I'll call him out by name.
These are @crypto-p's claimed rewards from the past 10 days - from self upvoting his substanceless spam comments that he leaves to other people's posts every two minutes:
Claim rewards: 100.261 SBD and 101.675 STEEM POWER
Claim rewards: 93.881 SBD and 61.966 STEEM POWER
Claim rewards: 114.597 SBD and 59.280 STEEM POWER
Claim rewards: 126.366 SBD and 70.936 STEEM POWER
Claim rewards: 42.876 SBD and 30.884 STEEM POWER
Claim rewards: 36.504 SBD and 23.790 STEEM POWER
Claim rewards: 59.849 SBD and 35.815 STEEM POWER
Claim rewards: 28.944 SBD and 21.992 STEEM POWER
Claim rewards: 49.565 SBD and 33.901 STEEM POWER
Claim rewards: 76.583 SBD and 43.263 STEEM POWER
Claim rewards: 40.702 SBD and 29.675 STEEM POWER
Claim rewards: 51.114 SBD and 35.546 STEEM POWER
Claim rewards: 39.983 SBD and 25.718 STEEM POWER
Claim rewards: 40.902 SBD and 28.607 STEEM POWER
Claim rewards: 28.715 SBD and 20.457 STEEM POWER
Claim rewards: 43.122 SBD and 32.906 STEEM POWER
Claim rewards: 108.656 SBD and 54.516 STEEM POWER
Claim rewards: 39.344 SBD and 19.980 STEEM POWER
Claim rewards: 46.914 SBD and 24.084 STEEM POWER
Claim rewards: 71.815 SBD and 39.726 STEEM POWER
They add up to about 1240 SBD and 780 SP in rewards.
Yes, the blockchain allows this.
But it also allows flagging for abuse. Do we, as a community, consider this abuse? Or is this what we want Steemit to be?
I'd be interested to hear.
I'm recharging my voting power at the moment, but once it's filled up, I'm going to be flagging. Even though it will lead to retaliation.
But some of us need to have a set of balls between our legs.
Very torn here. I just spent about 3 hours making a deep dive post on wine making. With my photos and all, and i have earned less than a buck in a few hours and hope it gets to 5 before timing out.
BUT
I also thought the whole point of a decentralized network like steemit was that there ARE NO rules and so he isn't actually breaking any rules.
I don't want to fight for a dime I deserve, but I also never ever want to be told how I can or cannot vote....
Telling him he can't do what he wants with his own money and voting power well, that's heading towards socialism and communism and this ain't that but if it becomes that, most of the people I see on here who seem to be anarcho capitalists more often than not, will not dig it and leave.
So this is a very tough call.
I think it boils down to I have the freedom to do the same thing. I also have the freedom to get bigger and its up to me to do it. I'm not jealous of this guy, are you all?
Just food for thought.
Hey sircork, just found this post. It's so funny. And sad.
Can you tell what's going on, you seem reasonable.
As i understood correctly, creator of the post complained about other guy crypto-p who said "hello, nice post, following you" or something like that and upvoted himself, right? (i hope i didn't miss anything).
Okey, i decided to make my own research. Checked his posts, damn that was long.
And i'm offended now! How can he say such things to people..
And i can't stand that! We should unite and stop that nonsence! How can such a cruel person exist, right?
Then i found out that reasonable part of his comments are located on a new steemians blogs who don't have much followers and comments. Trying to build their own follower army and waiting for someone to come in and look at their content. It can be really hard to build your blog at the beginning. He followed everyone of them as promised, so i say it's + than -.
But then.. after a while i checked some of the next-lvl strong whales (business people who rock in investing or something like that and are on the next lvl of badass) with more than 150k steempower. And actually.. they upvote themselves a lot. You ask wtf? I say - yep! Each vote more than 80$. Why no one ever tell them a single word? I have an answer - NO BALLS. But insead you attack someone who never said a single bad word to anybody. You call that balls? Are you sure?
And now i don't even know what's good or bad. This huge post about that guys crypto-p with average vote around 2-4$ and now compare it with 100$+. Why do you care?
It seems that it's just a simple personal grudge against someone who has more steem than you schattenjaeger (no offense). I don't see any concern from you about decreasing of the reward pool or about community. It's clearly an attack because you want so, not because you care about others around you.
In conclusion. it's my own research, strict and based on facts. If you ask me - i'd say he is innocent.
But who am i, i've started on steem not long ago, it's for you to decide.
I have been on a short day trip today, and just got back but I read this with great interest. First of all, thanks for thinking I might be reasonable, that's very kind of you to say!
I read everything you said, and it was actually quite enjoyable. If you post like this too, I'll be your follower for a long time. Super amusing, and likewise, I think you might be pretty reasonable too.
As for your actual opinion expressed after your research? I'd say you nailed it, and you don't need a word of opinion from me to confirm it. Well done.
Looking forward to your posts on less stinky topics :D
Oh no you've read all this. It should've taken quite some time. Sorry about that.
Have a good day :d
I read 300000000 words a second. No worries :D
Bullseye 🏹
There are rules on steemit, it self governs those who steal content, and spam and this guy is spamming so getting his comments flaged is exercising our freedom to say hey your content is garabage.. get it out of this thread
Ok, that's reasonable. But if he adjusts to reasonable comments and upvotes them anyway, what then?
