RE: Thoughts on earnings and delegations out
Here are the questions for me:
Why should I continue to engage on a platform that doesn’t support legitimate projects that do what everyone is always claiming that they want? And why should I continue to engage on this platform when my constant engagement yields very little in return, both socially and economically?
The incentives for stakeholders and potential stakeholders to engage socially are poor. I have been trying to make my case for at least a year and a half with no luck whatsoever. The “leadership” here has no effin’ clue about what makes social media work or how to attract real investment.
So with that in mind and seeing how the platform has deteriorated under that “leadership,” why should I continue to put in my time/effort to get very little in return and then watch spammers, scammers, and shitposters go on mostly unabated and actually make more money?
Why should someone who has been active for over two years and has over 50,000 STEEM in their account continue to care about what people think of their “engagement” when their valid criticisms and practical solutions are ignored - and instead, other “solutions” that make things more favorable to spammers, scammers, and shitposters are continually supported and implemented?
So with all of last year’s hardfork changes and the increase in STINC’s powering down and delegating, the incentive for me to continue networking and curating has reached a point where it isn’t worth my time. However...I can get much better returns by delegating to a bid bot - and I can’t stand the idea of bid bots in the first place.
I’m in a position now where I know that bid bots aren’t beneficial for the platform overall. But I also know that our “leadership” has zero interest in correcting the massive points of failure in the current social/economic design of Steem/Steemit. I decided to no longer hope for or wait for better blockchain protocols and an improvement in the culture here. I am witnessing the exact opposite occur, actually.
When you and others write your posts about how “engagement” will improve things and how we need to remain idealistic and martyr ourselves for some greater good, just keep in mind that this is an economic platform with economic incentives. If you don’t like the behavior of the user base, then that means the incentives are not aligned properly with your vision for the platform. I would suggest that you start pressuring those who can make the changes and supporting those who have been calling for them for a very long time. And, most importantly - understand those economic incentives and how they will and do affect behavior. Because having no idea how things work - in theory or in reality - and then demanding action will only result in more of the same idiocy we have now.
And just so the usual crowd can’t say that I’m not offering solutions again, you can find more info here: @ats-witness. I will also have more proposals over the next few weeks. I know they won’t be seriously discussed or ever implemented, so it won’t matter. But I’ll do it anyway.
As said (or at least implied) in the post, if you have significant SP, you will likely make decent returns from selling your votes but, if you have very little, you will likely make more from engagement. This means,
I was talking about the economic incentives. Like you said, you have over 50,000 SP, the people with 150 SP delegating 120 to bidbots isn't going to get them very far.
Everyone seems to have different ideas of what is legitimate unfortunately but there are quite a lot of new apps that are at least aimed at a larger market.
This comes down to personal experience I guess on what classifies as enough return economically and who one engages with socially.
The deterioration has more factors at play but I agree, the leadership hasn't chosen to do much about some of the issues here. As far as it goes as the spammers etc, who knows how to deal with it but, it was no better when I came in Jan 2017. The place was full of circles then too, just different circles in some cases.
Btw, I called the bidbot issue and predicted where we are today in the first week or two of Rando starting in regard to bidbots. No one listened then either. So, perhaps if we could go back in time knowing what we do today as a collective, people might have paid attention. Unfortunately, that is not going to happen nor will rolling it back to that point be effective anymore.
Looking forward to your proposals.
I appreciate the reply, but you really didn't say anything at all. This is the same kind of bland/canned response that I expect from the average Steem user here.
If you want to say something, then say it. I don't need sugar-coating or cheerleading. Please don't bore me. I get enough of that everywhere else on this site.
lol. good. I am not one for dramaqueens.
You don't need to engage, you already have your stake here so earning for you is almost guaranteed no matter what you do. Your average SP/post outperforms mine 25:1, I have twice as many comments and 5 times as many posts but have earned 1/4 of the stake. It was a different time when you joined with a small group and low competition and those times aren't coming back for anyone joining now.
