to voter's SP. You can never be a fair judge to your own comment. Most people are biased when judging themselves. Let others judge their content's worth.
If there needs to be a feature for upvoting yourself, it should be just for the sack of novelty.
Totally agree! 💯
I also think this applies to posts, not just comments. As you say, "let others judge their content's worth".
Wouldn't that leave people to simply create sock puppet account? I think this isn't a viable solution.
Creating a ton of sock accounts would requires vastly more effort and time than an auto-vote bot, unless I'm mistaken. That's a disincentive to pursuing that particular course of action, especially given that new accounts have practically no weight at all.
Wouldn't it necessitate only one sock puppet account. It could be seen negatively to upvote its own comment this way but it still could be done.
At this point I tend to disagree with this solution and I'm still unsure about the course of actions that should be taken.
I agree with @teamsteem, the creation of just one sock-puppet account is an almost negligibly small discomfort to the average (ab)user. That's why my own algorithms have always treated self-votes and sock-puppet-votes the same.
Can't agree more! In fact, Steemit does not differentiate in a post or a comment and count them together as "posts". But while creating a post, "Upvote post" check box is checked by default and that is discriminatory of Steemit. This default setting makes us think that we should upvote our posts ...and by analogy, upvote our comments too. It's all beyond me.
Actually, this has been changed now and the default is not to upvote your own post. You must now check the box to self-vote.
Yep, that was a change I submitted too :)
And a good one. Well done you!
I understand what you mean, but they're clearly differentiated here on the UI, which would lead me to think that differentiating them via the blockchain shouldn't be particularly difficult.
motheryunker, u nailed it...
I have only upvoted my own comments to avoid them fall bellow an army of bot comments, which are annoying, don't provide any new things to the conversation and only generate spam that can avoid real people reading comments from real people.
In my case, my upvote doesn't give me back any money, but anyway, completely agree with the proposal of not receiving money at all for everyone self-upvoting
and providing good answers continues to earn you rewards from others....EXACTLY WHY THIS PLATFORM WAS CREATED.
Indeed. It would bring much better engagement on every post and that's what we need !
I almost upvoted my own comment (lulz)
Why not just disallow all self-voting? Of course there are workarounds, but I don't understand the desire to allow it "for visibility". Doesn't everyone want more visibility? If everybody would do this, then nobody should do this, as it would all cancel itself out. Or make it so every post is automatically self-upvoted. Just make it an all or nothing proposition.
I thought there was a button somewhere you could "auto upvote" your own comments already? Or was it auto-upvote your own posts?
Just your posts. It's assumed that you want to vote for your own posts, and I don't think people really frown on that, but they do frown on upvoting your own comments, or, at least, it's controversial.
I think I have an idea:
THE STEEMIT UPVOTE CAPTCHA
a bot that verify the human upvote...like a "captcha" type of bot that at the moment of upvoting it will ask you to write down a funny looking word lol...
"self-upvoting" bots would die in agony
also it would make you think twice before upvoting .. thinking about the time you have to lose to "captch" it...
...so you must really like a content to go thru an upvote..
am I missing something here? what do you think...
at least lower it to like 10% not 100
but even that might not be enough
i dunno ill have to brainstorm as many other probably have
if take away the upvote power they are like soldiers without a gun...
yes, and those people would be forced to post more, and perhaps would abuse that, but at least that is way more visible.
exactly, I mean how many posts you make per day?? 5-10 ...then how many of this 10 is worth your upvote?...they will get tired eventually
Consiquently. Every time you upvote yourself you loose 10 yunkcoins. This post is yunk approved. Share the yunk! Spread it around. Welcome to the yunkommunity
Maybe you can create your own Yunk token, which is given to those who don't upvote their own content?
lol we have definitely had talks about making yunkcoin for fun, we will see what comes :)
Would it be possible to automatically integrate Yunk tokens into steemit?
That is a great question that I do not know the answer to :)
Otacon?
Snake is that you?
