Self-voting needs to be addressed
With HF19 being live, a huge problem that still hasn't been resolved has been amplified now. People with small accounts like me will probably finally notice it.
DISCLAIMER: this article is exclusively about a technical flaw in the system, not about psychology or sociology or anything else.
The problem
As a curator there never was and still isn't any incentive to vote on other authors! You can always make way more money on average by voting on your own content (comments), just 11 times per day. It's only a matter of time before too many people realize this and the whole system starts to suffer and the price of STEEM keeps falling down until this flaw is fixed.
Potential solutions
- Prevent self-voting, which at least makes it slightly harder to self-vote (you'll need multiple accounts then)
- Reduce rewards every time you vote on the same person
Conclusion
I think we have a major problem! You can be certain that there will always be a percentage of users that will do this, because the system allows it. That's extra downwards pressure on STEEM that constantly needs to be compensated for by new investors. And that's on top of the STEEM inflation that already needs to be overcome. Let's hope the developers come up with something soon, otherwise this might get messy!
P.S.: I hope i'm not missing something, i didn't get a lot of sleep because of HF19 ;)
[EDIT 1]
I might have a reasonable solution: the rewards should increase based on a combination of the amount of other votes and STEEM POWER that has been assigned to the content. This way if you are the only voter, the post reward doesn't increase much until more curators agree that it's content worth voting on.
[EDIT2]
The solution mentioned above doesn't work. As of now I've never heard anyone come up with a solution to self-voting.
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We need to promote steemit as a society that helps each other to grow and develop. This platform for me is a new start on social media and the response that I have received so far is very positive. This is a very welcoming community which encourages people to share their stories and reward each other in a way we wouldn't in other social media sites. We need to let go of selfishness and support each other in order to make this work
Well said @shariezar
Yes this! I've been saying this all day.
Yes, but that's irrelevant. This is about a technical flaw that needs to be fixed.
I agree, this flaw needs to be fixed and I hope that the responsible parties address the issue. I am just saying that I am trying to focus on the good for now.
Many assumptions with having a lot of money can solve the problem, but that's not necessarily like ours,
Money will only support us in solving other problems depending on our knowledge and attitude.
Ti your post is very good to read dang very important
Aaaand that's 3 more bucks for me
Exactly, great platform huh! ;)
The self voting has always been a problem and will always be but the whales are not going to vote against it i bet lol... As for reducing the payout on your favorite authors ..don't like that but the removal of the ability for one to vote for themself I could get behind that ...
We can vote for witnesses who are against self voting! We can all vote on witnesses!
Witnesses are usually large SP holders, so good luck with that :)
I would be surprised if it's a majority.
:D On a serious note though, doesn't the curation rewards go up as well? A well placed vote should earn you much more than simply voting for yourself
It's unlikely (f not mathematically impossible) to come even close to the rewards. The more people vote on something, the smaller your piece will get. If you are left with 0.03% of $1000 or something, it's still way less than a simple self vote on your comment.
This was changed with hardfork 19 i believe. There is no longer a "finder reward"
This is totally not true. When I curate quality content, I make much more than just what my own votes are worth.
I selfvote pretty much every post of mine. Others who enjoy my content give me orders of magnitude more money than I could ever make just up voting myself.
There are many more incentives to upvote other content, especially when you have a lot of steem power.
That doesn't seem mathematically possible, can you back it up with some data?
My 100% vote is 4 bucks. If I get one of these in the beginning and a post gets to hundreds of dollars I make much more than 4 dollars. Very mathematically possible.
I need to see proof first :)
I've never seen curation rewards come even close to 10% of a self-vote, let alone 100%.
So if you can either refute or confirm, that would be great!
Agreed, this math seems off. Even if the post made $400, he'd need to get more than 1% of the rewards, which is split up between the author and a lot of other curators. I'd like to see some data on this too, but it may be too early in HF19 to get it.
Exactly and usually posts that make $400 have voters in the first few minutes and then you already get 10 times less because of the reversed-auction. On top of that if you vote as 3rd or later you already get so much less than voting as 1st or 2nd. On top of that even you lose 75% of your upvote to the author, unlike a self-vote where YOU are the author.
