Reward Pool Rape: Why The Whale Wars Might Be Far From Ending

in #news7 years ago (edited)

One week ago, I wrote a post and suggested a solution see link here that might help stop the ongoing whale wars between @berniesanders and those he accused of raping our reward poll with 8+ to 10+ daily posts ( flooding the system with their own posts and making average of 250SBD+ per posts) . Moreover, some steemians , examples, @anomadsoul , @transisto and @papa-pepper ( and many more) sent in their pragmatic suggestions through their post in hope of solving the issues.
The conundrum, however, is: will there ever be a solution to the problem? Will people use the premise of free will in a decentralized (uncensored) ecosystem as a base to continue doing what will be a disadvantage to all members of this common polity? Will there ever be a common sense solution or should steemit inc continue ignoring the issues, hoping that it will solve itself or should they come up with a pragmatic solution in the next HFork 20? Here are some few points:

Note: There are many factors that are negatively affecting steemit viability ( scam/spam posts, last minute mass comments / posts upvotes, bad quality posts , wallet / chat scams , spammy upvot bots etc) however for the purpose of this post, I will focus on reward pool rape issues.

Pic Source

Human Nature: it is argued that bringing back the post limit of 4 will help however not solve the issue because people will always circumvent by opening another accounts and continue self / group upvoting thus creating another big issue. This is a classic case of human nature (not all but majority of us are greedy) which will not allow an individual to agree to a common sense compromise and make peace with his/her community members-thus putting an end to the flagging wars.

Uncensored argument: Some people will rightfully argue that in an uncensored platform, no member has the right to tell others what to do or not do thus no need to suggest posting limits to people posting 8 + to 10+ daily- when steem blockchain provided us with top platforms (steemit, Dlive, Dtube, busy.org, Zappl, Dsound, Utopia, Dimania et al ) that makes it easier to post multiple times daily.
I concur to their above argument however looking at it in a quality perspective, (I do understand that quality is subjective ) is it possible to post 8+ to 10+ quality posts daily? Is it possible to engage through replying all comments on those posts? Is it possible to reward all good comments on those posts? Or is it a situation of just throwing out posts, upvote it with your massive steem power, use your contacts/ fake accounts massive steem power to upvote it, be on all trending pages, get many upvotes from steemit community members and then avoid / ignore other people that supports your posts and then continue the same thing on daily basis?

The simple pragmatic solution (no perfect one here , so pls send in your own suggestions) is that, sometimes we should remove the self-centered greed in us and put ourselves on the conditions of many minnows who earn their daily bread through platforms like this and thus share some love with them by at least taking in the amount of posts we can manage a day which will be beneficial to new and older members (quality posts) , respond to comments, upvote other people great posts/comments and thus put a smile to someones face through compromise and compassion-this in return will add more financial benefits to the individual and community, however will human nature allow it? ( remember that the evil in human nature can disguise in free will or uncensorship and destroy this platform for all due to extreme greed and disregard for others ). It is , however, time for us to bring out our best through compromise, compassion and empathy!!!! I wish you all a blessed weekend.

Send in your comments, resteem in order for your contacts to join the discussion and upvote in order to send in your support.

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The rules for rewards must be tightened up. Remove auto-upvoting. Limit the amount of rewards that can be given in a day. Throttle, but not eliminate, self-upvoting.

Good suggestions indeed,thanks

It is not possible to come up with 8-10 quality post every day,curating and communicating with your audience even if you do this full time.I don't even follow accounts like that,I hate to be 'used'.

It's not really possible to come up with 1 quality post every single day unless you have a team of people to check and research for you.

Steemit is all about quality content and I choose to mute the spam hopefully we can find away to stop them spammers from monetising their shite content

I mean if you do vlogs about your daily life then you can.But articles like the ones haejin posts requires a lot research and work as you said.

I think technical analysis is something you can do daily if your covering multiple coins in 1 article although even this could be deemed a bit excessive with weekly reports usually being sufficient as you can put more quality analysis in.

Obviously if you just want to make money promote a load of shit coins that you have pre invested in with a separate article for each one and then use sock puppet accounts to upvote.

Hopefully not too many neewbs thing this is serious analysis but I'm sure enough people have lost money by just blindly following the advice.

Good point indeed, thanks for your comment

Thanks point indeed, good for your comment

Great points and post . I read most comments and it portrayed my expectations of how people feel here. majority of steemians are fed up. curation does not work anymore because of whales and their bots. Imagine even if you source funds to buy sbd for upvotes, the bots join and share your curation. If you post in dmania, dmania bot shares from the curation upto 50%. steemit has turned from a lovely community where one works hard to to engage and get followers who reads and probably upvote your good posts from their feed to a platform of bot. Send a crab, upvote with a bot and you done. More worryingly, bots are using bid based crab to rip people off. Folks like Jerry Banfield has even turned to a bot to rip off people legitimately. A friend paid him 10sbd for upvote and got 7+sbd in return total. If asked he said its bad timing cos its bid based bot. Greedy folks posts 10x daily and upvote themselves with no reply on their comments. Minnows joining now does not stay for the community anymore as there is no more love. Most of us who wanted to use steemit as business option to make a living and market steemit to all and sundry are discouraged. Steemit is turning into a mess and if @ned dosnt take action to safe his platform, the greedy whales will mess it up and go for another option. The next hardfork should address most of this issue. We not saying turn here into a socialist platform, no. but let there be limitations to how some individuals rip off. This is my humble take. This post is worthy of my 100% upvote

Thanks, very good post !!!!

Awesome Work!

Keep it up!!!

@cryptoinvestinfo

What is your favorite hardware Wallet?

Ledger Wallet protects your bitcoins

Good point indeed, thanks for your comment

It’ll never be fixed. The people with the power will refuse to back off due to profits. Likely the only solution will be to restart Steem with a max vote dollar value, limited posts, and some sort of system to stop bots.

Then another competitor will come in. Good enough eos is working towards that and should @dan come up with similar stuff, he would ensure such nonsense doesn't take up eos like steemit.

