RE: Why i don't believe @berniesanders flagging campaign is fair
The issue isn't that so many people upvote his content and make him successful. The issue is that one individual (with an upvote worth over $300) in particular is upvoting all of his (@haejin) content indiscriminately and nobody else's. This is further exasperated by the fact that this particular individual (@ranchorelaxo) seemingly came from nowhere and seems to have no other opinions or associations with anyone else but @haejin. It's reasonable to suspect (while far from being proven) that @ranchorelaxo is @haejin or that the two of them are colluding. If that turns out to be the case, he would be defrauding all of us.
@haejin is good at analysis. He should be able to analyze this situation and come up with a transparent solution on his own. It's very easy for an objective thinker to see the importance of the issue to the overall community.
@haejin's blog to many experienced crpyto and even starter analysts see the potential gold mine this guy is giving out through information. I'm Sorry but that's just a conspiracy theory you've put together buddy, mixed in with a large dose of jealousy. there are maybe 2000 followers that of @haejin, like myself that ONLY follow him (was brought to steemit because of him). So one of these followers have a large pocket of steem power and is giving haejin the only thing he wants in return for the massive profits he is giving out for free..
This community is so toxic man to even write that bullshit without proof and call it a 'discussion"? In reality you want the man to tell his followers to stop rewarding him because "it's too much" and the other people here are getting real jealous. The idea of communism comes to mind :),
Good day mate.
@moeknows comment about the whale is reasonable based on what can be readily observed in both the guy's wallet and voting pattern.
So, let's see, you came to STEEM only to support, follow and vote on @haejin with zero intention of becoming part of or contributing to the community. (I address this comment to all those supporters of @haejin who have made this claim)
You think it is quite all right to use other people's money to pay someone who is providing you with what you consider to be valuable information?
Are you such a leech that you can't reach into your own pocket and pay him directly?
According to the claims of his followers I've seen, you guys are making thousands off of his work. Why don't you pay him for what he's doing with actual money from your pockets instead of this community's funds?
I hope @haejin takes a hard look at some of his so called supporters and shakes the leeches free so he can start making some real money from his true supporters pockets.
How do you rationalize it? I don't understand why it's so hard to actually address my actual statements. Dude, I am at the bottom of the steemit heap. If I was jealous, I could pick a lot of other targets to go after. I'm not. It is fishy as fuck though. I have little to gain by putting in my two cents on this situation and everything to lose. Unlike you, I did not create another account to protect myself from what I say. I am owning it. it's got my name on it.
All @haejin or @ranchorelaxo has to do is simply address it. Explain why he has done nothing on the Steemit blockchain except for using his influence to direct the reward pool to a single individual and himself to the tune of over 11k USD in a little over 2 weeks. If he did this maybe it would all just go away. Rancho has upvoted 37 times. 33 of of those upvote have been on haejin for over ~10,770 USD. 3 more for himself for over 900 and one for someone else for 10.
The reward pool is private funds dedicated to (and governed by) the community at large. So it is a little bit of both communism and capitalism. It would be different if Rancho simply sent transfers from his wallet to haejin's. That would be capitalism, and nobody would have an issue with that. Instead he is spending the private funds in the reward pool to the community's detriment and haejin's benefit. We all have a say. So that is what we are doing. I just want it to be transparent. Why don't they just address this head on?
I hear you, a comment on it in some form would be appropriate as this is a community.
But, there are no rules which can force @haejin or @ranchorelaxo to reveal their real identities and prove that they are not the same person, nor should there be...
In addition, this platform is made so that bots can exist (taking the hypothesis that @ranchorelaxo is a bot as claimed), and if bots can exist, and anyone can invest in the platform and use a bot to promote self-interests then the truth is that EVEN IF @haejin owns the @ranchorelaxo account/bot, then he is in his full right to do so and is in fact doing nothing wrong except playing the game smarter that the rest of us. (But I am not saying that this is fair, I actually really dislike the idea of bots in general)
But you are also right, the community has the right to "redirect" the reward pool in different directions if this is wanted, but I question what good it does for the future growth of the platform. Surely the goal should be to attract more users and investors, and not to destroy the experience of thousands of new users with no power and low reputations by consistently downvoting all their posts and comments.
Perhaps others should just work harder on providing quality content and start competing for their share of the pool.
Well, they can do both. I agree that there shouldn't be rules to stop them from upvoting their own post, but I have no problem with people adjusting those votes with downvotes. Flagging and downvotes really should be two separate systems as they address different issues, and I doubt we would be having this conversation if they were different things. Also, there are protections in place to deter people from downvoting frivolously. For frivolous upvotes, the people are the protection mechanism.
