RE: Singing In The Shower
It's entirely a result of economic incentives of the platform and the behavior it encourages. With the current economic scheme in this ecosystem (namely Linear Rewards), it basically compels investors to view their voting rewards as returns.
If only it were haejin or myself etc they'd be next to nothing to worry about as it's easily rectified with a couple of downvotes. But as things stand right now, every sp that is delegated towards most bid bots are effectively taking 100%+ of their voting rewards. Eg, SP holder sells a $100 vote for $120 to a buyer who gets a $100 vote and a bit of exposure. That way the investor gets 120% of the value of every single vote they cast. I don't know what the exact market price is but this shouldn't be too far from it.
So how widespread is this? It's not just a few whales here and there (including early miners and the largest account owned by an individual on the entire network). Last I heard it was about 30% of all SP. If you take away the accounts owned by Steemit Inc, it effectively means 60% of all voting SP are basically clawing back all their voting rewards and more, that is proportionately more than me even if I own darksaint. 60%.
Self voting, bid bots, circle jerking, delegation markets etc are all manifestations of the same phenomena: SP holders want to claw back the value of their votes. It has gotten to the point where larger stakeholders see votes going to external parties to be essentially wasted and to view their votes as legitimate returns on their own stake. This is doubly harmful to to the platform, not only because if everyone clawed back their own vote rewards it'll defeat the purpose of this place, but also because every one of these methods of clawing back vote rewards is indiscriminate towards content quality.
Why did this happen? Is it because 60% of us are morally reprehensible and stupid to the point where we're collectively self destructive? Not really. As I hinted it has everything to do with economic incentives that dictate behavior and very little to do with individual actors themselves. I believe linear rewards is the problem. Before linear, your votes aren't equally valuable on all content so you can't just vote or sell on posts that weren't popular and expect to make a profit. It meant that any abuse can only take place on posts that have very large payouts which makes policing them a much easier task. Now under linear, the voting market can take off because selling 100 1% votes is as profitable as selling 1 100% vote.
Yes there are benefits to having linear rewards, but I think by now it's obvious that the cons outweigh the pros. 60% of SP (discouting Steemit Inc) are being economically compelled to take part in something that most of us know is bad for the everyone, but not taking part in it while everyone else is is even worse for the individual abstaining. The economic incentives needs adjusting and behavior will follow suit. Under a good economic system every person rationally pursuing their self interests will benefit the whole. Under a problematic one pursuit of self interest harms the whole and disgruntled parties start accusing others for not being moral heroes.
I'm certainly no moral hero but hopefully I've persuaded you that, unfortunately, this isn't a problem of me or even a handful of bad actors. The outlook is a lot bleaker than that.
So what happened with me? I own about 0.26% of Steem through investing pretty much my entire savings. I also happen to respect good content and therefore, I'm one of the last people who wants this platform in the state that it is right now where large stakeholders are economically compelled to view their votes as investment returns in a very self defeating fashion for the entire platform. It affects me adversely far more than you, and notwithstanding being unsatisfied with an investment that has gotten to 1.2m, it also caused me to lose 3m in a span of months, perhaps partly due to this bad economic ecosystem that promotes garbage bot bought content on trending. I just can't afford to take the risk of investing in Steem and not take back my share along with 60% of SP holders. Believe me I'd tried for the first 8 months on here, but 0.26% abstaining isn't going to help anyone and just costs me in returns forgone.
I still enjoy writing a few jokes and interacting a bit here which is the only reason my behavior is conspicuous. So with economic incentives as they are, if I'm singled out doing what most others are, it'll be rational for me to just delegate entirely to a bid bot, through anonymous accounts if need be, but I think that's definitely not the solution we're looking for.
The good news is that this is fixable. The solution? Readjust the rewards curve away from linear and perhaps introduce higher curation rewards. The rewards curve doesn't have to be as extreme as before, but it's obvious that linear is harmful. Right at the start it does mean that the multi vote buying posts will make even more (therefore their sellers) which means a sledgehammer (maybe Steemit Inc) would have to come down on them. But it'll no longer be wack a mole as high rewards posts will be the only way to abuse rewards and they'll be obvious. So now you can't just mindlessly sell small votes or bot 10,000 comments and upvote them 0.01c each and your big votes are getting scrutinized.