Hello @stellabelle
Those are strong tags, but they are neccesary
As someone who runs a contest for new Steemians , I have recieved some complaints about how unfair the system is.
HF 19 (nicknamed Equality),may have brought increased voting power, but it is also brought about a sharp increase of self reward and greed.
I don't believe in Equality in this aspect, Equity is what we should strive towards, I have seen some blogs that the owners have not been active but they still earn more than those who post articles by just upvoting their comments.
This is very unhealthy for Steemit, and I believe that this is what has led to the increasing number of shit posts because people feel like cracking their head for quality posts will bring them no tangible returns.
I have seen where people upvote their comments without even upvoting the post.
@ogochukwu
Good insights. No one has the answer, but many think that removing the rewards on comments is a first and necessary step.
OK, I agree with this: "...that removing the rewards on comments is a first and necessary step."
Sock-puppet creation is too easy for this to be a viable total solution, but it sends a message to the copy-cats.
Indeed, if the only logical reason to self-upvote a comment is for promotion, then it logically should cost a bit to do so. This may not be visible in dollars bit can be adjusted in the Vests value.
Good point but you know that many people feel they have already purchased this right by buying STEEM and powering it up.
So, I can upvote my posts, of 3 paragraphs, and that's all just great?
This is so short sighted...
Paying yourself first on a post is one thing, comments is just asinine. Steem, like most things, has herd mentality at its core. Self Comment Voting might actually just be a short term issue as the ecosystem can correct it with enough foresight.
I guess you COULD say it 5 times fast lol
Yes, but what do you really think?
What are your hidden motivations, agenda, and actual considerations, besides your kneejerk reactions to other's behavior?
Why do i feel like I'm back in High School, and cliques rule the day?
working within a general consensus is a reasonable way to get along with folk. As long as that general consensus does not violate your morals. even if out side our preferences.
I can say I unabashedly upvote my own comments sometimes. Said vote is worth next to nothing. For me it's increased visibility. however, by the time one of my comment upvotes could be worth a few sbd, everything I do will be plenty visible. No need to self upvote. I have no money in upvotes, so if money was taken away, no skin off my back. it is nice to get a $$$ upvote now and again, but.. I won't cry if that disappears.
I think it's helpful to be able to change the visibility of my comment more so than earning a profit from it.
I just laughed pretty hard in the middle of public and now everyone thinks I'm crazy... @stellabelle
i am glad!
Welcome to the club.
those motheryunkers lol
It’s starting to turn into a real issue. I just see spammers everywhere upvoting themselves and getting a network to upvote them as well. Then people see those comments and upvote them because hey others are upvoting…. Thank you for sharing these resources. I just wish there were more tools to directly deal with some of these people. I’ve even tried talking a new Steemain about his actions and it didn’t end well. He ended up swearing at me in another langue from the best I can tell using google translate lol. Some people just don’t care, and want to get their greedy hands on whatever they can while they can.
upvote captcha coming to a greedy steemian near you ... lol
I hope not, I fail those more times than the bots do. I’ll never get to upvote again! I bet I would get auto banned after my 10th fail trying type in the first captcha.
Now if those are just applied to "greedy' and we define that as someone spamming every 15 secs then I would be all for it!
captcha became user friendly but if that is what you fear then we can reverse the mechanism meaning instead of trying to type what is unreadable, we write it down like a pass that will be used everytime we upvote ... a 1 time "reverse" captcha will be used to register ur upvote pass...
how you define greedy lol... u can only prevent abuse by ...
