Dan needs to be stopped
Dan Larimer is out of control
A recent commit to the Steem git sets up yet another hard fork implementing a fundamental change to the nature of the social interactions of Steem/Steemit users.
Dan has decided that it is appropriate to implement a feature allowing users to completely void the voting capability of other users. He has done so apparently unilaterally, and without divulging the identities of specific individuals I have reason to believe that he is acting against the wishes of many.
I think that the changes that he is-not merely suggesting, but has implemented-have not met any threshold of consensus from the community that I would expect such a change to receive.
I'm even skeptical that people want a way to negate votes... that's an idea first floated by Dan a couple days ago, several posts into a series of posts on voting that most people honestly don't give a shit about. People voted on it because it's him and they stand to gain some curation rewards. And some sad attempts at ingratiating themselves to him by commenting in support of it.
There is no consensus on this or organic demand for anything of the sort.
It doesn't even make sense... there is already a mechanism in place for counteracting votes that you disagree with. It's a downvote... I don't understand the rush to implement new mechanics before the unintented consequences of previous changes have been discovered (ie, reputation system is seriously flawed)
This behavior from somebody that has essentially unilateral control of the platform does not fill me with confidence about the future of the platform. In fact, I think this is the greatest threat Steem faces.
Edit: Since there is some confusion whether this is a commit or a proposal, I want to make sure that everyone is aware this is in fact a commit:
Another comment:
Can you link to where they can voice their concerns please?
https://github.com/steemit/steem/issues/279
Umm also as an aside there is this issue that could use a little attention too. It's alienating a large group authors and artists that were planning to come to the platform and produce exclusive content for steem.
https://github.com/steemit/steem/issues/267
Update:
Addendum:
Thanks to @liondani for pulling the youtube video.
I would like to point out that I took a risk with this post, to bring up a legitimate issue in a way that was intentionally over the top and tongue in cheek. I clearly missed the mark, but my intent was not to impugn Dan's character. I'm grateful for what he has done to create this platform and this community. I think we all are, and we can all acknowledge that even when we disagree.
dictatorship,hindenburg,titanicand a hitler meme are all a bit too over the top for me. I'm glad you're voicing your concerns, but a "Dan must be stopped" call to action against the very person who created what we are all enjoying isn't (IMO) the best approach for having a respectful dialogue about the issue. It seems many are already discussing the issue on github and voicing their disapproval there. We'll see where it goes from here, and it's definitely something to keep an eye on. For that, I thank you, but I won't give you my vote on this post because I think the tone is counter productive to a rational, open conversation about the issue. I may be wrong and maybe a more alarmist tone is called for. As with many things, we shall see over time.Yep. I posted this same screen shot as a comment here 4 hours ago and was the first to give that Github comment a thumbs up. As much as people want to complain about this system and the inequality of it, to me, I see a platform that is functioning surprisingly well for such an early beta.
I feel like I have much more say here than I ever have or will ever have on any other social media platform on the Internet. I'm not kissing Dan's ass or bowing at the throne of his team, but I'm also recognizing without his (and his team's) efforts, none of what I'm currently enjoying would exist. As an entrepreneur myself, I respect what they've created here and that they have, to some degree, given control of it away to others who are willing to invest and/or influence the network. Yes, today, they have more control than anyone else and they may keep that control well into the future. On any other network or on any other service I use, the level of influence of the founders does not prevent me from using and benefiting from the service. Until they use that control for harm, I don't think an alarmist tone is helpful. The closed Github issue, in this case, I think proves my point. The respectful, rational dialogue on that issue ticket is what matters.
Well said, Luke. 100% agree.
Sometimes I feel like a lot of these complaints come from a place of deep seated envy.
Thanks Sterlin. I think we all have levels of that same envy. Rereading my comment here, I see my own envy and insecurity. I felt the need to let everyone know I posted that image first. Why? We are all just human.
They absolutely are, and you can find them if you dig into the comment feeds of these people. I was absolutely over the moon about one little upvote that was almost paid out to me when I stumbled into one of these characters and my future, only the next month, mind you, flew out the window. Now I am back to square one and the individual who flagged me and destroyed the little hope I had that I would have at least a small reprieve from the uncertainty of my future, had to go deliberately into my feed and rub some more salt in the wound, while claiming that he didn't care. Yeah, didn't care so much he wastes his time on pathetic little me. I'm convinced.
