Powered up / Make Steemit great again / switching focus
Yo yo yo, Hope everyone is safe, full, and smiling.
I went ahead and consolidated from many of the more speculative coins around, into the most useful crypto I know of, Steem. I have officially became one of the top 1500 accounts according to Steem Power. I'm willing to bet, many of the accounts above me are alt accounts for the 20 - 30 people who have more than a million Steem Power. Knowing my Steem Power and my rank according to SP account holders, is kind of depressing. 60,000 people. With my relatively small amount of Steem I am among the 1500 largest accounts. Any upvotes larger than a dollar come from those 1500 accounts.
Firstly that just shows how much responsibility and pressure those people with large accounts have. 50,000+ people interacting on Steemit. With less than 5,000 people capable of rewarding content decently. Damn, just damn. That's a bit overwhelming for both sides. The wealth gap here on Steemit strongly resembles the wealth gap we see in the real world.
Secondly, that makes my position here that much more important. If I am among the top 5% here on Steemit, and I am afraid to downvote certain people who are stealing from the reward pool for the damage they are doing. That means there are very few people capable of doing it who have more Steem Power than me. That makes my upvoting and curating here that much more important. I need to better understand that even if its not for the right reasons, because of my Steem Power and my Rep I am a role model to some of the newer users no matter if I like it or not. I will try my best for the community, to be as good of role model as I can!
I came to Steem at one of the last good time, when buying coins was cheap enough. When there were few enough people that I could get some of that sweet, sweet attention in this attention economy we are in. Times are changing. I watched the birth of upvote bots on Steem, I watched the hardfork that drastically change the way votes were weighted and worked. The hardfork came and killed off bot voting armies, and replaced it with powerful paid voting bots. To me the bot armies were unfair as well, yet they are much more desirable to the system we have now. Where the users are delegating the Steem for a return on investment, to the voting bots that will eventually kill the platform once they get all the delegation.
I would like to evoke every cheesy U.S. political slogan over the last 20 years. Make Steemit Great Again, Hope, yes we can, change to believe in, Yes Steem can, building a bridge to the Steem blockchain, don't stop thinking about tomorrow.
In order to achieve this I am going to do these few things and I would ask that you join me.
I am adjusting my votes, speaking with my feet. I am removing votes for any witnesses that I am voting for, who are running the voting bots, or upvoting the bad content on the hot page.
I will not upvote the users who run bots, who use bots to upvote every post, or those spend more than 50% of their voting power on themselves.
If an upvote bot has upvoted something. Save your upvote for a post that is not advertisement. Because when someone uses an upvote bot on a post, that post becomes equal to the shit you would find on promoted. It becomes advertisement. If its a challenge or a worthy cause then maybe it is still worth an upvote, but this post should not be 400$. If you pay 350$ for upvote bots, you can turn anything into a piece of gold though.
remain vocal addressing these issues. Issues like my post addressed here, and like @krnel's post did here. As well as commenting on the people who are only voting themselves and seem to be happily ignoring the community like i did here.
These are things we can all do no matter how much Steem Power or followers we have. We need to move the discussion in the right direction and sway the minds (or pocketbooks) of those who abuse the system. Make them realize that helping the community to increase the price of every Steem they own, is more significant than squeezing Steem out in a way that is detrimental to quality content.
I am going to move my focus away from Haejin and abuse, Its up to the powerful people to deal with the powerful abusers. I am going to spend my time upvoting good content, trying to keep the quality posts here an coming. Interacting with the good people who are still here. Healing some of the people who take damage in the Steem Quest to make Haejin human.
Anyways! I'm off to pay 500$ to get this on the hot page with the other shit posts lol jk. Adios!
Woot woot,
Admirable and measured goals.
I am fortunate that I care little for mammon, and recently have been amongst the top flagged accounts on Steemit. I was grateful for the flags, because the conversation was about censorship, and the flags proved my point better than I ever could.
I'd like to point out that @haejin somehow learned of the flags, and countered them. No one asked him to, and no one expected them. At least not I.
@haejin is human. Not only that, he apparently cares about free speech, and censoring flags, perhaps as a result of his recent exposure to them.
I didn't figger much in the initial discussions regarding @ranchorelaxo and @haejin, except to note that minnows receive about 1% of the rewards pool, and the most outrageous claims of @haejin's rewards were that he was getting about 5% of the pool.
Given the median post payout is about $.01, 5% of that is literally nothing. @haejin's rewards are completely irrelevant to minnows. It doesn't matter to us which whales get the rewards, because no matter who it is, it isn't us.
Whales care. When your upvote is $100, 5% of that is a nice cup of coffee.
