Steemit is Proof of Bot, We need to make it Proof of Brain!

IMAGE SOURCE: PIXABAY

Got your attention? Good. Right now on most posts the upvote to view ratio is about 10 to 1. I could write “Yabba dabba do” 100 hundred times on my next post and get 50 upvotes( warning: I might just try it). Shit posts of crypto graphs, copy and paste bullshit, and dumb ass memes earn tons of rewards, and thus drain the reward pool, because the people posting them know where to find the bots to get the upvotes.

Over at Steem Inc they are working on Hard Fork 20. I know we just had a big round of suggestions but hey, sometimes good things take time. Here are my suggestions to bring out the potential in Steemit. Most are geared at creating an environment that requires actual human curation and human interaction. Some are geared to ending blockchain and reward pool abuse.

Discarding upvotes from accounts that don't Generate Views

This would be a major disrupt to the way auto voting and bot voting work now. At the 6 day 12 hour voting limits any upvotes by accounts that did not also generate a view on the post would be discarded from the reward pool for that post. This means you would have to actually click on and look at the post for your vote to count. Simple right?

No Upvoting Accounts after Fund Transfers

Bar accounts from upvoting any account they have received a fund transfer from for 12 hours. This will help prevent the use of bots to automatically land a post on the top of trending/hot. Combine this with the view for a reward above and you have a 1-2 punch that will reduce the use of bots. The idea is not to ban bots outright, it's to re-balance the ecosystem so the humans are the dominate driver of voting, curating, and determining who makes it onto trending/hot.

Return to 50/50 Split on Creator/Curator Rewards

I've seen this suggested by several other Steemians and at first I was dead set against it. I've since warmed to this idea because it will give a strong incentive to curate that, combined with my other suggestions, will increase actual human interactions on Steemit. I would not implement this as a stand alone solution. Some have suggested getting rid of the 30 minute scale. I'm in favor of keeping it because I think it will prevent open and vote run bys.

Eliminate Curation Rewards on Self votes

This really isn't about improving human curation. It would be a move to prevent the reward pool raping scammers that rent a bunch of delegated SP then upvote every post and comment they make. It would effectively cut their reward for the self vote in half if combined with my suggestion to return to a 50/50 split on rewards.

No rewards after the 4th post per day

I know there used to be a soft limit on the number of posts per day imposed by diminishing returns and that was removed. It needs to return because we've seen that abused by high frequency spammers posting up to 2000 times a day. I know we have a twitter clone app. It'll need to migrate to being an SMT application.

Universal Basic Post Reward

I think we lose a lot of decent new Steemians because they come, try posting for a few weeks, get some upvotes, but never get a single reward. Part of the problem is that the system currently throws out rewards that are under 0.02. I propose that any post that has received at least two upvotes and no down votes be given a reward of at least 0.02. In my opinion this small investment will be more than worthwhile to retain users that may eventually spend their own funds to buy more Steem.

Conclusion

I throw these thoughts out there not as a single block of take it or leave it ideas but rather as a collection meant to spark debate. I think each suggest on their own would have merit and bring positive change. I think on a whole they could bring about powerful positive change. I also thing there are a lot of really smart people here on Steemit and they might read this and think of a way to mold my suggestions into something even better. Have at it boys, and girls!