I think it's wrong to silence people for voicing an opinion and have expressed that with the OP. However, I also think downvoting is appropriate when they feel someone is getting a disproportionate piece of the pie.
And I respect your decision, but instead of using your SP on downvoting you could use it to upvote someone else, that is my main point.
I think this could be a never-ending issue, because we will not stop upvoting him when he is a main source to our financial freedom, and his following is only growing from all the attention.
I fear the situation will escalate.
I personally haven't downvoted haejin. The reason why simply upvoting other post doesn't address the issue is because each of those upvotes are worth less because of the abuse carried out by rancho.
ETA: If rancho had not stopped, those upvotes would have continued to be worth less and less each day.
So why don't you take it up with the person you disagree with who's giving rewards instead of Haejin who hurt nobody and is helping people..this is a travesty
Unfortunately, the only way to correct the actions of rancho is to downvote haejin because haejin is the only individual account he has ever upvoted besides himself. This abnormal behavior, to many, is evidence of collusion. I'm not downvoting anyone Well, I did downvote one of ranchos post because it very obviously wasn't worth the $300 he is going to earn from it. Haejin's post have merit, but I don't necessarily that they have that much disproportionate amount of merit compared to similar posts.
Thanks for being civil with your post Moe...i understand what your'e saying but there has to be a better way...i know 5 people that I know personally that have made tens of thousands of dollars because of haejins training videos and technical analysis...i just don't see the justification in down voting or punishing him..it just doesn't seem like something i always thought Steem was about...like maybe having a discussion with both haejin and rancho and respectfully voice their concerns before taking hostile action...this has really made me leary of this site...hope you have a good holiday season
But Moe ..."Unfortunately, the only way to correct the actions of rancho is to downvote haejin because haejin is the only individual account he has ever upvoted besides himself"...does that sound fair and responsible to you?????
Well, yes if the downvoting stopped once rancho's contribution was erased. As I understand it, it has gone further and that is regrettable and I don't agree with it.
Also neither haejin or rancho has engaged the community to give their side about the situation. I think that would be a big help. Haejin did make a call for help, but I found it odd that he wouldn't take that opportunity to bring up the rancho situation and tell his side. Many people on Bernie's side believe that rancho is actually haejin. If it were me, and I were innocent, I would meet that accusation dead on. I wouldn't be seeking my supporters for help, I would be trying to convince Bernie's supporters. But that's just me.
I think respectful and open conversation is the way to go. We get nowhere without an understanding of each other's perspective.
Thanks for the well wishes. I hope you and yours have a good holiday season as well.
After reading more, I think its okay for people to flag if they don't agree with the payout. I personally don't plan on ever doing that, but understand the frustration.
But isn't that how Steemit is built (for good or for bad)? Anyone can come in, create an account, buy a $hit ton of STEEM on blocktrades, transfer it over, power up, and start off with a very high upvote? Steemit doesn't start everyone off on an even playing field. As to possibilities of where @ranchorelaxo came from:
Yes, maybe him and @haejin are colluding. However, @haejin's content is still good - it's not like it's crap and then rancho elevated crap.
@ranchorelaxo is some random person who has a lot of money and is getting into crypto (and STEEM) as an investment. He came upon @haejin's stuff and found it useful and either doesn't like anything else on the site or isn't interested in anything else. I know for a fact that there is at least one financial/investing newsletter that is pushing STEEM as a good investment (it's how I ended up here), and they SPECIFICALLY said to invest in SP as a long-term investment. It's not implausible that others much wealthier than I am heeded that call as well and came to steemit, and it explains why they would be interested in @haejin's posts, but not that much else. Their interest may or may not be in building the steemit community or in producing content. I myself started that way (put in money and leave it), but then decided that the steemit community itself was interesting.
Or 3. Rancho got rich off of haejin's advice and wanted to repay him.
It could all be innocent. So why not address it? Say that. Realize though, that his actions could be a detriment to the platform overall. I wonder how long he would have continued to reward haejin had the community not said anything? He (I use 'he' for simplicity, could be any other entity) seems to be able to read and speak English. Why not just address it publicly?
But why would he/she have to? That's literally the opposite of innocent until proven guilty. The rules of steemit isn't, hey, join this community but also you are obligated to defend yourself from any and all attacks and explain all your votes and content to the satisfaction of everyone. That's...super restrictive and controlling. Not to mention like I said, there are probably users on here who are just for the "buy and hold in case this because the next Facebook in 5 years" and care very little about interacting with steemit beyond that. If that's true, why should they be dragged out and accused and forced to interact?