This in conjunction with higher curation will mean that the best way to maximize returns is no longer to vote in a way that's indiscriminate of content quality. In a nutshell, a n^>1 curve and higher curation rewards forces all potential abuse to be highly obvious (only high payout posts are 'profitable' in a voting market), and encourages voting behavior that is competing over speculated future popularity of a post which may reflect content quality or at least not be content agnostic like all current strategies to maximise returns (eg vote selling or self voting).
I've talked to people in private about this, although most people view it as a problem, I'm not getting a lot of convergence around the solution, there's a lot of people with competing interests filling the debate with poor justifications (eg bot owners) and it's not the #1 priority for devs (which unfortunately implies there are bigger problems than this and they're probably right). I'm relatively exhausted trying to voice these ideas in private with people and figure that while I have a lot to lose, it'll be up to people who have a lot more than me to lose to adopt a solution, perhaps what I've suggested, or something else. Suffice to say that everyone upstairs knows about this, and there are too many, rather than too few voices there.
You're a very passionate person idikuci, now that you've had a glimpse at the bigger picture I'm actually interested to hear if you agree with my solution or what your rational take is on this.
just want to add that despite all the negative things I said above, I still think Steem is a worthwhile investment
Not one bot will get you 94% return, not even close. The best ones you'll get nearer to 80% that's if you're lucky because they're up and down. Your performance is truly impressive and I applaud your system, you're better than a bot. I like you, I like the stuff that you do I know you support funny to a degree, I certainly wouldn't be where I am without your support early on, it's nice knowing a whale has your support.
You think with you 0.26% of steem you can't change this place? You must be in finance because you certainly can't see the wood from the trees. By your same logic #comedyopenmic shouldn't exist. With 24,000 SP DJ and I pulled a rabbit, we created something people really enjoy and we hope is making steemit a better place. But who cares about that right? You can do a lot with your SP other than to reward yourself.
You claim 60% of people do what you're doing, if that was the case steem would crash and burn. I could go through and create a pretty graph and prove your figures are wrong but we both know they are. I don't mean the steem price I mean the blockchain, this would be a ghost town. But If your goal was to just get a return on investment, create 1 post and upvote it 100%, then just comment on that post with a "." and upvote that 100% every 2.4hrs. Hell, I could create a bot for you to do that.
You say you're an investor in steem but you're not. Not really. You invested in steem in the start and now you justify sucking it dry because there are some guys who are bigger than you, well I'm sure you've been in a locker room before... There's always someone bigger. Steem isn't just a crypto currency, it's a platform. The guy who created DTube invested and continues to invest in steem, the Dapps coming out, they're investments in steem. You just bought some steem. You want a bigger picture: Steem at $100. You personally could be responsible for increasing the steem price by $20 through an investment to create the next DTube or Dmania or Appics or Busy.org or...
We've been down this road before, we both know you're wrong, but you want to get to 1mil steem to be able to defend yourself from attacks. But invest in something, and you can build an army to defend you. Don't want to build it yourself? Fine then go find something and delegate. Don't just suck steem dry,
Contribute!!
Delegate 20,30,40% of your SP (Hell anything!) to a project that makes steemit a better place. Help Steem, this is platform where communities thrive and individuals bleed out. Help create a community and when the 1.2mil wolf knocks on your door 1000 people answer. That is your protection. That is how you invest in Steem, if you believe in it.
On efficiency of bots: my understanding is most buyers pay a little more than the value of the votes they buy for the exposure which yields over 100%. This lower bound is auto correcting as it's the risk of steem price dropping in 7 days vs the benefits of exposure. Even at 80%, it seems like a pretty good deal for doing absolutely nothing. They're also perfectly efficient in managing their voting power, which means delegations to bidding bots drain the voting pool more than any manual voter.
