RE: Why free downvotes are a good and necessary part of STEEM
to put out another perspective
Having another perspective is always a good thing and I can see the reasoning in some of your points.
Having downvotes cost the same as upvotes made them being used very scarcely
No, being scared of retaliation from the big boys made them being used scarcely. And that hasn't changed.
why trending looked the way it did
I concede that it it looked bad sometimes in some categories. In the categories I'm following it looked just fine most of the time. I'm not opposed to doing whatever is necessary and legal to push one's content to the top, provided the content is reasonably valuable and everybody has an equal opportunity to do so. I consider this marketing.
Which direction did it head the last months and years, while they were able to self reward?
Sometimes up, and sometimes heavily so. Since #newsteem only down. But I admit, that's subjective, and we can't really tell with the multitude of factors that influence price.
it finally delivers on its promise to bring the best content to the top
Strongly disagree. People being people, in their filter bubbles, this will never happen as long as money is involved. "I scratch your back, you scratch mine" is pretty much hardcoded in our DNA since we were apes. Who has the prettier back has never and will never figure into it.
A downvote doesn't take something away, it changes the allocation of the funds to be paid out.
Sure. The money the thief stole isn't gone. Somebody else has it now. Everything is fine then, I guess. So we can rape the reward pool to our hearts content then? After all, the rewards aren't gone, they're only in a different wallet. Yay!
the main value proposition is not working
In my mind the main value proposion was economic freedom. Making downvotes free has skewed this in the wrong direction. Using them excessively is sending the wrong signal to potential investors and new Steemians alike. Who wants to be in a social evironment or invest their money where thugs and bullies can hijack the system?
an economic system where those who have much can assign even more to themselves
How is that different from the way it is now? Oh, actually it is. It has gotten even worse for the little guy. So I guess it has changed.
Just because someone decided to give you a vote after 5 minutes, that doesn't mean you earned that.
Patently wrong. I have earned it in the eyes of that person. (Or I bought it legally.) And you don't have the right to nullify that person's decision. If you don't like my post, that's fine. Move on and reward something you deem worthier. That's your right. Interfering with my rewards and my voters' curation just because you have more VP is simply wrong.
the platform constantly shrinking because we can't retain authors
And you think by bullying them via free downvotes into a certain behavior, and by cutting their rewards, you can retain them better? What did you smoke?
Look, I can only give you my personal perspective as a content creator. I can get behind the idea of splitting the rewards down the middle as a big incentive to foster organic curation. I can also sympathize with the concept of less vote buying for promo purposes and not hog the trending page just because I could. For me, I have decided to buy only as much as it takes to overcome that 20 Steem hurdle in order to give my organic voters every incentive to come back.
What I absolutely, positively, cannot get on board with is, being bullied by a bunch of self-enriching thugs whose votes I used to BUY just because they got religion. (Well, some of them pretend to have religion now and they're still circle jerking each other.) I haven't decided yet whether I'm going to do something about it or just leave - so much about author retention...
Vote buying is like prostitution. It may be ugly, you may object to it, but it's not going away as long as there are whores and johns. And as long as it's legal it must be tolerated by a free society. You don't stamp out prostitution by having vigilante gangs of thugs club the Johns in the street and steal their money. You make a law by democratic means and then you enforce it.
Until then, if you are a whale, by all means, take advantage of the new split and curate what you like with all your might! Think of it like training a dog - change things gently with reward, not punishment. It might in time even work on an old dog like me ;-) After all, vote buing isn't really profitable. The current vigilante vote police approach will fail. You may push, you may even push hard, but some people will simply not be pushed around. Try something positive instead - please!
Haha yeah I agree to 100% this is what I mentioned before in a lot of comments and some posts.
To be honest the free downvotes is another sword in the hands of the big ones becaues they get even more power from the normal SP to use for their little games the play normaly, there is no need to think about losing some curation rewards when taking the free downvotes now instead of the normal votes from the account.
And such guys are witnesses huuuuu verry bad, I have withdrawn my witnessvote to pharesim after the absurd downvote attack of @curangel against a vote on a comment at @justineh.