Then nothing. Because he's no longer spamming.
Fair enough. I get your point.
Thank you @sircork
Youre welcome! Whaddid i do?
Epic one :D
I guess you guys liked my comment or you are making fun of me for saying something obvious or something lol i can never tell ;)
This post is about me. You supported me.
I support freedom and if that means supporting you well hell yeah babee. Freedom rules and im glad we apparently agree!
Exactly man!
Have a 100% 6 cent vote for freedom lol
On the surface, this is clear enough... I see something like that, get all riled up and think "HELL yeah, what an abusive JERK!"
But it's generally not that black-and-white. Looking at this differently, we could also say "Wow-- here's someone who's figured out to maximize his returns in a free-market capitalist system!"
Not saying I agree with this kind of practice... just suggesting that if it were Forbes Magazine reporting this, rather than @schattenjaeger, we'd likely have very different perspectives of the same practice.
So this is really a moral or ethical dilemma, more than a functional one. Free markets are inherently about being self-serving... so we get to look at what is the community's purpose here... if any, at all?
Again, this is subjective but the community here is akin to "shareholders" in a company. And-- presumably-- the common interest of the "shareholders" is (ultimately) to oversee and guide the "company" (aka Steemit) towards long term thrival and survival.
Against that backdrop... we could postulate that someone who engages in "abusive comment self-upvoting" is putting personal short term gains ahead of being part of ensuring long term survival. Stated bluntly, it's the "Riches NOW, fork the future!" approach.
In a system that truly works and is functionally self-regulating, the preponderance of the voting power would arrive at a measure of consensus that we are not here simply to "rape and pillage" in the short term, we are here to help direct long term growth. So... again assuming a functional system... pressure would be brought on the "offender" to help them understand that their behavior potentially constitutes "sawing off the branch they are sitting on."
Is flagging the right approach? I don't know. I'm a little more with @lukestokes... let's understand the background, first. Also, as I commented on one of your posts yesterday... maybe the problem isn't "flagging" but the current way flagging works; perhaps the flagging methodology needs to be less individual and more consensus based.
And now, I'm going to be an abusive asshole and upvote my own comment! But not because I want to "make money," but because I don't want it to drown down in the "nice post, upvoted" cloud, having just spent 20 minutes on it. Which is the same reason I upvote many comments on Steemit....
Fair and balanced post. Is it "wrong", for example, for someone with some social power in the outside world to comment on social issues? To "push" politics in a particular direction? To essentially spend some of their social capital to accomplish something they want?
Voting for yourself is a like a little mini pay out. It doesn't make someone else appreciative and therefore more likely to vote for your post in return in the future. It doesn't create bonds between other users or add to your steem power. It just is a way of slowly cashing out.
If I understand it correctly. But I am a newbie.....
I think every time when we see a problem we should observe it from the different angles and only then make a conclusion. or many conclusions.
Thank you, @denmarkguy
I agree it's not that "nice" when you find someone who comments on a post you've made and then upvotes their own comment but not your post :/
I don't personally agree this is something that should necessarily be punished however. The way this kind of behavior is best moderated from my perspective is through showing that it isn't supported or appreciated behavior socially speaking. I for one will for instance not upvote such a comment or follow someone whom I know does not really support me, or anyone else for that matter.
If they do give support and also support themselves by upvoting their own comments, then I don't see a problem with that.
If someone spends $10,000 on a POW mining rig and receives a proportional amount of the block rewards for that coin, no one complains.
If someone spends $10,000 on Steem Power and receives a proportional amount of the block rewards from Steem via self-voting, is that something we should complain about?
There are many ways to look at self voting. I'm not sure it falls into the "abuse" category since abuse implies directly harming someone else. The rewards pool is designed to be distributed according to how those with high Steem Power vote. Sure, some mined early to gain Steem Power, but others invested real money (and lots of it... see my weekly exchange transfer reports). Maybe a few hundred bucks is just a return on their investment? Maybe it's worth some social shaming, not upvoting their content, calling them out as being overly greedy, etc, etc... or maybe we just need to think, "Man, I hope to have a lot of Steem Power some day so I can demonstrate the right way to use it which benefits everyone."
Investors create all the value we enjoy here. I think we should engage them and understand their motivations before we call them abusers.
Well, the issue here isn't just upvoting yourself. It's the spam commenting that accompanies it. He comments the same repeated crap just so that he can upvote himself at 100%. And when he does decide to upvote other people, it's at 1%.
Yes, the code allows it. And that's part of the problem with the latest hard fork and the full linear rewards plus 4x voting power. But that doesn't mean it should be accepted by other users.
For the record: the behavior by this user started before the hard fork. The HF simply makes this more lucrative for anyone who is only interested in lining their own pockets.
Great clarification. I think all spam comments are worthy of flags. We don't need that crap here.
Did you even read my post? Spam was mentioned at the very beginning.
Yes, I did. I'm sorry for not giving that point more weight. I've seen a lot of posts that just complain about others making money when they aren't and at first glance, I thought this was a similar post.
I'm all for other people making different amounts of money. That's just life.
Whatever is doable on steemit is allowed. Obviously some stuff is not okay, but hence flagged.