Totally agree @lukestokes, Dan already closed the issue, and it was discussed with witnesses and it was not accepted for many reasons. Witnesses are not pawns like some here are saying, and hardly all the witnesses agree with Dan on everything, the Hitler meme is tasteless. I have seen many witnesses I respect challenge Dan more than once, even Ned does not agree with Dan all the time. So making this sound like a dictatorship is far from the truth.
To be fair, it was Charlie Chaplin. It was somewhat tongue in cheek. I tried to make it apparent that some of my post was intentionally over the top, even though I was bringing up a legitimate point. It seems that I missed the mark with that, but I took a risk...
I want to add a little more substance to my previous response to this comment. As my previous response stated, "I always value your input."
I don't want to risk that being some innocuous disposable comment. It's a very genuine expression of the esteem that I have for you. You are consistently the voice of reason when things get out of hand and things get personal and vitriolic. While we often disagree--even passionately--you are always respectful and humble. The example that you set is irreplaceable, and I'm thankful that you are part of this community.
Wow, thank you @bacchist. I greatly appreciate that. Many here probably don't realize you and I have had many wonderful conversations both here on Steemit and in direct message chat over the past month, almost every day, and I value the friendship we've been building. Yes, we disagree passionately about many things regarding the nature of property, money, and what a future anarchist society should look like. I respect your views and what I learn from debating with you. You've given me one of my favorite compliments so far.
Thank you.
As opposed to a WWII japanese propaganda poster set against an imperial battle flag?
As always, I value your input.
Not enough to form a proper reply?
I thought that was a proper reply. He made a couple valid points and explained why he chose not to upvote. I totally respect that... Not sure what else needs to be said.
oh you drama queen...
It makes for good reading sometimes, not going to lie lol.
13 hardforks give me this impression:
We all understand that the project is experimental and changes are expected. But one shouldn't treat a blockchain with $180M market cap as his personal playground.
Dan has 20,000 VESTS of voting power. He votes who he wants and controls the witness list. Those under his thumb vote exactly as he does with few exceptions. Other very large anonymous accounts vote with Dan also. He has complete control of the witness list and can push through any fork he wants by manuevering sycophants into place. The memes are entirely appropriate.
Comment with your main account instead of trying to impersonate the steemit founders with sock puppet accounts @kushed or whoever you are.
Disagree.
I disagree with @smooth and agree with @rainman
For all your apparent reasonableness you do disappoint me sometimes smooth.
This had nothing to do with anonymity and everything to do with trying to muddy the waters and confuse readers.
The only valid point raised is that Dan controls a lot of Steem Power, beyond that it's pure speculation and FUD. The memes are not appropriate, and positing that Dan will "maneuver sycophants into place" is just ridiculous. Dan has shown time and time again that he's willing to not only listen to criticism but also make compromises, unlike kushed and the clique he's part of.
@lukestokes I understand where you are coming from but like I said, it was obviously done as a protest and not an attempt to deceive. Obvious to me at least, and I think everyone.
The idea of some sort of centralized (using signing by an authority which could be optionally attached to an account) or decentralized (using some sort of web of trust) "verified" accounts is an idea worth exploring, but is a subject for a different conversation, as you say.
@smooth: If that account was created as a protest just within this thread, then that's pretty impressive. Based on the conversations I've had with numerous non-native english speakers here, I could see this account being used to cause a lot of harm for people who don't understand who is who.
That said, I should withhold my judgement until actual harm is done from this specific account. It does, however, make me uncomfortable as I've already seen multiple examples of identity theft on Steemit, complete with faked verifications.
The account was created through mining 4 months ago, the same person also registered the larimer account, so we're dealing with a name squatter, something I personally despise. It falls in the same category as patent trolls, leachers trying to make money off the hard work of others.
Couldn't that have been done via a username like "anonymous923842748"? To me, upvoting accounts like this sets a concerning precedent for future impersonations, but I also agree with you that hiding the comment with a flag may not be good either. That said, I almost wanted to flag it as well just so others would see a lower reputation and not get confused about the real identity.