reverse captcha - reversing abuse
reverse "catcha" - catcha ur greedy bottom
lol
talk to me baby.. :p
I hope they will change the self-upvote system, I'm quite new here but it bugged me out from the beginning. If people prefer to upvote and reward themselves instead of rewarding others, the very essence of this platform is gone. However i'm not going to defend these self upvoters but I litterly came here after watching and reading about Steemit and the term "You can vote for yourself." came up quite alot which I did not fully understand at the beginning.. But now I do! and I mean c'mon everyone wants to make money to survive.. right? I don't blame people if they drive a car simply because that car is designed to drive.. The developer's should re-consider to alter or change this function like mentioned above in your article. People already are giving idea's and solutions.. And I'm sure many people here with the right knowledge would want to help change this problem. So I hope changes will be made. And that would stimulate people to stay if they actually got rewarded for a nice comment instead of ignored by the author and selfvotes his own "hmm okay thanks" reply. But I believe in the other other 80% that are on Steemit with good intentions towards other such as creative artists or coders or who ever you might run up to right here on Steemit. If we want to be noticed we gotta work together and help each other instead of only ourselfves. And your last tag is wtf but hilarious. 👍👍👍 😃
I'm 109% supporting no rewards for self vote comments! Stop those abusers!
SelfUPVOTE - DISABLED = Problem FIXED! Lots of people would earn less, for "crap material"... But @money plays!
Am Upvoted and resteemed ! Hope more people will see it !
Won't solve it. Just uovote yourself with another account, easy to transfer SP..
Super-mega Downvote Bots that recognizes the same user by ip or something I dunno, and downvotes the self-upvoters ?
Is it a possibility?
Might be, but then again someone could just use VPN. Banning certain behavior is just like government regulations. You always need to regulate the regulations because there's always some unexpected problems caused. We don't won't to start on that slippery slope
thank you for sharing this
NO PROB!
:)
....
I'm so pleased to see support of the yunk movement in your posts. Yunk on! :)
I've recently done some slight research into the use of 'upvote' bots such as randowhale and booster, and I am curious to see if at some point I can put some data together on how many of these votes are used for self upvoting instead of rewarding other people's posts as a percentage of their use. Would be easy enough to do the analysis; I just need to get the data.
yes, interesting data is welcome. Yunk on! I am totally yunkified. I cannot sleep.
I decided to do that data analysis, in the name of Yunk.
https://steemit.com/steemit/@holoz0r/report-randowhale-self-upvotes-some-disturbing-findings
Thank you for the insight and detailed explanation. After reading I agree, the monetary aspect of upvoting your own comments should be removed 100%. One simple tweak like that would have a massive effect on cleaning up this mess! :)
Keep up the good work Stella.
YES! This is a big reason why I started writing my 'Learning ethics from an as$#%le' post series! There isn't one 'right' way to use steemit, but there is certainly a 'wrong' way that will destroy everything that has been built here...
yes, well, the self vote abuse will only lead to one thing: NEW RULES! It will not last, as it is destructive.
I agree, up-voting own comments should be removed. I used to up vote my own comments (20% per day) shortly after HF19 but stopped with it completely since few weeks. At this time I don't see a reason why this should continue given the current abuse, other than a few people the greater community isn't benefiting from this so I hope the ability to self up-vote comments will be removed with next hardfork.
Hmmm, I didn't know the voting on your own comments has that 50% rewards factor that comes into play. I will unvote my comments. Thanks for the info :) EDIT: All done :)
Hey! @stellabelle, I am so thankful some one has seen What I have, THE PROBLEM WITH bots, Let me tell you I am not against technology or the bots, but how it's been used in this circle of never ending supporting bad spammers. I was thinking to myself many ways of improving steemit to make it more equal to each individual since it still not giving it, the reason for this is that if people who are the example of steemit are being "bad" then smaller steemeans will copy in some way. And bad is a sad word I wont say bad, but the need of getting their pockets full has gone to hard and went out of control. I have seen many steemeans change their minds because some didnt see that in fact this might affect steemit, AND WE ALL WANT STEEMIT big and healthy.
Let me tell you that I am really a baby in steemit, and the first time I came, I was blinded too, I was sad, because I didnt understand the how's and the why's. And I saw a big amount of people doing good and upvoting themselves, why can't I do it too? I though But later I understood that THIS MIGHT just become in a mediocre content circle. When YUNK found me I fell for it, I hope Steemit does too, since YUNK is Steemit. Together we create YUNK.
Yes, yunk will save us, and Steemit too. You are both Yunk master and pupil. So am I. We will prevail. I have plans.