I am a big fan of rational self-interest and you both can do whatever the protocol allows and feels beneficial to you.
I tend to think it is better for the community to handle such cases by the measures the protocol allows amd they deem fair, instead of tightening the rules within steemit.
Personally, i would let it slip.
Jerry Banfield had a recent post showing how if you use your vote power exclusively to upvote your own posts, you'll double your account's holdings in less than 200 days. It's a HUGE incentive to self-vote, even though it is not necessarily good for the ecosystem as a whole.
I'm with you - just because the code allows it, doesn't mean we have to accept it as a community. There has to be a limit. Although @lukestokes has good points as well. This is a hard problem to solve.
Yeah, I'm not a fan of that Jerry Banfield guy. Seems like a charlatan to me. Don't know him personally, but from what I've seen of his Dash work and what he has done so far on Steemit, I don't think he's very helpful. It's all about getting rich quick with him, but for some reason, everyone wants to throw rewards at him. It's not exactly the kind of voice that should be wanted representing a social media platform if that platform wants to be taken seriously.
Ahh shoot, I haven't done any research about him to be honest - I've only seen a few of his posts. I'll keep what you said in mind - thanks for the warning.
The sad thing is that 200 days to double your holdings can be pretty bad here. I've not been here for quite 365 days yet and I started with 10 steem power. I simply got my holdings by participating and it is many magnitudes greater than doubling my account holdings.
Exactly, I mean @lukestokes coming to steem to reap just the benefits for yourself, that's what I intended to say yesterday, does not create a good community. It's like stealing rewards. How do you see it?
I do understand that any rules we implement at the code level can have good and bad ramifications. I tend to agree with @lukestokes. I believe it is up to the community to fight these things. I caught a person talking to me for a long time on one of my essentially anti-communist posts who was pro-communism and blasting capitalism for all number of things while I watched him up vote every single one of his comments to me. It started at around $3, but our conversation was length enough it was less than $1.50 by the time we reached the bottom. So I finally pointed out that he was kind of doing here exactly what he was complaining about bad capitalist doing. He didn't say anything else after that.
I am a person that tries to solve these problems via words, and by withdrawing my support (votes, follows, witness votes) from people that don't seem to have the best interest of the steemit community at heart and are doing things that impact the rest of us potentially negatively.
I wouldn't mind participating in a hardfork experiment where they removed the ability to up vote your own comments. I understand the visibility aspect of concepts, but I don't think that truly makes a huge difference at this point, and I participate in comments a lot. I also up vote a large amount of the comments that interact with me.
LOL!
I think it depends if upvoting gets too nasty... Everything which helps grow the community into a healthy one... Take a look at our monetary system, a few (intended) mistakes here and there and there you go!
Great point. The nice thing here is we can influence the code as well. Witnesses decide if a hard fork should be implemented. If everyone did agree on a change, witnesses could (in theory) hold Steemit, inc hostage by saying "We won't accept this hard fork until this PR is included." I'm not sure we have that level of consensus on much of anything, but it's a nice thought. :)
One bag fills the other! It is not more!We should show such people the boundaries! It is they who empty the pots!But I will make so much good contributions, so I have the power to flag such people massively! Steem on my friend!!
I don't get why anyone should be allowed to upvote himself. What use case is there for this?
As one example, I upvoted my comment 1% on this post. Now this discussion is the first one someone sees when they read the comments on this post. That's influence. That's "power" given to holders of Steem Power. Adjusting the order of comments is an example of how I think self-voting can be used without it being abusive to anyone else.
I also see a good argument for no self-voting, but due to sybil attack concerns, it's not really something that can be stopped as people will (and unfortunately do) create sock-puppet accounts to upvote their own posts anyway.
Currently the steemit interface defaults to voting up your own post when you create. A comment isn't much different than a regular post as far as the blockchain is concerned, it just has a parent where the other does not. Each comment can be viewed via Steemit as a separate post. So, to be consistent, we might want to also talk about not upvoting your own full posts. ChainBB, as example, defaults to off. You have to go in and vote your post up manually if want to.
Some argue "Well, people put more effort into a post than a comment." That's usually true (and especially true in the case of spam comments), but sometimes I put a lot of effort into a comment and get very little reward for it. Does that mean I should vote up my comment? Is that justified based on the "effort" involved? Now we get to the slippery slope of defining subjective value. :)
Great comment Luke. Upvoting your own comments is like licking your own balls anyway so a bg no no. Unless you really like lcking your own balls of course.
regarding the upvote for your own post. I think its a way to reward yourself for the good content you just have posted. A small token of gratitude from the blockchain for being part of it and actively contributing to it. Unfortunately people will use either one the wrong way eventually.
Bck to thi post: I reckon the guy doing this has another, high level account on steemit itself and is pissing his pants because he is subject of this post. He probably upvoted it too.
Can't my own comment be good content and not ball-licking? Why the distinction?
Sure it can be good content. But it's really up to the original poster if he finds your comment "Worthwile". I think that there lies the distinction. The upvote for your own post is imo considered as a reward from the blockchain whereas the upvote on your comment is more like laughing at your own joke. Leave it to others to decide if your comment is good or not. If it's good people should upvote. Unfortunately it doesn't work like this around here.