Who cares? Why shouldn't he? It's his upvote. He literally paid into this platform, and steemit rewards him for that.
I think people came to steemit with an idea of a very fair, even playing ground and 100% meritocracy. But that is simply not true - you can buy steem, you can buy SP, and the platform rewards you for that. I'm not saying if it's good or bad, but I'm just saying that's literally how steemit is built.
Yes. But just as steemit allows him the ability to direct the rewards pool, it allows others to do the same. Why would you support his exercise of that use and not that of other smaller users to do the same?
I mean, honestly? Because the smaller users aren't offering me any value. Not saying they don't have value, they just don't offer me any value. There's no reason for me to upvote people for the sole reason that they're smaller users. If I think their comments or posts are informative/funny/etc., sure. But haejin brings me a lot of value, which is why I upvote a lot of his posts.
If other people find value in other users and want to upvote them, awesome. No one against berniesanders is against his ability to upvote people. They're upset about the flagging/downvote attacks against haejin and anyone else who stands up for haejin or criticizes berniesanders, many of which aren't whales and are much "lower" on the totem pole. Just today I saw speakyourmind downvote someone into oblivion on haejin's post for doing just that and then repeatedly taunt him by saying that he/she could do this all day "this is just one of my accounts." That kinda of bullying is what people are upset about.
Honestly, at this point I'm not sure what your argument is about. You started off arguing about haejin taking too many votes, then talking about how people should attack rancho instead, and then now you're asking why I don't support people upvoting. Those goalposts have moved mighty far from where we started.
I'm not asking you to upvote anybody. I'm asking why you don't support people downvoting Haejin to counteract a vote that they don't agree with.
The small users may be part of the reason you are aware of haejin, because they are responsible for his success...and that's all great. Before Rancho, steemit would be happy to consider haejin a success story. There were never any calls to downvoted him before. If he had the same earnings from different accounts, its doubtful that anybody would've said anything. Even if they had, they wouldn't be able to garner much support for it.
Also, Just like you Said, anyone can come with a shitload of money and flag the content they dont like.
So, where is the difference?
Everyone is seeing what berniesanders is trying to do.
No one heard from ranchorelaxo what he is trying to do.
maybe that is part of the problem that @ranchorelaxo needs to address.
the other part of the problem is that those who love seeing @haejin, or anyone else, upvoted by a whale need to be also willing to accept that a whale can also counter that vote. It's how the system works.
I've had comments downvoted on this issue. I support bernie countering the large votes. The main person downvoting my comments is screaming that bernie is being a bully while this guy's downvotes of my comments is in itself bullying and censorship.
One of them also told me that I apparently have a large mafia and an army of bots. Being honest and rationale is definitely not that moron's strong suit
Ever consider the fact that maybe @ranchorelaxo is a whale who finds Haejin's content useful and has made a ton of money off of it and this is his way of paying him back?
Haejin is making amazing content for FREE and is getting rewarded by the people he is helping. So what if one guy decides to only upvote his content? That's his choice.
Actually, yes. I mention that exact possibility. It is a reply somewhere on this page.
It is also everybody else's choice to reverse that action. The reward pool is shared by all steemians and directed by all steemians. If people feel the reward is not appropriate, they have just as much right to correct that reward.
So wait...you are upset that someone is upvoting things that he or she likes instead of just random upvotes on different peoples posts...am i missing something..sorry
Yes, you are missing the premise. Do you agree with bernie's use of his power to silence and remove winnings from haejin's posts?
Yes, if it's used respectfully and with merit..but this is abusive and disrespectfull
Bernie sees rancho's use of his power to be without merit. Rancho had directed 11k of the reward fund to a single user (haejin) in the course of 15 days. Now, one could say that haejin might deserve 11k if the guy got rich off of his advice, but if that's the case, the dude should just pay it out of his own pockets. Instead, he is paying using the reward pool which belongs to all of us. Secondly, what would have happened if this went unnoticed? In terms of compounded steem power, that 11k could have turned into much much more.
None of us have the ability to redirect that much of the collective wealth to a single user. The downvoters see it as an irresponsible use of power. I am inclined to agree, but would like to hear rancho or even haejin acknowledge the situation (the rancho situation) and give their side and neither have done that. I find that odd.
I am confused on how ranchorelaxo got so much steem power if he came from nowhere and only engages with haejin.
He invested in Steem then powered up. You can buy steem, you don't have to earn it.