Maybe this is already a problem with accounts like @berniesanders, assuming this platform does take off to threaten the other major social media networks (think verified Twitter accounts). I'm curious how these issues will be resolved in a decentralized manner, but maybe that's a subject for a different conversation.
It sounds like we need a fork so Dan can start dealing with evil minnows and get his name back.
The decentralized way to claim account names you missed out on is by an auction or open bidding. I'm listening to offers. Otherwise it's mine and you can't have it.
@lukestokes I did not claim it was created as a protest, but it was clearly being used as a protest. If the post were more like "This is Dan, we have an urgent issue with the coin and I need everyone to post your private keys as a reply right away", that would be impersonation. I agree with you about waiting for some actual malicious act, before asserting malice. The mere duplication of an account name by itself is not malicious, nor is it identity theft, it is just an account name. I just searched Facebook and Linkedin and there is a very large number of people with that exact same name. Before long there will be many people on Steemit with the same exact names, including some with the same names as well-known Steemit personalities, if not already.
@rainman, I'm not sure why you are bringing up the memes. I did not upvote the original post and I thought it was highly sensationalized and not the best way to address the issues. The politics surrounding the witness list and in particular whether the sort of top-down control that has been exercised and how well the composition of the list serves the wider community are a relevant topics for conversation and need not be hidden because you disapprove of someone presenting them under an obvious pseudonym or doing so less than politely. As you may recall I have myself expressed some concerns about Dan's actions in this regard in the past, and recent actions taken have reinforced the relevance of the issue. As far as the anonymous accounts, you seem convinced that @kushed is behind it, or if not you are simply feel like mentioning his name twice anyway without actually knowing. Perhaps this has some connection to the fact that @kushed happens to be one one of the long-serving and relatively-independent witnesses with a good record and documented accomplishments who has recently been pushed out, but I'm completely speculating there because I have no idea what such a connection might be. For the record I have no idea who owns those accounts.
@chhayll if posts were made that referred to me in the third person and criticized me and my actions, and if that were done using a name similar to mine, I would interpret that as a stylized form of anonymity and protest and not an attempt to mislead anyone that I was actually the one posting (and criticizing myself). I respect your different point of view on the matter though.
@smooth: Replying here due to nesting.
I mentioned the memes because the comment we're discussing says the "memes are entirely appropriate". I disagree.
I suspect it's kushed because:
My saying this has nothing to do with his record as a witness. I did try to look at it following your comment though and it's not as well-documented as you imply.
I noticed they also have a @larimer account. Sock puppets make me sad. Can't we all be adults and speak openly and rationally about our opinions?
I up-voted that comment because it was funny, due to the name and had some valid points.
But no, it not me. I am never been shy about voicing my concerns in slack, don't need to hide behind anon just to make a comment like that.
Why did you just downvote my blog post? I credited any source that was used including image... what was the problem? Just trying to understand the problem so it can be fixed.
(I'd contact you another way but not sure how)
Thanks
It's not really about the voting power. Almost everyone accesses Steem through a single gateway — the steemit.com website, and the owners of the site can change anything they want, even replace the Steem blockchain with a centralized database. Many users do not care about blockchains and decentralization, they are only here for the "write a post and win money" lottery.
Dan, you nailed it.
I'll send you 399 Steem for nedscott
That is the most touching, play by the rules of the game gestures that I have ever seen. It's all yours. Keep your money.
One of many honorable and transparent moves I have seen from @ned
May this continue to be the case!
This one is just silly.
I think I understand more about this now. It's easy to see this commit as an abuse of power, but I don't think that's dan's intention.
Clarification of the commit
Flagging a post is currently the only way to counteract "bad" voting. When posts achieve an excessively high reward it gets downvoted because people think the reward is too high.
This has a couple of negative effects:
The commit adds the possibility to downvote a vote instead of a post. Users that don't agree with how someone is voting will be able to negatively impact the voter (with whom they disagree with) without affecting the poster.
Logically speaking, this makes sense: make it clear what we're saying when we vote.
Possible motivation
You might be inclined to think that the motivation is to make the separation between downvoting posts and downvoting votes clearer. Whilst that might be true, the post negative voting and steem by @dan focuses a lot on whales and bots. Whilst I'm only speculating now, I think there's a lot more to this than meets the eye:
I think @dan is going after other whales. In particular, he's going after whales that use bots:
I think @dan is trying to protect steem from whales that are abusing their power to earn high rewards by giving altruistic whales a better way to punish the abusive whales without affecting post authors.
