You have made some exceptional points here, and have continued to make them, especially in relation to vote betting, and how the term used here - "high quality", doesn't mean that at all . I hope someone with the power to affect change pays attention to the feedback being given.

Let me do my best to set expectations appropriately. These are things that I have been beating on as a regular issue since I started posting to the platform years ago. Unlike a lot of people, I started by actually reading the white paper and understanding enough about game theory and mechanics to see what it actually said and be able to know that what I was being told it was being said was a lie. So I came into this with my eyes open. And in fact, I can link to an article that I wrote where I go on about that for some time, particularly as regards the folk betting pool and implications of top down "valuation" that might interest you if it doesn't make your eyes glaze over.

Steemit and The Dynamic of the Authoritarian in Assumption

This is one of those pieces that I wish could be evergreen rewarded because I end up citing it a lot.

It feels like steemit doesn't value the majority of its users as the minority hold a bigger combined stake. The curve goes against the small-big user is favor of the larger, the vote distribution and the latest revelation that this goes further than I had thought, where a vote from a big user doesn't mean anything unless it is backed up with enough votes from other users.

See, this isn't new. This is the way that it has always worked, it's just that this is the latest opportunity to talk about this being the way that it's always worked. Always. That the curve is flatter and now biased against the original creator just in general with the basic ratio simply makes the situation worse for people who thought that they could be creators and competitive earners on the platform.

You (and I and my weaker moments) labored under the belief that while our vote was small and probably worth only a few tenths of a cent in the greater pool of money that was being given out, when we gave an upvote at least it was going to give what tiny amount of value that we could give in support and if a lot of people were doing so, so much the better for the creator, right? More votes equals more money, more money equals more reward, more reward, means more things that we are likely to want to vote up in the future.

But now you find out it doesn't actually work much like that at all. That unless a bunch of people whose opinion happens to agree with yours who are also limited with how much they can give because of low SP also vote up that piece of content, the cumulative amount is beneath the level of "dust," and the creator gets nothing. At all. If you do happen to attract the attention of a significant stakeholder whose vote exceeds the dust level, you do so knowing that even if they vote up that content, unless there are a fairly significant number of similarly scaled stakeholders also voting it up, their vote doesn't matter that much either. In fact, the only value to you and the content indirectly is that you can make more for having uploaded the article in question followed by the significant stakeholder upvoting that content than the actual creator does, depending on how the curation numbers eventually settle out.

So content valuation doesn't reward finding new, interesting authors and creators, and rewarding them, it rewards figuring out what kind of content bigger players than you frequent and upvoting that content before those bigger players do in order to get your maximum curation rewards, and it doesn't matter what that content is at all.

That results in just creating a race to finding the most monocultural content which caters to the upper strata of stakeholders and only that. If you want your curation to actually provide for school utility to you, that's what you have to do. And if you're a stakeholder of significant worth, it's in your best interest to have a very predictable slate of things that you are interested in and make sure that list is very publicly known so that it can be rewarded by you and your proxies to reap maximum benefit.

You'll notice, at no time did I bring in what that content actually is – because it just doesn't matter.

This is the reality we have been living with on this blockchain since the beginning. Sometimes it's tuned to favor one group over another just a little bit but this is the underlying architecture. I'm sorry if it is disappointing, because watching it long enough to figure it out myself filled me with enough disappointment to load up a couple of buckets.

Say a lone curator upvotes me, if I want their vote to have the value they intended, I have to either hope enough other users, with enough power, agree. Or i can reinforce it with bidbots. I am not a bidbot user, talking hypothetically here, yes the bidbot gets a 50% curation cut, but confident the bidbots have adapted to that, and if the bidbot increases the value of other users votes, then it is worth it despite the curation cut. That combined with the increase in the curation cut, and the new payout curve, no wonder people are shocked at how little their posts are worth.

From the perspective of you and I, what we really want is for our vote to have a consistent, predictable value, however small.

If 10,000 SP is the inflation rate for every blockchain cycle, let us say (and these numbers are very, very arbitrary and ratios will be very, very arbitrary as well), there is 1,000,000 SP in the pool, and we hold 1000 SP (which really makes us a significant stakeholder given the actual curves, but we'll ignore that for now), you would think that your vote, each and every one, would be worth 1,000,000÷1000 = 1000 STEEM. The actual value in real money varies based on how much one STEEM goes for on the market, but again we'll leave that aside. We control 1/1000 of the SP in play and thus have a reasonable expectation of being able to direct 1/1000 of the 10,000 SP inflationary reward pool, or 1000 SP's worth.

Even if our vote goes to a piece of content which no one else votes for, with our stake you would expect the creator would receive a cut of the rewards pool equal to 1000 SP.

But thanks to a really complicated means of working out power decay, total amount of SP actually being leveraged in terms of votes, the skim off the top for the Witnesses, voting windows (which thankfully have shrunk to five minutes, even though that seems a little wonky, too), it's just not anywhere near that valuation. And aside from software tools which have been inconsistent about how they calculate the results of a really complicated process, we can't actually know how much our vote is worth, and the whole thing turns into an exercise in wishful thinking.

