What REALLY Goes On Behind The Scenes of The Daily Gems?
Since @dragonslayer109 decided to make this post and milk his bot votes by lying to everyone, I had to respond. I wish I had more time than I do, but I just noticed it and I've got to get to work soon...
A bit of background... I was featured in this hidden gems post by dragonslayer109. Go scan those posts... they'll come up again in just a minute.
I couldn't really hold my tongue any more after hearing so many authors watch his gems posts get paid hundreds of dollars a piece while they got nothing. After it happened to me I was a little pissed off and it led to my post, How Much Are Hidden Gems Worth?
In it, I explained that authors were receiving little or no benefit and he had been featuring authors who were well established and posts which were noticed.... Towards the end I also noted that:
In fact, six of the posts from the above list were just taken from a low-volume private post promotion channel on the RocketChat.
He commented on my post...
And of course, I was booted from the channel...
And now he has this post making himself out to be some kind of hero. Is this kid serious??
This is what really happened
Earlier another of his gems was posted to the same channel...
Oh, and another...
There is at least one other that was posted to the very same channel... but as I said... I have to go to work. I don't have time to track it down. I just want to make sure people don't buy his claims that he's some kind of martyr. He's looking more and more like an opportunist and a fraud.
I have no horse in the race, I'm taking no side, I'm just trying to understand where you are all coming from.
Rewind four weeks. So @steem-babe-xoxox gets >10,000$ for a lazy intro that makes up its lack in brains and sweat with a generous view of boob, while others like @steem-socrates type their fingers bloody for hours to make an awesome, deep, thoughtful post and are glad for every penny they get. Minnows find it unfair and voice their concerns. Dolphins defend the high payout for @steem-babe-xoxox. "Stop complaining. Don't feel so entitled. You only get the same opportunity, that's as far as 'fairness' goes here. You made five cents on that post, that is infinitely more than you ever made on Facebook! You are just envious because the whales are so generous". The Man writes an essay about how "fairness" is all in our heads.
Fast Forward to now. Along comes @hidden-gems-aggregator and provides visibility and exposure to @steem-socrates and others like him. Minnows thank him greatly; they see they are being read and followed; for some the "honor" to be featured is a drop of cold water on a parched throat: someone noticed them after all.
Dolphins attack the high payouts for @hidden-gems-aggregator because they are unfair because he (seemingly/allegedly) hardly put any work into it.
I can't be the only one who notices a logical disconnect here, and if I were less careful with my words, I'd call it a double standard.
With all you fine people here who are lightyears ahead of the average population in terms of intelligence, openmindedness, technical expertise, esoteric knowledge, political education and critical thinking, I find it astounding not many seem to see the irony: already, Steemit is a small mirror of the great whole. Instead of questioning the system as such, a dedicated scapegoat is found as a tangible "symbol" and placeholder for the preceived unfairness and tarred and feathered in public.
Since @hidden-gems-aggregator broke not a single of the ethical/moral "rules" of our sweet cozy little anarchy here, like those against spam and plagiarism, a new "rule" is invented on the fly, and @hidden-gems-aggregator clearly broke it: to share his SBD with @steem-socrates and the other authors he featured. Others started doing so out of their free will and it sort of became the thing to do, but it was never a "rule". And if it were made now, there would still be need for discussion about ex post facto law.
I can only imagine I'm missing something important, so here I am and confess my ignorance: what is this really about?
I just noticed this:
Do you just fraud me?!? Should I flag your comment for fraud now? Is that how this works?
Where's my pitchfork, let's burn us some witches!
</sarcasm>
Now this is style... I love it
This is a bit hard to follow... am I supposed to be @steem-socrates in this story? I'm certainly no dolphin. As I said many times before, I'm a jellyfish. :)
I'm not trying to come up with any sort of double standard. If I saw anybody else repeatedly milking upvote bots under false pretenses, I would call them out on it as well. I have done so in the past, and I will surely do it again. Whales are voting for him based on the assumption that he is providing a service to the authors whose posts he highlights and that his work benefits the platform. Both of those assumptions are false upon further examination. That information needs to be brought to light, and that's what I'm doing.