Things changed rapidly but once the people had stake, the stake controlled. Some sold their stake because it was easy to get, I have powered up most of mine and can support a few people along the way. I have quite a good social experience here as I tend to have decent discussions with people on and off site from the smallest to relative large accounts and I spend time with each of them regardless of their wallet size.
For a fairly new account coming in, delegating to bidbots isn't going to help them get very far, buying from bidbots can help them grow SP but, they won't have a network unless they build one. Essentially, to have a long position here now, it is buy in, or work your ass off. I have only had the chance to work mostly, not buy in. Although I have put in hard yards, I am never going to earn like the people here in 2016 did.
The site has changed a lot in what I consider a short period and it will continue to change. It is a social site developed by people who may have struggled to get a date to prom, so social immaturity is essentially guaranteed which means, a poor approach to developing a space to build a community upon. That means the community has to build itself which requires engagement but those that can support it with their stake don't as often as they perhaps could or should. While people are worrying solely about the financial/distribution aspects, the social aspects are going to hell and the people who could set an example, barely engage.
As the new Dapps and the like come in, those without network or decent content are going to find themselves in the same position as any other noob user in, scrambling. This is a time that if someone wants to have a future here, they have the potential to build one. There is risk, it can all go down the toilet but, such is life.
There are a lot of complexities at play here and not many people with the life experience to handle them all together but, there is also a lot of potential to pull shit together and build something that works. however, that takes a long game and there is no long game if all people do is expect passive revenue streams and entitlements because of time in, past achievements or because once upon a time... those times are gone and unfortunately so too is most of the active stake that the people who were there for them had. So, little fish like me work our ass off because many others will not while the people who earned cheaply delegate to and run bidbots. It isn't going to be the code of steem that ends bidbots nor what gets rid of all the little scammers and shitposters.
Perhaps it comes together, perhaps it is all a big waste of time. We should have a little fun along the way at least.
I'm sorry @ats.david, but you come from a different time and hold a different SP to 99.99% of the members here.
It does indeed take a fk load of time to engage, time that someone with your account is just not going to bother with - it is far easier in both time and effort to find the most profitable BB.
For small accounts, the argument here is not to sell out, take the time to engage and grow with the hundreds of thousands at your level. There are a growing number of us who appreciate this approach, and even myself with a small dolphin sized vote, can give you a weeks' bot-delegation rewards for this.
Is this not the problem? I have all the time in the world to engage. What I'm not finding is the proper incentive to do so. And...what do you know? Most other people here don't either, regardless of their wallet size.
We have about 60,000 accounts that are active out of over a million created. Of that 60K, how many are real people vs. bots or other automated transactions? Are you going to tell me that there is incentive for people to genuinely engage around here with our abysmal user stats? What statistics are you seeing that nobody else can see?
It's the 'problem' for you, yes. 1 post and 9 self-upvoted comments will do you fine.
99.99% of those that are unique and active don't have this luxury.
The crux of this post is in relation to giving your influence as a minnow/redfish away, so that the people still bothering to connect are rewarded with dust.
My account has been built around engagement, I'm happy with the progress I've made, and will continue to focus on others with the same approach.
I suspect your average post payout is far beyond anything that will ever be achieved by blogging again on Steem, congrats for being here early.
Not only me. It's the problem for everyone, which is why so many people are delegating to bid bots. It's much easier and more lucrative compared to time spent searching for and upvoting content.
It does't matter one bit whether you have 100K SP or 1000. What matters is the percentage of return from the bid bot. It's the same for everyone. So if you can get a 20% return for delegating and doing nothing else, or maybe get a 20% return for being on a site all day long and wading through an ocean of spam and shitposts, why would you not take the "easy" and "guaranteed" returns?
