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RE: Examining Honey from a Different Perspective - Steemit Sock Puppetry Continues
Impressive research.
If this is a free market, there is nothing wrong with a person creating two or more accounts, not revealing his or her identity, or voting early on content made by someone else for whatever reason. There's also nothing wrong with pointing out things you see happening.
More than one account is not the problem. https://steemit.com/whales/@throw-away911/a-funny-interview-with-steemed
The problem is taken the rewards from the pool all for themselves and their meat puppets.
Steemit is only a scam if the whales make it a scam.
However, who can become a whale? Anyone with enough money to invest in steem / steem power can. That skews the premise Steemit was built on, to create a platform where individual contributors are incentivized to create + curate content valuable to others.
I understand @dan & @ned created Steemit in such a way to preserve and grow their personal investments, and part of that is coding "the rules" to not only insure that, but also to insure the platform itself is sustainable. However, other whales have invested who found a way to game the platform, taking advantage of the rules @dan & @ned put in place to protect and sustain the platform.
I see no inherent problem with multiple accounts operated by one real identity and anonymity of accounts. The root causes of the gaming arise from bots and the fact that anyone regardless of their intentions can buy large amounts of influence. Would it possibly help to level the playing field to limit the power of bots inversely proportional to the amount of SP the bot operates with? If you're a whale why do you need bots to further bolster your influence?
Another aspect that complicates our view of activities on Steemit is the nature of these "bots". What is a bot? It is simply a set of rules (i.e. a computer program or code) that carry out a predefined set of operations. Those operations can be very simple or very complex. It's conceivable that highly complex bot programs based on AI could be used to take advantage of loopholes in the steemit platform to "game" the system. It would be interesting if there were a way to identify the actions performed by bots and surface that info to the steemit community. Should bots have a reputation score also?
I'll readily admit I don't understand the nuances of this platform, not only from a social perspective but also details in the coding. Having been involved with the BitShares platform long before Graphene existed my knowledge is far above average on the technical underpinnings of Steemit, but I wouldn't hazard to quantify it with on a 1 to 10 spectrum, it's just too complex a beast.
From the earliest discussions about steemit I've always had reservations about the ways in which it might be gamed, either through "voting guilds" or other means. I don't think guilds are necessarily bad, if they are nothing but subsets of the community that vote with a collective agenda. I see the biggest threat being what I opened this comment with, the fact money can buy a lot of influence irrespective of concern for the platform or the community. It's the same potentially corrupting influence that money has on politics - a tendency towards centralization of power.
Perhaps in the final analysis we'll discover that any type of PoS system, be it capitalism or PoS/DPoS blockchains, will as free or rigid as the strongest influence in it allows. Since @dan & @ned aren't the wealthiest people on the planet, their influence can be super ceded.
This post was indeed very brave, and I commend you @ats-david for your willingness to post it and the thorough analysis it contains.
I agree that there's nothing wrong with that. But the problem here is the deception, combined with the shady origins and the collusive voting. There are more than these accounts involved.
True, but all of that is not in any way prohibited by Steemit, so what are we going to do about it? I agree with @smooth that
The problem is that this pattern of behavior will necessarily limit the range, quantity, and quality of content. Whales colluding to vote on each other do so at the expense of new authors being rewarded for their content. Without incentive for the creation of new and diverse content, it will not simply appear of its own volition and continue to be produced without recognition.
This behavior is anti-competitive.
I think it's disingenuous to fall back on tropes like "free market" and "competition" when this behavior is, in essence, no different than a government granted monopoly. This is the antithesis of the concepts that are being used to defend it.
I see what you're saying, and I agree with this:
I've seen new users (one of whom was my mom!) come to the site and become discouraged by the lack of attention paid to some excellent and completely unique posts. I respect @ats-david's decision to disseminate the information.
However, I don't mean something figurative or metaphorical when I say "free market." I mean that we are all free to NOT support things we don't like, to make deals or alliances with other users, and to build on Steem in ways that create more legit reasons to buy and sell the tokens. If I were a brand new user of Steemit right now, I'd market and advertise my posts and go to @robinhoodwhale, @coinbitgold and her academic post initiative, or someone who promotes and features new content.
If this is really as flawed as a government monopoly, maybe it's time to make big changes! It's always been centralized, so what do you expect? The whales are mainly the initial investors.
@edgeland thanks for the mention. Appreciate it for the recognition. As much as i would like to agree with you, the journey to promote new science and academia writers has been difficult because I do not have much of an influence at steemit. And upvotes on my content come from whales who maybe think i have good content or who think it is good to promote good science writers. And i am grateful to them for for believing in me.
I have a few comments on this post:
Even if evil whales are ousted, can we be confident that there will be no new evil whales in this anarchic system in the future ?
Let's admit that in this current system, the voting algorithm is easy to game for whales.
I respect @ats-david for posting this and giving this information to all users. But on the other hand, is it really good to flash "dirty laundry" publicly? IMO, it is not good for the steem prices and investors confidence......
@bacchist you know I think a lot of you. So this is going back in the way back machine. Considering the debate you and I had relating to anarchism almost two months ago now, this response of yours has me grinning from ear to ear. Good work on investigating this by the way. I've been following your progress too and spreading the word.
Is this debate about anarchism accessible on Steemit? Lol.
I appreciate this response from you, given our philosophical differences. I don't necessarily hold "free market principles" and competition to be ideas which I'd prefer to build a society around. But at the same time, I do think that whatever principles a given society is based upon should be applied uniformly, and not arbitrarily enforced depending on how it effects those with the most power.
Yes, thank you. Your link brought me here.
It absolutely is very different from a government granted monopoly in that no legal authority backed by force is protecting it.
Understood.... Hypocrisy does suck... So if a certain system is espoused yet it is not followed then you would feel justified in speaking up. So would I. We differ in the capitalism vs communism aspect of things, but that does not mean I do not respect you. Your mind and efforts are very telling. Keep it up. You have my support, and the support of others.
People can use this information however they wish. I am simply disseminating it. That is also not prohibited. In fact, information is extremely valuable - and vital.
EDIT: "Competition among content" won't resolve any of this. When there is collusive voting among whales, it doesn't matter if there is other better content. They can simply continue upvoting their own socks because they have the influence to pay themselves a large portion of the daily rewards. If there are not other influential voters who are downvoting to offset that, then it can't be prevented. In order to neutralize bad actors, there must be an equal opposing force willing to act. Ignoring it doesn't work.
Once it is exposed, I don't expect it to be policed per say, but I can choose to mute these accounts so I never accidentally vote for them.
Thank you by the way, for taking the risk to post this. I agree it shouldn't be policed, but it should be outed, so the community can decide if they wish to support it or not.
This was a brave post!
Your vote wont make a difference. As long as the whales keep voting for each other there will be nothing left in the budget for your post.
https://steemit.com/whales/@throw-away911/a-funny-interview-with-steemed
Two parts - debate you asked for:
https://steemit.com/anarchy/@dwinblood/so-i-encountered-an-anarcho-communist-and-this-is-my-discussion-debate-invitation
https://steemit.com/anarchy/@dwinblood/fire-in-the-hole-anarcho-capitalism-communism-debate-discussion-part-2-after-many-comments
Thanks! This looks like it's going to be fun to read. I'm an anarchist without adjectives. ;)