I have been thinking about launching a steemit clone, the source code is available.

Do you think their would be a good market for this?

Why not. If it works well like steemit and allows folks the true freedom plus favors new members, do keep me posted to join in the marketing.

Observations :


I have said this a few times on this platform, Steemit reminds me of the early days of the internet. It was free, wild and full of unlimited potential. Hacking was not done to destroy but to disseminate information to the people , empower them. Then the idiots moved in and while it still remained a place with huge potential darkness had it’s paws on pretty much every aspect.

People don’t like to see it, they say the Internet brings out the worst in people. I say it brings out whoever you are behind the mask. The Net is a reflection of our world population and let us be honest, most humans suck! they are greedy, self involved brats who really do not give a damn about anything outside of their own event horizon. Some are more ruthless than others and have accumulated enough power in which they can control the masses and the masses are to lethargic or comfortable to do anything about it.

The above history is repeating itself here on the Steemit platform the problem is that our history also shows that creating more rules, and giving more individuals the power to created said rules, always leads to a shitshow where some get fat and the rest is just vegetating.

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The Solution :

So what to do about it well either we need an incorruptible benevolent dictator to regulate everything (not seeing that ever happening unless we are finally invaded by more advanced aliens) or we need to implement a system where community trumps whales.

The vikings often settled major disputes in the community in a gathering called a Ting. people would speak their case and then the ideas were upvoted by the greater community by hitting their sword on their shields- the idea with the most noise won. Obviously we are not going to post videos with us rattling our armour but we could code a digital equivalent within.

How?- let us say that after a certain percentage of downvote power (regardless if it was triggered by whale or the rest of us lowly meerfolk) the post would be put up for evaluation by the community. The posts payout would receive a 3 day delay. During that 3 day period the community could discuss on the post why it should, or why it should not receive the payout. During the quarantine period two buttons would appear, one to approve one to deny. Everyone in the community would have one vote and regardless of rank their vote would be equal in worth. The decision over the fate of the post would be determined by the ruling of this virtual Ting. The judgement would thus lay in the hands of the whole community not only those with the huge slices of power. A voting system like this would keep the Whales from being corrupted by power, but also curb some of the jealousy downvotes people love to engage in. - just my two cents.

I like your solution, my problem is that whales can buy as many accounts as needed to be the community and approve their rewards. Though maybe reputation and account age could help with that.

I also suggested that @haejin do an analysis of his own post rewards as well as other accounts. This would at least bring more light to their actions.

Maybe be ip based option can deter multiple accounts on same computer.

it is a solution but do we really want to be traceable in a world where our governments are not to be trusted ...

Good point but if it will deter multiple accounts use, it should be looked into except folks can still bypass it using VPN Servers. Well, let's see what the next Fork holds.

nods, hence the amendment above

Wow what a very good comment..thanks a lot. However the limitations is that many people (mostly whales) that have more than 10 accounts will use it to vote and thus we will never have perfect democratic voice unless the community select at random 100 individualy (flesh and blood , not bots or cloned accounts) who will physically upvote or downvote the post

Court system of jury :)

Maybe, it's very interesting case but it will not happen soon if we consider how the US developed from Wild West to the first economy in the world. Freedom matters, but society can create laws and rules.

Valid point! so then let us refine the process to having a computer generated equivalent to jury members who are called up to vote on a quarantined post. Each post getting its own set of Jury people.

Good point however it is a job for the witnesses and management-hopefully they will read all these comments and act accordingly

Nods but like in the world outside when the government does not take action it is time to stand on their toes ;)

Wow, what a guy!!! you share solid things with us through your posts...this one , is one of my best as it teaches us to bring out our best through compassion and empathy...upped 100% , thanks a lot and happy weekend

Welcome and thanks for your comment

I do wish that Steem was so skewed in favor of the rich, and has some mechanisms to stop the "rich gets richer" phenomenon...

Unfortunately, our world works for the rich...steem power is the key

You know @charles1, you're right! This is our DAILY BREAD. This is why one minnow-like me is trying to push to get more SP to help the same person as I am. And it is very hard for someone like me to continue on the way I'm doing since last year I started. I have to get help from a whale that I know. Well, she has a big heart to help others especially, when at the time of CHARITY WORK.

I really feel what you are saying here ... And you have a big point of that! For my part, I have a solution or suggestion if it will work.

Why does not the Steemit owner hire a person to work internally to check abusive person? There is a lot of easy ways to solve this problem but they need to discuss it first the possibility; the negative and the positive. This is just my opinion and if there is a general meeting I would like to join to listen.

You know? I admire the @curie of the project that they are doing. They help the Steemit community and help others to maintain the good quality post.

And I hope, the other whales realize that the SP delegated to them must be used in a proper way to help other minnows. To boost them and share their knowledge and experience in life.

If the majority ask me what should I do to the SP that they will delegate to me? My answer is, I will use it to all CHARITY WORK that I am doing and to boost the other small minnow who does losing hope of writing. And I will build a community of a CHARITY WORKS to help other needy people. This is from the bottom of my heart for a long time.

Very good comment, I agree. I wish you success

Excellent work dear friend @ charles1, as always, it is true that many things are happening on the platform that negatively affect her. since the beginning of the platform that I publish four post a day, I did it even with the 17th fork when I did not earn 1 cent for the publications, I do it because I love sharing on the platform, some time ago I was forced to publish more post a day, as you know my family and I live from what I generate here on the platform, my compensation has decreased by more than 80% for this reason I had to do power dow to face some economic commitments, today I am publishing six post a day to do in total 20SBD and I see that day after day my compensation continues to go down, what I never thought would happen to me, I do not feel like continuing to publish, I feel tired and unmotivated, I see that only a few They worry about others and I see many who are making a lot of money here, multiple accounts, voting their own comments, voting bot, selling votes, in short everything that is already known.
I like the organic system, I do not use bot for my votes, I do not buy votes, I really do not know what the solution would be, but I feel very sad because I see that this is not going well and I had the hope that what I put together in Steem Power will be my retirement of juvilacion, apparently to the step that we go I will not be able to do it.
I wish you a great day dear friend

Thanks a lot for your great comment. In fact , rewards are not what it use to be because many people have been taken over by human nature and thus ignores upvoting other people posts. I will always upvote your posts as I normally do and wish that you will get back your success which you deserve. Patience and consistency are the solution...happy weekend.