On top of all this, beyond all of this, there is the fact that bid bots are simply better at playing the game then you or I. We don't watch the whole blockchain constantly for content that might be useful to us. There is no way that we can work the windows to be advantageous; we just don't consume content fast enough. The big players can afford to invest in bid bots which specifically focus their fields of interest, and because there is a significant amount of SP in play, direct or delegated, it's in your best interest to try and use systems which pay attention and get in the front of those vote trains. Because that's where the money's at.

A bid bot never increases the value of other users votes. A bid bot acts as a collective proxy for delegated SP which is effectively voting power. One which can vote at a very precise time and which then redistributes the income that he gets for that curation act to its investors who paid for it. In the proportion that those investors paid.

As such, if you are not using the bid bot, your vote is less likely to drop on content right at the right time unless you got there before the bid bot. The increasing curation payout is just gravy on top that makes running a bid bot more valuable, not just to the owner but to the people using it – and again, we are deliberately not talking about the content of the post in question because it simply doesn't matter. All that matters is the mechanical interaction and timing, and the content can be completely arbitrary.

That one users flags (from their various accounts) stripped away a value accrued by 180+ other users. The crowd determined a value, and one person with a lot of SP was able to take it away with their downvote. That doesn't reflect the opinion of the group, and the culture and principles behind flagging need to be addressed, not made worse with the encouraging of comparative flagging.

But this is exactly in line with the underlying design of the system which is, I remind you, proof-of-stake. The only thing that matters is how much SP is moving. That nearly 200 other users have collectively acted doesn't matter, because the only thing they are and represent is some pool of stake. The only thing that's important about them is how much SP they possess. When a much bigger player comes along who has more SP than they do collectively, a single downvote (which now every single bigger player has more of for free) nullifies all of those upvotes.

Again, a reminder, this is a proof of stake system and the only number that matters is your stake. When they talk about large number of lesser stakeholders being able to band together and make significant impacts to the platform, what they mean is if there is something that attracts the attention of all of those tiny minnows consistently, they can have an effect. As you can imagine, doing so is very difficult and inconsistent, because with 200 people is very difficult to find something they all care about and are interested in. They are 200 individuals with the interests of 200 individuals.

As opposed to the focus of the same amount of SP wielded by a single individual.

This is the basics, the underpinnings, of a proof of stake system. The Steem blockchain has always been a proof of stake system. That's its nature.

Diversity, and sincere engaged disagreement can bring amazing positive change, it is a chance for people to evaluate their own position, improve their understand, and learn. If someone disagrees, please tell me, I want to understand why, not to argue with you, but to better understand my own perspective and learn something about yours. Downvotes don't help that, and I don't see how that element is going to attract new users. Debate, and open discussion however, does attract people who want to get involved. Hell, I am here commenting on this.

Here's the thing about downvotes/flags:

They only happen when you should come on the content that you believe should be flagged.

I want to point out how much "the community" goes on about how important it is to deploy your downvotes strategically in order to "maintain the rewards pool." But the actual mechanical intervention with the flag system only happens when you find that content.

Normal people don't go out of their way to find content they think should be unrewarded. For the most part, normal people are most likely to run into comment spam, where they will deploy their downvote, it will be largely meaningless because, like everything else, it's scaled by SP, but they will have indicated this should be unrewarded and they will move on. Day-to-day, they will not run into content which they think should be unrewarded (in the active sense). Normal, sane people don't go out of their way to find content they don't want.

However, a basic observation of the mechanics suggests that to maximally increase the rewards on things that you do want to be rewarded, you have to go out and actively use every bit of your SP that isn't involved in upvoting content you think should be rewarded in downvoting things that you think should be unrewarded. Before this hard fork, that was a legitimate trade-off. SP committed to increasing the rewards for a thing could simultaneously be used to decrease the rewards for another thing which indirectly would increase the rewards for the first thing and everything else. Now, with free downvotes which will not diminish your SP/VP for the use of upvoting, all of that "ghost SP" can and will be used by people with automated systems for personal vendettas, general malfeasance, and sometimes even the intention for which it has been suggested, unrewarding spammers and conmen.

But I wouldn't expect it.

Although that said, i think this is probably the end of a girl who doesn't matter commenting with an opinion that doesn't matter, even if all the people who don't matter express it, when no one who matters cares, it feels pointless. But I am so grateful there are people like you who are still putting themselves out there and commenting, saying what so many may feel but may not feel empowered enough to say.

Well, you can always aspire to my place in the ecosystem. I say what I want, when I want, to whom I want, secure in the truth that I don't matter, I don't have enough SP for one of the major players to want to go out of their way and swat me down on a regular basis, I don't write about anything that they find particularly interesting one way or another, and so I avoid most of the calumny that comes with being outspoken.

I recognize and accept that I just don't matter – and I'm okay with that.

Once in a while I get annoyed enough to stir from my cave and wander out, bellow at the world for a while, and then get bored and go back to my cave where all my games, communications equipment, and everything that actually does pay me lives.

What I like to see the Steem blockchain turn into a useful platform or series of platforms? Sure. I like to see things work. Do I believe it's going to? At an essential, mechanical level it is actively geared against doing so – so no. And that's a shame.

Can I offer you some popcorn? I brought some just for this occasion.