Selling votes seems pretty cut and dry damaging to the platform, but its literally the only way for the majority of users to make any sort of progress. The unfortunate truth is, it is entirely up to the whales to determine how this whole thing is going to work. They are the ones who have the influence to incentivize behavior in any meaningful way. To ask people not to buy upvotes is never going to work. Why? Because you're asking them to make a sacrifice for the greater good of something that they aren't invested in. I'm not saying it's right, but why would someone with .5 STEEM care at all about the value of STEEM? It is leagues more beneficial for them to abuse the system to gain some traction than self-sacrifice to do the right thing when everyone else is benefitting from doing the wrong thing. It's an issue of incentives. The people who set the incentives are incentivized to set the incentives in such a way that it bleeds the platform dry.
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I would need you to define what you mean by progress in this context. If you mean SP, then one could simply convert their SBD's into SP, or sell it on the market and then buy STEEM to power up with. If you mean reputation score, then I would ask you; if all that reputation score means is how many times someone has paid to have their own work upvoted, does it really seem important enough to be measuring your progress on Steemit against?
I can empathize with your position. I truly can. But there are other ways of measuring progress, and other ways of acquiring it. There is the option to the "play the game," as I like to call it. You can go and read the work of others in your "niche" and leave insightful comments. Make "friends" and then you can all support one another as your accounts grow together. You can head over to discord and make yourself known in the chatrooms and give people a reason to end up on your blog upvoting your posts. This will certainly help one progress on Steemit, supposing they are not so unlikeable that it backfires.
Another possibility is to sweat for it. I have noticed it is getting more difficult for newcomers, and the vote-selling is largely responsible for that. But, if you can put in a graft and get out several quality posts a day, and retain that motivation to push on even during times when you're not getting what you feel you deserve, it will pay off in the end. I have seen the prolific ones succeed on here, just as I have witnessed this elsewhere.
Those options are there are right now, but I can assure you that if you all continue to buy votes, they will not be for much longer.
I agree. I would like to believe that if they understood that their purchasing of votes was reversing the distribution of STEEM on the network and recentralizing the power in the hands of a few(who are obviously smart enough to know that they're doing this to you all and therefore unworthy of such power) that they would simply desist with the vote-buying. Unfortunately, however, I am no longer naive enough to believe this. I think the only chance there is to reverse the damage this is doing is to convince the sellers to close up shop. There is far less of them than there is buyers to convince. But, for all my ideas, I've none on how to convince a greedy bastard to let go of a cash cow.
I had just considered while finishing up that sentence that the possibility of a whale account, which was comprised of delegations from many, many dolphins and minnows, which sold votes, and which reinvested its liquidity and curation rewards into further helping to distribute STEEM across the network, could potentially work.
But.. no. This here is exactly the problem. We can't even be thinking of this as acceptable. Since when are rewards--the word the Steemit developers chose to use, something that you can purchase? I still think Steemit has a chance, but we need to realise we are looking at the evolution of money in a microcosm. We have seen where the greed-based mindset takes an economy. I think we ought not to walk blindly down a path we already walked once, and hated. That's why we came here, wasn't it?
If these people think the only way to get anything out of Steemit is to BUY their fucking trophies and put them on display, How in the actual fuck did I manage to earn this much money? I didn't BUY this MONEY!!!!
They want participation awards to make themselves feel better. I laugh hard at that and I don't believe in that mentality.
They buy their trophies. Morons. They put their trophies on display! BEST BOWLER EVER!! but you know what... some day someone might want to see them bowl!
Do people not know what WORKING is anymore!!
Anyway... rant over. How's it going? Happy new year.
Perhaps it is that the word "rewards" was used instead of income. I believe this word was chosen intentionally, for gamification purposes, but it seems to have backfired and left everyone expecting something for free.
I'm doing well thank you. Spending the day with family I haven't seen in some time, so couldn't really ask for much more.
I hope you're doing well too, and happy new year indeed.
