What I had to say on MSP-Waves

in #minnowsupport6 years ago (edited)

Policing the system with downvotes means punishing the minnows who bought the upvotes from another minnow who pays for delegation off a whale.

So downvoting these minnows doesn't stop that whale getting the money. In fact it just screams scam. Because these are ordinary social media users spending their money on self promotion and they won't get their money back when they get punished for purchasing the service.

Charging for upvotes and delegation is actually what's encouraging users to use the platform this way because they don't have the incentive to care about the platform.

Minnows don't have the same incentives as whales and dolphins to make the platform attractive to investors. So you can't change a minnows mind about spending the money they spent on upvotes or delegation on their own shitposts. If that's the best thing whales have to offer that's what they're going to go for and nobody can blame them for that.

So here's my solution for all the free market lovers. Simple solution for those with the power is to offer cheaper rates. Of course minnows spending $50 a week are going to try to make that money back and the current rates don't even allow that. To compete with whales offering delegations EMPLOY SOME MINNOWS who are going to use their delegation responsibly. Use steemreports to check that they're voting according to your standards.

As for people selling upvotes I don't agree with it benefiting your investments but it is a free market so I accept that. What I would say could be better would be to pay for attention rather than automated upvotes and I would hope maybe steemit inc could help with this by disabling notifications of transfers in the wallet so that features can be developed enabling users to put a price on their attention.

As for the whales policing the system the tools and incentives are there already. If you're invested in STEEM you don't need any added incentive to "police" the system. Any policing of the system is for the purpose of making the STEEM network more attractive to potential investors and users. A whale with 500'000 SP gains $5'000 every time the price of STEEM goes up by 1c.

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@beanz I'm only ~6wks in. I have invested a fair amount of time to try & learn the system. Posted a little, but I'm not a "blogger" or really an "author". Mostly I tried doing the "reviewer" thing to try & learn about good posts & it is easier to earn 0.001 for a comment than spending 2-3hrs on a post to earn the same.

I get what you are saying @fred777bear but for me it is just writing practice. I have a lot of subjects that I am researching just because life is so freakin' fascinating....and I have always dreamed of being a writer. Now I am. :-)

In the beginning, I did Upvote my content because no one else did. I stopped when I read that it was discouraged. I may still do it just because I do feel that my content is worth at least one Upvote. :-)

I have used the pay-for-a-vote "services" (mostly bellyrub) because I saw other successful writers do the same. I usually got the same return that I invested, and maybe 10 - 20 more votes because of it. I just figured that was how post were more visible thru Upvotes.

I wish there was a more engaging dialogue, but I have been on Steemit for less than a year. Maybe over time I will meet more like-minded folks?

In the end, I appreciate posts like these because that tells me that folks want real content. There is hope.

Thanks for reply.
I think for every "performer/actor/writer" there should be 100 or 1000 viewers. For that to work the "audience" need a reason to hang around, and telling them "get on stage" is not going to work.

Not everyone is a 'performer' some are consumers, and they need to be welcomed / embraced / encouraged as just that. they are perhaps more important than 'actors'. else it is just a crowd of a 1000 shouting over each other, & never heard.

if audience is not here it means the authors will produce less (due to less viewers) and the spiral is downwards IMHO

I think that in various communities on Steemit that is happening already (like with the "homesteader" community). I think the hardest to deal with are the folks that Upvote or comment on something that obviously wasn't read. My hope is that over time, we can weed out the people that are just in it to make coin. We will see!

Actually I think the 'weeding' is already happening......they come..they see...they leave

@yoginiofoz I was thinking about your comment last night re "weeding out".
While I agree that would be a good idea, it is 100% opposite to the "marketing" for steem.
it's the $$ that drag people in here. Then we "weed out"..... I'm not sure how that works.
Seems complicated and self defeating in some way to me.

I appreciate your perspective @fred777bear. The weeding out that I was talking about was just the people that flit from one concept, idea, or sales gimmick to the next. There is so much to distract these days, and it does not lend itself to anything real or concrete if we cannot spend time researching and pondering life's many questions.

I have been searching and will continue to search until my last breath (and hopefully beyond, God willing) for the answers to life's riddles.