60% of all people is a complete misquote. I said I've read it's around 30% of SP and rising. Which equates to ~60% if you discount the stake controlled by Steemit Inc. Whatever the aggregate amount of SP in all known bots is, it's a staggering proportion of the entire pool and a problem. This doesn't include other forms of clawing back rewards including self votes, vote swaps, delegation market etc.
All this has a negative impact on Steem price. A price I'm paying as long as I'm here. It's something that can be mitigated by maximizing returns through clawing back rewards, just like with the other 30% (realistically more as it's not just bots) SP. As I argued, this is due to a flawed rewards curve.
I don't owe you any more than any other investor/miner/user in terms of votes. What is the incentive for me to personally forgo more returns than the other 30% of all SP out there? The system can't work if it requires the magnanimity of certain actors. Almost nobody is invested in crypto for altruistic reasons. The incentives must align profit maximization with behavior that's best for the the system as a whole and linear does not do this.
If I'm wrong, why is it that we both know that just throwing my SP into a voting bot is an option that's available to me? Again, the system fails if the economic incentives rely on the voluntary generosity of its actors. It thrives when actions that maximize self interest directly also maximizes the interests of the entire platform. You are basically just asking me to be more generous. Even if I oblige, which I won't, it doesn't help given the current economic ecosystem.
Putting it bluntly, all things being equal it's stupid of me to invest in an economic ecosystem where 30% of SP is just mindlessly clawing back its stake through rewards. But it's even more stupid to find yourself invested there, pay the price (through a shitty trending page, bad content discovery, therefore lower steem price) and forgo these returns. It's also unreasonable for others to ask me to forgo them. When you're not antagonizing me directly, can you see the economics of this?
If the economic incentives are fixed (I blame linear, but i'm open to other suggestions), I'm more than happy to support a lot of other content as I had for 8 months before. But when 30%+ and growing of SP are maximizing their returns, I can't afford/am unwilling to do otherwise as I'll just incur a personal loss for nothing.
While not directly relevant, most (all?) of the projects you listed are heavily reliant on immense delegations and are not without their own controversy/problems/abuse.
I think this is a crappy way of thinking. I was raised to lead by example. This is not a leaders mindset. It reminds me of someone who says that a specific contest they stopped running was costing them. Costing what? Self-votes (or lack thereof). They weren't losing money or sending via transfers. It was upvotes.
I'm pretty sure the upvote recharges so it can't possibly cost you.
I've never invested anything I can't afford to lose, so if you have to upvote yourself 94% because the struggle is so real I'm sorry but you're failing somewhere.
It must really suck to be a millionaire.
You still don't believe, let me give you an example.
@groovatti joined steem specifically to participate in #comedyopenmic.
Read his #comedyopenmic entry
Now imagine 1000 new people of this calibre on steem, that is what will make you a $100 Millionaire, that's your fucking economic incentive, but you prefer sit in a corner gratifying yourself.
I can't in good conscience allow you to continue doing this without opposition.
Can't say I didn't try convince you to change... twice now.
I'm going to put my 2 cents in even though I know some may agree/disagree with me. I think that anyone who put in that much of their own money into this system and is not breaking any rules of said system is not doing anything wrong. I agree that it may not be sustainable forever, but I would probably do the same if it we're me.
Even though @trafalgar is making a lot, he has also helped minnows like myself a lot too.i never got any cryptocurrency for posting on Myspace, Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, or anything else. Steemit is not perfect, but it is at least a start. I can't really blame him for doing what so many others are doing as well. It's like the speed limit is set, but everyone is speeding. If you are the only one slowing down, what's the point? With that said, I also greatly appreciate @dj123 and @idikuci for what they have been doing with upvoting my posts and promoting comedy posts here as well. I see both sides.
I don't want to do this, I want it to be like back then when I'll mostly browse through the contents and vote what I think is promising. That was when the economic incentives (particularly the rewards curve) worked better.
But I can't afford to not do this if 30% of SP is effectively taking all their voting rewards back and seeing it as part of investment returns. I feel I have to take part now too because this is effectively priced into the investment. And when there's this much SP behaving this way, it's no longer a problem of bad actors, it's a problem of economic incentives within this ecosystem.
