RE: What to do if your Steem newbie friend is getting Bandwidth Limit Exceeded Error
I'm curious about how this is supposed to differentiate legitimate new users who don't have a particular established presence on the platform from spam. Logically, rationally, observably – it literally can't.
Not only that, it actually has an observable negative impact on the platform with regards to new users versus spam. New users will absolutely go away. They have choices. They have other things they can do with their time and money. Spam accounts don't see this is a problem at all. They are automated; they can afford to keep spending all their time trying to post over and over until it goes through.
Why would this be thought of as a good idea?
In fact, it's pretty amazingly impressive at actually achieving the opposite of its stated intended purpose. You have to work hard to get that deep in the hole. Bravo, Steemit. Bravo.
If you're genuinely curious, I suggest you read Dan's old posts on the matter. Dynamic bandwidth limiting is the alternative to fees. Users are consuming a public resource, which increases the cost for witnesses and other node operators, and so bandwidth usage must be limited in some way. Dynamic bandwidth limitation allows you to make your comment without having to attach a fee despite the huge traffic on the network right now. Consider the fact that with 1/5th the number of transactions, a basic transaction on Bitcoin has been costing up to $25 in recent weeks.
Steem instead has a consensus method for the rules of inclusion, which ensures that small holders of stake can only increase the running costs of the system so much, while also allowing users like yourself to post for free.
The system doesn't differentiate between spam and normal users, but it prevents spam users from costing too much to the system. A human can differentiate spam and normal users, hence why I delegated stake to @ingaaa, since I know who she is. I would not delegate to a user who is spamming 'nice post' over and over.
I have actually read all of those pieces, I'm familiar with all of the justifications, and I am quite capable of analyzing the output and what will become of it – and combined with other issues of like nature on the chain,What I see happening is that such effects are given to the user by feedback, and if the user doesn't feel as if they are being rewarded as if they had access to good content