@bacchist, you are among the first I followed long before the follow function was implemented, when I needed a txt-file with comma-separated usernames to c&p into steemstream/steemviz. I've been respecting your style and writing since the first hour and agree with many of your opinions.
So don't take it the wrong way, please, when I point out you are, with your 10.9 MV, more than twice as powerful than I am and on rank 779 of the rich list at the time of my writing, making you literally a member of the upper 1% class, a "hero" in the steemd.com/distribution roster and thus a "dolphin".
I know you are a jellyfish. I am asking you why you are jelly, fish.
It has been made abundantly clear by the devs that the systemic "injustice" and extreme income disparity are an integral part of the game. In a sense, it even says so explicitly in the whitepaper. This is a lottery. If you win, great, if you lose, and you will lose most of the time, and most of the users will lose always - don't whine.
Please note: I am not making a moral or qualitative judgement. It breaks my heart as much as yours to see valuable content go mostly unnoticed while posts that gnaw away at your IQ when you just read them populate the "trending" feed.
All I am saying is that dragonslayer played after the rules of the system. The system is fundamentally broken and has been from the start. Hate the game, not the player.
Just like in the real world, the victims of the class warfare (this is what Steemit is, essentially, a market deliberately designed for inequality to enforce the most brutal competition) squander their energy fighting each other over the crumbs falling from the master's table, instead of working together towards a better system in which everyone sits at the same table.
THAT is the only reason I interjected. Our perfect little anarcho-society is repeating in time lapse the history of the "real world".
I'm not saying I am the Cassandra who predicted this...
I would like to point you to my latest post which is highly relevant to the "fairness" debate, but you don't like people posting links to their posts in the comments of your blog in general, since they are all spam.
@bacchist mate, I don't see the problem.
If @dragonslayer109 is linking to other posts that is fine. That is what the internet is about.
If he was copy/pasting the articles of others it would be a different matter and I would agree with the condemnation but that is not what seems to be happening.
I would be flattered if people linked to my posts or website or recommended my work to others? How is this different.
Also just because he also takes suggestions from people on the chat does not mean he doesn't do the work to find them himself too.
I spend a lot of time using both methods myself. It would be just stupidity not to use other people's suggestions too.
Frankly mate, unless I'm misunderstanding something I think this is a gross over-reaction to something that is of potential benefit to people.
oh, you said everything I feel in best words possible! :)
Just want to point out that the votes on this post are from @gavvet and bots... Don't take that as some expression of community support of this point of view.
@thecryptofiend I respect your opinion, however I disagree with your opinion that what he is doing is "something that is of potential benefit to people." Unless you're going to fixate on the potential to help... in my previous post, I started building a case that it does not provide any actual benefit. The fact that it is not providing a benefit is far more important than the idea that it could hypothetically provide some benefit.
Whether it provides no tangible benefit or not - how is linking to someone else's post a problem?
Like I said the whole internet is based on the principle of linking.
How is it any different from what for example Google does? They make money off linking to other people's work.
Nobody is rushing to have Google remove their articles - quite the opposite - people complain if they are not included.
In what way is this harming you?
Reading through all this drama, this has been my question also:
Thanks for making that point.
If someone in the community is being less than honest about their contribution to the network and the value they are brining, I just note it and move on. Those who try too hard will be found out eventually and in no way that I can see am I being "harmed" by someone else doing something which might be considered gaming the system.