I much prefer it if no one or very few people did this, but as an investor it's not rational to fight against economic incentives. So things as they stand I can't miss out.
Not to say there aren't people choosing to not take part. Some are so rich they don't care, some don't really have much interest invested so don't care either, and some are genuinely just stand up moral champions. I'm none of them. But this place can only thrive if it didn't solely rest on the actions of moral champions or people who aren't investors so don't share their interests. And as you can see it's a losing fight. Change the economic incentives (linear rewards, low curation), change behavior.
So much going on here:
What do you mean by that? Why should the acceptability of your actions be any different? Is 'investor' shorthand for 'someone who makes ethically problematic decisions in order to maximise return'? I know this sounds crazy, but you can make choices that lead to you making less money.
Yes, this isn't just about you and your behaviour. But unless you need to maximise your returns here due to some external circumstance that places you under duress, you can choose to do the right, if slightly less profitable thing. As an individual, all this 'economic incentives' talk is just an excuse - a convenient lie that people tell themselves.
And if you are going to slavishly follow profit to exclusion of your moral autonomy, at least think about the longer term! I don't know if you've noticed, but not everyone is happy with the way the reward pool is distributed. Are you confident that your behaviour is helping attract new users who are not spammy scamming grifters, phishers, or economic rent-seekers? Because if you are interested in the long term gain to be had from your considerable stake, you'd be doing everything in your power to attract and keep quality account-holders.
I get that it's a big problem. I can even see how some of it happened - it's a 'problem of many hands':
Nonetheless, we all play a part in what is going on here, and that you play a bigger part than most is the price for owning roughly the 40th most valuable account. You could buy a house in Sydney with your SP. But that will only continue to be true if the steem network doesn't fail.
No one is saying you can't make some decent coin. Give yourself a couple of 100% self-upvotes per day (or equivalent thereof) - no one will begrudge you that if you put that accumulated wealth to work doing something worthwhile.
You don't take any responsibility for your own weakness. The system made you steal from the commons to feather your own nest. You and your ilk are the main reason why this system is dying, are you not? Don't blame the system not having the checks and balances, blame yourselves for being greedy thieves. This place has so much potential but it's stunk like rotting blubber the moment I walked in.
Naijasinglegirl (Nigerian), Gabriel Marcotti (Italian) and Trafalgar (Chinese? Australian? Fuck I don’t know) have one thing in common: having no idea how they inspired a forever unknown internet user into enjoying satirical contents so much he gave up many, if not everything to become one.
Steemit, as I was promised was going to be everything worthwhile. The first few hours were hell, gave up, gave it a try next day and still left unsatisfied. Kept at it, in and out, mostly when bored and then I stumbled on a post talking about “looks” with the catching hook being somewhere along the lines “paying no attention to the one asking if “looks mattered” because he/she wasn’t even good looking” and from that day till now I haven’t missed a day on this platform. Because it really was going to be worthwhile.
Not only were your content among the 0.0001% one could read from the first paragraph to the last, you were also a big supporter of minnows most especially through @traf. Rewarding creative juices that pumped in smart replies each time you dropped a GIF. You were one of the very few man. The very few.
In February, someone dropped a link on a Whatsapp group I belonged to and lo and behold my Traffy was the subject of a rewardpoolrape abuse. There was no thinking twice when I fired the below shots…
Comfirming darksaint belongs to you will be among the top 3 most traumatizing things to happen to me this year and we are not even past April. You fcuked up man. Your defenders, witnesses and all. For what? Dollars? Jesus. Knowledge is virtue. You know that and yet, you fell for a piece of paper. The betrayal from a smart being is the stone cold act of twisting a knife through the heart of a simple minded fellow from the back.
Even if money is your ultimate, it is shameful for a guy as smart as you to chose the short term over long term. If intellect had heaven and hell, you’d end up in the hottest chamber. You know why? Because you know better! Haejin and his gay buddy rancho don’t hide theirs. They do it and say suck it to the faces of poor steemians. Yet their activities are purer than yours. Why? Because you hide behind the once built wall of defense made of little, but mighty in number steemians to fuck steem pool in the arse and come out in bright day light to drop stupid gifs and have a laugh without us knowing your rape section is what really gives you the only amusement you got in life.
