The past 2 weeks have been brutal for minnows. Our post payout are decreasing by the hour and by the end of 7 days it's probably gone down at least 15%.
Due to this factor, many have chosen to leave and not waste anymore time on STEEM. Out of 15 friends I've gotten on to STEEM, only 4 remain and only 2 of the 4 are active everyday posting contents and engaging with other people.
So I think it is a huge problem from the way the way things are now and I don't think STEEM will achieve it's potential we all hope for. Even when SMT starts, I don't think it'll make much of a difference. More stuff on a broken system doesn't fix anything.
Flagging content is all we can do and as minnows, nobody actually wants to flag because of the fear that we'll get flag too. And whale flags are obviously way more powerful than minnows. I personally think flagging can solve this problem as only "content with effort" (like this post) will be valued. However seems like minnows doesn't see this as their problem. They see it as "the whales will sort it out" problem. I think everyone has to take ownership of this and be more responsible on this whole issue or else we're doomed.
Anyone not participating in this activity will just be losing out BIG TIME over the months and years. Like I've said in my previous post, someone with the same amount of Steem Power (SP) as me in the beginning of this year is now already ahead by 50,000 SP just selling their votes, while my votes mainly went to curation while taking my time to post. So I'm not holding back as much anymore, and I'm playing the vote-farming game on my alt-account @etherpunk to keep up until Steemit Inc and the top witnesses decide that some of us are right about our diagnosis and proposal to fix the misaligned economy. An economic system is flawed when it relies on the altruism and sacrifice of some users.
From since I've known you which is January, you have not done what most have done which is self-voting and that's like 10 months. You've waited long enough for something to happen and have been vocal about this issue. I'm with you in this even though I'm directly affected by vote farming.
I'm just praying this changes happens sooner rather than later. Bless ya man!
Yes, the flagging is not effective over the long-term mostly because of linear. When everyone can reach for the nearest switch for max profit on nothing to do with content, there'll be too many people doing it. If you're not joining, you're losing out over time. If you're flagging, you're losing out over time too.
Edit: Flagging should be contingent though. It has some social cost attached to it. That's why it's better to have an aligned economy and just a small amount of free downvotes.
Yeah that way of flagging would make much more sense. If flagging is costing me my upvotes, why not just upvote someone else or myself? If this method of flagging was implemented, I think it would solve a lot of problems with this issue of rewards and upvotes.