Whoever flagged this should explain themselves. Thanks.
https://steemd.com/tx/b96aa1af010dea3e1d4c019f0febd461b63989fd
Thanks! I figured it out quickly and he posted soon after but still thanks.
slander and direct attack of a person gets flagged this is now to posts of direct attack against my privacy . if you have an issue with the flag please go to steemitabuse-appeals thank you or contact me directly on steemitchat
Isn't the easy solution to pay out the SBD from the Daily Gem posts to the featured gem authors? Was very surprised to see that you didn't offer that up in your rebuttal.
Also, to be clear, truth is a defense against slander. What portion of this article and what evidence that he presented is not true? Thanks.
I am just reading all of the posts. If it is slander then attack his points and the things he pointed out. If you do that and can prove he is wrong then I'd gladly buy into the "slander" concept. If you don't do that much and you flag him and say he is slandering you. then in fact it would be you slandering him. You need to show how he is slandering you. If what he has stated is incorrect, show us. I am interested. I respect @bacchist and I differ on a number of philosophical ideologies with him, but he seems to have a very sharp mind.
Yet I've also looked at some of your hidden gems over the past month. I didn't look as closely as @bacchist and I certainly was never featured in one of them. That is not my motivation.
All I really care about is truth. If someone slanders you then by all means call slander, but you need to support such an accusation or that is slander.
This is not slander.
He posted picture evidence, he didn't make a wild speculation or claim. Downvoting this post for being objective is not fair.
Please just pay out the SBD earned to authors, you keep the SP, everyone wins and everyone is happy. This isn't too much to ask.
@dragonslayer109 I think you should reconsider the flag on the post. I know from reading the comments that @bacchist hasn't given the 100% truth here but two wrongs don't make a right. You shouldn't be flagging when you're the topic of the post, it's a bias that isn't cool.
I have been honest about the substance of this post. I left out that I was eventually brought back into the chat channel... after the owner of the channel questioned why I had been kicked out. Because I didn't want to get into all that, really. I guess I could have left it out completely, now that I think about it... I was a bit rushed earlier, because I had to go to work.
yeah, sometimes it may pay off to take a breath and wait until there is time to think through what you want to say. I've been guilty of rushing in where angels fear to treat more than once.
I still stand by everything I said. I don't think it's dishonest at all.
I upvoted this, even though I disagree with it. It has been flagged, and buried it along with the comments. I think the comments make excellent points, and I would urge @dragonslayer109 to remove his flag even though he feels personally attacked.
Upvoted as I do not agree with the flag
What's sad is all he has to do is say "I'm an aggregator and I realize people are incentivized to like posts they think will be big, so mine get upvotes instead of the authors within. So like other aggregators I have decided to pay out the SBD generated from my Daily Hidden Gems to the authors inside".
He doesn't even need to apologize--he may not have realized what he was doing is considered unfair as steemit ethics are in their infancy and we learn more every day. All he needs to do is slightly change his behavior and all is forgiven instantly.
He saves face and keeps the SP. but instead he lies about his process and shows no interest in paying out the SBD, so we have no choice but to flag his posts until he changes his mind.
I said this yesterday and I will repeat. Aggregators are important and will be even moreso when the site grows. Thousands and possibly millions of people pumping out content, and the best work needs to come to the forefront somehow. But using your reputation and people's economic greed via curation rewards to rack up nearly 1k a day on no work while featured authors get a fraction of that is not behavior we should encourage.
I have no interest in shunning dragonslayer from the community, only wish to help him do a better and more ethical job. His voice and reach added to great authors can only be a good thing. Please just do it ethically and fairly.
I check all channels for posts as I am trying to get the best posts in my hidden gems . links sent to me dont always make it into the hidden gems. I get a lot of spam of posts that people link in my direct channel ... If i want to help some people out then allow me to do so. my recent post was to explain what i do in my pick not to milk the bots
Well this type of behavior, to lie about how much "effort", 8-10 hours, you put into collecting the right kind of posts, is deplorable. This type of duplicity is not what I want to have. I will not be voting for him anymore, despite him having featured one of my posts. I can see this a less than honest person, given the contradictory information. They just need to watch the chat room and pick the posts in there... not even going through the "new" feed.