I just notice that we are losing the ability to see and grasp the subtleties of life, which is so rich and diverse. Nature loses when we forget to go outside and just be.

You are correct. And as I mentioned I'm not sure if steem is a get rich quick concept or they plan for a long term thing.
so far they are saying the later, but pursuing actions that indicate the former IMHO.

Hello, I really like your post and what your saying (not sure I'm informed enough to know if what your saying will work - but it seem like your ideas are worth a go or consideration at the least).

I agree the pay bot thing isn't the best.

As a minnow with average posts (won't say they are sht :) - as i spend several hours doing a post and try to improve each time) my steemit experience kindda goes like this:

  1. I spend several hours making my post and hitting the button (already spent days putting source together) - I'm slow with computers
  2. takes me an hour just to edit and clean it up -I'm trying to improve my english/writing/presentation skills.
  3. I try to get some attention of curators, or followers to get some votes.
  4. I Get like 20, 30 votes up to 100 votes, and I earn 7 cents
  5. I watch the 7 cents get less (yes cause price of steem varies, but more likely that paid for bot is being applied again bot bidders, spreading the share.
  6. I give up and try to experiment with the bots
  7. I make like $1 a post (after bot fees)
  8. I watch while people who just post a pic with unedited txt or refer a utube link (probably took them 5 mins, make $2 a post)

If I had published my book as e-pub like I was going to do, I would have made allot more money.

For me though Its not so much about the money, I love the idea of crypto and trying to wrestle control/money just away from the few and give to the many.. and I really hope Steemit is a platform of fairness. I really wish the whalebot thing wasn't the only way I could make something.

At some point I'd like to help make things better. I will follow you and if one day you want help with an idea please let me know and I'll try.

It's people like you that give hope. Please keep up the fight.

Cheers

@lordnigel great comment .. I am with you this is my experience also.. I listened to @beanz on discord and she said many of the things she wrote here .. so glad she made this post.. she is a great representative for us minnows.. thank you.
Also one BIG shout out to @minnowsupport we love you!

Yes I buy and occasional upvote not to make tons of money ... after curation probably 20 cents on a dollar..

I have put in effort and got noticed a few times by curators... but generally doing this for fun now and really the fail factor is there for most new minnows.

Think of it a Whale A can post something ordinary...Whale B, C, and D have bots that can upvote it with never reading and it trends. How much out of the money pool is that? So I am fine with someone making 20 cents .. Like me.. Lol.. no offense to anyone .. like I say I am here for the fun of it or I would leave due to the imbalance currently being experienced and I am thinking it will al work out eventually even for people like me that are at the bottom and have no techy skills.

When I say shit posts I mean anything can be considered a "shitpost" by somebody, even my own (which is evident from the Bernie flag) The posts getting flagged are comments with a few words. I actually don't consider them shitposts personally but I can see why making $25 each is considered overvalued. At the same time, they paid for the votes just like somebody with a better post did, so both curations were inauthentic in my opinion.

Thanks for the great comment. Very important that we get the minnows perspective.

Exatctly what I thought about when seeing the bot thing for the first time. I'm still trying to wrap my head aroud delegating vote power and so on.. it's abit.. complicated. on a new platform the flaws that begin as tiny cracks grow into chasms as the platform expands. just like a baloon! that's why I like this stage- there's still a lot of time to fix things as we go along.

Thats a good Comments......@lordnigrl

.. sounds VERY familiar!!!!

Attracting investors and attracting users are VERY different tasks, and possibly at odds.
I could not stay in the chat room, I do NOT like bots being able to vote. I think curation is what will attract users here. If the content is not well curated, no one can find good content and no one feels it is worth the effort to generate good content. So I went to the chat to speak my mind... and people will defend those damn bots to their death. The tech-minded community did adopt steemit early, but MOST of America wants to be able to just go to a site and use it. They do not want to have to learn about bots, how to program, how to code... They want to watch videos, read stories, laugh at memes. If the only way to get established here is to buy votes, get bots, and (as my husband calls it) blow whales, this platform is doomed. It MUST be fairly intuitive to use, or people will not stick around.