I stated that I hoped the whales flagged all their rewards back into the pool, so minnow rewards would go up by 99%. That's rewards that make a difference, particularly for folks in less fortunate economies.
It makes no difference to me either way, as I have never spent a satoshi of Steem, nor intend to. I live off wages, beating nails into submission and smashing thumbs.
So I don't use bots, I don't self-vote, and I prefer to vote on posts with payouts under $100, although it's not a rule I live by. What rewards I can share, I prefer to share with minnows. My focus is on engagement, and the incredible people I have been fortunate enough to converse with here, like you.
I hope many folks see this, and undertake to follow in your footsteps.
Thanks!
I agree with you that the whole bid-bot phenomenon is short sighted and damages Steemit's ability to become a major blogging platform which would ultimately increase the value of Steem and solidify its value as a coin. This is short term gain over long term wealth creation mentality.
I, like @valued-customer, am more interested in reading and producing quality and controversy than I am with playing this game to win. I have been following @taraz who gives lots of lip service to getting rid of the bot influence to keep the influence high but he has worked very hard networking and posting, borrowing SP and upvoting his own posts and it is paying off for him. In other words, he's playing this game to the best of his ability while adhering to his particular morality, though I don't read most of his posts since, to me, they are a bit superficial.
Another person I follow is @vimukthi. This guy is brilliant and is playing to win. He is doing very well and is providing interesting and thoughtful content. I believe he has SP parked in an separate account that he uses to upvote his posts and, as we all know, the more SP one has the more curator fishies will be following you and upvoting your posts. @vimukthi is using the rules to his best advantage while also providing quality.
My bottom line is that this is a game that can be played to win in the short term if gaming interests you. I'm not much into that. I just want to write. I want to invest my time, have people read my stuff and have the coin value go through the roof. I don't need much to live, but if Steem hit $1000, I already have enough Steem to last the rest of my life. I'd rather this platform stabilized and it's coin gain value.
The attrition rate on Steemit is large. Most of the people who joined when I did in September no longer post because $1-$5 for a couple hours of your time just isn't worth it. If somebody comes up with a better algorithm that increases exposure and then rewards authors for quality, I'll also jump ship. Until then I'm willing to support those who favor people over robots. Perhaps we can steer this ocean liner away from the iceberg before it's too late.
Yep, I note this is a social media platform, not an automated crypto mining scheme, or at least it was.
If it turns out not to be anymore, I'll have no further interest in it either.
Do you mean you'll leave if quality posts are better rewarded? I suspect a typo, or my own brick isn't grasping well what you mean.
Comm error! I meant a better blogging platform based on a different coin.
Also, did you mean @tarazkp?
Oops, yes! So much for quality. lol
I will look into the two people you are talking about. Always good to find more people trying their best!
That's the only thing that makes Steemit worth reading. If you haven't caught my typo already, my reference was to @tarazkp.
You're singing my song! Or I'm singing yours. The bots aren't necessary. Time is. Time posting, commenting and curating. The more I read from both sides of this issue the more I am convinced of it.
Flagging does us little accounts little good, but curating, commenting and posting does.
Quality is subjective. Abuse is less so, but with no rules to really govern it accept those who have the will and the power to impose their own, how can you truly say what constitutes abuse?
I believe there are limits, and I believe we should all have our own, but unless someone at Steem Inc. decides to cap post quantity again or cap daily reward earnings, someone is going to keep going after the reward pool, and someone else is going to go after them.
Where does it stop? Where does it end? Only in self-regulation, and I'm afraid while there are people who do just that, there are too many others who regularly prove they're concerned more with self-interest.
Indeed, So we just gotta keep commenting on the good content creators, upvoting them and try to keep them around. Hoping for the change. Steemit Inc has become hyperfocused on the SMT's and nothing will be done in the near term for the platform it seems, but if we hold out long enough, and can keep some quality conent creators around until the HiveMind comes out. Maybe we will win. It is sad thinking that if we win even the abusers win, and since they were abusing, they win more really. Though maybe some accountability will come their way eventually. Some sort of cosmic karma, or something that looks like it.
I'm hoping for Hivemind/Communities to bring some good change, but I don't know. The more I read about it, the less it sounds like what people think they're supposed to be getting. Though I've read quite a few posts on it, I'm not at all clear on how it's supposed to interact with reward pool, as it sounds like accounts can become communities, open or closed (similar to FB) and then somehow the reward pool gets shared.
We shall see. They keep mentioning, though in much less detail than SMTs, but it seems like we get HF 20 with Communities happening either before or after, then SMTs with another HF 21. Having them not get specific with time frames helps not to oversell what they can't reasonably complete, but not having any time frame, while desiring the flexibility to green light projects in place of others if they deem it necessary still leaves a lot of uncertainty. Just can't win I guess. :)
It is good to see dolphins like you, that really care about the platform and are willing to set an example for other younger users.