You’ve shattered hopes and beliefs left and if you refuse to divert from this part of perdition, a desert awaits where berniesanders will have a field day making your investments weep for a total withdrawal and flight away from this platform because there will be no little fishes to nudge the surge of steem’s number one shark.
Goodluck mate. I wish you what you wish yourself.
Okay, god knows that my two cents on this subject may barely qualify as half a cent. The idea of economy incentive is one that I understand however it's not the be all end all on steemit. You see steemit power will only increase with new people joining in and the existing people posting more and becoming more interactive. The idea is you can't grow a community by locking it down. That's how communism worked and SPOILER ALERT communism failed. The quote "You gotta spend money to earn money" Didn't become popular for no reason. Take @comedyopenmic, @Curie, @OCD and all of those community-based initiatives for example. if everyone thought of what you're saying about economy incentive none of those movements would have existed and few on their long LONG list of people they supported would have remained without their support. I myself started posting so little and been following your posts around and had notifications set on for whenever you post because upvotes on your gif+comment posts is worth more there than any post on MY own wall of blogs. I get little less than a dollar for a comment on your posts while I barely reach 0.30 on mine (Including my own upvote of 0.12) Unless I'm doing a COM entry or my posts get a share from @punchline (More on that later), this whole incentive leaves the community at a stale base that barely moves, limiting the growth of different accounts, Comedians and writers such as me and many people around. Also it limits your own growth. If no one continuously invest in steemit it reaches the profit cap, and with people knowing that it will soon reach a level of departing the site, leading the cap to get lower, you see it in many countries under the same system.
Starting up I was helped by #Comedyopenmic, @Idikuci and @DJ123, they didn't leave me out to dry because of the "economical incentive", 2 days ago I was able to send in 20SBD to COM's main account along with my Friend @yesaye. Had I kept chasing your posts around I wouldn't have gotten there, I wouldn't have authored the comedy guide post I did 9 days ago with yesaye, and we both wouldn't be working on our second to post today. back to @punchline, he shared some of my posts which both freed me and encouraged to make more work, including stuff outside of comedy. The reason that matters is now I'm also able to help out with other people. However and thanks to the current "Incentive" we could be hitting a cab in some time. with the support we got from people like roelandp and thedelegator we are able to expand our prize pool, add few ones in and get more people involved. It leads to more work to be created, and more people to join in (I personally know 7 people who are eagerly waiting for their approval to join in)
You could talk about all the economy incentives you want but one part that remains intriguing in the whole process that keeps people coming in and that part is people reaching out and looking to grow the community (Which I'm not really sure If you qualify as part of that anymore) and bridge the space between people that will soon give and creators on the site. Look at your own numbers, they're not exactly growing if you look on the overall and same thing applies to a lot of those other whales. and what your "Many voices" are doing is really going to be the doom of this site.
So no if what you're saying is true steemit isn't a "worthwhile investment", based solely on what you said, it's a ticking time bomb. Much like my country Iraq (Which had similar thinking) During Saddam time.
I'd like to resteem this comment!
I really hope I'm not being mocked here xD
If I was here to mock, it would be aimed at the post owner, or at least his big brother.
This is a storming statement regarding what this place is about and the mindset we should be approaching it with.
Well done you ☺️
Thanks.
And yes aholes, I'm a generous dick. So what huh
i'm still tough alright don't mess with me u c*nt plebs
Bitch I'm still mad at you for donating my gift of 20 SBD to COM, which was meant specifically for you to either withdraw, or Power Up.
Now I understand why you did it; it was YOURS to do with whatever you wanted to, the moment it reached your wallet.
Hahahaha Amir you mothafuckin', ultimate, self-less goat fucker you
Well played.
<3
Two wrongs don't make a right.
You should have turned that into a post! This commment needs a resteem!
Near perfect summary of the problems of the economic ecosystem!