"The main reason why this was not an issue before was simply that Whales aren't desperate to earn a few bux while doing something that is socially unacceptable. They weren't accountable to anyone else anyway, but some of them did care about their reputation."
This is a strange statement because, If I remember correctly, they were already making lots of money because of the way rewards were distributed.
So, can someone tell me why people will invest in Steem Power?
Final note:
It should be up to SteemIt to change the system rather than employing a 'BullyBot'. What if you BullyBotters then decide to change something else. I mean, you do realize that many users have invested in Steem Power and may rely on the income it generates. They can't just pull their money out, because powering down takes such a long time.
Imaginary headlines,
"I put my money in and then they changed the rules. I couldn't get my money out."
"I followed the rules, but they hounded me out"
"They have a bot that bullies people"
"They can all vote for their circle of friends, but if you vote for yourself within the rules, they go crazy and set a bot on you"
People invest in Steem Power because they believe that Steem provides a desirable social function as well as an equitable distribution system for newly issued cryptocurrency.
You are committing a logical fallacy in your question asking why people invest in steem power, as though the only mechanism for distribution is self voting. If you are that much of a bore nobody votes on you, why should the network bear the cost of your spammy self votes and give you money for giving nothing to nobody? The logical fallacy is called False Dichotomy. This is almost the favourite tool of political rhetoric. It is also an attempt to intimidate the querant and assumes they are stupid and don't realise the list of options has omissions.
The thing about not being able to get money out is a non sequitur because we are not targeting accounts with under 1000SP, both because they are mostly new, struggling accounts, and the proportional impact on rewards will be greater (though still miniscule). The votes it gives are absolute minimum and only will rise as an account continues the comment self upvoting. And lastly, it won't flag original posts because this is a default in the user interface and would be unnecessarily confusing. Self voting takes a specific conscious effort to do, and we are aiming to break that habit, and show people how it feels to not lick their balls.
Everyone votes for their friends, usually because they like what they friends do. Usually this is why people become friends.
EDIT: Not only that, but a secondary, positive feature, is that if you have previously self voted comments, and then stop, in a random time period from 2-8 hours, your non-self-voted comments will be upvoted at 1%. This may seem a trifling amount, but the economics of managing the bot's voting power mean that once we get through to a person, we want to at least show them gratitude by incrementing the vote count, even if it does not mean very much, and it saves the bot vote power because every subsequent upvote you make will increase the proportion up to the limit at which it neutralises your reward.
And the bot will not forget your past behaviour, or the level at which you decided to stop, because maybe you arbitrarily vote your comments up. This also accounts for those who don't upvote every comment they make, perhaps because they aren't entirely greedy. To reset it to zero would open up the possibility of gaming our bot, which we will not allow.
The upvotes she gives will continue indefinitely until the bot is decommissioned.
If you are wondering about whether a mass of people with your mistaken ideas about what we are trying to achieve here will attempt to spam up the chain with self votes, then you also, as a collective, will show that you care more about keeping your ability to divert rewards away from those who vote for others, than the community as a whole, which will then invalidate your argument.
And some day in the distant future, when we have full AI bots, people will be able to automate the investigation process to locate sockpuppet accounts. I have been working on simple rule systems for this, but they require intelligence to find sufficient links between the activities of an individual engaging in this activity. It is on my agenda for development of my distributed network architecture design, which I started to do intensively when I went on a holiday from Steem after I got tired of struggling with getting Steemit, Inc to make the HF 19 change. My planned media monetisation system requires this, after the network scales up, and I intend to work on this in parallel with my work as a Witness on Steem, because I, like many others, consider Steemit, Inc. to be an absentee landlord, and just as Dan Larimer has expressed when talking about how he moved on from BTS to Steem, and then to EOS, it was his intention that at some point the community would become the arbiters of who would be developing it, and develop a community governance system to make it more responsive, by opening it up wider, and monetising the code production itself, directly.
"Everyone votes for their friends, usually because they like what they friends do. Usually this is why people become friends."
It troubles me that you are not aware of the problem of voting circles - people who band together to vote each other up. There have been enough articles and comments about it here on SteemIt.
I am fully aware of the circle jerk, and in fact, HF19 was made because of people's bubbling rage against this injustice. Because of the architecture of an open, distributed system like Steem, with no moderators, and the difficulty of identifying sock puppets, there is no intention to address this issue because it is outside of the scope.
It is completely natural for people to cluster into affinity groups, and indeed, the necessary corollary of this, of the conflict between different groups, is precisely what is taking place between you and me now. Both dynamics have their place in the process of developing a community, and establishing the rules and customs in that community.
So, maybe now I can follow your track of thinking and say you were misleading in your answer about friends naturally voting up each other because you didn't mention it.
I didn't think it was necessary to repeat myself. In the original post above, I pretty much lay out everything, if you read it right through. In fact, there has not been an argument or point that I am aware that I didn't already address in the original post that you have raised.
That's a dare, on my part, for you to find a hole in my logic. I want you to do it because I don't want my logic to be faulty. The pushback against this idea means that I have also plenty of self doubt but as I continue to develop the complex of reasons why this is the right way to look at it. Some people have indeed already hurled ad hominem attacks against me, and anyone who wantonly does this does not deserve a civilised debate: they deserve to be ignored.
"People invest in Steem Power because they believe that Steem provides a desirable social function as well as an equitable distribution system for newly issued cryptocurrency."
This simply isn't true.
