Nice to know you, Joey. It all seems so simple to me. Ad decentralised systems are all about leaving every person the rights - preventing centralised control. This argument about keeping spam etc out sounds a lot like the argument of stripping our rights to privacy and other freedoms, in the name of the fight against terror. These trolls have to be nipped in the bud and only collective awareness and resistance will end it all.
Remain vigilant. Keep our eyes on the ball, even when we organise, lest those tendencies find their way into our own efforts as well.
You are right about the content on here. Everyone should have a right to say what they want. However, everyone else has the right to agree or disagree with it. I tend to take a logical leaning, and here is the rub: if a flag is considered censorship, then a vote must be considered permission. The opposite of voting is not refraining from voting. It is flagging.
The fact is, the powerful and wealthy have always been in charge of media and communication. Steemit, regardless of its hands-off approach to content, is not going to be any different in this regard. Who gets to decide what trends and what doesn't on this platform? Stripped down, this would be the powerful and wealthy.
If the most influential people on steemit thought spam was cool, then we'd see a lot more of it. If they thought it wasn't, then it would get voted off the island. Here, it appears to be somewhere in the middle.
In the case of bot-votes, trending is a purchased conglomeration of votes meant to mimic the wealthy. And this is a middle ground that levels the playing field somewhat. However, the more powerful users can (and will) determine how these play out. They could just as easily downvote all bot votes. And they don't, largely because some of them are the ones profiting from them in the long run, partly because some of them believe these are a great boost for minnows.
Simply put, the ones who decide what trends and doesn't, whether it's in the news, on the radio, on social media, or on this blockchain--are the powerful and wealthy, with few outliers. But this is the most common human social construct.
In the case of downvoting a post from a bot-vote over 3.5 days, these are the rules someone with power made up, for reasons they believe are meant to shape the platform in a positive way. Take it or leave it. Or fight it. But those are the rules. You know the risks and so does everyone else. When you are wealthy and powerful, you can decide what the rules are. I'm not saying it's right or wrong. I'm just saying, that's how it is.
On another capitalist note, if we were to take an Atlas Shrugged approach and allow spam and crappy content take all the rewards and trend, then this platform would self-obliterate on its own and it would need no help from whales.
The only reason spammers have any ounce of life at all on here is because there is good content and good investment into this community to begin with. If all of the good guys left, the spammers and greedy self-perpetuating whales would be like leaches sucking scum off the bottom of a dried up lake.
I am just saying, actions like a @grumpycat downvoate, as unpopular as they may seem, do theoretically prolong the life and sustainability of the platform. From an investment standpoint, bot-votes longer than 3.5 days old are fiscally and statistically detrimental to the platform, due to the nature of the bids they tend to engender, the content they regularly promote, and the bad humor they create in new users.
The overwhelming number of users who swoop in on the 11th hour of day 6 to win the bid on poorly written and promotional posts are just as guilty of pilfering as another user is of downvoting their pilfer. Their bids 1) do nothing for the life and sustainability of the platform, 2) take advantage of unsuspecting new users who otherwise think their bot bid is worth something, 3) and their content and disingenuous behavior degrade the value of STEEM.
But other than that, they're fantastic. :0)
The only reason that plagiarism is cared about here is because steem inc wants people to, because they don't want to deal with cease and desist letters or other copyright issues. But the funny thing is that rehashed content and memes are what people on other social media enjoy seeing, so this only hurts the value of the platform for content consumers.
What a mess this platform has become. The CEO himself hasn't bothered posting on here in over a month. What does that suggest about the future of this place?
I see almost daily developmental updates about EOS and other up and coming blockchain projects. Smart Media Tokens? Oh yeah, we have a white paper to reference from September without further insight on the roll out status. As long as Steemit is considered the brand face of Steem, this blockchain will continue to lose market share to more dedicated dev teams.
Grumpy and others touting self-proclaimed rules of engagement embody the Animal Farm atmosphere that has run amok on this site. At first I thought Grumpy's initiative was admirable, considering the lack of guidance from Steemit Inc on the issue of voting abuse. Yet a more in depth look reveals that he himself engages in extensive self-voting, as @sircork has pointed out. It's hypocrisy, full stop. Anyone not calling it out for what it is also is a hypocrite.
And anyone supporting this nonsense contributes to the madness - it's easy to pick on the small fish, but if engagement drops further, all you're left with is a silo of sanctimonious enforcers of arbitrarily designated laws that controvert the very code that the platform was constructed upon.
Address the code and apply reform across the board equitably to everyone. Targeting users on a whim is not the way to go about encouraging a systemic quality culture. The apparent indifference of the top Witnesses to all of this, despite the oft discussed issues plaguing Steem, is inexcusable.
To be honest though, steemit inc, the amateur blog site makers aren't in charge of the block chain at all, and EOS is a block chain, which produces information updates about its development. They are not the same thing at all.