The whales who can make or break individual users need dethroned. Sorry, but as you noted, the minnows get beat to shit by getting caught in the middle of a whale fight. The whales have largely delegated their curation to bots, but they cling to the power to destroy and wield it a bit capriciously, from what I have seen. Just a few whales, I should note. But ANY whales that CAN destroy accounts just for lulz.... that is going nowhere good. Having that type of power available to BUY, not earn through producing and curating quality content, will lead to minnows who are afraid to speak out.
And with that, I am swimming back into my hiding hole and hoping no bot-loving whales see what I said to you...

Attracting users and investors are different tasks but not necessarily at odds imo. Users come first, and it is when there are so many users that investors become interested. Although I think I know what you mean. Once these investors become large stakeholders, they may be interested to promote their own products which appears as an ad to the users. When I had first joined I was under the impression that advertising would be downvoted. But only minnows get downvoted here. Investors could deny payouts if they want to use their SP for exposure. But nobody holds investors accountable. Too many people believe that preventing large stake holders from doing whatever they want will discourage investment. What they don't realise is that the ability to prevent other stake holders doing whatever they want is actually steems greatest functionality and is what attracts investors. @dan gave us the tools for this reason, and people refuse to use them, even rejecting other tools he had offered to make this easier such as vote negation.

Users come first,

And this appears to me, with my limited experience, where steemit is failing, or at least stumbling, as evidenced by the very topic you are discussing. Add to that the fact that Steemit is not simple to use, and you eliminate a large sector of users simply because it's too much for them. I know a lot of people who use the heck out of Facebook because it's simple for them, they are not techy AT ALL. They could not use Steemit if they wanted to in the current environment.

I've seen a lot of discouraged users recently too, largely as a result of this same topic. For everyone that speaks up how many are silent?

It appears to me this whole topic is a discussion on how investors are currently making a return on their investment, but it seems like it could be short sighted.

I hope your voice is heard by enough people who are in a position to make a difference.

I truly appreciate your insight. As a newbie, I have a very "short" view, and as a non-tech person my view will never be as clear as some... I did not know tools were offered and refused. I had the (apparently wrong) impression that dan and ned just don't give a shit any more.

I wouldn't say they don't give a shit anymore. They had a baby and got a divorce. At least that's the impression I get from their comments.

My speculation though I could be completely wrong is that @ned and @dan had a similar vision for steem but not the same philosophy. @dan believes in decentralised governance. @ned seems to believe in taking an objective stance and not interfering, despite his huge incentive to steer us in a positive direction.

"They had a baby and got a divorce."
GREAT description...

I wouldn't say they don't give a shit anymore. They had a baby and got a divorce. At least that's the impression I get from their comments.

That is a very good analogy. Perhaps some came to steemit thinking that they could make mega bucks without putting the work. A lot depends on our attitude. I hope this all works out in the end and we can go back to doing what we were doing before all this jealousy crap started.

I used to feel we should try to attract and retain new users, but with the concept morphing into SMTs and communities I am having difficulty picturing advertisers or any other form of large investors coming in and trying to advertise on several platforms across multiple front ends. Just as you can't really advertise on ETH and reach the end users.

So, I really have no idea other than selling SMTs, why the traffic and end-users matter at this point. Let each community try to create an audience. As far as retaining end users to attract Investors, I have given up on that idea. As bad as it sounds with the business model I heard about from SteemFest I see NO reason to try to retain end-users or promote SteemIt.

I am not saying it isn't there... So, if you still see a reason let me in on it.

There is no guarantee that SMT's will take off passed the steem community. From what I hear, there are plans by big media outlets to adopt an SMT, buy what happens when these well known sites decide that all the bots, vote buying and trolling over who got paid what causes them to abandon the reward token?

There are solutions proposed that could prevent these, but they haven't even been experimented with yet. So I'm very skeptical that we're ready for SMT's. In my opinion steem is not yet a good example of a sustainable decentralised social network, which means any SMT could be just as unsustainable.

Aside from that, steem still gains value from all of these 3rd party applications. Personally I think they bring more value than any SMT will. They have the ability to hit specific internet markets, which means steem is no longer "not for everyone". But development costs blood, sweat, tears, time & money. Promotion & marketing basically has to come from investors and users, and as long as people are unsatisfied, they're on strike from promoting the network and those platforms.