I see greed is taking over. Instead of upvoting good content from new writers the whales tend to upvote only the people they already upvote. They have created exactly that what they opposed in the first place: A rich 1%. Congratz, you have all the power. However, what they fail to realise is that the coin only will grow in worth if a lot of it is distributed to newcomers with good content.
And when that fails people will resort to other ways of getting rewarded, like crypto-p for example. In fact, I think I should write a post on this exact theory. On the other hand, no one will actually read it nor upvote it anyway so maybe I should not bother.
Best thing the whales can do is hold on to their power and steem so they can go down with it once they wrecked their own ship. That's the way its going to be if they don't start to redistribute that what they have. And that would be an incredible shame.
They have the power to make this network worth ten times over but choose to stick to what they have. That way it will never grow to its full potential.
Several curation trails have been set up which I believe is a good thing. That way good people will be stimulate the writers to grow. And yes, I am talking about rewards. As for me, I am typing about 5 hours a day and am active the rest of the day (On Steem or Discord) but my rewards suck big time. I literally work for less than 1 dollar an hour. And I am not the only one.
But I know things will change, at least for me. That doesn't mean I get impatient. I get impatient when other people promise things and earn big money out of that promise but fail to follow up to that promise.
WOW... I just got the typing demon. Sorry.
Should have started a post LOL
I checked out his account details and a few things stood out to me:
I hesitate to call him a spammer or crucify him for upvoting himself to maximize his return on that investment in the platform. More investors mean our payouts here are better in the long run, and he's done more in that regard than the typical school of minnows will in a year. Sure, he could be more of a team player, and maybe he will be once he understands the community principles behind Steemit. I don't think call-outs and flagging are necessarily the right means to that end, but hopefully it all works out.
@lukestokes makes some great points, especially about subjective value, in the comments.
Thank you @mtgmisfit, you are absolutely right.
What you said is true.
But flagging is also the right of a stakeholder. Flagging is just voting, just like upvoting. This post is intended to bring conversation with the community.
There seem to be people agreeing with me.
@schattenjaeger I agree and disagree.
Like you said and I agree spam comments are bad.
As for upvoting your own comments and post. I think its fine as long as its allowed by the system.
As @lukestokes stated some people have invested alot of money into this platform and they should profit however the rules allow. Im a miner and I get it.
Upvoting to get higher up in the thread.
Yes so true. This is another reason why the self upvote is valuable.
Thanks
Your welcome!
I agree, downvoting is part of the system as well when there's a disagreement on rewards distribution. Many people get too upset about downvoting, but I do see it being used as actual abuse (i.e. harming an individual by purposefully waiting for the last 12 hour window so no other upvotes can impact the payout and then downvoting it to nothing because of personal feelings about the individual with nothing to do with the content itself which the network already voted on and decided to pay out).
And yes, some people will always agree when it comes to "I want that person to make less so I can make more." That doesn't always mean their position is the most rationally defensible one.
But you're calling out an individual. Have you discussed this with @crypto-p to get their side of the story?
Either way, I do think it's a good discussion to have. I do sometimes upvote my comments, but I do so rarely. I did in this case at 1% because I wanted my comment to be at the top of the list. To me, that influence is motivation to stay powered up (in almost a year, I've never powered down).
Yes, I warned him that I would start to flag him. He then threw a hissy fit, as expected.
But how is flagging then sometimes abuse in your opinion, if voting is just the right of a stakeholder? Both are just voting, done for arbitrary reasons.
But that's not even the point, for crying out loud.
The point is in the post: is this what we want Steemit to be? A joke of a platform where people spam shit like "good post" without even reading, just to self upvote?
A platform that looks like a joke that people are embarrassed to show to other people outside of Steemit?
Well, I guess that's not really a problem because people don't want other people here; they don't want other people interfering with their cash cow. The success of Steemit is irrelevant, as long the blockchain can be milked for easy bucks.
Who cares, right?
I've written about this in detail here, if you're interested to know my views.
Many people care. Very deeply, in fact. Steemit isn't perfect and certainly has many challenges to overcome. This is part of being a community and working through those challenges together, hopefully in a respectful manner.
Steemit is what we make it to be.
All due respect mate , but are you aware that the copy and pasting of other people's comments back to them is..like..really obnoxious ?
just saying. thought maybe no one had told you is all : o)
I've been here a year and have posted/commented over 6,000 times. No one has ever mentioned it being obnoxious at all. On the contrary, I think it's extremely helpful to ensure clarity in communication. One of the biggest breakdowns is when people respond to something the other person hasn't said or don't clarify which part they are responding to.
With all due respect, please acknowledge what bothers you personally may not bother others at all and since you joined less than a month ago, your perspective may not be as broad as it could be.
That said, I appreciate your intentions, trying to help me. I disagree with you because I think clarity of communication is really important. Quoting someone else, to me, is respectfully showing them you directly read what they said and have a specific point to make about it.
My point exactly.
I don't agree with you, any system should be fair and if it has bugs like these the just need to be fixed. I know this might sound like a bone-headed comment but stuff needs to be simple.
Please define "fair" in this context using my mining rig analogy. Is it "fair" to get a return on one's investment? I think it's arbitrary to say self-voting of posts is fine by comments is not. Or maybe it comes down to frequency? I think it's not clearly a "bug" as much as a community expectation which is still fuzzy and being figured out.