I love this! Thanks for sharing and I've gat lot to tap from you man! Bless you!

Welcome and feel free to read my older posts for more tips

excellent comment @jlufer when i joined steemit june 2017 it was not like this. folks work hard to engage to build followers whose posts appear in trending. If you manage to have over 1k+ followers then you are sure of earning good via curation reward for quality posts. All these ended with whales greed and intro of bot upvotes. Hardly no one visits posts to read and upvote quality contents only sell sp for money. Greed has overtaken steemit and this will cause mass migration to a platform that is more justifiable since it seems steem mgt are reluctant to hurt the feelings of the greedy whales. Nice comment. lets keep in touch. upped

Thank you for this post @charles1.

I agree with the sentiment. Steemit is no different in many regards to real life. War is messy, has unintended consequences, and tend to rage on.

What you mentioned about the minnows is an observation I made. They are the ones who are affected by this the most. Many of them do depend upon the upvote of others. My upvote for a comment went from $.40 to $.13. Granted some of that is the pullback in the price of STEEM. Yet not all of it is.

Wars tend to keep going. This one is going back and forth with each side trying to garner more support. Sadly, the large number of posts are still rolling out at a high payout plus everyone else is engaging in behavior that I dont think they want to have people see in real life.

People often profess to be about love, humanity, and compassion yet then we see actions that go completely counter to that. Of course, there are those who do not espouse those values and walk through life bullying everyone within site (for some reason White House comes to mind at the moment). Empathy is a great concept to apply to this situation.

Many have reached out in an effort to try to reach a compromise but the fear and greed are in full force. At this point, being right appears to be all that matters.

Fortunately, STEEM is much bigger than Steemit. The ecosystem is much more powerful than what we are seeing. But you are right, there are going to be some who hold onto the bitter end.

We can only conduct ourselves...nobody else. Applying some of your suggestions is a great idea for the day. Thanks again.

Welcome and thanks a lot for a great comment...I am sure that you will be a big success here. Happy weekend.

This is by far one of the best posts I've read about this war. The poolrapists don't give a fuck about minnows, or any other users, money has corrupted people and it will keep this way till the end of times. We are selfish by nature, and when it comes to money its a lot worst. You idea of a solution is the best we can hope, and the only thing that could stop this war will be if those who are raping the pool take a moment to think about the ecosystem, in my opinion that thing will never happen, anyway great article man, couldn't agree more with your thoughts bout this thing killing STEEMIT.

I came back to steem after a few months hiatus, I have heard that whales have been very selfish and upvote for themselves before, but it looks like things have gotten a lot worse if there is a new term being thrown out there called "poolrapist." It looks like things are pretty grim now.

Welcome and thanks a lot for your comment

On a recent reread of the white paper it's useful, I think, to point out how many of the stated aims of steemit the Whale Wars undermine... at least the following -

  • figuring out a way of fairly rewarding people
  • building community
  • being a store of 'quality information'
  • extending to a mass audience.
  • it also breaches the so called sweat equity principle.

The only thing it's good for is allowing wealthy individuals to make themselves richer.

I think the whole anti-cencorship line is just an ideological smoke screen - these whales aren't interested in free speach they are interested in the freedom to extract as much steem for themselves as possible.

Steemit either needs to remarket itself to make this clear or try a straightforward maximium reward limlit (maybe) - NB putting a limit on rewards does not limit free speach.

Also - IF we had hard limits on how much you can take from the reward pool - you are still free to transfer 100s of steem to an individual if you REALLY like their post THAT much!

Very good suggestion indeed, wow!!! Daily max reward is a good point just like daily post limit however as indicated in this post, they will circumvent it with many new accounts...human nature aka greed is the issue

Damn. I always miss the obvious - fair point about the multiple accounts.

I guess the most obvious way to solve that is through verification.... not gonna happen is it!

At least a max reward would be symbolic and make abuse slightly more of a hassle.

Good point, verification is the solution however people will go against it because of claim of decentralisation and uncensorship...people will always have a reason to keep their greed.However strong will is needed ie do some unpopular things for future gains

One of the points you mentioned was "building a community." Haejin has 25000 people following his blog. Posts often receive over 10k views and hundreds of votes. Like it or not, that is a community that he has built and who's support he has gained.

People from outside of that group decided that they didn't think the content was worth its large rewards. First they were led by a few whales, but now have built their own communities.

The overall problem is that there is a scarce resource (the rewards pool), and everyone is in competition to gain a portion of it. While the site was set up with a very libertarian view, there are many individuals and groups with very different political and ethical theories on how things are run. Since there are few ground rules, it basically becomes a tribal fight of ideas and for resources... technology is advancing quickly, but humans are stuck in our old greedy and tribal ways.

Very good point however does he show back the love to hundreds of people that comments and upvotes his posts or just throw in many posts and make money...sometimes we can compromise and at least show love to our supporters and others struggling in the platform, by upvoting good comments including their posts..however this is impossible if you post 8+ daily...I podt 1 daily in order to be able to respond to many people as possible before the post payout expires

I have received upvotes from haejin. I think there would be many more upvotes being spread out if he wasn't having to use his upvote power to fight the people attacking him.

As to the 8+ posts, he has dozens of requests from his followers for tokens/coins to review. He is gives his followers what we are asking for. What we are not asking for is to be downvoted by outsiders for daring to comment on his blog posts, and sorting through dozens of derogatory memes in the comment section while trying to interact.

If the detractors cared at all about haejins followers they would cease those actions.

Granted it's a type of community, and I'm more than happy to share a platform with them; I'd just like things tweaked so Haejin can't pay himself so much!