Besides, everybody keeps making the assumption that investors are some multi millionaire or advertiser. Some day they might be, but that is probably 5 years down the road like most other social networks. Our investors are US. We're the ones buying steem when we're satisfied that this is sustainable and going to grow. There are far more of us than there is millionaire's with nothing better to do with their money. While we lose users, we lose potential investors. Not indirectly because they attract investors, but directly because all our investors started out as users.

Currently the reward pool is at 700k ish of new Steem generated. I can't see where people who are fighting over a few buck on this platform can sustain that.

Oh, I fear I am being to blunt. Please feel free to add this comment to my newest post if you wish. Reading your post and making my comments inspired a post about it, I am hoping for community discussion on where our focus should be at this point.

Thank you for alerting me to it. ☺️

"and people will defend those damn bots to their death. "

This is a pointless distinction. Unless you have a practical way to stop bots (hint: there is none), then arguing about whether they should exist is a pointless waste of time.

I would hope maybe steemit inc could help with this by disabling notifications of transfers in the wallet so that features can be developed enabling users to put a price on their attention.
As for the whales policing the system the tools and incentives are there already. If you're invested in STEEM you don't need any added incentive to "police" the system. Any policing of the system is for the purpose of making the STEEM network more attractive to potential investors and users. A whale with 500'000 SP gains $5'000 every time the price of STEEM goes up by 1c.

I agree with most of your post, There are some assumptions made that were logical, Lowering price is a free market thing that's already in play. I personally do not like the terminology of Whales / Dolphin / Minnows, they are supposed to have roughtly the same goal to grow the platform. They have different skills to make a difference, so why not call them by their main role, Author, curator, promoters, advertisers.

I asked about that a while ago and had a good response from @sneak, https://steemit.com/steem/@transisto/steem-improvement-proposal-minimum-threshold-for-being-notified-of-transactions-memo-messaging
In the meanwhile I asked @armandocat to implement it and he did in his Moreinfo addon.

That is a good point on the terminology. I do feel like we give off a cultish vibe sometimes with the lingo we use. I do agree we have roughly the same goals. But I do think that some of these roles such as curators are not getting the incentives to treat the platform in a way that is in the interest of growing the platform. For instance, there are so many users who are not content creators by nature, but they come here and see that as a way to make money. Investing in steem power is not something we can expect all curators to do. But if they had the option to apply to become a curator, and get delegation from a whale who is convinced that their curation will bring value, then we can actually get a lot more eyes on the content here and hopefully that would encourage better content too.

early adopters of Steemit were able to make big rewards.. I saw old posts from 2016 where some people would be rewarded $50 for a simple comment.. and $1000 posts were so common.. nowadays with the increasing amount of user the pie is getting shared among more and more newbies wanting their shares.. the whales are very upset because of the increasing mining difficult.. technically speaking we are mining steem using our brain.. but every-time new steem are created the difficulty keeps increasing.. just imagine the time when one could mine hundreds of bitcoin with that dual core cpu in one day compared with now.. So the so called policing is to chase as many people as possible into not sharing the new steem which are created everyday.. I believe there is a fixed limit to the number of currency that can be created in one day. I know a few whales who self-vote in comments like "wow" and "nice" and gets $10 but these people are so greedy they won't let a minnow earn $1

Wow! You hit the nail on the head!!!
"People come to Steemit to make money..... People don't want to watch a social media network of other people making money!"

I had never thought of it so clearly. It's not just that you are told you can and WILL make money on steemit.......IT IS THAT YOU SEE OTHERS MAKING $20, $50, $300 and you are not going to stick around if you are only making $0.02 here and $0.09 there. If you spend an hour on a post and only make $0.50 or less, most First World users will leave if they see posts of equal or lower quality making $20 or $200.

There are ways to bring people around, and get rewarded through social interaction in communities and keep them around long enough to improve their posting and commenting skills so that they can earn too.... But atm it is not an easy process.

Thanks for being on MSP WAves, I only caught the last few minutes, so I appreciated your recap here!!

"IT IS THAT YOU SEE OTHERS MAKING $20, $50, $300 and you are not going to stick around if you are only making $0.02 here and $0.09 there."