Self-upvoting makes disproportionally high ROI now. The total token emission is just 7% p.a. , but because account @steemit owning 50% do not vote and many whales do continue with no-voting-experiment, self-upvoters can get much more then just 7% they are sort of "entitled" to.
When you say "7% p.a." what is "p.a."? Sorry, I don't know what you mean.
That's an interesting point about gaining more of a share than their investment would otherwise allocate. Unlike a mining rig with a somewhat fixed return... but I guess even that isn't fixed if a bunch of other people buy mining rigs but for whatever reason turn them off or don't use them effectively.
Interesting way to think about it for sure. Maybe I'll do some blockchain analysis to look at self voting comment rewards over time... that might be really interesting.
per annum
Ah, thanks!
Those people who "turned off their rigs", what was their intention for doing so ? Just to fund self-upvoters ? I doubt it.
I'll suggest another parallel.
Some people have made donations to some charitable foundation. The employees of this foundation are supposed to distribute donations keeping 25% as a salary ( curation rewards ) Some employees decide to keep 100% for own needs.
In my country it's a crime ;)
Interesting perspective. I think you mean someone is given, say, $100 and told to give $75 away and keep $25 but instead they are keeping the full $100? I guess that does make sense.
Not sure there's a way to stop it, but here's an idea: what if the steemit interface gave a visual indication of self-voted comments (red background maybe?) so people would know more clearly who votes themselves up regularly. Might that change anything or bring about some social shaming if the community feels it's not a good activity?
Might be interesting.
I think the biggest question has to be: Where does it leave Steemit if everyone only voted for their own content?
There might be more activity, as you need content to upvote but there is no incentive to make it worthy of reading.
Like many others, I'm torn about the whole thing. It's his stake - everyone here has one, regardless of its size.
Ultimately though, the value in this platform does not come from upvoting spam content. If it decends into that then we've played ourselves.
I think you hit the nail on the head here. A few people self-voting doesn't make a big impact. But when all of the discouraged newbies see how profitable self-voting spam is, they won't be motivated to improve their posts and engage with other users. Why work if you don't have to?
My fear is that the Steemit party is going to go from "super hot orgy" to " just a bunch of dudes masturbating" if we don't focus on the social aspect of this platform. We should discourage antisocial behavior, like farming self-votes.
Test on self voting ....
Not bad ;-)
I'll call that abuse. I am not a fan of the self-upvote for comments. I have done it once or twice to get my comment at the top of the list for more visibility, but in connection curating for the @foraging-trail, to put key foraging information at the top of the comments. I don't feel right doing that, though. I think self-upvotes in the comment stream should require promotion spending, just like post promotions. They should not generation self-rewards.
I agree with this! BUT... it is predicated on a common goal we perhaps share, of maximizing value of the community.
That's not everyone's objective. A lot of people just "want to make money" and they could care a rat's rear end about how that happens, or what they DO to accomplish that.
Which takes us right back to the broader question of what the "greater purpose" of the organism known as Steemit... and is it even possible to reach consensus on an answer to that?
That's the issue at the base of it all, isn't it. But there's several layers of consensus -- the developers because they have to code the rules, the witnesses because they have to accept the code changes, and then us because we have to be willing to create the value within a setting where some folks are exploiting the comment system to generate personal returns without building community.
I'm under no delusion that Steemit the platform exists for us. It exists to demonstrate the value of blockchain as it's being developed. But I don't see how the value of Steem can continue to grow as people simply siphon off funds from other investors. And that affects all of us who are trying to grow the value of Steem -- and our quality participation here does contribute to that value, as we draw people in to use Steemit the blockchain and Steem currency.
Promotion fee for upvotes is brilliant. Sounds like a no brainer!
I would pay a fee like that to get my comment at the top of the list sometimes. Comments are just 'mini-posts' in much of the Steemit accounting anyway. So maybe it wouldn't even be so hard to do.
Me too. I can't really think of any problems with it...
das ist eine der beschissensten methoden geld zu machen, wer groß ist wird immer größer und die kleinen bleiben auf der strecken..... in den arsch getreten gehört so was!!! ich habe fertig!
Upvoted for hearing it in German as well.
As we Dutch say: "De duivel schijt altijd op de grote hoop". (Teufel, immer, scheißt, Haufen should be enough to understand it 8-)
haha.... good!!
This is sopposed to be a social media outlet.
Not a self upvote and get rich place.
People are going to realize that nobody votes for there content because everyone is saving their power for self upvoting.
I personally think the system shouldnt allow self upvotes. They make absolutely no sense in the over all picture.
If you invested heavily in SP. Your reward is greater Curation rewards.
Right now, curation is pointless because your better off upvoting your own content than others.
Whoever is defendong the self upvote position is obviously benifiting themselves.
This free money fountain will collapse if this continues. I assume the drop in price is reflective of what is currently happening here.
My opinion, worth ~0.30 cents ;)
Its not good to abuse the system..people can upvote some of their posts or comments but not many. Rather use the upvote to reward good posts , comments and help others rise.
yes my friend!
welcome
Wie im wahren Leben auch...die ehrlichen werden bestraft...und diejenigen die bescheißen, sogar noch belohnt...einen Schande....😠Pfui....