Also I'm not so sure his analysis is sound, but it is visible, mainly because of him rewarding himself, which maybe explains why he gets so many views! Also we don't know how many of those upvotes are done just for their share of SP?

To haejin paying himself:

I'm about 90% positive that haejin didn't start upvoting himself until the flag war began.

Payments are based on the amount of SP used in voting. Haejing picked up one on the largest whales on the platform as a benefactor. A large % of his rewards come from the SP of ranchorelaxo who invested over $1MM into steam.

When the flag war began he was not a whale, he had apx 8k SP. His upvote was worth about $15.

His community rallied together to delegate SP to him. He has since used the SBD he earns to buy more SP and has increased his voting power from that.

His own votes have been primarily to counter the downvotes and to downvote the bad actors on the steemit platform.

This war was not started because haejin was over rewarding himself.

I must say @charles1 you've hit the nail on the head. This unfortunately is what discourages many minnows out there where we see all upvotes and trending pages and the same people hoarding all the money. Voting for themselves and creating fake accounts, etc. If you take a look around Steemit in particular, you will see so many quality posts but because of a lack of a substantial Steem Power and means to get/buy into voting bots etc, they are left unnoticed.

It is quite a hard pill to swallow because of the very nature of steemit being decentralised. Like you are saying it's just human nature, but it can be overcome with empathy and compassion.

Perhaps limiting posts to 4 per day per account across different platforms then?

Good point indeed. I suggested it in my former post ie you can post as many as you wat however you earn only in 3 to 4 posts max...however understanding that others need to earn too as indicated in this post, is the solution.

Steem is like a microcosm of the real world, where the rich keeps getting richer and the poor are left with meager leftovers.

reward pool rape exist only in whalewars but not in reality.

  • There is no rewards that are taking from the pool that is not proportion to the account steem power holding.
  • What happen is "a single whale account choose to support 100% to only one account", this does not violate the rule.
  • Greed as we call it thus this accused account is posting 10x a day and gaining 250 sbd a day. Still this account does not violate the rules, since the steemit rules allow this.
  • This is part of the game, One account can take a potential rewards, and also take a flag at of the same time.

Does whaleswars going to end?
It depends on both side to settle and agree on terms, I don't think Steemit inc will do something on the mid fights. But the community can suggest a solution to steemit inc to change the course through hf20,

For me, The clear solution is none really,

Good point indeed, hence why we try to open up a discussion and thus come up with a pragmatic solution because doing nothing is not good

I just wanted to drop in and say that I just discovered you and am really enjoying your posts. I am not aware of the whale wars (still a steemit newbie + a busy student), but I really like the topics as well as the way you write. I am just getting into cryptocurrency but I feel like your posts are easily approachable and clearly written so that anyone can understand, which is something that many people are not so good at even when they have the technical knowledge or understanding about something. :)

Thanks a lot for your comment, feel free to see my older posts for more tips. Following you now in order to stay in touch. I wish you success.

Thank you, @charles1. Upvoted!
This matter is more difficult than it seems. We have a financial dilemma here. Those people contribute to the value of Steem.
I have explained it in detail in my recent post: The Ugly Truth About The Value Of Steem, Or The Steem Dilemma!

never seen anyone thinking along this line for quite some time now.... nice post hope to see more it

What do you like about the post?

I dont' know if writing more about the problem and showing possible solutions to the problem is going to SOLVE the problem. What I see now on the trending page is THE PROBLEM making $800 per post. NOW there's profit to be made from the PROBLEM existing.

He/they HAEJIN isn't going to suddenly stop doing what he/they are doing because somebody wrote a 1k word essay about how good it would be if he/they DO A). B). or C). Why would he? He found a flaw in the system and profit from it till it bleeds dry.

Those open letters are more invite to WRITE about the problem and push the post to the top of trending on the way $1,000 in rewards. Unless there's some miracle update (hint HF20) that prevents such abuses, HAEJIN, won't stop.

What would I propose? I say let the flagging continue, not because I think it's the best way, but because for now, it is the only way. In the meantime, maybe people should be supporting initiatives like @travelfeed that curates and supports authors who produce good content.

Wow, you comment makes a lot of sense, thanks a lot and I wish you a blessed weekend.

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Steemit is getting close to being a surveillance and propaganda platform just like every other 'community' on the internet.

Someone like v4vapid buys 100k steem at .01 each two years ago, and he can bring in 20+ other accounts of disinformation agents and their shite websites to give them the appearance of earnings and legitimatcy. It's like shareblue slide posts on /pol start showing $200 earnings. And anyone who asks questions gets totally excluded from the community.

I just wrote a very lengthy post that took a ton of research and the beste I can tell is that only bots are even visiting my page, .06 upvotes in the first hour.

It's gone the same way for weeks after I took sides against all the disinfo agents, undercovers and haejin too, and this site to me is a ghost town of 15SP accounts popping in to say 'gosh i didn't read this, the title was interesting'

Ghost town. Every one of my posts invites discussion, but in the entire time I've been here I've had like 5. The IQ level of this place is very low and there are a ton of people here with ulterior motives just gaming the platform.

This is an unmoderated plutarchy, so it's crass and it's just a giant hose of lies, like haejin's TA or kim dotcom's obsession with who hacked the dnc and how, without any attention paid to what was really leaked. (kim dotcom is an obvious propaganda operator btw)

The only way I've gotten through this far is by muting so much disinformation, the number of legit accounts who even read the topics I write about is about 0.

I am seriously considering a full powerdown.

@mindhawk i feel you and instead of getting better this is getting worse by the day. I had a lenghty discussion with a friend who borrowed money to buy sbd so he can pay for bot to ensure his posts even gets traction and alas, bots are even reaping folks off like jerrybanfield and upmevote etc and when you complain they tell you its bid based and one big guy came and bought up the whole power. i think if steemit dosnt correct this issues in next hardfork many will leave in droves and the whales will have themselves only to swallow. lets keep in touch tough. nice comment

I noticed a lot more articles and comments showing displeasure at the direction of the platform and the negative incentives that have been created.
I also seem to hear more about people leaving
If a critical point is reached, there will only be whales and bots circle jerking each other for money.
The red light is flashing

And worryingly @ned is busy watching a great idea going down the drains because of fear of hurting the big whales. A loose loose option. ...