Big Plans For Yunk
gif by @atopy
awww that gif is beautiful!! :D she is making awesome things.
I would like to see how YUNK grows. :D We should all discord one day.
let's do group videos and make Yunk go viral. big time.
It is really sad to see this practice @stellabelle and on the other hands some great content posts are dying without even being noticed! It would be great if these self voters start reading some posts and help grow the community!
Thanks for raising this up!
@progressivechef
This needs to be addressed or Steemit will die a very good note-worthy post exploits, like these require attention. That's a get rich scheme for programmers. But programmers can also help other users, all and all bots are probably making users rich on this platform siphoning it dry from $$ and value.
You made my day with the most funny and informative post. I upvote my own comments only few times to get noticed but not all times. If the comment is informative we will definitely get good rewards and I remember some times comments makes better earnings than my blogs but it should be with in the topic of the blog.
yes. Thank you. Yunk on.
Okay, at first i was kinda scared with your post title, but later i felt good reading this and "thumbs up" your excellency. If steemit must grow and last long then users must avoid greed and selfishness.
We don't have to paint the wrong image of this community for new users coming in, and this type of post helps everyone to think the right way to behave if steemit will last long
This article was hilarious!
I'm still really new here, so I'm a bit lost about the Yunk thing, but look into it a bit more.
Also if you have a sec, I recently heard about the Minnow Support Project, and it seems to be similar to what you're suggesting Yunk is? Is that right?
No, yunk is a state of mind that you will slowly figure out. Minnow support project helps minnows.
Thank you, that helps :)
I agree with you on the no money for up voting your own comments, what I really don't understand is why you think this self up voting has any impact on Steem's value, it sure has an impact on the reward pool but why on the currency itself? Steem's price has been crazily fluctuating since the Bitcoin fork was announced I don't think the self up vote has anything to do with it, if that were the case why did it go down to 8 cents before HF19? I think I would rather blame big investors who are playing with the supply and demand, I understand Bitcoin's price has a big say in it, as you can't convert Steem to fiat before changing it to Bitcoin. Maybe Poloniex' huge hoard has something to do with it.
Because if word spreads that this place is a scam, no one will join. When no one joins, no one buys Steem. Then Steem's price tanks. The reason, one of them that the price was so low was because WE HAD MASSIVE SOCIAL PROBLEMS, in here. It was human behavior, abuse and whale wars, power struggles that almost ruined this place.
Followed you...I am @cali-girl's son btw
oh hello! Nice to meet you! Glad you're on Steemit!
Great ideas! I have no problem with people upvoting their own posts and getting a reward. But I agree, changing the rule on comments to no reward would diminish this type of abuse
AMEN AMEN AMEN. I'm so sick of seeing people comment on my posts with some nonsense that has nothing to do with what I wrote about. Then they beg for an upvote, a follow and a resteem. Then they upvote their own comment and don't even upvote my post! I've been so frustrated with this lately and I've wanted to rant about it and this seems like the perfect place. Thanks for taking the time to put into words what I couldn't figure out how to write so eloquently.
Join our #yunk movement and feel the authenticity.
Fakery is always easy to detect.
Yunk, in all its glory will save us from spam and pure shitfoolery.
This discussion is tiring, just take self-upvoting away all together.
The concept does not make sense. Of course I think my posts are wonderful and thought provoking. I'm a genius in my own mind!
I get so tired of the self-pontificating posters railing against self up-voters. If it's there, I'm going to do it, plain and simple human nature. So take it away once and for all.
BTW, I just up-voted myself because I think everything I think and say is brilliant......and to prove my point that making it available to the posters is stupid. Also, I really want someone to reply and preach to me about how I'm destroying Steemit.
Just take the option away!
p.s. I did up-vote the main article as well. I'm not a total douche!
ha ha! Good point!
It is interesting to see, though, how most humans behave, when given the opportunity to self upvote.
I made far more money on the post i didn't upvote than the ones I did.
#yunk?