And I should note (with actual numbers) that the curation returns are not comparable to the bid bot returns I'm getting. Prior to delegating, I was earning about 20-40 SP per week from curation. Just in the past week, I have earned 96.68 STEEM through my delegation...plus another 41.761 SBD. And this is with prices and bid bot use on the decline.
So you can congratulate me all you want about "being here early," but it doesn't change the fact that the economic incentives to manually engage are piss-poor. No amount of denial or blaming those who recognize this reality will change it.
So what will you do? Continue watching people tune out and blame them for this place not being what you want it to be? Or hold those people accountable who control the protocol writing and implementation...and who continue making things worse?
It also matters what you compare it to. And when you simply compare your bidbot return to your financial return from curation, you're declaring that the Steem you distribute to other people has no value to you.
Since you don't need sugar-coating I'll just say it straight out: you're being a shit. Given the option to give ten presents to other people or keep five of them for yourself, you're picking the five. Don't go putting the blame on other people when you're evaluating your own incentives that way.
You want to run for witness while literally arguing that the people whose votes you want aren't half as valuable to you as you are, go ahead, but hopefully they will see through that.
I don’t think you even know what you wrote here.
You guys really need to learn how to read and comprehend. What I’m saying is - there is not enough incentive for me and many, many other users to spend my/our time curating content.
Read the writing on the wall. When a large amount of invested users are telling you with their wallets and their feet that there’s not enough incentive to stay powered up, to not delegate, and to curate content, maybe you ought to listen. What the fuck does “giving presents” have to do with investment and economic incentives for desired behavior?
This isn’t a moral debate. It’s not a moral dilemma. We can’t expect everyone to do all the nice things we want and none of the bad things we don’t want without incentivizing them to act accordingly.
So while you and others make this about morality and claim that I’m “being a shit” because you don’t understand economics and behavior, the platform continues to deteriorate. Someday you guys may realize that the protocols have been fucked and need to be corrected. Then again - you may not. It’s really not my problem, to be honest.
Funny. I thought that you and the other people in this thread were “blaming” me and other stakeholders who simply behave in a manner that’s incentivized by our current blockchain protocols. I guess you didn’t recognize that either.
I am a witness. I don’t run for anything. I’m not a worthless politician.
This in turn leads to an exodus of good content posters who are not circle jerking or buying votes, but who were trying to get along by creating content alone and voting for what they actually like.
Their leaving leads to more leaving, and to others frantically looking for alternatives.
The total number of users may be going up, but there's slaughter going on among the ones I follow, and no, that is not just because of Steem price. It's because Steemit isn't working properly for them anymore; it also doesn't work as advertised anymore, which is a huge marketing problem.
It’s not working for most people. One could argue that it hasn’t worked for about 94% of all sign-ups. (Not an accurate number, since sign-ups have been artificially inflated, along with “active users.”) The people who remain are pretty much just here for the money...and how that money is being earned on all fronts is a great indication of the extremely poor health of the platform.
What people apparently fail to realize is that “investment” and having happy, engaged “investors” on Steem is what will draw happy, engaged, and good content creators. But the problem is - the people bitching about how investors are investing aren’t actually listening to or comprehending those investors and their actions.
Whose fault is that? The people buying the tokens and/or powering up and putting positive price pressure on STEEM? Or the ones whining about how they then use that influence in the flawed system? And why are these whiners not speaking out about the critically flawed system, instead of brown-nosing the dev team that has fucked it up and continues to do so?
Strangely, we agree with this.
I'm not talking about curation.
The example in the post is clear enough. 450 SP is required to gift a commentator a non dust vote. We have 1.1 million accounts on or less than 500 SP.
Why should I support an account who has delegated and dropped below this level? For .05 a day. I could gift them 10 days Bot delegation profits with 1 vote.
It does matter where your SP Is at, it's not worth your time commenting, but is is for over 99% of the platform, who if they tie in with the likes of myself, taraz, and a solid growing community like @helpie, will almost certainly grow faster than delegating out and expecting visitors.