As I said in my other, reply on the other thread, why haven't those commentators, and, I am sure, some here, invested in Steem Power. A good number of those complaining about altruism and what is polite simply don't invest. It's very easy for them to talk about how people should vote. How altruistic are they being?
"You are committing a logical fallacy in your question asking why people invest in steem power, as though the only mechanism for distribution is self voting."
No. You are simply introducing something that I never said. Look at the paragraph above and answer it.
"If you are that much of a bore nobody votes on you, why should the network bear the cost of your spammy self votes and give you money for giving nothing to nobody? The logical fallacy is called False Dichotomy. This is almost the favourite tool of political rhetoric. It is also an attempt to intimidate the querant and assumes they are stupid and don't realise the list of options has omissions."
I never addressed anything of the sort. If this is the best you can do in forming your argument against what I actually said?
I made some valid points. I think it is a failure on your part that you did not address them.
You ask the question, why do people invest in steem power, and my answers don't fit your narrative. So you claim that therefore my point is invalid.
If you are really driving at the unspoken question, which is 'how do the people with low self esteem and talent earn money on steem' the answer is, they don't. There is a million other ways such a person can make a living honestly that do not require them to spam up a community blockchain with empty, vapid upvotes on their own, vapid, empty comments.
Also note, and I am not sure if it was Ned who coined the name, but the word Steem is shortened also from Esteem, which means 'to value something'. Excessive self esteem is called arrogance and conceit.
"If you are really driving at the unspoken question, which is 'how do the people with low self esteem and talent earn money on steem' the answer is, they don't. There is a million other ways such a person can make a living honestly that do not require them to spam up a community blockchain with empty, vapid upvotes on their own, vapid, empty comments."
No I wasn't driving at that question. Why would I?
"Also note, and I am not sure if it was Ned who coined the name, but the word Steem is shortened also from Esteem, which means 'to value something'. Excessive self esteem is called arrogance and conceit."
Are you name calling? Just because I dare to question?
You would not want to admit that is the case but why else would you cast self upvoting as so vital to the platform and the distribution if that was not implied?
Demonstrating that a person's blind spot towards an aspect of a debate resembles bad behaviour most certainly does not constitute an Ad Hominem fallacy.
I admire your desire to continue trying to find a way through my wall of reasons, don't stop, please. I am not trolling you in this statement, at all, this is why I have not made any such explicit declarations.
You know, I could be wrong on a very critical point. I don't see it yet, and this is not the first debate I have had about this with people, as you can imagine. I would like you to keep looking as long as you feel dissatisfied with my answers, and probe me as much as you like. Of course if you were to start using Ad Hominems I would simply stop replying.
This is a collaborative process of truth discovery, vitally important to the progress of our species.
"You would not want to admit that is the case but why else would you cast self upvoting as so vital to the platform and the distribution if that was not implied?"
I said that it should be in the rules of SteemIt rather than having a bot.
" You know, I could be wrong on a very critical point. I don't see it yet, and this is not the first debate I have had about this with people, as you can imagine."
You do realize that it is about a matter of opinion and not a matter of right and wrong.
As I said to you in the other thread, Good Night (or day)!
I agree, it should be in the rules of the steem blockchain consensus. But unless you are unaware of the history of the last 10 months, or how we came to have HF19, it required @abit and @smooth to stick their head on the chopping block, precisely running a bot to neutralise whale upvotes, during their experiment, which was intended to demonstrate how the distribution of rewards changes to the benefit of the majority of the users.
The laws of cause and effect no less apply rigidly and inexorably as they do to the motions of electrons and celestial bodies. Humans have the unique capacity amongst all living things on this planet to develop models of cause and effect, and these laws no less apply to society than anything else. Conversely, we also have to contend with the fact that we cannot appraise 100% of the available data, as some of it may not even be recognisable as having relevance, or may be simply indefineable, or the most negative, that we may be defending a belief because it suits us, while those around us are suffering because of our false beliefs.
Without such rules, there can only be disorder and conflict, the purpose of rules is eliminating conflict. In a court, the overarching objective of the arbitration is to settle the conflict and determine a consensus, in order that the cooperative and productive activities of the people in society may continue unimpeded, to the benefit of all.
By the way, I'm following you now for engaging with me this intensively. and it shouldn't be hard for me to remember to actually take a look at your profile to see what I can see, with the number of your posts in my reply feed.
" Excessive self esteem is called arrogance and conceit."
How do you decide what is excessive (and why are you the decider?)
I notice @l0k1 has not got to this comment yet - I am in full agreement with you there @lexiconical :)
I have decided it is best to not poke the bear (kitty) anymore, in this case. ;)
Hunter pokes anyway!! Hee-hee :D
Well, I never called out your use of voting power on your personal account. But, taking it to the level of creating flagging bots and looking for delegated SP (I assume from others) takes you out of your own voting power and into being some sort of community policeman.
I never suggested you were outside your rights with self-voting.
I wouldn't have a problem with you self-voting your own posted content from your own alt account, it's still your SP. Same with resteems, etc. You are just trying to relocate followers, no issue there.
My main points remains you are not stopping voting from alt accounts, so functionally, you do nothing to stop self-voting except catch the egregious and those who don't care. They will still do it, and if your bot every slows them down, they will just create another account.
This is like trying to make karma matter on Reddit - a pointless endeavor that will only "catch" the bottom 10% of least savvy "abusers".
Frankly, I think this is borderline totally wasted effort when things like BookingTeam.com spamming trending is happening every single day.