Hey Jerry,
with this post you lost me as a follower. I might be small and I don't matter in the steemit ecosystem, but it shall be a food for taught. This post is to underline that you should be first, at least this is what I understand from it. You try to present the two in front as scammer upvoters. They might be, but let's put it this way, you also upvote your own comments. Most of the minnows would be instantly flagged for it. As you got already a lot of traction people will just upvote everythig to get the curation reward.
Regarding the first two. Yes it is wrong what they are doing, but why don't you just flag them and then presenting this in here. I think 99% in here think they are wrong, but nobody has the balls to just send one flag. Well I might get flagged for this comment.
Regarding the witness vote. I don't know why I shall vote for you. You speak mostly about how much a witness makes, not about what a witness shall do. Most put a tremendous work on the platform and don't post anything as their are busy to keep the system running. Just check github to see how many people are involved, but are not having your visibility.
Also trying to bribe the whales to be a witness is so wrong:
You should be a witness for the things you do in the background not for the post you do. @nanzo-scoop told you already this:
Like said, even if I get flagged for this, it had to be said. If I would have been one of the top whales I would probably get some pretty good dollars for the comment.
Me too
hahaha yo tambien!!!
Thank for all my followers and fans. You too!
Priceless haha well done
Get More Upvotes and Followers : https://steemfollower.com/?r=1966
Touche, good sir. But I think this one is played out now.
(Do not reply to this comment with me too. Argh. Now it's guaranteed to happen.)
Me neither @lexiconical
Thank you for posting your thoughts, despite the risk we all take when doing so in any controversial topic.
I think it's a little unfair to call those "bribes", but I get your point. I think it wound have been appropriate for nanzo to keep the 20 and shrug. One could also interpret this as Jerry's way of paying for the time of a whale, which is valuable and could be otherwise spent not reading transfer messages in the wallet. At least he bothered to check how often they each voted for him, thereby having a reasonable reason to assume they might support him.
"Most put a tremendous work on the platform and don't post anything as their are busy to keep the system running. Just check github to see how many people are involved, but are not having your visibility."
I totally agree with you. However, if one is capable of outsourcing part of the technical work, could it not be potentially valuable to have a more public witness (whether that be Jerry or not?).
"Like said, even if I get flagged for this, it had to be said. If I would have been one of the top whales I would probably get some pretty good dollars for the comment."
I have been very pleased to see that the community has done very little comment flagging here today. I'm also happy to see you with those "pretty good dollars" you mentioned!
I'm coming from a former socialist/communist country, where freedom of speech was forbidden. I will do fight, even with risks for this fair right that so many take for granted.
He already posted that he wants to be a witness and the posts have been already voted by the whales, and if they real have read the posts and wanted to make him a wintess they woul have done it, without the incentive, so for me it is still bribing. Why did he not send to lower guys that voted him as a witness? It is economics, I would buy myself also in when if it is needed and the system allows it. This is to get back to the point. I do not condemn that he is doing it, just the way he tries to come out clean and point the finger on others.
The point of the witness is not to outsource the work. Let others do it, that have the passion for it, not for the money. I wonder if 50% of the witness would still do it if only the elcetricity and machine use would be paid, but this is another topic.
I'm happy also, because we can have an open debate with normal arguments.
Also I have to thank you for the normal reply, with marked points. I like having constructive discussions, where we can find solutions.
For the record...
A bribe absolutely requires quid pro quo by definition.
There was no quid pro quo here. This is a sales tactic used in marketing, soften the target with a gift. It's distinctly different than an offer that requires quo to get your quid.
This may be a semantic argument, but I think we should call it what it is, a sales tactic not a bribe. You can't have a bribe when you are allowed to keep the quid and not even respond to the quo request at all.
It's not really spam either, because if spam came with a $15 reward for doing nothing, we'd all be like "gimme more of dat spam".
It's a marketing tactic, and he's an internet marketer. I suspect that alone is enough to turn you off, as I've noticed a lot of other people with a similar opinion (honestly, including myself).