I've been rewarded in the past, on the job, when they gave me a raise. I had to work for that reward too.
It's this generation of participation awards and entitlement. This is quite the social experiment. Look at what we've discovered.
I'm truly sick of the entitlement culture, its destroying everything, there are less and less people able to create something of worth and out of that small percentage less and less could actually bother as 60 % of the reward will be taken and given to lazy non productive sheep who 100 years ago wouldnt even live past their 25 birthday due to natural selection and lack of welfare.
I agree with prety much all of this chain of commenters.
Did you just join? I think if you have been well established in the early days you had a much better shot of being successful than most. I'm definitely not saying you don't deserve to be rewarded for joining early. You do. It's very hard these days to blog your way to success, especially in a sea of shitposts, and that's not even the point. The point is not just that it isn't easy to do, it's that you don't even have to do it.
People don't want participation awards, they want money, and they can make it right now. I'm not saying it's right, I'm just saying. People have an opportunity to make money by shitposting, we can all plea with them not to shitpost for the good of the platform, but they don't care about the platform succeeding, not until they have significant SP on the line. As long as people can easily make money by shitposting they will. Working hard is a great aspiration, and when you have to work hard to earn something, it's important to be able to work hard. When you don't have to work hard to get something, there are going to be people who don't work.
Hopefully I'm being overly pessimistic here, I dunno.
Hope you have a happy new year as well.
I joined, when I joined. Started with nothing, didn't know anyone, it was the same place, but without people selling votes. So imagine this for a second. That made it HARDER.
Why does it have to be easy? Since when is life easy? What's wrong with a challenge? I grabbed this thing by the balls! I climbed this mountain! I got to the top! I looked! There was another damn mountain!
Kept going.
Shit post this, shit post that. I don't post shit posts. I've had a few flops. I just kept on going. I don't care about shit posts. They don't bother me. They are not my competition. They are shit posts.
You're being way too pessimistic. If you scroll down to the bottom of my blog... you'll see how I struggled. For some reason you folks see us folks and want what we have. You want it NOW. You don't look to see what it took to actually have what you want.
Hard Work!
If you're here for money, but don't feel like working... you came to the wrong place.
I think we're probably just talking across from one another at this point. I'm not saying it has to be easy, I'm saying it is easy... It's easy to do it the wrong way. There is a huge amount of money to be made with bid bots. Way more than anyone just starting could make by writing quality content. You say you don't care about shit posts, but you should, because shit posts are making 10x what you're making on your legitimate content. They're robbing it from the reward pool and dragging the price of steem down with it.
It's not as simple as convincing people to grab the challenge by the horns for the sake of pride. It's literally convincing people to work hard for scrap instead of cheating to make money hand over fist. People don't much care about pride in that sense.
I don't look at you and want what you have NOW. I look at you and I see a lot of hard work to build a lot of value that people are now robbing from you.
I know what those shit posts are doing!
That's why I'm a little bit ticked off. Pardon me.
I'm not working hard for scrap.
Even if I earn less, I'm still doing better.
I don't want to sit and argue back and forth with long boring essays about nothing though. All apologies. I'm done here.
Understandable, sorry if I came across in an offensive way. I don't think we really disagree, and I do see and respect what you've built for yourself.
Have a good night.
But without people buying Steem, would steemhave any value? I think one of the cool idea that came out of steem is that you can actually get paid for your posts. Which you can spend on real world goods/services. Without someone buying steem, steem wouldn't have any physical world value.
I bought a little steam to power up but I won't to it again. Steem is currently to expensive and the return for your $ is to small.
I think that with the recent jump in Steem price new users will not make it past plankton any more.
Isn't that where the bots come in though? Return for your $ by powering up is small so people run to bots to get some views/votes for their $.