But hey, yes it isn´t against me personally one (curangel) was just of the opinion that vote was an overrating of the comment !
The little ones do not bother the dolphins and whales, and they (the big fish) do the same as before play their own game and claim they do it only for the community, hardly anyone opposes something like that, everywhere only cowards scared for their few cents.
Great outlook with #newsteem, well done steemit.inc, well done !
with sunny greetings from Andalucía
Don Thomas
Agreed in most cases
Posted using Partiko Android
Yes, my stake gives me the right to nullify someone else's decision. As their stake gives them the right to make everyone else's decision worth less by upvoting someone. The rewards are decided on in a process, not at the point of someone casting their vote.
There are two ways in curation: assign a bunch of the shared rewards to everyone else (downvotes) or one single person (upvotes), both are fine. None is theft.
When vote buying isn't profitable any more it will get less. It actually has already.
Thank you for your answer. We don't see eye to eye on this, but we agree on one thing: "When vote buying isn't profitable any more it will get less." So why not wait for that blessed day and bully people instead? In fact, vote buying was a valuable tool for visibility while it lasted, but it was never profitable.
A few bots at least even promised a certain profit. Maybe you used the wrong ones? :D
Downvotes are not bullying, they are the only way to cut into the profits of vote sellers, by taking away their curation rewards and their customers. It's not going against the person who buys directly, only against the act of buying.
I wouldn't know. I didn't use any bots. I bought votes from @smartmarket, and the supposed ROI never really worked out for a variety of reasons. For me, that isn't the issue. I want it for visibility. Anyway, @smartmarket is no different from any other automatic curation trail, with the exception that "money" changes hands. Behind it all is a large number of real people, most of them "little" folk. A whale downvote does damage to them as well as to me. How do they not have the right to use their vote as they see fit?
I reiterate, I never had a problem with organic downvotes because I strive to put out reasonably good content. What I object to is the bullying kind. That's just not how it's done, period. A minority in their teens kills the potential profits of a crowd of sometimes over 1,000 with their strong VP to bend them to their will. If that's not bullying, I don't know what is.
Everyone can use their up- and downvotes as they see fit.
Most downvotes go against voting behaviour which is against the best interest of the platform, and opposing to the value proposition as described in the whitepaper. Steem was created to crowdsource the best content, and negative voting is a part of it to explicitly be used against colluding groups and "defective voters". If selling votes isn't defective, I don't know what is.
You're beginning to sound like a cheerleader. "The best interest of the platform" is good content towards the top of the trending list. I like to think I provided that until some people saw fit to interfere with me. Even my shorter, newer, non-video posts aren't junk.
It doesn't work and it never will, as I explained earlier. People will always band together and scratch each others' backs regardless of skin quality. Trying to force what can't be will only serve to drive some of the best content creators away. Ask yourself why no star Youtubers are flocking to the Steem. There is your answer.
Agreed. But it is being used only against the little folk. The big fish are happily colluding like they always have. So that mechanism doesn't work either; it only creates unfairness and negativity. So why cheer for it?
Youtubers don't come because of the back scratching and the need to buy visibility, downvotes have nothing to do with it.
I came to steem because I liked the ideas described in the whitepaper, and I will do whatever I can to make them work. It's possible that it can't be, then we're all wasting our time. I'm not ready to give up yet though.
Slowwalker is far from a little fish, but our power is limited. One after the other, the system was broken a long time and people got used to it, it will take a long time to revert (if possible).
Downvotes are not used against colluding small fish, they go against the defective voters aka bots - it just happens that a lot of small users are their customers, but the size of the guy buying doesn't change anything, the downvotes hit all buyers.
You feel entitled to move your own content up to trending, but that's not how it should work. Everyone thinks their shit is the greatest. If you can't accept that and only can point to others doing wrong too instead of helping to do something against it, it's maybe really best to leave, because your entitlement won't stop us in our efforts to steer the ship around and you seem only to be dedicated to reinforce what's been going wrong all the time.