OK. I am, because I’m not interested in posting much at the moment. I’m busy with other things. And curation is the way that investors can earn without delegating and without shitposting and self-voting...which then gets everyone angry again. I’m giving you my own reasons for delegating to help you understand economic incentives...since we’re all making economic decisions here.
The money continues to flow into bid bots because stakeholders can’t earn much from curation, relative to what they can get from a “set it and forget it” bid bot.
I don’t know. What are your reasons for supporting someone? If it’s based on the size of their vote and not on whether or not you like their content, then I’d say you’re doing social media wrong. But that’s my subjective opinion.
Anyway - I’m telling you why large stakeholders don’t care and why many users are delegating to bid bots. So you can be pissed that it’s happening and lash out at everyone involved...or you can hold those accountable who made this shitty system what it is today. If you’re not willing to do the latter, then the former just makes no sense.
I’ll continue speaking out and doing what I can to fix the massive mistakes that have been made and will be made again starting next month with HF20. Because I don’t care about the size of your wallet. I want a system that works for actual “investors”...the ones who add the actual value around here to our Steem currencies. If we aren’t doing anything to make it worthwhile for people to invest, then we should all just cash out now.
I have not read any other comments yet, please bear that in mind:
I do not really see that as a fact. If you cast a vote after 30 minutes after posting 25% of that vote is returned to the voters. If you gast a (3) three dollar vote on any post 80% of those post are going to see a shit load of follow on votes. If you are the first vote you are going to collect the vast majority of that reward. Will it be a 25% return on what you invested? No it won't. The only investment a vote requires is your time to read evaluate and then choose to cast or not. Voting does not cost anything. If you started casting a $10.00 vote on a post and did it consistently, the number of follow on votes would be astronomical, of course then you would likely have Bernie or Haejin or some other fool counteracting your votes. If you also while voting placed a comment, you would likely drive more voters to your own content.
I know a lot of people will ignore this comment and tell me it is to simplistic, but look at the numbers that tarazkp put up again. Take two weeks, use 5000SP to drop 10 full powered votes on a day on small non voted or little voted content, and see what happens. It is only for two weeks. Don't look at the value of the vote do not look at does this post really deserve a $5.00 vote (or however much a 5000SP vote is worth). just vote at that level, if it is a good post not a shit post and you liked it. Last week with the little bit of SP you left yourself you earned 0.481 Steem that was with an effective 474.726 steem power that you had showing today. So you have a comparison starting point. Find ten redfish or minnows with halfway decent content and give them an Ats-David curate. See what happens. I think you will be surprised.
I'm quite aware of my returns, as I've been watching them for two years now. I cannot currently make an amount of curation rewards that would be better than what I receive from my delegation to @tipU. The only way for me to get a better return and not scour the platform for potentially good content that whales and bid bots might then upvote after me would be to post and self-vote at 100% ten times per day. But that option is not on the table. Even at my peak of blog posting on this platform, I was only posting maybe 4-5 times per week.
So, I could do that with comments instead. But rewarding only myself all day long with 100% votes for shitposting and shit-commenting isn't really my style. Others might be cool with that, but it's not for me. And lately, I haven't even really been commenting enough to give myself these returns.
So, no...the incentives for me to spend all day looking at content and trying to find something that I actually like and want to upvote are just too small. And frankly - most of the content sucks, based on my own subjective opinion.
I know nobody wants to say that the incentive structure and the culture here is shitty. They don't want to offend anyone and be taken off of auto-voting lists or be deemed "toxic" by the actually toxic shitposters, ass-kissers, and circle-jerkers around here. But the fact is: the incentive structure and culture here IS shitty.