Even when i come here and make a lengthy on topic comment, I get a single upvote even though 8 people responded, like what is that? I don't understand, I worry that these are not real accounts.

I have heard rumor and seen some evidence that twitter and reddit are fully in control of the Hillary democrats/fbi and that they rework everything behind the scenes so that if you arren't on their agenda, no one ever sees your things in their feed.

I am beginning to believe this is the case with steemit as well. It is centralized and closed source, steemit inc could flag certain individuals as either suppressive or expressing unwanted information, and then with a single flip from 0 to 1, no one sees your post in their feed at all, except cops.

I am having a difficult time perceiving anything else, like all the censorship at reddit r/conspiracy, 600k accounts subscribe but no post except from a certain angle ever get 3k upvotes even, which means that people are writing really popular things but the site doesn't reflect it, which is a really irritating form of gaslighting.

'why aren't you are a more famous writer? no one ever reads your stuff' but really millions of people could have loaded your article and all the benefits are kept by the corp, the fbi uses it to track and profile you, and you end up thinking you are actually bad at what you do.

I see no reason to think steemit is or could be different, it seems the forces at work here are into censorship but pretending that there is none. I hate these people.

Not even 15 SP accounts, they're .5 or soon to be .1 SP accounts with a temporary delegation, so when the delegation is retracted they won't even be able to use the site, lol.

No one reads anyone's posts. Period. Everyone is focused on writing their own crap. The only reason people read others' posts is either for networking (if they post) or for upvotes (if they only comment).

The IQ level on the platform is kind of split, I'd say. But that is just society for you. Most people on steemit could also be found at your local pyramid/MLM scheme meetings. Even being lucky and getting in early was no guarantee of intelligence, just timing and luck.

You might as well power down before any large exchanges go down in flames, once one becomes insolvent nearly all of them do. Or if not insolvent, then under the legal hammer at the very least. I'm only here for the lulz.

Lol, dont be pessimistic...steemit will recover from this mess and you and I will look back at this period and laugh...we jjst have to keep our fingers crossed fro a solution to this issues.

And anyone who asks questions gets totally excluded from the community.

Do you mean by loosing followers?

no, they act like a cartel. similar to the haejin situation, he has people on his side too who will refuse to engage your content.

There are networks and they act like scientologists, they declare people "suppressive persons" to their content, scam and disinformation. I can't quite tell if it's russians or the fbi, but I have seen evidence for both. Just look into what v4vapid upvotes and resteems, ie disobedient media he hyped like they were jesus, while my basic investigation uncovered they are obvious disinformation.

I have been gaining followers, but i see no reason to think they actually see my content ever or if they are bots/shills. I have 230 followers now, my posts get 20 views and 0 comments that could not be made by monkeys.

They warn you off from pointing out what they are doing in comments with heavy flag downvotes, even if you didn't do anything flagworthy and there always seems to be another dozen or so 15SP accounts come out of the woodwork to personally attack you and do the dirty work.

This results in the topics of conspiracy, pizzagate and 9/11 truth being effectively censored and/or flooded with crap. It happens to every new event, they just flood the topic with crap, upvote themselves and anyone else who doesn't have a big wallet is marginalized no matter the quality of their content.

I challenge anyone to read my recent pizzagate article, it is the most authoritative post on the entire internet on the topic and I can't get a single real person to comment or to upvote more than .06.

You tell me what's going on. I worked for weeks on my pizzagate article, it is the result now of years of research and study. Worth less than a dollar on steemit.

Reading through your post now. It is such a long read thought it best to comment first...

Sorry to hear of the reaction you have received on your content. My feeling is that getting one's following together is critical. Then we can grow together turning those penny paycheques into something more stubstantual. With that in mind, consider yourself followed. 😉

Thanks, that is one encouraging element, I have gone from 150 to 250 followers in the last month. But with no upvotes or actual reads I wonder what that even means.

People want quality, that means actual content. Despite engaging with about 20 people over the last day on this and other threads, not a single new upvote on my blog and most people didn't upvote my comments either. I don't get it.

There is very little organic, real engagement on the platform inside of posts themselves even on popular authors' posts, so don't be too surprised. And yes, most followers are going to be bots or some other non-person entity, and even if they are real people, 90% of them won't be active in a year, if past trends hold true.

I understand you a lot however do not pack and run and leave this platform for the bad guys alone..patience is the key. I am sure that when a big competitor comes, steemit inc will correct all these limitations

For me, I've been watching with rapt attention and unseen awe how the platform has been evolving, with some people really getting it big, even when the quality of their posts is not that awesome, but that's by the way... Because there must always be the rich(who works very little and earn more) and the poor(who often appear to be working hard and yet get very little).

It's a matter of social status and it's obtainable in our society, so I have to accept that.

Meanwhile, I suggest that there should be a limit of posts for a day (3 posts).

Also, @ned should fix a limit to the amount of SBD an account can earn in a post (500 SBD) should be the limit, the subsequent gains on the post should should then be shared equally to the accounts that upvoted the post.

Another problem I have noticed on the platform, is that most Curators are not being checked, they barely curate posts and yet they are being paid from it, this too should be looked into.

Also dormant accounts with excess STEEM Power should experience 5% deduction of their SP for not posting or commenting for 5months.

These are my submissions.
It could be edited and remoulded into a great idea.

Wow , very good suggestions indeed . However I indicated most of it in my former posts and people rejected it because of the platform being uncensored and people can always open multiple accounts however doing nothing is no solution

@idunique
best part of this comment is dormant accounts with large steem power should experience 5% deduction. well, very good but it will not work as they are the big boys. well, lets hope for the best.

Very true, because those who possess the power seems to control the platform.

