RE: Closed Beta of Smackdown Kitty begins
I'm so sorry to hear of your setback.
I wish I had all the answers to all of the world's problems, but that is an unrealistic thought. The best we can hope for is to solve one problem at a time. In this instance, we are discussing abuse of SP and until the developers of Steemit feel there is sufficient threat of killing their baby, I don't see a lot changing. The way I see it, the whales are pumping real fiat currency into their project and that is what the developers are after. They need money with which they can pay their bills and make a tidy profit for themselves. This prevents them from doing anything that will drive away the whales (at least for now). But, since the current system gives whales all the power, the whales are Gods and everyone else MUST bow to them or suffer their wrath.
If there was a way to expose those who abuse the system and have everyone else flag them, then there MIGHT be a chance to control them. This is why I believe it would take some form of governing body or committee that is outside of the potential of being flagged to do the job of policing this platform.
I can't formulate a response to this right now.
No worries. No response required. It is just my thoughts put out there for you to think about. Obviously you have more resources than I do and you know how to code and do stuff. All the things I am not able to do. I can only contribute my thoughts.
Thanks for your consideration and time.
Oh, I'm sorry, really, this discovery about the invisibility of the bot's flags has sucked the air out of my lungs.
I am no kind of accomplished coder. I simply know what computers can do, and in a small fragment, or simple algorithm, I have no problem developing robust and correct logic. But I have never been able to go much beyond putting a few of these together, before I forget what I was doing, the purpose becomes clearly folly, and the application it was going to apply to turns out to be without utility.
These kinds of moments make me just want to pick myself up, and go back to walking towards nowhere, to some place I will never find, because I have never been as happy as I was when I had no passport, walking and riding a bicycle along the road through the italian countryside.
I have been given the gift of some new understanding, and I thought I had some chance of moving upwards further, but I think I have hit the ceiling just now, and I may have exceeded my available reserves in doing this.
Poloniex has stolen 1233 of my steem, with no serious hope that they are ever going to send it back, I got the rent covered until september, but I need to find a new purpose, a new goal to walk towards. I was actually trying to get that steem into my bank account as BGN.
Do you ever look around at this blockchain world, and wonder at how it is that it is such a nest of scammers, liars and tools for the racketeers who rape this world?
I'm really having a hard time here. I am wanting to be as far away from a computer as I can possibly be right now, this is not domain I have any business being involved in.
Wow! I'm sorry to hear you were one of the people that got stuck with the Poloniex issue. Hopefully that will resolve itself and you do get your money back. That issue is exactly what I worry about with traditional banking and even with currency/cryptocurrency exchanges; you rely on a 3rd party! That is why I am not buying Steem. If I could buy Steem without having 2 or 3 other parties involved, I would do it. Unfortunately I need to buy Etherium or Bitcoin before I can buy Steem, and I need to use a bank to buy either of those! Geeee! Why can't I just buy Steem straight out?
As for wandering aimlessly, I can see the attraction. You would be living as nature intended it to be. There is something peaceful about that. The soul and the body are in the same space both physically and mentally.
It is not just the blockchain that harbours liars and scammers. These people penetrate ever corner of our real and virtual worlds. Unfortunately for everyone, they do not realize that they will never find real peace and happiness in their lives by following that path. Sure, they will obtain godly powers and enjoy many luxuries, but they will never find the truth. The truth is that we are all part of something greater than us and we only hurt the other part of what we are when we hurt others in order to enjoy self gain.
I feel that you are a mature soul and have come to realize that each of us is just a very small part of a bigger entity and that by helping others we actually help ourselves. We are all connected to each other.
Do not beat yourself up. You tried and that is admirable. Take time to compose your mind and emotions. Seek peace and harmony. The answers will come some day. Peace and love!
Someone showed me also another interface to steem, where the effect of the bot's flags was to pretty much make the post disappear. It is only steemit.com that shows nothing. Busy shows thumbs down, that android app shows a big nasty black hole. Maybe it doesn't matter that steemit does not show it. A lot of people are still going to see it, just not on this application.
Actually, according to steemdb, the other gateways to steem are not used much and that over 90% of users are viewing the blockchain via Steemit. So it matters very much what Steemit shows the users.
Well, after having a debrief with @personz, we are still going to run the bot, and I can't see how anyone is going to call it an abuse of downvotes when nobody can see it anyway, on steemit.com. It does not take anyone's rewards away, and I lose nothing significant with that delegated SP to allow it to function. And busy and esteem users will still see it, even if they are a small minority.
The bot is not producing these downvotes from a random number generator, it's gathering a database of self-vote abuse. We are going to publish daily reports, regardless and the bot will do exactly as we planned anyway.
It is a minor setback. And as maybe someone else pointed out, maybe someone will come along and delegate 50k SP on it just for fun, then people WILL feel the effect, and the flags will become visible.
So the course is not going to be changed. I am going to take a different approach in my dealings with those who post inane, illogical non-arguments against what we are doing. It's called the 'Mute' button. I was doing ok coping with the shit and attempting to rephrase myself and use new analogies, and the simple fact is, we have a lot of support.
Thanks for your support and your kind words.
Yay!!! Go get em Kitty!
Hopefully whales like berniesanders will get on board with you and help the smack-down. He already does a lot of flagging in an attempt to level the playing field.