Steemit inc makes a shitty blog site. Steem the block chain is not their responsibility.
Yet Steemit Inc is spearheading the roll out of SMTs. And for that, they are responsible.
I am very interested in using their SMT panel to launch an SMT of my own. I am curious about the APPICS distribution of XAP tokens which are apparently SMTs and ned is on the developers page as an advisor
Not if the top 20 witnesses don't come to a quorum and vote for the hard fork it will require!
Freedom. I love freedom. If I wanna Self-Upvote, Good. But you seem to say freedom is limited. You seem to say we should not be allowed to do certain things. Then they should disable the Self-Upvoting Feature then. Tell @Ned to turn off Self-Upvoting capabilities. Either we can or we cannot. But who to say how many self-upvotes are too little or too many? Where is the line between acceptable and abuse? Where are the rules to say what is abuse and what is not abuse? If we do not like Cat and others, we can downvote Cat, make posts about Cat, form a group to do whatever we can to stop Cat or whatever. That is our freedom if we want. We all are better off as we talk about it and as we take action to do all we can to do what we want to do.
Charity Bot, you are right. And the whole thing about what is and is not copyrighted, patented, protected, reserved, covered under fair use, what is in the public domain, what is copy right, what is copy left, what is open source, and everything else, is and is not sometimes problematic in so many ways depending on the countries you are in and depending on many factors and I heard that Walt Disney stole some ideas or drawing, allegedly, from others that worked in him around the 1920's and Disney probably stole it and copyrighted it and that means the other man could not use his own stuff and there are thousands of these stories were copyrights were actually stolen in the first time to protect the robbers and not the actual creators as the original creators are not always able to protect and copyright their work and fair use for parodies and commentaries and other things is another issue as we have Weird Al and others and that is another thing to consider and the public domain thing is another thing to consider also. All of this is very complex and more complex than most people think as it goes both ways in so many ways in the risk and in the pros and the cons of all the laws just like how taxes have problems and welfare has problems too.
No way. Users facing arbitrary attacks from heavily armed terrorists (a grumpycat with a fat wallet is a "gun" here) will not use this platform.
In no way is basic bitch playground bullying for ANY reason acceptable, and will not in ANY way , "prolong the platform"
I don't know. If we could determine whether it was just basic bitch bullying, I'd say I agreed with you. But I don't know if it is.
Anyone could argue that a downvote to an innocent bystander might be intrinsically bullying, outstanding facts aside. However, the real question may not be about the downvoting in itself. It appears to be about what this specific type of downvoting is meant to accomplish, what it is actually accomplishing, and whether that is worth the casualties it may incur.
Those who think the purpose is a worthy one will justify the behavior. Those who think it is not will crucify the behavior. The kind of downvoting, albeit unfair to some, takes an approach that is not a respecter of persons, but an all-or-nothing word to the wise: "Don't use bots after 3.5 days, no matter who you are. They need to be shut down."
Frankly, I'd be more interested in seeing the short term and long term fiscal impact on both the "last-minute-bot-vote-pilfering-from-babies-and-kittens," and the "arbitrary attacks from heavily armed terrorist @grumpycat downvotes," as there are casualties on both sides.
Users facing arbitrary attacks will not likely use this platform. Neither will users who are randomly pilfered out of a purchased bot-vote. The question is, which users are we deterring more of over the long term: those who contribute to the success of the platform, or those who contribute to the failure of it?
As a business model, I'd be more likely to choose the one that retained users who contributed to the long term success of the platform.
As a side note, the system that attracts users with integrity and grit is generally a system that has integrity and grit. Maybe we just sit and see which one holds out...
All your points are true... and yet have nothing to do with what I am upset about.
And that is the fact that we all stand by and argue about this or that side of this issue in terms of the voting and bidbots...
When the real issue, is that a playground full of people has just has one big fat kid step into it from out of nowhere and start imposing his opinion as law in a place where in fact, his opinion is nothing more than his own and had nothing to do with any kind of enforceable anything. It's just an asshole bully with an opinion, and a bigger gun than the people he assaults with his terrorism.
You know, like the mafia does when they sell "protections" to shop owners to ensure they don't have "accidents" by failing to comply with the mafia boss.
"Capiche'?"
OK. So who is it up to then? A lot of people seem to think what he is doing is right. Is it up to those people? Whose opinion actually matters? If not his, then whose? Yours? If you had the big guns, and you could do whatever you wanted with them, what would you do in his place? Would you allow the bid-bot profiteers to run off the noobs and pilfer the kittens?
Look up the non agression principle, if it unfamiliar to you, but I suspect it isn't...
This is a decentralized platform, with no rulers. It has rules, but those are the code, nothing more, nothing less. In theory, no one here is breaking the rules of the code. Neither the asscat or the people using or making bots. So what gives asscat the right to assault other users with his opinion, especially when it's not even his real opinion as demonstrated by his own $1000.00 a day self-voting habits - not illegal but sure as hell hypocritical given his "reasons" for his assaults.