Thanks @stellabelle. I'm kinda new here and I'm still learning the ropes. It's been a blast so far!
I shall endeavor to #yunk in all my future posts!
You can upvote urself? That doesnt make sense to me. And i think they also should do something against these bots that do random crap comments.
Time to call for a revolution! Just my words. J
LOVE IT! Let's dooooo this!
This post received a 3.6% upvote from @randowhale thanks to @kurtbeil! For more information, click here!
Wow, I didn't know this was getting abused so much...
I totally agree with you - there should be no monetary gain for voting for your own comments, but maybe only for better visibility.
Any idea why this was changed?
we demanded it, and we worked for many months getting it changed. The reason was because the whales controlled all the rewards, and that was a bad situation! Minnows had it really bad when the algo was weighted exponentially.
So it helped with getting the rewards spread a bit more, but has now (potentially) caused some other challenges. I'm assuming there were still be multiple changes to get Steemit just right...
I certainly hope that Steemit does get "fixed" properly in the long run to make it sustainable :)
The entire thing is bootstrapped. Problems (usually human social ones) emerge, then a fix is applied to the algorithm. This is how it how been built.
I agree. Something needs to be done with upvoted comments. Either putting a limit on how often you can do it and get rewarded in a 24 hour period. Likewise with upvoting your own content because they can just circumvent this by posting 10 times a day and upvoting their content. Setting a limit on that as well.
I don't get being able to upvote your own posts. We already get rewards for creation. Let the content speak for itself. If you want to promote it them spend some of your own Steem to do that.
Yeah, I don't think I would have a problem if we did away with getting rewarded to upvote your own posts or comments. Problem is there are always ways around it. Someone can create 2 accounts and use one to upvote the other. In the end, we just need to police ourselves and try to do what we feel is the best for the long term growth of Steemit rather than trying to make a quick buck.
This solution is not good: people will create two or more accounts and vote for each other ... If the solution before HF19 was working, we HAVE to go back to it ! People will always try to maximize their profit, we have to change the system so they can't do it .... And as I can, I will self-upvote my comment... Steemit is broken at the moment ... What is put place to fix this ?
by doing so, you just missed out on a $9 payout, and a reputation increase.
So, you got $.28 instead of $9, way to go!
You do not get my point, too bad ... A technical solution has to be enforced, not the goodwill of the people .... I do not have the solution, but what you propose is way too simplistic. We have to find the correct technical answer for people having multiple accounts. These people are invisible for now .... What do you propose about that ? That's why I was saying that if the pre HF19 solution worked, we HAVE to go back to it.
I upvoted you for having an opinion and stating it. I appreciate the fact you are reading and interacting with the site. I don't agree with exactly what you are saying, but this is for reading and participating in the conversation. I take no issue with you self-voting.
Since day 1, Steemit is always trying to solve the problem of abuse. I did get your point, and I had a point to make too. As you can see, I've given out close to $60 to people who provided good comments on this post. (who have not self--voted).
There is a group now working on a technical solution. However, there's an element to be social on a social network. Human behavior can be changed, if people see that you can actually make WAY MORE MONEY AND REPUTATION by doing good works that benefits many. Tech solutions have to work side by side with human behavioral solutions. Nothing is in a vacuum.
I did get your point. I am being a little irrational, because I read too many posts, detailing what is going on.....I appreciate you taking the time to comment and engage on this topic, and I have to agree that it's broken at the moment, but it will get fixed....if we arrive at a decent solution.
Nicely done. We may not agree on this topic, but you are good for engagement, reading and supporting many users on SteemIt. I like that you hit the hot topics and then truly engage with people of all levels.
I do not think the witch hunt solution will solve the problem https://steemit.com/steemit/@financialcritic/why-are-some-steemians-witch-hunting-self-upvoters
I am not going to reward you posting a link on someone else's blog, but I did enjoy the article you linked here.
@stellabelle
This is exactly what i felt. I got really angry when i found out about this problem too. For some reason the people working on hard forks don't fully realize the severity of it.