If we chase out all investors using our own moral yard sticks, we are forever going to remain a niche community and steemit will be back to the few cents as it was before. If the rules/code allows it, it is allowed.
True, good point.
Allowing this kind of activity will only bring short term value to STEEM, nothing more.
I guess he have worked hard and invested money to earn that influence and get to that vote power. As curators the community have the power to manage itself. I guess the best way to "fight" something like that is for us to grow our own vote power and upvotade the content we thibk it is deserved.
some of us need to have a set of balls between our legs
yes you do..
quit whining about stuff that is none of your business and go home to mommy.
your diaper needs changed and you're drooling.
Don't worry, @ats-david is downvoting his comments ;)
Agreed, this IS ABUSE indeed
"I'm recharging my voting power at the moment, but once it's filled up, I'm going to be flagging. Even though it will lead to retaliation." I'm new here, so can someone explain to me what the "retaliation" is referring to? Can people see who you flag, or does it mean that the people that get flagged enough may act negatively in some way?
Yes, everything is transparent. If you flag someone they can see it. It is not anonymous.
Self voting is widespread - this is some analysis from just one day's data (28th June):
https://steemit.com/stats/@analytics/128680-steemits-top-self-voters-28-june-2017-report
It's filtered to just the top 50, there was around 200 identified platforms which had a very high %/ self vote count.
Nice data, I was wondering where something like this could be found. I honestly think someone should set up a bot that awards badges to the most egregious self voters, at least to raise awareness for others to be wary in the way that a message from cheetah does. Then individual users can start to flag if they feel it's appropriate.
Another great idea. (sorry for baby vote - my 100% is a whopping $.65 fully charged - and I'm getting depleted lol)
I'm SOOO close to starting an account and amassing SP for the sole purpose of protecting the reward pool from this type of blatant abuse, because that's exactly what it is.
Jackasses like this don't deserve to make money on this platform. In fact, they are simply taking money from the pool that could have gone toward valuable content.
I have been torn on this subject. After initially refusing to upvote any of my own posts, I have settled, for now, on a self-imposed policy of upvoting only if I feel as though I have added something substantive to the discussion.
At this point, I try to get about 10 votes in per day, and about a fourth of those have been for me. Of course, it's not that big a deal now since I'm a newbie. I'm just trying to set a habit. But I suppose that will evolve over time.
But it's nice to hear that someone has the balls to call out abuse for what it is. I'm behind you 100% on that.
Hey man - I think we deserve our own upvotes on content we've put effort into. Like someone on this very long thread said awhile ago. Especially when you're a minnow, no one is going to fault you for rewarding yourself.
It's the whales abusing the system that hurt us all. I'm not a fan of regulation, and I'm sure this very smart community will figure out a way to punish those who upvote themselves to the tune of $100's or $1000's per day (flagging is one way...lol)
Yeah, wow, what a thread this is turning into! Thanks for bringing me back with your response. I don't have time to read through all of the comments, but I do agree with you. I would say that I am OK upvoting myself if I feel as though I deserve an upvote for it. How's that for a wishy-washy non-committal position! Obviously, that's not a big deal at this point, but how am I going to feel about it if/when my votes start carrying some weight?
Are the whales abusing the system? Someone smarter than me will need to figure that out. I have to assume that some are and some are not. When the discussion gets serious about regulating that stuff, I figure that it will start to flush out the abusers, who may start moving some of their financial girth elsewhere. Would that affect the valuations and reward system? As they say - he who has the money makes the rules.
he who has the money makes the rules Ain't that the sad truth!
So if I write reasonably good content, which I can come up with in 20 minutes say, I can post 30 times a day and upvote each of them, would that be ok? No? Then the solution is make another hardfork and return to only 4 posts a day and no upvoting own comments. But wait we had a hardfork because we wanted to be able to post more than 4 times a day, personally I don't see where I can come up with more than 4 a day, but I'm not that creative. See you can't keep everyone satisfied, you just don't like what this guy is doing because he is making a lot of money which we all probably aren't, if I did that with my 27 cents voting power and made 50 posts a day and upvoted myself each time and made a whopping 10 dollars would you be upset? I'm not saying what this guy is doing is cool , but he isn't breaking any rules. Someone said he was going to start flagging him, wouldn't his voting power be of better use upvoting minnows?
I'm new but it seems odd to allow unlimited posts per day. That's just asking for low quality.
Perhaps in the blogging format that is Steemit.com, but the blockchain rules have to apply to the entire chain - which is now currently beginning to host an Instagram type network (Steepshot) and soon will launch a Twitter type service (Zappl). People can tweet many more times a day than they can blog, and any posting limits would be spread across all Steem based sites. If we take it back to 4 a day you could blog once, tweet twice, and post a photo. Not a solution. Plus it's not immune to simply creating multiple accounts and spreading Steem Power among them to continue the abuse. A very open and permissive rule set is fine, people need to start flagging low quality.
It may be the reason why our post payout is decreasing day by day.
Would someone bother to explain this a little more? I've noticed that a lot of posts have gone down in payout value. One that I resteemed went from $1,200 to $800. And one of my posts went from $560 to $320. Is the value of our posts tied to how much other people are making?
Post values are determined based on how the daily number of rewards are allocated by all voters and it's also based on the price of STEEM.