If I had the bigger guns, I'd shoot cans in my backyard with them. Because what other people do is none of my business until they do it on my property, then I have the right to return fire in self defense.
He is offensive, in all senses of the word, and far outside the ideals of our white paper and our code law here. He is a tyrannical, hypocritical and somewhat sociopathic bully. Even inconsistent in his targeting by his own guidelines.
End of the day, he's an aggressor, a terrorist and a stain on the face of this platform that is acting against even his OWN self interests. But that too is none of my business, once again, till he comes in MY yard - meaning my discord communities which are NOT decentralized, they are my private domain, and my posts and my friends posts who ask me to defend them or need help doing so themselves.
Aggressors will not be tolerated. A flagging is not aggression. Wanton destruction is though, and this thing has done plenty of that.
As for the last sentence of your thing? People don't have a gun to their heads to use bid bots. That's a consensual arrangement between buyer and seller in a free market, even if the bot owners profit and the buyer loses money, as most do. This is none of your business or mine.
But the reward pool rape!!! OMG!!! Ok, so either play to win and bot up since thats the thing people do here, or don't play. Your choice, as consumer of the goods.
But when an aggressor comes and tries to impose law of his whim by force? That's terrorism, violates the NAP and is worthy of my contempt and active attempts to defensively end it.
Supporting GC is supporting terrorism,plain and simple. And I am fully aware we are dialoging and you have not expressed support for either side in your question, so don't read this any other way than as an explanatory response, not a personally accusatory one of any kind.
Hey @sircork, I have not been able to steem today. But I actually really liked your response. So I wanna respond to it. Hopefully tomorrow (which is in 12 minutes for me...but I'm going to bed now. Super long day.) I'm interested in this conversation. If others are getting annoyed, we can get a room, but it seems to pertain, so.....
Exactly correct @SirCork.
Is Grumpy Cat imposing law? No. Even if the cat says they are laws, they are not. The cat may be wrong to downvote if the cat is downvoting, but that is what freedom is all about. Cat is imposing opinions and is doing whatever. If we don't like it. We got to downvote Cat or ignore Cat or something. That is our job. We can talk about it and we can take action if we want as that is our freedom to react to Cat and others too. Good luck with that.
OK. So I like this response. It sounds authentic and driven by experience and personal reason. That being said, I think part of the problem is the code itself. Curation coding has morphed over the stretch of the beta so many times, it's frustrating to see that during a time where more tweaking is needed, none is made. Only a little tweaking could engender a more mindful and authentic voting structure.
What we're left with, as a result, are Big Brothers and large farm animals like the cat, who mean well to begin with, but who, not surprisingly, fall into some categories of hypocrisy, as well as indiscriminately alter the experience other users have, for the worse.
That being said, I'm still not altogether convinced his actions are wrong. I am saying I'd need to see the numbers. If his downvoting is in fact generating an appropriate deterrent for abusers, thereby creating a more even playing field for good users, I'd like to see it. That questions needs to be answered.
Also, you have not answered my question as to what you would do with your steem power if you were in his place....what is your proposal for dealing with abuse on here...or do you not consider it such???
Agreed, so much has been decided, influenced, managed, controlled, governed, historically, culturally, globally, by the wealthy, basically, generally, and Steemit basically has that, absolutely, or to some extent, and I like that, and we also have some ability to influence each other and to compete to become wealthy as well, eventually in the long-run, as we go up ladders to compete with whales on Steemit and everything. I promote freedoms for better and for worse. If we do not like @GrumpyCat, we may try to Downvote Cat, talk about it more, take actions maybe. Those are our freedoms perhaps. And it is also Cat's freedom to do stuff be it good or bad as the wealthy makes up the rules so to speak like you said. For me, I try to ignore it. I don't downvote people. But I don't want to stop others from making their own choices. I try to focus my time on things I like as much as I can instead of crying about things I do not like. Thanks for writing. :)
Agreed, that is freedom, for better or for worse, for the good people and for the bad people as opposed to subjective rules applied only sometimes to some people at certain times and so on and so forth as that is not what this decentralized system is really all about basically, potentially, ultimately, like you are saying, and it is our job to talk about all of this more and more and to raise awareness of stuff, all kinds of things, good things and bad things, and people too, and we can talk about Cat for example, and we can come together and downvote Cat or whatever as those are our choices perhaps. I am not going after Cat. I do not care what the cat does. The cat has freedoms. I respect those freedoms even if Cat is doing bad or whatever the case may be. I am focused on spending time around people and things I like. I upvote. I do not downvote, haha. Like smoking. I do not smoke. Maybe a store will sell cigarettes. Yes. To make money. And Grumpy Cat has the freedom to buy cigarettes even if that is bad. I will not buy any. But I will let Cat exercise freedom, freewill. Amen.