And instead of acknowledging this and supporting people who want to fix it, most of you simply join the toxic shitposters, ass-kissers, and circle-jerkers that make this "social" network entirely anti-social. Then, because they finally stop their own self-immolation, you condemn people who have put tons of time and effort into producing content, networking, building communities, and giving away a ton of their own rewards to new users and small stakeholders alike. And why does this happen? Because they dared to point out the many, many flaws in the system that never get corrected...or the new ones that are introduced because nobody knows a damn thing about economics and economic incentives around here, let alone how to make social media work for themselves or anyone else.
So no, as long as things continue down the same path, I won't be trying to find a few gems to upvote every day in a vast sea of absolute refuse. I tried to tell people that this was going to happen. And I finally decided to do it...a year late, mind you.
When the protocols make sense again, I'll change my engagement behavior. But I'm not interested in making more sacrifices while the "leaders" of the toxic cult here continue to rake in big money for being absolute douchebags and produce zero things that are appealing to social media users and investors.
Find me some coders willing to rewrite some of our failed protocols, then find me 17 witnesses willing to implement them, then find me the support needed to get them in the top-20. Unless that happens, I'm tuning out from the day-to-day around here and focusing on my own projects and community...building a business/website, accepting cryptocurrencies, and marketing it to the larger, non-crypto world. You know...the things that this "community" says they want but never actually supports.
And no, I'm not doing these things "for the community." I'm doing them because, as a businessman, I want to make money. And I will drag this clusterfuck of clowns around here kicking and screaming to the bank if I have to. But that will only be coincidental.
All I can say is I think I am glad I joined after the first year ended. I guess I myself do not have very discerning taste, I find content on most days to get down into the upper 80% range of my voting power, and have rarely been at 100% full power.
I do understand where you are coming from in a desire for a Crypto Social media point of view, and yep there is problems with some of the coding, and with a lot of the witnesses, the reality is that the witness situation is not going to be fixed. Not enough people understand it, (myself included), or are even concerned about it over much. I have only seen one witness sort of semi get the boot, well maybe two, not sure about the Trevon Guy, but the other You tube guy, shit can not think of his name for the life of me, the one that did the stupid video of trying to pleasure himself, but he I think pretty much got rejected by the people that had him as a witness.
I read about the nagonoo thing when I first joined, and still do not understand what happened or transpired and honestly do not care. I was told that was part of the reason for Bernies low ranking. bernie did sort of try to let people know about haejin, grumpycat tried to let people know about the self vote abuse, neither one was able to get their view across, because the people with the money liked how they were getting their money.
So I understand a lot of the frustration with the system, but it is what we have and what we work with. We all have differing methods of getting the system to work the way we want. People throw circle votes and glad handing around like it is a bad thing, I do not see it that way in most cases. most of the time it is friends acquaintances and people with the same goals. You are not going to get a satanist to vote on a christian post. You are not going to get a christian to vote on a pro abortion post. The only votes a democrat is going to give a republican is a down vote.
The company wants the divide among the users, it creates drama, drama is what gets a lot of attention. Good, bad or indifferent attention is what makes money for them. Or so they believe.
I myself do not know what I want or expect from the community, I am enjoying some pretty decent content, (better than most magazines and the TV/Radio programming I left behind years ago), music, videos, stories and photography. All in one place. Yes I could find it all for free on the internet, yes I could have a FB or YT or other social account, but fact is I can not get rewarded just for saying thanks for showing me that or sharing that with me. I have no problem voting on content, I would hope that no matter how much SP I have that I will not vote below a 20% range. That is my goal right now to get to a point that I can give a nickel reward at 20% vote power. For comments, and content. That will be a lot of votes, I no a nickel doesn't excite a lot of people, but then again a two cent vote from a whale account doesn't excite people either.
It may change and turn around for you and become enjoyable again for you, we all do what we must. Good luck with your business endeavors.
I get it. Do you think Dan's Steemit v2 will put the final nail in the coffin? I am just wondering how far do you let it fall before pulling the plug? There is only 80 some cents of dropage left
How do you think Steemit can keep attracting new users?