The abuse you are talking here is difficult to stop, bid bots will probably end up being the most powerful users on the site. If the witnesses don't care then we cannot do anything, other than leave this platform when its model become unsustainable (if this ever happens...) and go for a better one.
I believe the concept of leveraging blockchain technology to reward content creator is brilliant. For now this idea is steem exclusive, but there will be other platforms. I believe @dan is working on something similar with EOS.
Having said that, I really wish steem to be one of the most successful blobkchains out there, the opportunities we have thanks to this platform are unprecedented in history, so nothing would make me happier than seeing it being massively adopted worldwide.
The sad thing is, that I am still a minnow really. Even though there are only 1500 accounts more powerful than me. I'm not sure how far I am from finally being a dolphin but I still have a ways to go. Sadly I am not rich enough to just throw more money at it, I will have to just post, comment, and work as hard as I can to try to get there, and invest here and there when I can.
I agree with you it is an awesome concept.. and I have EOS so I will get some of whatever our future competitor is as well hopefully. I powered up today, so I am not expecting Steemit's death. I just think there is room for more than one, and that competition creates the most superior quality. So I am excited to watch the platform battle.
Well, as far as I know dolphins are users with at least 5k in Steem Power. So I think you would be a small dolphin then hehe :P
About the competition, I am not sure which one will be better. But I guess we will know more when the time comes and EOS competition is close to its release.
In the meantime we just need to steem on and building the best communities possible in here.
Well snap. I guess I became a baby dolphin today, and I didn't even get a t shirt lol!
Nor do I, though distribution is a hard problem for the Steem blockchain. EOS could circumvent the whole issue with that by doing a broad, fair distribution to EOS holders. That would make up for a decent amount of the head start even maybe.
With Dtube, Dlive, Dmania, Zappl, Steepshot and etc. Steem will not go anywhere though. The head start is substantial. What if though, a big what if the EOS version gets some of these apps to cross over. What if they allow posting across blockchains. So posting on EOS will also post onto here.
Too many variables to follow any tree of probability very far.
I agree that we do need to do that. I kind of want to start a tag. a humanvote tag or something. Where people can post quality content for others to see. So it would be easier to find. That excludes all the people who don't know abut the tag though, and some of them surely make content worthy of being seen by human curators too. It seems like lots of people have tried to form a community around a tag and for the most part it doesn't work. It would be something until real communities came though.
Everything I think of to try seems like such a long shot, or like the walls and barriers are too much to overcome for just me
You are not alone. I reckon we all feel like that.
@humanbot may be similar to the #humanvote idea. Dunno. You'd have to ask @carlgnash about it. There is a sizable group forming up around the #informationwar tag. Seems to be growing still. @stevescoins even set up a discord.
Do not be discouraged. As you point out, we mere human trifles are incapable of seeing into crystal balls much, and the smallest thing can change everything.
Exactly, we are growing our small community and months from now we will be a lot larger. 19 total members in Discord so far, we are just getting started on organization, expect good things!!
Send me an invite and I'll join.
I have not invested in the learning curve to use Discord to do more than communicate, so dunno how. @stevescoins, @openparadigm, or @truthforce may all be better able to do so, and I found the link on one of their blogs.
Sorry I'm so incompetent regarding what are probably simple matters!
sure. check out this post
https://steemit.com/informationwar/@truthforce/7xt3qs1z
Hey @truthforce what do you think of Digibyte?
Maybe we could get a downvote bot running, some whale could create it with the sole purpose of downvoting other extremely voted posts that have purchased more advertising than necessary (6 vote bots on some of these posts, it's ridiculous)
Yeah! I have read that idea somewhere. The whales financing those bots would end up sacrificing a lot of curation rewards, so they would need to really love this platform in order to do that.
But that idea of downvoting abuse by a communal account is a good one.
I feel like if you're a whale it's in your best interest to love the platform that much, while you might lose rewards, you'd also be helping grow the platform and probably increasing the price of steem.
I think I saw people supporting the burn account to try and lower SBD to $1 but it doesn't appear many people support it anymore. This seems like it would accomplish similar while also lowering the amount certain users are taking from the pool
You forgot, No Minnow will be left behind ;)
Peace.
Ah... Steemit makes me think that if a lot of SP is the answer to earning big then maybe I should put some more money into it. But I can't seem to make myself do it. :P
Congratulations for being in the top 1500 accounts! :)
How do you earn a significant amount of steem power if you aren't constantly seeking curation rewards and returns on buying votes for your post. I think they offer a catch 22 service but, I am on a mission to also gain entry into the top steem power holders. I don't have enough expendable cash to blast up there so I am doing it through alternative means.