We can debate around this for hours. I was born in a country where corruption is endemic and a lot of the "gifts" are kept without doing the requested thing, as nobody will try to announce that he tried to bribe someone. For me, this marketing tactic is acting as a bribe. The "gift" is to influence one on the decission of doing something, which could have been done freely till then.
According to Merriam Webster Dictionary a bribe is:
Also I thank you for the constructive comments.
I was being a bit of a pedant. I still don't think this is a bribe because what is given is given freely before any chance of whether there will be a reward is known.
However, if you had used the word "corruption", I wouldn't have made this objection. Not that I'm saying it is or isn't, but I wouldn't have pointed this out.
If you called it "vote-buying" or maybe "pandering" (an option with a negative connotation), I would have been 100% unable to do anything but agree.
See what I mean about me having a penchant for playing Devil's Advocate?
Ok, let's put it as vote-buying from whales. Pandering would be to redlightish for the level of the discussion we are having here.
Gladly to find common sense.
As I said you can initiate a bribe and the guy can keep it without delivering it, but this is another part of the story.
There ought to be a term for a failed bribe that gets kept with no reward.
"The idiot tax" is already taken by the lottery here in the US...
Great discussion @lexiconical and dont you find it interesting how Reddit never really had any issues with self upvoting but the secondmoney is involved, and its steemit where you get PAID for the upvotes , then it becomes a whole dramaabout fairness but people never cared when it was for wothless karma but when it bcomes real money its all of the sudden a big deal becauyse people are all secret;ly just jelous! they want to convincethemselves its not fair, so they can justify their not making much money here , or so it seems XD haha lol its funny tome, like, i never ever heard of people on reddit arguing about some of this stuff, but as son as steemit comes alonga nd actually pays people in steem and that steem is actualy worth real Bitcoin then people freak out! But what is funny is that the STEEM that is CREATED is created BECAUSE of the whales and their steempower and thats how a proof of stake copinw orks rwhere you get to make more coins over time if you hold coins and hah these outsiders trying to argue that its not fair to pay certain peopel certain way on a platform that they had nothing to do with building or spporting, its just funny, its so ... i dunno its like someone coming to your company and getting hired and then trying to tell the boss how to pay his employees or something.... because the writers here no matter what content they produce, are all producing content and that si what gets clicjked and is why peopel come here and use the site and the whole idea of the site is to be a social media experience so when you have people dedicating tgheir time to posting content here and you see them getting paid, thats the platform actually working and when peopel dont even question the idea of wether steem token has value or not, when peple just would rather fight OVER the tokens themselves, then that is a GOOD thing :) I would ratherpeopel fight over the tokens (becauyse they ARE valuable) then fighting over wether or not the tokens have any value at all!
In that way, steem has already won the hardest battle and I feel like that accomplishment should not be overlooked
anyway great respoonse lexiconical! I loved your response justr wanted to add to the story here!
See you in #trending !
Huh? He's not exposing them as scammers...he is simply analyzing them and sharing what he discovered. You should should be grateful for Jerry's content!
I think he presents the flaws of the system, but only on the ones on top of him. It would made more sense to see the top10 including him what tricks they are using.
It is the same like comment upvoting, a flaw in the system. This is how I see it. I don't find them right, but this is only my opinion.
Why should I be grateful? Okay, he does a great job as a content producer but I said something else, I said about the witness stuff, which is a little different than the content.
this is better than floyd mayweather vs conor mcgregor
Pick a random fight, and most chances are it will be better than floyd mayweather vs conor mcgregor
Let's get Alex to pose.
That made me laugh :)
This is not the point of the discussion.
But to give you an answer: As if we would fight on social media, I can quit from the start to keep losses low. If it is a fight like the one from last night, most probably I would be the winner, having some basics in contact sports and being in the heavyweight category, aiming to reach cruiserweight category end of fall.
They should change Heavyweight to the Battleshipweight category, and whatever comes under Cruiserweight to Destroyerweight.