There is a great problem in Steemit right now, with people focusing on the financial incentive to just jump on the advertised "make-money" bandwagon that Steemit offers. This behavior is related to that. Steemit is supposed to be about curating meaningful valuable content, with the bonus of be rewarded for those efforts. If someone is just given the links... and claiming they spend 8 hours each day to find them... that is not honest community behavior and should not be supported.
I have written about the intent for meaningful quality content in the white paper, and how people should not be focused primarily on making money, but on helping to make Steemit a success by helping quality content become successful, and not simply jumping onto cult-of-personality popular content to ride their upvotes to some SBD and SP, either. 95% of the new posts are low quality fodder from people just trying to make some money without any effort and quality content creation, being opportunists like you say. This needs to change or the quality of Steemit will fall and so will its success, making it not attractive in the future.
Please consider reading what I have to say, as it is important to improve the quality of SteemIt and the content that is being created and curated: Steemit Succeeds if We Make it Succeed - Analysis to Help Yourself and Steemit Grow in Quality. I want more people to understand this and share it. I have shared it on FB. The upvotes are not required, and please only do so if the content is of value and appreciated, as I do with other posts I read.
This issue of low quality content flooding the Steemit platform needs to be addressed, and the importance of curating quality content as well. I fear for the future of Steemit. I invested money to buy into SP so that I could curate better quality content, and not simply the "popular" content that already has following . I hope more people will understand this responsibility to up their game and the quality of the community.
Thanks you for sharing what has been done here. It relates to the poor attitude and effort of many in the community who just try to make money and don't put Steemit and quality first.
Take care. Peace.
^ this
There is definitely money in this kind of consolidation/curation. @gavvet has done pretty well out of it too, among others.
I can't complain though. Since I was featured in dragonslayers ($332 and counting) post earlier today, I've received a whole 1 Upvote, 1 comment, and 1 subscriber, and my post is up to a whopping 6 dollars. I'm RICCHHHH!
And he has to scroll through spam for hours to find these "gems". He said it himself, on the internets, so it must be true.
Seriously though, I think part of the problem is the rewards incentive, which I keep bringing up, but the issue is not going away. People are incentivised to vote for "sure shots", rather than doing any genuine, sincere curation.
Look at the discrepancy between the Upvotes and actual interaction on dragonslayer109s posts. His account gets Upvotes - that doesn't mean his posts are actually read.
There's a reason so many people aren't happy to be "featured" on his posts - They simply aren't being promoted or rewarded.
There's only sure shots because whales upvote the same people predictably. Steem lives and dies with how forethoughtful the whales are with their votes and SP; making an effort to spread out their votes and actively curate new content from new authors is key.
This is unfortunately the typical outcome for most authors.
And another development. Apparently @dragonslayer109 does indeed share out, some of the rewards, to some people, sometimes.
He has now begrudgingly started to offer to share some of the SBD rewards with the authors whose work he features. But, much like a store that offers mail in rebates he is putting the burden on the authors to track him down and request a share of the proceeds. He is hoping that people don't actually do that.... and the language in his hidden gems post implies that it's somehow illegitimate for authors to request it... "If you feel you need some of the rewards, come find me"... it's a really weaselly way to go about it.
The subtext here is that you snooze, you lose. It's on you as the featured author to make the request in a timely manner.
It's JUST like those mail in rebates... terms and conditions may apply... shady.
Coming soon: Drinkzya's response to the bacchist and dragonslayer109 debate ???
@bacchist
telling the public that he has kicked you out of the channel is only half of the truth.
@dragonslayer109 had indeed kicked you out of that channel, but addet you back a couple of hours later.
Just wanted the public to know that, before taking any sides here!
That's true. He also removed his flag of my previous post. I included it to show that he was a mod in the channel.
And from what I've been told, it was entirely his decision to bring me back. ;)