No need to do something as massive as 5%, that would scare away investors of all kinds. But the current way authorship is required as an excuse to direct the reward pool to oneself is obviously broken. Most large investors have better things to do with their time to write blog posts all day.

lol yeah the way curation works it you have to look more at the number of votes and how old the post is than any of the content itself. I at least don't upvote obvious spam, to my knowledge.

But unless you pay to win, or kiss the butt of whales even if they are propaganda accounts, no one sees anything on here.

As well meaning as the Gondor Whales may be, to me, it seems like a pissing contest. My feeling is that the large majority of whales are sittiing this out. The solution may hit very close to home for such sidelined whales. Too close to show their support. If this is the case with the Fork Voting Twenty Witnesses then we must seek solutions lower in the fish tank.

One possible solution was explored in a recent blog post of mine.

Thanks for your comment, and good post indeed

I agree with the sentiments you express in your last paragraph in particular. The whale wars are a worrying development to a newbie who really doesn't understand how the platform works. I don't know if there is some way of ''democratizing'' steemit so that the whole community can participate in discussions on how to take the project forward?
The more people contribute to the debate/discussions the more ideas will be thrown up for consideration.

Unfortunately It looks like greed will continue to dominate in the steemit platform from whales to all these new accounts that spam bot generic comments.
Without a counter balance larger than the rape and dumps there really is no reason for any investor outside of the steemit community to invest in steem at all.

Good point, however lets hope that there will be a solution

Absolutely, just my observation but I'm still rooting for steemit all the way.

You inspired me to touch on this subject again too. I'll post it later on. Thanks for the mention and for the insight.

Great and do not forget to keep me on the loop when you post about it...am sure it will be very interesting and cant wait to read it. Anyway, I will see it because I have you on my steemvoter.com Lol...thanks for checking it out ...keeping the topic alife is vergy good.

@papa-pepper good for you to decide to post on same issue. If respected steemian like you keep posting on such topic I think those greedy folks might have a rethink or @ned will call his tech gigs to look into something favorable for the general community in the next hard fork similar to before the Advent of bots when curation of good contents was in Vogue

I have not completed 6 months yet but heard lot about the Steemit wars on this platform, and in my opinion this is amazing platform and also an amazing community driven platform and most of the people think that Steemit will bring an Revolution in Social Network Platforms and i too think that but the negative environment should be resolved as soon as possible because our Steemit Platform is still new and yet to reach masses and the negative environment can lead towards speculations for the new join users and it will be opinionated by new users that with hard work we cannot earn but that's not the case Steemit is an amazing system and if you are genuinely putting your efforts today or tomorrow you will grow. So let's hope that the Steemit wars would be end and let's enjoy the life of Steemit with togetherness. Thanks for sharing and wishing you an great day. Stay blessed. 🙂

Good comment indeed, thanks

Thank you and welcome. 🙂

I am new...this is a wonderful post. The information is solid. I have seen and experienced all of the above through viewing others actions and myself experiencing it. It is unfortunate, hopefully their will be a true balancing of power and care. Im friending you to follow more info! Thanks.

Welcome and thanks for your comment

Thank you @Charles1 for bringing this topic for discussion, I my opinion, many things are wrong with the way the community is going now regarding to reward system, most people who joined steemit newly have stopped being active as a result of low reward. I am suggesting that the limit of post per day should be two, also bot services should be improved to encourage new people to keep writing quality post or the services of bot should be stopped so that community members will return back to the days of upvote. Nice article as usual.

Very good point however do you think that they will ever stop bots? remember that the whales control the system and bots are their money printing machine.

Welcome and good points indeed. However do you think that bots will be stopped?

Perhaps one of the main issues here is the dream that many of us have to receive an upvote from one of these large accounts. When you start out on the platform, you'll likely be drawn to the trending page, which if we're being honest, is probably the worst page on the platform.

When we land on that page, we find posts from the same few people with hundreds, and at times thousands, of SBD in upvotes. It can be tempted to leave a comment on them in the hope of grabbing the posters attention for an upvote, and to potentially give ourselves more of a chance, we'll upvote the post with no real care for the content itself.

Some of us quickly learn that this isn't the way to behave on the platform, but for many, this is something they'll do multiple times per day. I think the obvious 'best way' to prevent such use of the reward pool is to stop rewarding these posts. Sure, there are a few whales helping some of these posters out, but just look at the number of upvotes they have. If we all stopped paying these posts any attention, it would be more difficult for them to thrive.

Having said that, how on earth do you go about trying to convince thousands of other people to do the same thing? That's something I don't have the answer to.

Very good comment indeed and you answered the question tooo!!!!

There will always be scammers and spammers trying to gain the system because theres nothing stopping stopping them ! lol! But i do hope this War ends or at least calms down soon here on Steemit , it looks very bad for the platform ! thanks for sharing my friend , great post !! upped and resteemed for you !👍👍👍😀

Welcome and thanks a lot for your support my Dmania queen...I wish you more success

I liked when steemit has a soft limit of 4 posts a day.

Good point. They woukd have maintained it and find a way to stop multipl accounts maybe through account verification like some top wallets...however people will go against it in the name of decentralisation

Lord of the Flies was an excellent example of Decentralization.

The gift and curse of humanity is that we will never agree.

Good point and human nature will play a big role

In fact the solution is to require solving a captcha on any post, comment or even upvotes, that would stop bots in their tracks. But is anyone willing to do this? You see, most of us (including me, I have a daily upvote from a bot which is the only sure vote I have, I would lose this if a captcha is used) depend on bots, and if there are bots the abuse will continue. Apart from this I don't think there is a practical solution to this problem

Good point and note that stoping bots will cause big issues here because most whales own bots...

I don't quite understand the loophole clearly but as you pointed out, posting too often devalues the users contribution to the community. It seems possible to add this consideration to the reward pool distribution formula. If one post per day ensures the ability to engage, and ten posts make it impossible, then the first has more valuable to the community. Abusing the account system might be an easier fix on it's own. Multiple accounts using the same writing styles could be recognized at least. Seems like a good solution is possible.