When you see potential payouts fluctuating when STEEM prices are fairly constant, it's mostly due to how rewards are being allocated by vote. The more people post and vote, the more these rewards will potentially be directed to new posts/comments. The more influence a user has, the more they can direct to their preferred content. So, when you see someone like "abit" using his full 100% vote on a post, he's directing a substantially higher amount of rewards to the chosen author than you can direct to yours. When he does this multiple times per day, his influence will have a larger impact on potential payouts and each vote will draw rewards away from all other pending payouts. This happens when everyone votes, so the more people there are voting on content and the more content there is, the more these rewards will be spread around and fluctuating.
Since the hard fork last week, there has been a much larger amount of daily rewards allocation than there had been over the prior month. With that larger pool and with voters having the ability to vote at 4x power, the "decay" on pending payouts has been significantly higher than they had been previously. Even if the STEEM price had remained constant, post payouts would be trending down at a much faster pace than they were before the hard fork.
With STEEM prices falling this week, the pending payouts will also fall with it because that's just how the rewards are calculated. STEEM prices on the platform for rewards purposes are based on a 3.5-day average of the STEEM price feeds by witnesses.
So, all that said - we can expect average payouts to decrease and to continue decaying at the faster rate, especially with prices trending down. But the reward pool is being drained at a much faster rate due to the hard fork changes. Once there is no "surplus" of rewards, we will only be receiving the daily amount of STEEM created by the blockchain, which means a much lower total that can be spread around to a growing number of users.
In other words: this recent "party" will be over.
There is no golden goose. We just haven't realized the cost as a community yet.
There was more good content in this comment than most of the Steem posts I read in a typical day. I recognized most of what you are saying, but that was articulate and based on graphs and stuff. You should top-post this.
@ats-david (because I'm sure my comment will slide down lol) -the worst part is that the ones who abused the system in the short term still win and walk away with all the took from Steemit.
I am really worried about it and it is discouraging me now.
Me, too, rocksg. It is taking the fun away and it feels useless to spend time trying to write thoughtful comments when someone else is cut and pasting spam and running up points t o get themselves recognized. Worse even is that people playing by the mutually-agreed rules of fair play are afraid to downvote because of certain retaliation from the scofflaw.
Could this be due to the fact that the price of Steem is down? So everything goes down, my voting power at 100% is only about 60% of what it was at the inception of HF19, now I know Steem isn't down 40% but I guess this has something to do with it.
If upvoting yourself, self curation, is bad, then the very simple solution is for steemit to stop paying for self curation. In other words, make it so an author cannot receive curation rewards and author reward on the same post. No need to get upset and start judging others with penalty flags.
Until then, the guy did invest a lot into steem and he's following he rules, I guess. If the rules change he has the option to sell his steem and move on or stay in the community. It's his choice.
I find that when I submit a new post my upvote is automatically included. I must then quickly un-vote my own post. That doesn't make sense.
Have a look at the @smackdown.kitty bot.
Original post is here
I have made this point elsewhere (I think on comment with @brianphobos who was discussing similar things).
It is fine to upvote your own post 100%, because you put time and effort into it.
However, upvoting of your own comment should be disallowed (or capped at a low amount - 5%). It is open to abuse, particularly by those with a lot of SP. Sad to see, but hopefully will be fixed, as it is an obvious exploit and very selfish.
10% would be 100 votes a day right? I think that would be a pretty good cap for the comments with no cap on posts... but then again with no cap on posts, people would just make weak posts more often (probably) so seems like it may be a little fruitless. I could find 10 posts a day to make about sports for instance.
This guy just commented on my post, he did not upvote my post but his comment has more value than my post which he upvoted himself.
As I already wrote before
Also there is the is the problem of voter trails, it cause so many spam comments.
But how can this be solved by taking away self voting, if the reason people hold steem power mainly is self voting. They would have to change the curation awards to be more equal and then get rid of self voting otherwise people would cash out of steempower
By flagging. That's what the feature is for. People are just so scared of using an intended feature of the platform.
I understand why people dont use it tho, sometimes it does nothing and then your voting powers gone, I think they should fork the voting powers into three catagories .Selfpower .Communitypower .Flaggingpower Problem solved
A good idea. Could improve the entire situation.
I don't understand the whole self voting thing... surely if you spam your comments your voting power decreases so it's not worth doing it repeatedly?
you are right
#abuse
I hope not..the reserve is getting depleted they said.
Agreed upvoted
@ch00fy
This is insane... and abuse at its worst. When people are struggling on Steemit trying to "make it" (like me) this (expletive deleted) is grabbing up an unwarranted percentage of the rewards pool! This makes me sick!!! I work my ass off and am lucky to make $60 for 4-5 hours work writing.
Some of us play it fair, and try to be an asset to the Steemit community... Flagging's too good for this jerk- get me his address!
Honestly, $60 sounds pretty good for 4-5 hours of writing. It's better than minimum wage ($10/hr - taxes in California). But yes, I also find it slightly annoying that some people find more success than others when it appears like they find some kind of unfair loophole. I guess that's life though.
But 4-5 hours doesn't include the time it takes to create characters, develop the plot... That just includes making my running outline and actually writing it all down. Read a chapter of one of my stories and you'll see what I mean.