By progress I simply mean getting to "the top" having high SP. You are correct that you can just put your SBD into SP, but you still have to earn that SBD in the first place. I don't really expect to get very far here. I am a "blogger" on a platform that is 100% other bloggers. It does not have people who are passive viewers because there is nothing of value here to passive viewers. I don't mean to cast judgement on people's content here, but it isn't anything that you couldn't find on a blog or reddit. Hopefully that will change considering how much better this is for content creators.
I have been playing the game because I'm just curious to see how it goes. I have slowly built up to 100 followers, probably only a few of which are interested in my content. They all just want to trade upvotes. That's okay, but it's not a real content provider-content consumer relationship. Many of the whales get comments and upvotes because people are praying they can get "blessed" with an upvote, not because they genuinely want to consume the content. If a whale moved to a non-rewards platform, their viewership from Steemit would likely plummet.
I agree with you that vote buying will kill Steem, and I agree that the only option is to target the sellers. They are handing out free money on a street corner. To try to convince people to not take the money and go get a job instead is just foolish. It's not in line with human nature. People would rather get $50 out of Steem today with bid bots than work hard over the next few months and get $500. You cannot plea with them not to take the money by pointing out the damage they cause, because they have nothing invested in the platform. If they don't use bid bots, they'll allow some percentage of people to still have a healthy platform to make the $500, but as a result, most will likely not ever even get their $50.
It is for this reason that I don't plan to invest long term here. I put in money, I'm really not liking what I'm seeing right now, so I'm taking it out. I plan on sticking around and commenting. Being a viewer, since I think that's what Steemit needs most, but the way this whole thing is going gives people every reason to suck it dry, and no reasons to invest into it properly.
Hopefully I'm wrong.
The same conclusion I came today as well. I might not down power right away but I certainly won't put any more money in. And I also will stop shilling on other platforms. I only shill what I truly believe in.
I like that response of yours. There really is no need to buy a vote. If a person is willing to buy a vote, then they are willing to sell their vote. That is not and never has been an acceptable behavior, at least not an acceptable behavior to me I should clarify. To each their own I guess.
I fear that Steemit reaches the point where new user have no chance to make it past plankton any more.
For example you suggest: “Buy STEEM to power up with.” Not an option any more. One year ago you could buy yourself up to be a Minnow for ≈$350. But with Steem and Steam-Power currently at $5,88 that would need ≈$12'000 to become Minnow.
That's simply not true. We can make progress without bid bots but it just takes more effort to create something of value. It doesn't necessarily mean your post will get the rewards it probably deserved compared to the volumes of crap being self-voted and bid botted to trending but at least you will have one the thing these shitposters lack. Integrity and sense of a job well done.
Sure, those things aren't going to pay the bills but, if we really want this platform to change for the better, we have to start with ourselves. I've taken a difficult stance towards bid bots and self voting. Something just feels kind of messed about the whole system. I think if we want the world to look at Steem as a legit platform, we need to get away from this vote selling because tbh those things scream Ponzi scheme.
We should all have an equal voice with fair opportunity for rewards. What we have done by allowing bid bots is allow the sweat equity principle to go to the wayside. We've basically said forget about working hard to create quality content. If you don't have $$$ to use a bid bot or self vote (injecting perception of value into your content using stake), your voice isn't as important than those that do. I cannot support such a thing.
I have to disagree with your first paragraph: The self-voters and vote-buyers take so much out of the system that there not enough left for honest users.
I see one posting, with a promised $0.0x reward, not paying out after the other. On payout day it drops from $0.0x to $0.00. I don't care about the penny. It's the lack of appreciation what hurts.
And it's the other way around as well: if I upvote then other person won't even get a single penny either. I even bought some steem to power up so my votes count. But with Steem at $5 I can't really buy enough steem to make a difference. The only thing that happened: I lost my new user delegation.
The combination of bit bots, self vote and hight steem price endanger the platform.
@krischik
I agree. That's why I opt out but keep posting.
You are absolutely right. This is why selling votes should be punished. A temporary ban might be a way. But I don't know if the blockchain has actually provisions for bans at all.