I was wondering whether downvoting could be coupled with an additional multiple-option choice, like
"downvote for abuse / reputation impact",
"downvote for excessive payout - payout correction / no reputation impact"
"downvote for (some third option)"
Something like that plus a
Yep, something like that...
@alexgr this is kind of the type of thing I was trying to get to in that post. I think you two hit the nail on the head with your suggestions here. These types of changes are going to be needed if the platform is going to grow, could go bad, could go well, but if it's controlled properly I think it'll work out.
@alexgr
although I like this, who is going to moderate it? the problem still remains. people will follow the money no matter what. how about the power of the voter?
That looks even worse than the censorship bots. Who would be in charge of that monstrosity? Do they get to punish people that offend them? If not what stops them?
Are you gonna hire the Conde Nast censorship team to run it or go straight to Homeland Security for the wrongthink patrols?
This is the kind of SJW safe space crap that is ruining facebook and reddit. Grow some thicker skin and just ignore the people you don't agree with instead of trying to develop ways to label and censor them.
Would something different happen if a post were flagged for abuse instead of being flagged for excessive payout? If the result is the same, the distinction wouldn't serve a purpose. More importantly, your suggestion still puts the focus on flagging the post instead of the voter.
In my scenario, yes. The two downvotes would be programmed to have a different effect. One only affecting payout, the other affecting payout+reputation as well.
I don't know if it's technically feasible - just asking.
(And yes, the intention of the proposal I'm making is to keep flagging the post instead of nullifying the voter - because as Dan has noted in his series of articles, people take it personally (for irrational reasons) when they are aimed at). In theory it shouldn't make a difference, yet it does.
Thank you @bitcalm for that very enlightening comment.
I'm sorry but the real problem with a post like this is it's pandering to one of the main crimes of the mainstream media. It's called Outrage Marketing. The idea is you try and whip up a frenzy of emotion in order to a) sell more newspapers or b) get more views/votes on Steemit. The post could just as easily be framed as a question, as in 'why's @dan doing this?
Now that might not engender such a large response, but at least it would be the start of a civilised discussion, rather than a pile-on.
Now I apologise profusely if that was not your intention, but from where I'm sitting that's really what it looks like.
To me one of the most poignant parts of this discussion is the fact that it demonstrates just how fragile our concepts of 'trust' are nowadays. Someone has taken time and effort to create something which he believes is/will be of value to the world, and releases is to early acclaim. But then, immediately he tries to polish/improve, it's considered to be a threat or an attack. At this time an imaginary threat at that.
So what is the threat? That @dan or someone else will use the new power to 'completely void the voting capability of other users'. Is that really true? And if so, would he use it to ruin the community spirit or to try and improve the quality of the platform in some way? I don't understand why he would do it for the former, rather than the latter.
Anyway, the arguments can rage back and forth ad nauseum, but I would suggest that we try and maintain a credo that has served our civilisation well for a long time.
"A person is considered innocent, until proven guilty".
Peace out!
I actually think this improvement is indeed an improvement. I don't think anyone except bot operators benefit from bot voting. It is also affecting the content that makes it up to trending feeds. Bots have destroyed the ability of people from earning curator rewards. I think this is better than a bot detection system that throws up CAPTCHAs because it lets people do it. Ok, so now maybe the bot-game players will start playing the downvote but then there will be a countermeasure for this as well, and this measure goes towards this. By downvoting bots we can bring the process back to natural human beings and stop the gaming that is adversely altering the rankings and reputations especially of those who are smaller in their position, working their way up.
I'm tending to thing you may be right. I don't understand enough of the game dynamics behind bots and whales to make an intelligent guess, but at the moment I would rather trust a founder's perception and motives than not. :)
Valid criticism... I honestly thought that people would recognize Charlie Chapman and realize that I was being intentionally over the top and tongue in cheek.
Oh now it's my turn to apologise if you were trying to be funny. I pride myself on normally spotting that, but this time clearly I failed. Anyway, thanks for the thought provoking post anyway. :)
No need to apologize. It didn't work for a lot of people. Probably didn't help trying to have a substantive conversation at the same time.