This would satisfy my hierarchy-of-naval-vessels-tonnage desires.
Lol.
Because of your well tought comments, you gained a new follower ;)
You too, Alex!
now you two can go upvote each other , i was gonna make some sort of joke about "upvoting each other" like googling each other or i dunno i couldntthink of anything
[ This is not the point of the discussion. ]
Oh yes, it bloody well is, and you know it. You are pretentious, arrogant, and quite frankly, a flaming idiot. He called you out perfectly with that meme. You're attacking Jerry for no good reason to somehow show off as the moral superior.
Address the flaws in the Steemit system he has exposed, or STFU you miserable cretin.
I think you did not read the whole post or if you did, not comprehend it.
I try to summerasize it for you: One shall not blame others on gaming the system if he does it in another way. Blaming others when you do almost the same stuff is the thing I addressed.
I did not say that I'm moral, just read the thread.
On another note, as one that claims to be a rational conversationalist, you got flammed very fast, cursing without any reason. I did not bring any insult and with the other commenters, we had a decent inteligent exchange. Let's keep it to a certain level.
There are flaws in the system and not few, some of them can be corrected, some not. I would have the problems addressed not the users, like for example @tamim did not post for 9 days when the post was made, so to bring him in this in was pointless. Just name calling.
Incorrect, you attacked him as part of the moral authority. Rather than deal with the issue that he has presented, you immediately criticize him for not living up to your moral expectations. I can't stand people like you.
No, I did not, but it might be that you know better. I added some more to the issue he presented. As you can see some other that have more power took already action. I issued an opinion and I'm happy I could do it, even if there have been the one or the other who couldn't cope with it and start swearing(maybe this is the most they could have done, I can't judge them)
It is ok, I can live with it. There are billions of people on this planet, I hope you find some that you can stand, else it might get lonely.
Lol.. I think it is pointless. Hoped for a constructive discussion but all that came was a video from a bad singer with some self upvote:
Thanks for this, as I'm convinced of doing the right thing with the comment and pointing some of the flaws out.
You pointed out some serious questions that Jerry should answer. Replying with a Kesha song is ridiculous, and bad taste. Thanks for the comment, and I hope you get a response.
As for Jerry, I am sorry that people keep re-steeming your stuff into my feed, however you did point out some interesting things about those two top authors. I feel like they are both scamming the system based on what you reported about them.
I shall thank you for the comment. I think the response is clear. He will probably not answer it and he will let it go ;)
It will be good if this scamms can be blocked. Some understood it before the post and stopped. Look at @tamim. ;)
Jerry, I hope you are simply busy at the moment as I believe you would do well to respond to this in a less meme-worthy fashion. There are fair points on both sides and an easier compromise here than on other issues.
You two should start here: "You try to present the two in front as scammer upvoters."
me too ...
man kesha sucks so much! lol love how you found a way to monetize VEVo videos lol its like, u got 59 cents for keshas music video LOL i wonder if youtube is gonna get mad at us for that? Im sure they will! We should cherish these good times on stemit while we are big enough tio make some money but small enough to stay under the radar!
I agree with Alexvan here, when you see something wrong happening you should do something about it and not use it to defame someone else for your own good.
Actually I think he is doing something. He makes members aware of an intrinsic problem of the platform, which is a first important step of thinking about it and finding solutions. I don't think single users are to blame 'morally' to exploit a system if the system allows it. So it is not the point if @mindhunter or @tamim act 'morally' wrong or not.
But in my eyes it is obvious that extensive self-voting, comment voting and other (completely legal!) 'tricks' can be dangerous for Steemit in the long run. If only a few are doing that, the system will handle it, but if more and more users are getting aware, that self-voting (without writing long, elaborated articles or communicating with other members) is the most easy and effective way to make profit here, then more and more people will do exactly that (they have the right to do it actually). The consequences will be less communication between users, low quality articles, frustration of newbies, and of course a low Steem price. So even if extensive self-voting may lead to some short term profit in the long rung it should be counterproductive.
