Anonymous voting and honesty in the choosing

Since the last hardfork that made downvoting great again, there has obviously been a fair bit of retaliation going on targeting those that have downvoted for whatever reason they have chosen.

@acidyo posted today about some of his thoughts and @kevinwong commented on something that has been brought up before, anonymous voting.

This is something that I believe will be revisited many times to come and I feel will eventually happen, as will hiding the wallets due to various risks and concerns of safety - When Steem is riding at tens of dollars, some people living in or travelling to some countries are likely going to get targeted.

So, imagine a scenario where the amounts are shown, but who voted and at what level is masked. What I think would happen with anonymous voting (besides the early attempts to scam it) is that there will eventually be a more balanced approach to voting, and while it defuses the potential for retaliation by removing the target, it also takes away some of the negatives of upvoting.

For example, in time without people knowing who is who, the larger staked voters would be left alone to vote as they see fit without having to be concerned with public opinion nor get targeted by upvote beggars. This would also make the post itself the actual focus of the upvotes rather than the person, unless the person proves themselves worthy through their content - the same as on other platforms.

On top of this, the content will also be evenly targeted by those who are willing to downvote for overvalued content without having to worry about retaliation. In time, anonymity in voting could mean that a healthier content value discovery mechanism could be established with a greater focus on the content creators, rather than who has stake or not.

Part of the problem we have seen recently is when some content like an art post have been pushed up in value and then judged critically as overvalued based on who upvoted it. Even though those same content creators might never get another vote of that size, people find it unfair that someone gets lucky even once. Making the vote anonymous would mean that when those who come in to evaluate aren't going to be colored either way by who has previously voted it.

Taking out the "person" from the voting list means that like @kevinwong noted later in the comment chain, Steem becomes more content-centric, and this means that eventually those who attract votes will be those who are able to garner the attention of the staked community and have that community direct the flow of Steem to and away from the content as it sees fit, the way it was designed.

One of the drawbacks for staked members of course then is that the stake no longer becomes a near automatic attractor of attention, but this is likely a good thing for rel content producers as it means that stake would have to more evenly compete for attention in the content marketplace. Much of the stake wouldn't bother and would instead choose to earn from curation, again the way it is designed.

One of the positives of anonymous voting is that it would take away a lot of the comparison between stake and perhaps make smaller users feel more significant with their vote. This could better bring into alignment the idea that @nonameslefttouse has mentioned a fair bit over the last year or so, tipping for life. This could put more buy pressure on Steem because taking away the comparisons makes everyone feel that their vote has value and, buying Steem will be the gateway to that perpetual ability to vote and earn, no matter the amount.

From an interaction and engagement standpoint, adding anonymity of vote means that people will not necessarily know who has stake and who has not ad this means that people will have to better understand the preferences of their audience, no matter who they are. This makes targeting large stake much harder, but also frees up that same large stake to vote as they see fit without having to worry about who is watching. Of course, the checks and balances are still in place and over voted shit content can still be knocked down and with that anonymity of vote, the content itself will be held accountable.

There are many pros and a few cons to hiding the voting and stake, but I think that it makes more sense and what it will mean is that reputation of account will become an important metric that holds value. An account that has been able to build a reputation based on how that account acts in the community without having the stake influence the perspective makes it more useful as an indicator.

Perhaps one of the SMT applications will use a way to mask and disconnect names and stakes to see what kinds of changes to voting behavior and interaction take place. I do think that it is worth the experiment to find out as I reckon that the largest winners on the platform would be the content producers themselves as they are able to compete based on what they offer the community rather than who they know. Backdoor deals will be relatively obvious and will get downvoted consistently without reprisal possible and a whole new way to engage would be born on Steem.

Perhaps without anonymity, the wisdom of the crowd and proof-of-brain will better be able to balance the supply, demand and the rewards through the communities by giving people the freedom to choose more honestly without fearing the judgement they currently get in their choice.

What are your thoughts on anonymous voting, better or worse? Pros and cons?

Taraz
[ a Steem original ]