I'm totally opposite. I think this is one of the things that make Steem flourish.
I've seen what happened with Bitshares. Dan was doing all the time groundbreaking theoretical work but shareholders were too divided to actually support him, even when it was clear that the project will decay if nothing gets done (which eventually happened). Now I'm really excited to see him having so large stake that he can dictate pretty much everything.
Platform is still in beta, so now it's the time to try all new different things. When Steem grows bigger, it will be more and more difficult to do changes. We are still in a phase where it's ok to screw up with parameters because they can be reverted without much harm.
That being said, I'm not sure if I support this new change to the voting system. I haven't seen anything like that anywhere so it's hard to imagine how it will actually work in real life.
I totally agree. Inability to take decisions was a hard lesson taken from BitShares. Let's learn from this.
Agreed, there are plenty of "let us build consensus and do nothing" alternatives out there in the crypto space. As the platform grows it will naturally be harder to make such changes, but while it's young let's have the benefits of dynamism. Hard forks have been normalized in the Steem space and that's excellent. Since both the P2P system and the primary website are now open source, you always have the opportunity to deploy a competitor which takes the opposite approach and requires wide consensus before anything changes.
No you don't, the license forbids it.
The license forbids you to create your own blockchains? Pretty impressive license!
The context of the above comment implied using the original code with a different blockchain or a fork, which the license indeed forbids
Oops, I glanced over the P2P part not realizing he meant the steem blockchain.
This will probably hang over us until it's tested in court. For the good of the community, maybe you should deploy one and invite Dan to sue you? Better now than 10 years from now.
Nice of you to volunteer me. How about the novel approach of volunteering yourself?
@smooth I imagine you can more afford it than I.
It was a joke, of course. You are right to highlight it and put pressure on them to remove the ambiguity.
Its very very unlikely that the founders would be willing to risk a lawsuit to stop a renegade blockchain, even if they could figure out who deployed it (which i feel like it would be tough).
Theyre playing way too close to the edge to risk that. Especially with things like peerplays.
Obviously the best person to do it would be Satoshi Nakamoto as with his 1 million BTC he can bury Dan and Ned under a mountain of lawyers.
Yeah, it's hard to see how Steem could have recovered from the hack if it was truely decentralized. We would be still discussing what should be done.
I think that it is natural that the developers have this position of power on the system, since after all, they have spent a lot of time dreaming it up, working out the bugs, and implementing it. Dash directly funds the ability of devs to do this, I don't know how the distribution goes on Steem with this particular aspect.
There will of course be competitors to Steem arising, and the ability to adapt and change is very important in a competitive market. The best ideas should win, and the people will vote with their dollars who that is, as well as their comments and now both up and downvotes.
Bitshares has also blockchain based funding for workers. I guess Dan considers it somewhat failure because it wasn't very effective. Opinions of what should be done were too diversified and not enough stuff got done.
I think the Bitshares' system is brilliant and the shareholders are the biggest problem. Too many people with too big stake who didn't share the vision that Dan had for Bitshares.
I saw this earlier when I was poking around in the code and didn't really look too much into it. You've sparked my curiosity though. I've upvoted you because I think it's worth of a discussion, though I think you're a little witch-hunt-y.
From what I can tell, this code isn't going live anytime soon. This is more along the lines of a proposed solution that's already had a little bit of development behind it than something imminent. If the hardfork timer were counting down right now and it was going live in 8 hours, I'd have my pitch fork ready too. It's not though, it's not live and the hardfork itself isn't an option.
We need some civil discussion happening though. I'm all for that. But I think the first question we need answered is:
What are we trying to solve? I asked the same thing on github.
Thanks for keeping a cool, level head about this. That's why you've earned my witness vote.
Well the important question is whether or not it will damage the ecosystem beyond repair. This is all still in beta, but I would like to hear whether or not the miners / witnesses will have any say in feature implementations or reward mechanism restructuring.
I don't know Dan personally, and this project is still new. What we have so far is pretty awesome. but I do think the community should have say in changes which affects them.
The community does have a say in changes and how they affect them by voting for witnesses who then agree to adopt or not adopt the changes.
That's very theoretical... the community doesn't have the voting power to exercise their will in this way.
The problem is the main witnesses risk losing their status if they speak out against Dan. He represents a large portion of the voting pool that most witnesses need to retain in order to hold on to their position.