Good point, thanks

Really good post @charles1 you definitely cover a lot of material here and have some great suggestions. I've remained silent on this subject and pretty much hoped they would burn themselves out. What seems to be happening is the more it is suggested to stay away from someone, human curiosity gets the best of them, the check out what they're told is bad and end up liking what they when to check out or upvote out of spite. It really does seem like a war and the ones that are will take the damage is everyone else.

I agree with a posting limits. I see so many, red fish and minnows, that put out a large amount of content, most of which is a meme or just a photo copied off of Google. In order to produce good content consistently you it's difficult to keep up with 8-10 posts a day, unless this is all you do.

For me, the only thing that 'keeps' me at it is curation. I get to learn a lot about the topics I don't know a lot in and hopefully get t engage in conversation. With trying to keep up with good quality content it takes time to research to come up with good quality content and for someone like me, it's is seemingly pointless. Unless I can double my followers and they actually read and upvote my content, curation is pretty much the only way for someone to grow right now. A better way to make connections.

I agree with removing trending it showcases just the whales and we lose a lot of great content that is it not being seen by the vast majority. As for the whales any of them speak, they're followers will upvote them no matter what and that's fine. That's how the game is played. I guess this is where I need to do more research on the reward pool. Seems to me if we work on collaborating and banding together on the lower end it may be enough to balance things about bit more.

Good point indeed, thanks for your comment. However the whales are the people who invested in steem and not all are bad...lets hope for a lasting solution

You're very right many the vast majority are vested and fighting to keep working towards solutions. It's always those few that just have to make life rough for everyone.

Hello!
Steemit is a long-awaited platform, I believe, for content creators that have been left out of the employment wave following the enormous UNemployment fallout from the Great Recession (if you're in the US). For creatives like myself, the hustle is what we build our muscle, and for some [living] artists, creating is a doing; we are always creating. There, I incline to agree with your point, @charles. It could be a new movement for illustrators, photographers, a legitimate microblog that combines breakthrough technology and automation that can enable a new sort of techno-entrepreneur. Maybe another time for a more colorful discussion about the sort of promise Blockchain can make for the Arts, but yes, Steemit has the physical capacity for the traffic activity. Why not reconsider a multitude points to communicate and transmutate media through socializing with other users (?)*

Though I am new to Steemit, I am familiar with online blogging, and a thing or two about networking when it comes to business. I've packaged plenty material in the past, for visual presentations, spoken delivery, and product demonstrations in both retail and commercial design. Steemit has proven itself the past few months for my studio a way to create passive income from self-publishing my original content online. Combined with Facebook, Instagram, and my website as a omnichannel, I find Steemit a gamechanger for effectively disbursing my content to find those who not only really like the artwork, but ALSO really want the artwork. Even then in the meantime, I can still stake an income on the time and energy it takes to initially promote content on my own, though I wonder if that may change or be revisited at some time in the future.

I really consider some really adventurous concepts floating around the oceans of Planet Steemit, a few I've touched: @earthnation @steembasicincome @steemgigs @insteem

Thank you for sharing!


Time is Art. In Life, all we have is Time. Why not make Art all the Time?



ASC_EN_Original.png
I am a proud @earthnation Steemit Guild Community member!
Thanks to their loyal support, I am able to create a passive income stream that funds my creative output and delivers this original content directly to YOU.


Welcome and thanks for your good comment. I wish you success and a blessed weekend.

Humans... Whether we like it or not... commits... whatever it is...

What if we do like what Bubblews did earning from Viewing, Commenting and Liking, say, with a value of .01 as a start. With these actions before ever hitting 1 dollar, you need 100 viewers.

A lot of nonchalant whales doesn't care about minnows. They want to be worshipped, licked their asses if they want to just to get their attention (with the exemption of a whale I know that he's helping us a lot (our group SteemitDiversify), but he's not in control because a lot of curators (in my opinion) didn't bother to check a good/quality blog. If they feel your post isn't worth to be upvoted and with BIAS attitude or simply doesn't like you, you'll end in a ditch, bloody, unloved and end up quitting, beaten!

Well, I just don't like to comment... but. it's all the same rant and just about anything about blah and blah... I think... It will not end... It's the same loop of human intervention with a good platform and with bad folks who siphoning quite a lot of money on Steemit.

Steemit is I think is the breeding ground for greedy individual... You have no investment on Steemit poor minnow, it will remain a minnow forever feeding dead plankton by the greedy whales.

My boring two cents.

Lol your comment made me laugh however it is the truth. Without SP, you are nothing...however patience, consistency and good attitute will help you grow...however it will take time

Something i have noticed is that the whales are now lazy, and often write short articles with little information. They earn $300+ for doing this.

Then a new user can come in and write the most amazing article which probably took them the whole day to write.. and it disappears of the main page in a minute with no views.

I used to write a good one, but now, I'm playing online gaming and post just a simple blog. I know i'm earning 15 cents max or you are lucky if you are curated for 5 to 10 dollars.

Boring Steemit now. If they will BUBBLEWS it, writerrs will I think. Lol..

That is our world, unfortunately...patience and steem power is the key

Not bad ideas but as you said anytime anyone puts limits on something someone circumvents the process. Oh the anarchy

Your point is very solid, Steemit should strictly tight discipline and in my opinion there should be only one post in 24 hours. In this way every one get a good chance to grow , please mention your suggestions to witnesses @Charles1
I appreciate your suggestions

You are welcome however as indicated here many will open multipl accounts

When the whales squabbling, the minnows dumped off from the ocean. When the parent divorce, the children suffer.

Good point indeed.

In my humble opinion i think we or steemit can not stop the war from the greeds. However we can control it, for example having down vote option and the downvoting power is base on SP. In short a greedy whale who get to earn 200 SBD but got devote by other whale by -150 SBD (or could be more but never higher than the actual earning) he only get back 50 SBD, which could be less ROI for the greed. Let the whales fight the whales.