I feel your struggle. I completely understand. The voting bots are the most lucrative, shiny object around. It's easy, its available.
If every person did it, only then would the true failure of it be easily observable. I have spent a lot of time here, posting and commenting. Thousands of comments, hundreds of posts over almost a year now. I still don't make more than 20$ a post really. Maybe its my content. Definitely a part of it. I do however make more than I ever had spending time on any other social media platform. I have met a good set of cool people. I am blessed to have a good amount of engagement in most of my posts. The upvotes and engagement has been slowly decreasing as the upvote bots rise to prevalence though.
Hey :) Your content is good my man, don't ever think it is that you have bad content or anything like that.
A lot of the success on steemit is due to a lot of networking or joining a community. Going at it by just continually posting will eventually breakthrough and get you some dolphins/larger minnows following you(or maybe a small whale/big whale), but I think the community aspect is the most powerful. Being part of a similar minded community gives us all an incentive to help eachother out since we all largely have the same goals.
I can tell you this, trying to earn 20 cents on blogging on other platforms is basically impossible starting off alone. And trying to get anything going on youtube's monetization basically requires 100,000 views + and 1,000 subscribers before they even let you start earning.
The time value of money here is way better, especially since there are some communites starting to pop up. @curie or @minnowsupport projects are doing their thing and growing, there is some gaming communities coming up now too. Iam sure there is some art and music stuff I am forgeting about, but yeah man, community is key!!!
Congratulations on officially becoming a dolphin @drpuffnstuff. Steem's lacking enough manual curators and bidbots have come to fill that void.
I use them although i don't go wild lol. Think it helps me earn a fair return on my post. Behind the high headline number, the actual ROI is max 1-2 SBD.
Hello, I'm here just recently. What hardfork did you mean? What has changed since then? how do you think it was useful?
I'm from Golos platform, there is now a quadratic function for awarding posts. The community does not like this, because contractual schemes have been formed and most of the votes are simply concentrated on top posts. Voices are bought below the cost price and the top of 40 posts receives superprofits. The quality of posts means almost nothing. Votes "for love" are unprofitable. Therefore, your experience is interesting.
I also have a Golos account. This is much better than Golos as far as structure. I assume you Speak Russian though so this is harder for you. I watched all the drama at Golos unfold, and I am currently powering down to trade my golos coins for Steem.
However Golos is still operating under the old fork I am speaking of. That is why Golos has so many votes on posts. Because people there make robot voters to make the algorithm work in their favor. It was that way to make the most powerful accounts less powerful if they voted on content that others had not and it appeared to work decently well..
We had voting bot groups like there were on Golos. Now we just have tons of different versions of booster if you remember booster from Golos.
Did this help?
Yes, it helped. My English is not so good, but in general everything is clear. I wanted to hear whether the linear function is better or not, because we still had discussions between the holders. But, of course, most people want a linear function. It is better for local communities and more uniform payments.
Golos, by the way, are going to accept fork with linear function soon, in fact by forces of enthusiasts. There will also be a beneficiary, so developers can also make money on applications based on Golos. Maybe it'll get better and we catch up Steemit :) By the way, now the tokens are cheap because of the actions of large stakeholders, founders of the platform. But this is another story ... I think they deliberately knock down the price to buy at the bottoms. Just do not think that I'm promoting Golos:)) This is not accurate and only my assumptions.
I did the same thing with my other coins @drpuffnstuff . I sold everything to go all in with steem last week. I have very little voting power but it is growing. For me though, I must vote my own post so that others will try and get curation from the post. We are only talking a dime here on my posts but I see your point. I do appreciate what you are trying to do and using your power for "good". I have done outreach, brought in investment and even thrown a local meetup. I think it all helps so Im glad someone with SP has aligned interests with me. It's inspiring.
Ohhh there is nothing wrong with upvoting your own posts. I upvote most of my posts. If I posted more often, I would upvote them less. Steemocean will show you how much self upvoting you are doing. I just try to keep the upvoting myself below 10%. It is usually at 5 or 6% of my total votes, so even I am guilty of self upvoting a little. You are only at 17.77% self upvote, that is a good amount below 50%. I found that here if you wanted to also be able to see and keep track.
thanks. this is cool. I'll watch out for this. I think when I get some more power I will spread it out more. It is hard at my level to give it all out. I try to vote my followers and upvote the comments they leave me. I think that with power comes responsibility so hopefully I'll get more power lol.
I also like this graphic website for vote viewing.