There's an easy fix for that. Just remove the pending reward indicators from posts, so the only thing people can see is the number of votes and views, and then rewards comes as a happy (or not) surprise after the waiting period.

Not sure what's gained by displaying the pending reward amount anyway, except to induce the writer or curator to continuously check back on the post to see if the reward's gone up.

Agreed, showing the pending reward amount is counter intuitive in getting people to actually engage in content!!! on the feed/blog at least anyway.

very interesting!!! The way I see it, in a way, this platform needs to split or decide if it is a social media site or a 'betting/banking' site! I came here, basicly because sites like fb were starting to ask me to pay to reach my own followers! obviously steemit kills any 'middleman' in that way. However, if you need 'money' to have a reach, then steemit has no edge! I didnt come here to make money!! It has become aparent that alot of people dont see it as a social media site, and if they dont start realising that it has to be to survive, then I guess it dies!!
... saying that, I'm still having fun here, cos I couldnt give a f**k!!
Peace.
termite symbol.jpg

What was uttered in the end...
"get myself some meth" ..thewhatnow..?

What you said makes sense. I believe when communities gets implemented the control over curation and spam will be much more powerful. Community Liaison hinted to this in another comment chain.

I also suggested something similar elsewhere that aligns with your idea of placing a value on what gets delegated by whales. Essentially a system of rewarding investors that DO invest in members that WILL provide valuable content. On the flipside, making it a loss for those that throw their SP around to shitposts and spammers. Thus the top is feeding the bottom, but only those with potential and intention to add quality.

The other issue I see with steemit is, that some crap accounts really shouldn't even be able to engage with some quality posts. If they do, then some requirements could be implemented. Such as minimum rep or minimum comment length. This is highly controversial but it would solve the spammers that find high paid posts or comments and attach themselves to them in hope of an up-vote.

Hopefully communities does bring some of these changes. It will be a lot easier to manage either way when tightly nit subgroups are able to identity the good and bad of the chosen community. Some healthy competition might even arise. As communities compete for that Utopian Dream.

Haha, oh you know just your neighbourhood meth head haha. Don't worry about it, it's an inside joke so to speak. Lol.

Great comment and ideas. Thank you

Haha makes sense now. The exhale was so fiend-ish.
Thanks again also for your valuable post and proposals.
It's good to see reputable members getting the topic trending.

Hi there! It's been too long, I know.
This was exceptionally well thought out and makes a great deal of sense all the way around. I'm glad I chose to watch the video and not just read it, I feel you covered it more thoroughly, and richly really. It's been tough lately for me to figure out what I feel about all of the different things going on, but this helps tremendously.

Hope you've been well!

Hi dreemit!! You're right it's been too long. I get a feeling of disconnection on here sometimes because I get disheartened by the directions we take and there are so many people to connect to yet nobody expresses those doubts until they've been proven right. But it's great to hear from you, I've always appreciated your honest input.

I understand. Speaking of honesty, I have to admit that I gave up fighting for the things I wanted to see change because it was draining my optimism, positivity and ultimately my creativity. As well as taking up too much time that I don't have being a mom, wife, helping my own mom with my dad, writing...you get the picture I'm sure.
I still share my thoughts when given the opportunity, and I respect people like yourself who do continue to fight the fight, I always will.

Hey ! Firstly, very informative post, thank you.
Still being a Minnow and still on the steep learning curve of Steemit I can't say i'm informed or so but I don't think the bots as they are now are a valuable thing for the minnows and the platform in general, so I join you on that point. Especially as this doesn't encvourage people to create nice posts as if they don't have an organic following they can still inject money to the bot. And on the long run I don't think the return on investment is worth it.
Your idea to trade for attention (and I suppose some kind of Resteem or promotion in a whale's post) is a far better idea as it will encourage to forge links between bloggers on the platform creating stronger bonds amongst the community, I can't see a whale accepting to promote a minnow if the later's post is not in line with the former's vision. Meaning there can be some kind of Whale's patrons helping minnows to grow, give more valuable content to the community in a given field, dynamise a friendly competition between minnows and build them an organic following. And the whale will still be beneficial, so it's a big win win.
I definitely love your idea !
cheers !

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