It's sad to see this. Thank you for not only pointing it out, but inviting discussion.
I think I know who this is! I mean. It’s all right to up vote yourself from time to time. It’s your investment and things aren’t black and white. If i guessed right who this is it would mean that hes not voting much for anything else. In that case I wouldn’t see that as an abuse, rather as a bad investors choices and i would understand that that the community would want to shut him down. Maybe try to discuss with him first and flag only if he doesn’t listen to reason? That is my opinion:)
Greasy
I think there's really not that big of a harm with self-upvoting, but it is discouraging to be in an exchange of comments with someone who upvotes his own comments and doesnt vote for your input at all... weird
Loopholes need to be worked out in every platform. Steemit and the community will figure it out. Smart cookies around here.
In all honesty, if its allowed by the network I see nothing wrong with it
its not like he hacked or went outside of the rules in anyway, if its a protocol by the network that is allowed to be used.... why get upset about it?
there are people who post extremely well made content and get maybe 3 steem dollars, while there are woman in bathing suits who post three photos and they make $1,500 a post, per day. that sounds a bit more unfair to me
in the end, everyone is just trying to make a buck, if the network allows it, then it is what it is
I completely agree with @moderninvestor. The people who are new here create content by putting so much time and effort and they get no recognition for that where are some people out there post random posts and make $1000.
Yes, it is allowed by the network.
The point of the post is that so is flagging. And the question I raise is should we, as a community, consider this to be abuse worth flagging.
For me, if its allowed by the network, i dont see why it should be flagged, the creators surely know about it, and if they dont see it as an issue then it must not be one to them
however, there are people posting music videos ( that arent theirs) there are people posting racist images and quotes (this should be flagged) these things should be flagged....but then... for the second part you have the question of free speech, and the first one is a gray line, as i have seen people posting music videos from beyonce, but I dont see in the rules that this isnt allowed
Flagging is allowed by the platform. :p
It's impossible to do things that are not allowed by the platform.
So that guy upvoting himself - and draining the rewards pool for all of us - is a-ok cause the system allows it -
But you have a problem with flagging, the equal but opposite force of upvoting - also allowed by the system?
Not following @moderninvestor's the logic ...
Yeah the girl in the bathing suit is spam for you but for someone else it's beauty worth to be upvoted. I think Steemit will be a better place if we don't judge others judgements. Flagging each other can make this a war zone and no one wants to stay in a war zone.
I looked at the guy's comments. And while very low effort, they are original (not botted/copy pasted) and respect what he's commenting on.
I just think posts per day should be limited and comments should have a max power reduction and/or cap for self-voting. Also, to stop sock-puppet accounts... and tbh stop cliques from only voting each other... Votes towards a specific account should have diminishing returns over a certain amount of time. So if bob upvotes jane every post. By the week's end his vote towards her is diminished (until it regens). But his vote towards fresh faces or people he hasn't voted for in a while is unhindered.
Those are some great ideas.
agreed. it would become a toxic place to post, because eveyrone would be scared of everyone else within days
So that's how it's done! Silly us for just posting content.
@schattenjaeger you sir has ball of steel to call out @crypto-p
This Banner is Clickable :)
Is that a.. thing people do?
That is how Finish Ski Jumpers start their workout - no?
Shaolin monks do some pain training similar to this. Learned about it in Kung-Fu.
I'd like to see him go through the birthing process, it's like getting hit in the balls for hours and hours...lol,😝
I see this being used in what I believe to be an even worse manner. By creating additional accounts upvoting their own content like simple memes.
I have taken to not upvoting anyone's posts or comments when they have upvoted themselves, no matter what the content.
I am still new to Steemit, but from what I understand, it works because everyone gives back and pools the steem, yes?
Maybe it would help to at least shine the light on people guilty of this so that each individual member of the community can make up their own mind as to downvote or not?
The way this post does.
I'm sure there are others besides this douchebag guilty of the same shady shit and still more who are aware of it but don't/won't point it out.
What about some kind of a "Silent Observer" blog where accounts can be investigated and either publicly cleared or held accountable, you need to make sure you don't just set up a SWATline that makes it easy to destroy people you have a grudge against.
I see this as abuse. This is one kind of threat to this whole platform if it is not dealt with. One good thing about the community is the chance to flag this kind of posts.
This is no good if bad things aren't dealt with.
Why can't I write proper English when I'm being serious?
Should I just start flagging him?
Up to you.
Thanks, I looked more into flagging and as far as I know, he could see I've flagged him and he could flag me back. He seems to have enough power to hurt me more than I could hurt him.
I'll be the coward and shout from the back row.
Steem finally reflects the real world :sad face:
Of course we have to fix this.
So, I am not at all for spam comments ever. I hate that. Just don't comment - however, I feel that not allowing people to vote for themselves is really not something that should be regulated. He should just comment on his own posts with his spam and vote there then. But I can't say that there's something wrong with voting for oneself. I don't do it much, except for my own posts, but have only upvoted one of my own comments - cause I thought I was hilarious. Haha.
he's found a way to 'game' the system instead of adding value which is hard work. and he's sucking up the 'reward' pool without adding anything. if he were an employee he'd be that guy that makes sure everybody else did his work while he takes home the paycheck and never misses a chance to tell the others around him what suckers thy are for working so hard ;)