RE: HF21: What Makes Steem Valuable?
I'll reiterate what I said early on about what I consider to be a fatal flaw in this system. There is no recourse when someone downvotes your content "for personal reasons." Some sort of dispute resolution function to counter this needs to be put into place or this whole system is going to continue to struggle, for reasons that you've highlighted here and more. Maybe it's a function that only top witnesses could serve, or maybe it would be somewhat automated. I'm not a programmer but I think I'm pretty decent at seeing how systems of rules and the incentives they generate will manifest. I knew accounts would abuse the flagging function right away after I started using Steemit and my first post got flagged for no actual violation, and so I saw that there needed to be a systemic disincentive to use flagging unjustly. Obviously a clear and objective set of rules would need to be posted about what constitutes an acceptable downvote. There currently is no way to make such accounts experience pain for their indiscretions, while there is a very easy and effective way to punish content creators, even if they did nothing wrong. People really don't like it when their livelihood can be destroyed by a simple click of a button by some asshole who simply doesn't like you. That imbalance of power is just plain unacceptable and frankly, it's not viable.
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I hear you, and you’ve made some important points, but just as some people won’t adopt Steem because they don’t want their potential rewards to go away or their post to be hidden, they also don’t want to see total crap content earning hundreds of dollars from the rewards pool. Both create a “That’s not fair!!!” response. The original white paper was clear about the super linear curve and rewards being like a lottery. People didn’t get comfortable with that and preferred something more equitable. So we got a linear “fair” curve and many of those who could exploit it for short term gains over value creation for the network did so. Eventually others had to follow along with similar behavior or get left behind as their Steem Power stake diminished compared to those who work the system.
I agree though, the imbalance of power here is a big challenge. Dan Larimer had some now famous run-ins with other powerful accounts (taking bernie’s reputation very negative, for example), but ultimately it didn’t matter because the system couldn’t resolve the power imbalance and Dan left instead of working to fix it.
Maybe it’s unfixable. Maybe the solution is Steem engine tokens or SMTs allowing communities to build their own interfaces with their own rules. If so, maybe STEEM could just become a really useful cryptocurrency and all rewards not related to securing it via block production could go away. I imagine that would piss of just about everyone, but it’s an interesting thought experiment.