As I don't blame single users like @tamim or @mindhunter (as I said, people will always 'game' an exploitable system - and by the way I also upvote my articles and some comments), I think we should try to improve the system, so that it will be at least more difficult to exploit it.
Actually all recent changes made it more easy to upvote oneself:
Actually all these changes also have their advantages but combined they favor self-voting a lot. Therefore I think we should collect ideas to minimize the effect of extensive self-voting and similar methods. I also haven't found any really good solution so far, but at least some ideas:
(These ideas may be inappropriate - I hope you will find much better ones! :) )
Maybe @jerrybanfield's article was not completely altruistic, but in my opinion he pointed out a real problem about which we should ponder to find suitable solutions.
I note there are other problems that stem from the same cause, which is weighting VP with SP. Perhaps the worst problems faced by Steemit is that this weighting scheme makes a Sybil attack on Steemit able to control the code trivial (all you need is enough money to buy enough witness votes), and PROFITABLE to those from whom the Steem would need to be purchased (all of the largest holdings of Steem were mined, before Steemit even existed), and the fact that weighting VP with SP makes Steem a security in the eyes of the SEC.
While the SEC has yet to set (publicly) it's sights on Steem, I am pretty sure it will, sooner or later.
I have posted on the only solution I can see to all the problems this weighting scheme causes, including exactly this rewards pool mining scheme @jerrybanfield points out in this post, and that is changing how VP is weighted. That is the only way to change how the SEC will consider whether Steem is a security, for example.
I have done my best to advocate for solving these problems. It seems to me that those who are either minnows and eager to be able to take advantage of these same design 'features' (vectors for attack) don't want it to change, and those unable to understand it is a problem, and those presently being advantaged financially by it (particularly those that mined their stakes, who are millionaires on paper), are manufacturing opposition to fixing the problem, for the reasons listed above.
Because of this I do not expect Steemit to fix the problem(s), and therefore the price of Steem is likely to continue to languish, rather than rise to reflect the potential of the platform to overtake Fakebook, and the capital gains that would inure to those who have invested in Steem to fail to materialize.
Fortunately, Steem is open source, and I know that at least one fork of Steemit is being written as we speak that intends to a) do away with the mined stakes, and b) weight VP with reputation in order to solve these problems. I am sure Calibrae will not be the last fork either, so if it doesn't succeed in solving these problems, another will arise, and another, until the lessons learned from each failure finally produce a platform that will kill Fakebook.
I personally am not focused on financial rewards from Steemit, although I am on Steemit because it offers them, and offering them has created a community the discourages trolling, and encourages polite discourse - a fantastic boon to social media platforms.
At first I thought Steemit was a fair and brilliant platform capable of growing to the point of leaving Fakebook in the dustbin of history, but after I read the white paper, and had conversations with witnesses, devs, and profiteers, I realized it cannot do so without changing how VP is weighted.
I could be wrong about whether Steemit will make the necessary changes to weighting VP, but I highly doubt it.
We shall see what the future brings.
The more I learn about how Steemit works right now, the more it becomes clear that the system is much too easily manipulated by people who can invest from the outside with fiat to get voting power. There must be a formula to figure out how much $ to invest X number of accounts to reach a sweet spot in voting power that can then be used make sufficient profit to justify the time spent - if you just vote for yourself.
That is very much not in keeping with what I understand the spirit of Steemit to be. I am very curious what the fork you mentioned will bring. I agree that reputation should be more heavily weighted in determining voting power, not financial value. Financial power = voting power is what made the world we live in what it is, and it is being replicated on a much much smaller scale here.
Clearly, you get it.
I agree that there is a break point where it is simply too profitable to self vote to bother with curation anymore - although some whales still do so. That they do is strong evidence of their personal dedication to Steemit, and one of the things that gives me hope, and causes me to continue to rail at those will listen, and try to advocate for changes that i think are necessary to prevent Steemit from suffering fatal injury.
I have posted on such topics before.