Thanks for supporting this cause.
I appreciate you making the issue visible @calamus056. I have been "down this road" on SO many platforms like this... and somehow every single one seemed to believe they are somehow "exempt" from the destructiveness of human greed.
Have any of your reports or post showed the percentage of the daily rewards that are going into "self-voting"?
Yes, in the period of June 20th - July 18th the measurable self-voting was approx. 9% of the reward pool. For comments the measurable self-voting was a minimum of about 35% of the comment rewards (this is likely largely because abusers can now self-vote in only 11 comments a day instead of 44 when the maximum vote went to 2% from 0.5%).
Obviously we can't know the self-voting that is being done between multiple accounts, owned by the same user. On top of that, stellabelle has the same worry that the number will only increase. Imagine when World of Warcraft gold farms discover SteemIt, or worse, that's not going to be pretty.
You can look at my latest post which includes links to all 3 related articles.
Yes, SteemIt will be a boring place if we all sit around and vote for ourselves.
It is hard not to feel like the only people reading anything around here are hungry minnows looking for votes and follows.
I have a different view on the situation though, I have more respect for those who are interacting each day with the site making comments (even if they vote for them) Then those who set their voting bots through the main voting groups and walk away from SteemIt, just letting their investment grow via curation rewards. (I am not saying it is wrong, I am saying, it is another factor in making SteemIt feel scammy and boring)
It makes no sense to me to focus on self-voting as if you make any progress at all, people will just make more accounts to vote for themselves.
I think we need to focus on voting for comments that show POR. (proof of reading) and try to find ways to reward those who are interacting with the site)
It is just another opinion, everyone has one. :)
Yes, I will be giving my comment a small self-upvote for visibility. I deserve it, I am here, reading interacting and engaging with the end-users. :)
Did you see @krnel 's post on this? Interesting but I have no idea how it could actually be implemented. Any ideas?
He had one that I saw, I will check it out.
And I will lift it a little bit more with an upvote because you're here and interacting with the content, and this happens to be a discussion I am interested in... because this stuff matters a LOT to the well-being and future of Steemit.
Gee... imagine that... the site actually working as it was intended to!
shout out to you as well, we may not always agree, but I know you are out there reading, engaging and writing.
I just want us to focus on that and not the petty issues. Reward those who are here and engaged and using the site!
By all admiration to call on the morality of steemians this has to be algorythm based. I mean its good to be a rolemodel, it might influence some minnows, but i dont believe this is preventing a botuser to "change" his behaviour for the sake of good. As long as the system can be exploited it will be exploited and this needs to stop or other people who can't stand iniquity (like me) will either power down or take their share and ignore the community.
Thanks for supporting this idea and promoting it 😆 😆 😆 I think it is a real contender and I'm excited to see it debated more.
I see your main point here is that you are concerned that self voting, especially on comments, is likely to increase over time. This is certainly something that concerns me too. We will be looking at the data and seeing if there is any evidence for this yet, and will be watching as we go on.
Well, thanks for being part of the potential solution @personz. This is something we need to look at and deal with sooner, rather than later...
One of the more prominent and somewhat recent failures of a "social site that pays" was a little venue called Bubblews which took a dive about three years ago, due to this very same type of issue. That site's fate is besides the point here... it's the numbers that are relevant.
The project founders did a bit of a publicity tour and got pocked up by CNN, CNBC and others... and approximately 1.5 million new users were added-- in a matter of a couple of months-- to an existing base only slightly larger that Steemit is right now. 99% of those had ZERO interest in "creating content;" they were purely there to get "money for nothing," and they employed the exact same pattern of vote-begging, follow-begging, scripts, copy-paste and anything else you can think of.
Of course, the next step is that legitimate users start to leave in disgust... and the balance of "power/content" shifts... after which everything heads down the tubes.
But anyway, back to the "numbers." That was 1.5 million people. Right now we're just dealing with some thousands.
And yes, I know this because I was briefly a volunteer "community moderator" but it was too little, too late... we were SO outnumbered.