Like you said about human nature, before helping someone they have to be able to help themself first, some might take more on helping themself than helping anybody.

Good point indeed however how many whales have the will power to take on the abuser? or are most part of it?

😱Common whales🐋, end this war💪 and let the ocean♨ be at peace.✌. @charles1, thanks, love you💖💕.

Thank you for clarifying through this post some of the many questions I have. Definitely what moves the world is money and usually most people only want the individual good, not knowing that everything is a system, if we all work well, we will all win.

Point!!! thanks for your comment

Steemit Inc cannot be oblivious to the issues that you have stated. Berniesanders called out Ned earlier today and claimed that Steemit is a piece of shit. Steemit Inc's community engagement is very poor. It attempted to engage with us earlier this year; but it is inconsistent. Staying silent will not help the platform sustain itself. I tell myself to remain patient and persist.

Good point indeed, I agree.

The biggest thing you left out. We had the 4 post limit for over a year and it didn't fix anything.

You are right hence why I indicated that the post limit might not work because people will circumvent it , thanks for your comment and happy weekend

You've been getting into my #steemit news section in the @newsagg headlines posts quite a bit lately. Keep up the good work.

Thank you Sir, keep up the good work- and I wish you more success

Good point. I indicated it in the post and argued that it might not be the solution.Thanks for your comment.

My concern mainly is that you can say it MIGHT NOT WORK about just about anything. The key here is we already had a limit on the quantity of posts for more than a year. So it isn't a matter of talking about something we haven't tried and saying it MIGHT NOT WORK. We are talking about something that has been done, and it had not effect on this. All it really did was frustrate new people that were coming to steemit and not understanding why this was the only platform they used that wanted to limit how much they could say per day.

Good point, you are right. However, maybe because steemit is unique more than other platforms that used their datas without giving a dime in return

I think the platform is way too young with too few content providers to start limiting content and moving to reduce content. If anything we should be doing the opposite. There will come a time when the community is large enough to address issues of abuse. We are far from that point.

The issue as I see it is the abusive down voting, not excessive posting... I check this site a few times a day and see no new posts, or the same old posts for a large portion of the day.

We should reward people that provide 10+ posts since they are doing the heavy lifting.

I'm not sure I agree that it is difficult to provide 10 posts with good content if you are doing this full time... and there is no reason to assume a single account is controlled by a single person, it can be a team of writers working in the background. If CNN can do 24 hours of news 24/7 surely a couple of people in a room somewhere can average 1 post every 2.5 hours. Do not see this as an issue worth any attention until the gap (lack of content) is addressed. Let these guys post as they wish, and let the followers decide if the content is worth reading.

Good point indeed , so let the whale war continue, all should close their eyes and let the current issue resolve itself because there is no issue or solutions to the issues?

no, we should attempt to find a resolution that doesn't punish content providers. perhaps rethink the down voting ratio... we should also introduce residual income for content so you can upvote after 7 day if the content is really great to increase the circulation of the really good content for longer than 7 days.

Still new here and trying to figure everything out. I am peripherally aware of the Whale Wars, but not enough to give meaningful input. What I will say is that either the community will police itself or there will be rules and regulations that police us. No matter the system there will be those that find ways to manipulate it and do better than others. We just have to figure out how we want that system to work and who we want to give an advantage. Right now the Whales have it. Are you suggesting that should change?

If you read my post, you will find out my view point: coming to a pragmatic solution to the current issue

Thanks for your comments and perhaps I was not clear with my thoughts. Sorry about that. First, I did read your post and my response is based on what you wrote sir. But the pragmatic approach says that if you build a platform where people are rewarded for creating power, lots of people (but not everyone) will simply look to create power (I am talking about the Whales here). If we do not want this to happen, it can certainly be taken away, but it will also give rise to another group that will also seek to gain power. They may want power to make a benevolent Steemit where good posts like your are always pushed to the top, but that will have to be imposed, it will not just happen in my humble opinion. So right now the Whales have the power. Are you suggesting that either they or some of them should have that power taken away? Or some of their power taken away? Thanks and your comments are always appreciated.

Thanks for your comment. I never suggested that the whales power or anyone power should be taken away. Rather I indicated that we all should treat others with empathy and compassion and if we are to compromise some voting power and upvote the little minnows, then we will do all including ourself a good service.

Thanks and I agree 100%. In fact we need more of this type of feeling and actions in the world today. People seem to be getting angrier , meaner and more selfish. Part of this is because people are more afraid I think. Keep advocating for what you are talking about and what you believe because history shows that change only happens when good people push for good things. I am a believer and support your efforts.

You are welcome and thanks for your comment

What you have written is a disturbing truth I have been carrying in my mind.

As a newbie, I haven't been more disappointed by occasions when I dropped reasonable post and comment on some persons blog that requires a reply from them but nothing comes in

I wonder if they ever go through the comments at all.
I will appreciate a diligent lady I respect especially for her respect for peoples comments. She is not just out for your upvotes.

She reads through, replies and set a thread of discussion making steemit more socially interactive.

She is @michelle.gent . There are many others of her kind out there, and we can take a leaf from them.

So this post coming from a top person like you, I really appreciate.
Thanks @charles1

Welcome and I agree with you hence the post!! many just throw out mass posts and ignore those that take out time to comment...I rather post once a day and thus have time to engage with people.

This war is suicidal. I've been here for two months and I'm sick and tired to open hot and trending page. I can read always the same names. Their posts are irrelevant for me.
The majority of new-comers will sooner or later realize that this site is about a few people and there's no support for minnows at all.
What will happen? They will leave the platform or they will try to use it the same way as they see and choose a side.
And the outcome? A battlefield flooded by dead accounts and two fighting sides who cannot remember what they are fighting for.
As @yallapapi wrote:

Don't hate the player, hate the game.

It's up to you, whales. What will be left behind after the battles. It's your war. I have a vote here for @charles1 suggestion:

... sometimes we should remove the self-centered greed in us...

Thanks for your comment, good point indeed.

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