There is no fate, but what we make...
Sarah Connor
We seem to fighting a loosing battle against lobbies everywhere, in every single aspect of our lives...
And now we also have to fight BOTs on the dark side.
Sometimes I wish for the rise of google, so the battle becomes fairer...
Battle is never fair, nor victory just. Nonetheless, we shall either be free men, or the war shall have been lost.
Not all company is good, and only good company will meet the victory of liberty haply. We must consider carefully our allies, that we not be led astray.
Google has certainly arisen to an extent that every matter we must treat involves it, and whether it is allied against us, or with us, time and truth will tell.
I was just pointing out that he was trying to talk himself as the actual top earner, because the others are faulty and have issues, like comment voting, but he does the same, votes his own comments. If some low minnow will do upvote his own comment for a longer time he would be blasted by some other whale.
He bought his witness rank from the top whales, just check the blocks with the SBD sent to top whales. Now he can start implementig solutions on github, but no, we needed all to know what a top witness earns and how @tamim or @mindhunter cheat the system. By the way, @tamim did not post anything in the past 9 days, only resteemed.
Like said, the approach was what got me to post the comment. Don't try to appear clean and shift the blame on others, admit your faults and flaws, come with a solution and let's discuss it. Just throwing a blame in a room will not bring us forward.
Steemit has flaws, of course, some can be solved, some maybe not, the real witness are working hard on it, and deserve to be paid for their effort.
I see that your comment was writen in a constructive manner, which I appreciate, and most of the things I have to agree upon. I hope you take my comments also in a constructive way.
No, I will flag it with 100 %! ;-)
Thank you Sir :))
you guys are right.. it is bad for steemit and I didnt feel very good about it as a minnow.. while I do my best to create valuable content someone who has enough SP earns just with one image or meaningless comment.. it wont be that bad if the posts were good.. steemit shouldnt allow this and it is bad when someone sees steemit just as a way to get money...
Because their are advantages to current 'problems', perhaps the right solution is do what the steem white paper suggests, in its crab parable. Let the big boys take down the big boys who rise too quickly or 'cheat'.
In other words, first warn the abuser and ask his motivation, then publish this abuse and last of all 'take them down' kindly. Once they are 'tackled' as in football, do not keep kicking them. Chances are they have something to offer, even if it is just demonstrating system weaknesses.
HF19 has been well, perhaps this is strong, a disaster.
Sooner or later the most elaborated post will always get the best rewards. Self voting won't hurt the community
I disagree. Just check accounts like the one of @tamim or also @sandrino. They make huge rewards by upvoting their own posts again and again. For example @sandrino just overtook me in the SteemWhales list by doing nothing but upvoting his own posts.
As long as not too many users follow these examples, it won't hurt the platform too much, but if more and more members recognize how lucrative it is under the current conditions, it actually could be the end of Steemit.
If the gaming is allowed, unfettered, sooner or later, that will be inevitable result - everybody just gaming for up votes, which will kill it, like you say.
I don't see the ethical stance changing, which is whats is needed, before implementing any changes.
And certainly not from the current big players?- why would they? - its the game they want.
What is the process for actual change on steem? How are ideas implemented into the actual code and who does it? Have changes been made before?
The last thing a charlatan would want you to do is call them out while they are performing. This is precisely what Jerry has done. It doesn't matter if he serves to benefit or not, what matters is that there are people exploiting Steemit, and the public deserves to know about it.
Defaming people who have done immoral acts is the moral thing to do. If you don't, then they are free to continue. The only reason I can see for wanting to protect the immoral in this way is if you are one of them. Defending your own by any chance Elias?
silentwrath i guess you can look at my profile and find that i'm not, and i think Jerry also said that they are smart to have a strategy and that he should've had a better one. so...
I think Jerry is just trying to raise awareness in the community about potential flaws in the system, rather than to accuse others. He's always trying to build and improve Steemit. Just my 2 cents.