I vaguely remember you talking about that experience before.
That might be the topic of a really interesting article if it were done in a deep way, i.e. looking for any similarities of dynamics (and being honest about the differences). So the question is, why did it fail? We are all in a way here to make some money, i.e. get rewarded, and there's nothing wrong with that. But where does it go wrong? And might the same thing happen to Steemit?
@personz, I think I may actually have most of that article written and sitting in my drafts folder on HubPages... and it would have been written shortly after the site crashed and burned, so the info was fresh... I'll see if I can dig it up and create something that's moderately readable... maybe with an "incendiary" title to do with history repeating itself...
I await in anticipation 😊 Followed, looking forward to hopefully seeing it
great! I love how diplomatic you are. I am just mad right now that so much of this bs is going on......especially the massive amounts. It's gross.
Thank you 🙂
One of the ways of combatting self-upvoting is to make it less rewarding than curation. You should be able to upvote your own post if you REALLY believe it is worth it, but the cost of the self upvote should be higher than a regular vote, and should increase with every self vote made in a 24 hour period. Basically it drains your voting power quicker and is capped at a lower percentage the more you vote. Eventually you have no power left to vote and have to wait to recharge.
If you're interested, have a look at my proposal here. It's nearly 2 weeks old now and so outside the payout window, but would like to see something like this implemented. Let me know what you think. It's quite a long read. It also deals with delegated SP and voting bots.
That was a really good proposal @bmj... I like the idea that people can have ONE shot at upvoting themselves at full power... and after that it's pretty much a losing proposition.
Exactly that @denmarkguy. It doesn't take it away, it just makes it less effective the more you use it on yourself.
I don't think Dan would even care at all though; I think it's pretty clear at this point that Steemit is the experiment to EOS' mass adoption, whether this was intentional or not. That means it's up to us to fix most of whatever needs addressing over here.
I've detailed my stance of being non-plussed regarding self-voting elsewhere, and think that most of the solutions proposed to curtail it fail to effectively target the supporting mechanisms that actually make it cannibalistic for the reward pool (like multiple accounts voting each other up via bots, etc.). So while I would support this idea of zero-dollar-value self-voting to counter it, without hesitation; unfortunately, I don't think it would stop the most egregious of this type of behaviour.
CAN YOU SEEEE WHAT THE ROCK IS COOKING?!?!?
Damn that is a very funny post thanks for sharing! Btw cocaine does not feel so good like shrooms, LSD, DMT or MDMA have a nice day :)
everyone is different! I've known coke heads, and they are probably the type to upvote all their own comments.
i think he was referring to the coke high not having flashing colors effect is all.... made me laugh out lol
btw @stellabelle i do agree and am glad to read all this thanks
I have done coke 3 times in my life and did not like it and this is 16 years ago I liked more the psychedelic stuff but after doing ayahuasca in Peru and iboga in Costa Rica I stopped with all that. Have a nice day :)
Sorry but I do no drugs more for a long time don't drink and stopped smoking 1 year ago. The upvote on my comment was for me to see how much I get with my 89% voting power. Have a nice day!
haha the cocaine guy is hilarious!
At one level I agree with you, that if self upvoting didn't pay any rewards it might help, but only for a few minutes until everyone switched over to second fake accounts for voting.
Now I'm just raising this next point to emphasise that there is also another side to this - most of us are very small and upvoting our own comments has bugger all effect on the reward pool, but it does get our comments seen when otherwise they mostly wouldn't be.
I can only speak for myself, but I upvote ALL my own comments at 10% and have done for my past 1600 comments. I would still do this if there was no reward, because it's all about placement.
My highest payout this year was for a comment rather than a post, and yes I had self upvoted it to the top of the stack before anyone else voted for it!
While some people complain about hardfork 19, I know my own post payouts have gone up 10 fold on average since that change, so I like it a lot.
We have whales upvoting each other to the tune of millions and nobody is saying boo because they will get their arses handed to them on a plate, but if minnows self upvote they are supposed to feel guilty about it?
