RE: Steemit's Top Self Voters: 07 July 2017 Report
Initially, I upvoted this post, but then I realized that it's a list of minnow accounts. It's unfortunate to shame them, as these are not making much on their votes and may not understand the platform that well. The list that matters should show the amount that someone has been earning. Weekly (not daily) and based on earnings from self-votes, not just raw votes. Even better, it would show distribution of votes to a handful of accounts (for those who do not vote on others), which also would account for sock puppets.
I am not a fan of shaming, but if the community can keep an eye on self-upvoting and sock puppetry, then maybe we won't need harsh rules. So thank you for the post. I think the daily votes list is not the right snapshot to illustrate abuse, and it unfortunately shames minnows who may not know what they are doing while others are making far more from this, but thank you for the effort and for contributing to this conversation.
While you clearly understand why self voting is occurring, and why minnows are actually decreasing their potential income by self voting, you seem not to have grasped how potential financial manipulation can harm those with significant holdings of Steem.
Maybe you do, and just don't mention it, I dunno. Those circle-jerking cliques are extracting income now for themselves, at the cost of depriving rewards that their votes might otherwise send to content creators whose work they want to support, and those creators are frustrated, perceiving the unfairness of a system mined for profits.
This debases curation and Steemit, and decreases the quality of content on Steemit. That, in turn slows Steemit's growth, which is the primary driver of the price of Steem. Indeed, failure to retain new accounts in the long run could well cause the price of Steem to decline, rather than increase.
This price appreciation in Steem is a far more rewarding mechanism for whales than a few upvotes could ever provide, and by failing to demand that curation be free of manipulation, they are failing to demand that Steemit be able to grow and provide high quality content - and failing to demand that price appreciation that depends on Steemit.
What I see is that those who are self voting, or circle-jerking, have no confidence that Steemit will provide price appreciation, and are mining for profits now, because they won't get them from future growth. They seem not believe in Steemit's future.
I can understand their viewpoint, because the Steemit code is not preventing this financial manipulation, and Steemit's future depends on fairness and content quality. This provides a basis for doubt in Steemit's future potential.
Changing the code to ensure that rewards are distributed via curation without being mined, gamed, or harvested by financial manipulations is the best way to restore confidence in investors that their best option for capital gain is price appreciation.
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Hi, my reply is now hidden because of a cyberbully.
So, @donkeypong is flagging all of my blogs and replies to intentionally ruin my rep score.
If anyone likes to stand up to bullies, go and flag @donkeypong as much as possible and lets ruin a rep score that deserves to be ruined.
If you are against censorship, tell @donkeypong to stop acting like the censorship police .
@donkeypong is a cyberbully, stalker and harasser.
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I'm right there with you on monitoring abuse. I just think that particular list that was not a good one because it showed only people who are drawing minor rewards. None of those names are making much, so it's barely any drain on the system. If you want to stop abuse and shame somebody, then look at the people with more voting power who are voting less but allocating a lot more to themselves on a regular basis.
SUPPORT FOR RANDOM PIC @randompic
Hi, my reply is now hidden because of a cyberbully.
So, @donkeypong is flagging all of my blogs and replies to intentionally ruin my rep score.
If anyone likes to stand up to bullies, go and flag @donkeypong as much as possible and lets ruin a rep score that deserves to be ruined.
If you are against censorship, tell @donkeypong to stop acting like the censorship police .
@donkeypong is a cyberbully, stalker and harasser.
https://www.steemnow.com/
PLEASE UPVOTE RANDOM PIC AND RENEW HIS REP SCORE THAT WAS UNJUSTLY DESTROYED BY CYBERBULLIES
Unfortunately, we're treading on dangerous ground here, as I am aware of a mechanism potential to strip virtually ALL rewards from the rewards pool, so don't wish to further elucidate. This mechanism isn't profitable, which precludes it's employment absent non-financial motives, and makes it unlikely to develop organically.
You are not incorrect that these accounts are but minor players, although perhaps, given the 400% fewer votes potential after HF19, and the dramatic increase in self votes that has further decreased the available number of votes per post, their strategy pencils out as financially optimal.
The problem for them is that their strategy practically precludes growth, which is dependent on using votes to benefit others.
So, I'm not really in favor of 'shaming', as I see that regardless of SP holdings, those egregiously self voting are doing so against their self interest financially. They just fail to understand the dynamics of growth and how, for minnows, using their votes to reach out to others as they form a community is far more profitable over a given period of time than self votes, and how for whales, using their SP to strongly encourage quality content creators potentiates price appreciation in Steem, which provides capital gains far in excess of curation or author rewards.
It will take a very long time to extract sufficient rewards from the rewards pool to equate to the 20k% price appreciation that Steem attaining 1% of the price of BTC creates as capital gains, and tbqh, Steem's potential to surpass BTC due to the use case (Steemit) is quite robust.
That growth requires an equally robust delivery of vests to a diverse community of authors, which is demonstrably not happening, due to self votes and cliques (at least in part). It is difficult for those able to extract income now from rewards pool mining to forego that income (particularly while others continue to do so) in order to curate content on the seemingly fanciful speculation of Steemit's growth to rival Fakebook, and BTC.
The code being permissive of such rewards pool mining is an indication that such long term growth isn't the intention of Steemit devs and investors, which I find unfortunate, as I believe strongly that such growth is far more potential than might seem obvious initially.
I agree in that there should be more information on the account holders. However I do not agree that holding others to account is completely negative.