Thanks for you opinion. I ranted about the way he did it, attacking the two top earners in front of him and their flaws. It would have been better to present the top 10 or 20 including him, with the system gaming they do. As you expose yourself and point out the flaws in the system, you are not vulnerable to comments from others. I did not say he does not serve steemit, it would have been unfair, because he is producing content and brings loads of people in here.
You are 100% right!!!
Uh oh a $60 comment! is @mindhunter behind this? lolol
Sarcasm :D
I will donate the SBD from this post to a social cause.
its all good , i was just joking, and hey you should donate an upvote to my Steemit Africa friends @tj4real and @bania and @mcsaam
@tj4real is getting oots of afrian userson steemit hesin Ghana, Africa, and he has some amazng projects were working on im helping him organize a big steemit advertising campaign for africa, and he just needs lots of supporters and followers to help him upvote his fundraising pots, he has results, hes trustworthy and hard working and also @stellabelle and I wanna send more USB solar chargers to arica so they can all stay online longer (smartphones run out of battery fast especially whenonlien!) africa has a lot of existing wireless infrastructure that is usable they just need more smartphones and smal solr carger backups OR more pocket battery bricks to kep their phones charged
anyway we need to promote more mesh network decentralized interneyt and satelite recievers from outernet we need thsoe BRCK portable wifi backup generators, we need ays to get internet to evryone in africa, get cheap $40 android smartphons by the box and hand em out to people in exchange for signing up to stemit and peopel can geta LOAN to have a smartphone, solar USb charger and $50 prepaid internet for a month, , and they can signup on steemit nd show the program they used in their introduction post, and end up making $100 off their FIRST post to have enough to then pay back the steemit proga, whichg usesthat money to then buy ANOTHER $100 africa inteenrt kit wiyth usb solr charger, smnartphone,a nd one month of prepaid mobile data, 9e need a longterm soltion for free wifi to africa and developing countrues) but yeah we could use steemit to rowdfund so many new steemit users in dveeloping world, and now @tj4real is on his way to ecomning a steemit whale, i convincd him to save most of his searnings as stempower which he has, and now he will be able tp uopvte all the african users who deserve upvoptes, he will be there for his fellow arican stemit users in http://steemit.com/trending/africa and we should all go in there wen we can and sprinkle some upvotes to African steemitusers ! even if a small number of Africans are on steemit, when they start making money they become beacons of hope for the people around them in reallife! This is how steemit spreads best via word of mouth, when a minnow becomes a dolphin and they are able to show people steemit and the money theyve been able to make!
Thanks for the info! I do use @treeplanter a lot, to reforest a part of Africa. And I totaly agree with you on this. Africa needs a little push to selfsustain itself as a continent.
@alexvan, this is quite an insightful post and you raise a lot of important questions about motives. I completely agree with you that being a witness is about work, not self aggrandizement.
One thing that i think needs to be kept in mind is the 'techniques' used by the self voters. You asked Jerry, why he didn't flag them? Fair enough. But they also were voting at the very last minute to maximize their gains. So, although i agree with the sentiment, he kind of has to go out of his way in order to do that.
But all in all, great comments.
Lots to ponder here, cheers
Hey @v4vapid, thank you for the comment. It was one of the few that understood it. I was happy, that so many people responded to it, with their own comments, but most have been taking time to do it in a propper way, keeping the discussion to a certain level(some exeptions, but them we can ignore). This is showing me that steemit is on the good way, even if not all agree on the same topic. I'm happy to be able to have another opinion than others and still not to hold grudge and to agree on other topics. This is my image of the perfect society, to be free to have different opinions and still to respect the other.
My comment was just showing the principles of the witness on one side and not defending the top2, even if @tamim had stopped 9 days before the post (so it was pointless to point him out). I would have not made the comment if the top10 would have been presented, including himself with their good and bad voting patterns. This would fair to say, pointing the flaws in the system for all.
I'm more the sinner than the saint. I do use the bots to get more visibility on the post. My comments I do never upvote. But this is all my choice. It is how I see the impact on steemit and on the reward pool.