I like my own comments so I upvote them. If I didn't like them I wouldn't post them.
There is some freaky shit for you :)
All the best, I'm not disagreeing with you here, just saying there is another side to this, and I know I'm not alone with this viewpoint.
Another digital ego stroke for the insecure. I border on nialism every time I read things that reinforce what I already know about humanity.
I'll always be in support of those that look to abolish narcissism. Voting upward :)
great idea and informative post, thanks for sharing this post, i think i have to resteem this post, maybe hf 20 we have to be a shark
Hello I am a Robot.
What an excellent solution! I love steemitopia, I don't want it to become a decentralized self congratulatory system!
This can easily be resolved by Steemit. Have the ability to self vote not possible. It's that simple. This will help ease a bit the greedy.
Taking away the monetary reward for upvoting your own post will simply cause more people to look for ways to auto-swap upvotes by using bots, joining guilds, and creating secondary accounts.
Next, there's going to have to be another hard-fork to get rid of bots, or change the rules for bots, or flag people out of SteemIt for belonging to certain vote-swapping guilds, and having multiple accounts. (OH, WAIT!!! DAN LARIMER HAS MULTIPLE ACCOUNTS ?!?! BUT...)
This is the exact same problem we have gotten into with the Tax Code in the USA. Now, there are so many rules, only a person who's trained for a lifetime in tax law can even begin to understand how it all works.
You like to use SteemIt for philanthropy, blogging, and the curation of good content. Maybe I like to use SteemIt to provide an interest-bearing savings account to help me take care of myself and my family. Somebody else may like to use SteemIt to promote their YouTube channel about growing weed. Another person likes to spread the "gospel" of their religion using an online presence. Is your purpose for using SteemIt more "virtuous" than mine is, or anybody elses? It's a matter of judgement and opinion. Should one group of people be trying to control how other people decide to spend or save their own money? Do you have the right to tell me what is valuable and what is not valuable, and then implement new rules on my savings account - because I use it to accumulate money to feed my children, instead of giving it to content creators?
Final Thought: Why not let SteemIt be a place of many varied uses and interests, rather than a place where one group of people tries to control how another group of people decides to use a diverse and varied social media platform/blockchain/financial instrument. SteemIt is not just a place for Content Creators - it is a place for Content Creators, Programmers, casual web-surfers, financial investments, and 3-eyed Ravens. Why place more limits upon it? Why so serious? Let's not try to make the external world conform to our individual set of values - let's value freedom, for each individual to choose. (Extreme cases of "abuse" can be dealt with by the Whales on a case-by-case basis, as they have been doing all along.)
@stellabelle Do you remember why people are leaving places like FaceBook and YouTube to search out alternative social-media platforms? Is it because they have such good "rules" for keeping everybody in line? Is it because their rules are so "fair" to everyone? Is it because they allow everyone their own, self-deterministic freedom to speak about & do what they want to??? Has Dan Larimer designed a poorly put-together blockchain here?!?! Are you better at advising the Steem developers what their policies "should be," as opposed to what they are? Did HF19 "fix" everything? Did it make it worse? Is HF20 going to do a better job at fixing all these "problems" than the previous 19 attempts? I don't know - but I do see some huge "blind spots" in your persepective on what SteemIt is, and what SteemIt "should be."
Good post. Upvoted and Resteemed.
Makes sense to me. lol, but maybe I should start upvoting my own comments while I still can with these one cent votes I have.........Muuhaahaaahaaa........Now that will make CENTS! steem cents
not a great plan.
I love the tags on your post. Especially the last one :)
Admit it that self-upvoting your comments is such an easy way to get some SBD. So tempting. You like your comments so why don't you upvote them and earn some at the same time...
OK, I agree that is counterproductive in the long run. Not everybody here wants to see the long run as is obvious from the list that you've posted.
BTW, you can add @steemcleaners to the list. Check out this conversation that I've recently had with it.
It flagged my post, commented on it and self-upvoted its comment. Sweet :)
#yunk on :)