In even the most ideal situation where you vote at 30 minutes as 2nd curator, the content would have to earn at least $2,000 to earn more than $4 in curation rewards and that (almost?) never happens in reality, right? I don't think @kyle.anderson realizes all these influences.
That math checks out, roughly, with my own guesses. Further, as you noted, that basically never happens. High value posts are slammed with votes by the time they are up 10-15 minutes, making curation even more difficult.
I'm eager to see the reports of some top curators in a week.
I'm more eager to see self-voting stats actually. Then people might finally understand the problem. I might have to look into that :p
I don't have time to do the math for ya but there are plenty or recent posts where curators shared their highest payouts. Much higher than their self votes.
There is plenty of incentive to not simply self vote.
Self voting is not a problem unless someone is bumping their single word comments up to the hundreds.
Right now there is no problem.
You keep saying that but please show at least 1 then. I think you're really really mistaken. I've never ever seen it. I could really use the data. At least do it to get clarification for yourself :)
https://steemit.com/steemit/@neoxian/bragging-post-the-30usd-dollar-mouse-click
Ok thanks.
That is in the old system though, where STEEM POWER was exponential. And he has over 150K SP (which is worth over $300,000) so he received a way too large percentage of the curation reward.
I don't know if it's still possible to ever earn more with curation now that SP influence is linear. What i do know is that this case is the exception, happens in way less than 1% of the curations. So on average you earn WAY more by self-voting.
I'll do more research this week, it would be ideal if i would get a curation reward where i voted after 30min as one of the first 3 curators so i can confirm.
I agree, and while I'm sure some will try using all their voting power on themselves and no one else, I think they will also discover a much greater benefit by continuing to interact with the community, especially for people like me who sometimes vote and comment 50 times or more a day! Of course, only time will tell for sure...
@alexpmorris you vote and comment 50 times or more a day, please check out my post, I can do with your support....thanking you in advance....
Agreed. Vote on quality not quantity. There is also the aspect of curation rewards so yes it does pay to upvote. Leave a comment while your there and someone may see value in that and upvote and follow you. Self voting is automatic for everyone so I don't see too much problem there. You are simply curating your own article. We will see I suppose.
As a recently self-proclaimed self-upvoter, I self-upvote this comment and self-commend myself for this selfish behaviour.
Also, you might enjoy my article on the hard fork - we seem to be thinking in the same way. I fully agree. Oh, wait, yet another reason to upvote my comment!
Resteem, reply, upvote for me and for you! This could get very messy!
And yet you voted on yourself hahaha life is hilarious.
Of corse I did! That was the whole reason for this post wasn't it?
You forgot to upvote yourself!
Im saving my votes for minnow support and my own posts. It was more just an experiment.
Hmmm.... I was going to upvote this post, but i think I would rather upvote my own, thanks for the tip. (just kidding I upvoted you, I can't help myself, following too) @ironshield
Woah, I just upvoted and watched your post value DOUBLE from .30 to .60! @ironshield
Nice, I have a couple posts that could use a double!
I'm sure there will be more 'tweeks' in the future. I bet there are a lot of steemians with low voting power right now. @ironshield
haha, probably so. I have SteemVoter running for minnow support, I'm at %75 right now.
I'm in the red. ~sadface~ Gonna have to take a time out for a while to rebuild some self eSTEEM (I mean voting power) @ironshield
Shame on your for being a decent human being. Go sit in the fucking corner! :p
I never upvote my own comments...
True! Those 8 cents came from...ALIENS!
Here, there's plenty to go around. You could have at least upvoted my comment dude, it seemed funny when I wrote it... xD
Nah the STEEM devs want us to upvote ourselves. So let's do that instead! :p
P.S.: I only have 10 votes a day because i have no slider so i have to be extremely careful with it.
I don't understand it yet, how exactly do you get the slider? I vote on loads of stuff but it's only gradually reducing in power
Around 500 SP you get it on steemit.com. On other SteemIt clients like eSteem apparently everyone has it.
Upvoting. This is SUPER important.
The system does not think like a human. However, I understand your anxiety and how you never want to stop making money on steemit. And how you don't want to wake up one day and find out that you can no longer make easy money on steemit because it's overcrowded and they could no longer pay everyone. I don't think or believe there is a problem. You can't fix what's not broken. so If it's not broken don't try to fix it.
I agree 1000% with @stokjockey.
Stay positive @calamuso56