There is GREAT risk to ANYONE who challenges Dan or Ned, though if all the Whales were to do so they could. This is why I still have hope for the platform. If there is something happening there is enough other Whales to make a stand and make a point.
We as minnows may not have much power but we can make our voice heard and if enough of us make that voice heard it could influence the platform.
Ultimately all we can do is choose to tell the truth regardless of the risk or conform to get approval from overlords~*~
Has that happened before?
I'm no blockchain historian, but this is the impression I get... I don't want to force anyone into taking a public stance that might put them at risk, but this is a real concern as far as I can tell.
They only did it when the hack occurred and when they had a fix for the solution. I think they wanted to be seen as pro-active in handling a situation as opposed to waiting on witnesses to update.
the point here is: right now, with the whole software still in beta and very new, it might actually be a good thing that there is still some control from one or few individuals over the system. this makes it possible to react quickly to critical situations.
What this commit implements can be emulated exactly with a bot that follows every action of the user and downvote all the posts he upvotes and upvotes all the posts he downvotes. The only difference is that the bot version is more spammy and only available to advanced users including whales and bot spammers. Negating voting also has a few great upsides:
What I hear you saying is that Dan wants more power over witnesses...
The second upside you mention seems a little far fetched. The only people who really think in terms of "evil whales" are other whales. Specifically in this case its a whale who wants to consolidate his power over other whales.
Come on, this isn't Bitcointalk, let's not start spreading FUD.
We all know full well that the only reason current witnesses are witnesses is because they have the support of @dan, @ned, @dantheman, and @steemit. Dan already has entire control on who is witness. At the moment it's the community that doesn't have much say on who gets to be a witness. If we really think one witness is a free rider who really doesn't deserve the (huge) payout he is getting and we all want to get him out, it's much easier to coordinate downvotes against him (actually there is nothing to coordinate) than coordinate upvotes on 19 other witnesses including a new one from the backup list so that he would fall to #20 position and lose his slot.
I'm surprised to hear that said from a member of #steemitabuse when it's a fact that we have users every day who come to whine about power abuse. Granted most of these users are actual spammers who are just being salty, but I have seen some new but somewhat larger users acting like small tyrants in a thread and downvoting on sight people with different opinions. That kind of troll could use some 1-week correction of attitude when the whole thread turns against him and locks him out. This kind of situation will become more and more frequent: just look at the crazy downvote trolling on Reddit.
Like you said, most of those complaints about abuse of power come from people upset that they can't get away with some form of abuse... The bulk of the complaints about whales that I hear are that they vote on certain posts, while other worthy posts don't get anything. Hard to see an organized vote-cancelling-bloc forming based on that.
Handling a pretty typical user that goes on a rampage is an interesting use for a function like this... I hadn't considered that when you said "evil whales"
You are absolutely right... That's Dan!
(watch please before you flag)
YES!!! THANK YOU!!!
I thought I was being clever... It fell so flat.
There is hope.
The best course of action would be a dislike button that takes away the reward but not authors reputation. Leaving the flag for spam/scams/identity theft etc.
I support this (EDIT: "this" meaning @repholder's suggestion of a dislike button distinct from flagging, aka downvote) along with a requirement that flagging (rep damage) include a comment, so the flagger can be flagged for abuse if others see the action as not justified.
I understand from that statement that you are supporting the "negate power" commit, am I right?
No, I was responding to the immediate parent comment ("dislike button that takes away the reward but not authors reputation"). I'll make an edit to make that clear.
@recursive: 1) I would require a comment when flagging, which is useful and frequently requested anyway, therefore both parties are always open to being flagged by each other and more importantly by third parties who can observe the interaction and weigh in on who (if either) is in the right. 2) It is not the same as Dan's proposal because it is a one-time action, as opposed to negating someone's entire influence for a week. 3) It is a much simpler change that several people have requested, unlike Dan's proposal which is a social experiment being pushed on people none of whom asked for it and many of whom apparently don't like it (personally I'm neutral/undecided on the merits, but negative on the approach of pushing these kinds of changes from the top).
But how can you "flag a user" that has just downvoted and not posted if you don't flag his account? And if you flag his account, then that's pretty much what @dan is proposing here.