For the First Time, I Might Be Losing Faith in Steem...

in #steem4 years ago

steem post 3.jpg

It's funny how quickly things change.

Just recently, I wrote a post celebrating 1000 posts on Steemit and/or a host of other applications sitting on top of the Steem blockchain.

But since then, I've been the victim of whale downvotes on several posts, namely coming from @ocdb.

This was an annoyance to say the least, however this isn't what shook my faith in Steem.

What shook my faith in Steem was seeing my post from yesterday, "Is Bitcoin Useless?", hidden due to "low ratings".

This was a completely legitimate post that I took the time to create, including a custom thumbnail, title and description.

All the rewards attributed to that post have been lost. The post has been hidden. What a complete waste of time and effort for myself.

I knew spammy posts could be hidden. I didn't know that legitimate posts could be hidden and rewards stripped, simply due to a few downvotes from powerful individuals.

I was originally drawn to Steem due to the censorship on YouTube. But now I find myself being a victim of censorship on Steem.

And worse yet, at least with YouTube I wouldn't lose my income from downvotes. But on this platform, those downvotes have a severe impact on my income.

So now I'm beginning to question whether Steem is a viable place for me to stay in the long run, if any possibility of making an income is dictated by a handful of powerful individuals. In that sense, it doesn't seem very different to YouTube, yet only has a fraction of the audience.

Perhaps I'm overreacting, but I'm shocked to see this when I've posted literally thousands of times on this platform. I also have money invested in this platform in the form of Steem Power. I find myself questioning why I would have money invested in a platform that silences me and inhibits my ability to have my voice heard and make an income.

I have a lot of thinking to do.

I would welcome any thoughts you might have about this in the comments section below.

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I think you're overreacting this time. You're not being censored on Steem. Nothing short of a hardfork can censor anything from the Steem blockchain. You haven't even been censored from steemit.com. You post is still visible on that particular front end when the viewer clicks on the button that says "Show" on it. The Steem blockchain retains everything. Even all the posts made by the criminal group that had stolen papers on 9/11 that extorted BTC from the victims are still on chain. None of the blogging front ends show anything posted by that account but with the right tools anyone can still access those posts.

All the other front ends including SteemPeak show that post of yours completely normally.

What you got was a one-time downvote bomb the basis of which was disagreement on rewards. You have been earning extraordinarily well on Steem. Even in this horrible bear market when the price of STEEM is at what I hope proves to be the rock bottom, your posts have consistently earned tens of dollars worth of STEEM. The money you have invested is dwarfed by the money you have earned here. Your Steem Power has remained at about 5000 for over a year despite your massive earnings. Steem has been a place to earn for you, not something to invest money in. It seems to me based on your posts that you don't put much stock in anything but Bitcoin and Ethereum. Altcoins are a minor part of your portfolio. Disagreement over rewards has been considered a valid reason for downvoting since day one. What you experienced was a downvoting bomb based on that reason. Perhaps @ocdb curators feel that such a short video wasn't worth the high rewards it was getting.

You are not being censored or victimized. And I'm betting that even if you earned 10% of what you have earned so far per post, it would still make perfect sense for you to make Steem posts out of your YouTube videos. You're not making any content exclusively for Steem, which means that no longer cross-posting your YouTube videos to Steem would mean not picking up some loose change available to you.

That said, I don't think that particular post should've been targeted with such huge downvotes. Some of the pending rewards should've been removed but not all of them and that post certainly didn't deserve to be downvoted that hard.

I'm really hoping you will continue. I don't think anyone intends to stop you from earning here. Besides, what else is there out there better than Steem in terms of earning from content? Scarcely anything even remotely as good. Sure you can earn on YouTube or Instagram if you have a massive following but for anyone not massively popular, they money on mainstream platforms is pitiful.

You're right. @louisthomas should understand the difference between downvotes in steem and censorship when only the rewards are removed but not the content.

@markkujantunen said that correctly, your content is still on the chain and it's impossible to remove it.

Take a look at this pages :

https://busy.org/@louisthomas

http://steempeak.com/@louisthomas

https://www.palnet.io/@louisthomas

And after all your video is on in 3speak and if they will upvote it, it will apear even in steemit ! :

https://3speak.online/user/louisthomas

So, no one censored you and there is no reason to lose faith on steem after all the positive interaction that you get here in term of comments, upvotes, resteems and support from our awesome and best steem community !

Hey mark. Thanks for taking the time to leave a thoughtful response. I'd like to reciprocate the favour.

Perhaps you're right and I am over-reacting. I was pretty mad when I posted this, but I'm still glad that I did.

It may not be censorship in the strictest sense of the word, but in my opinion still acts as a proxy for that if it leads to less people seeing my content and 90% of my income being lost in a post with a single downvote. It's not much different to the adpocalypse on YouTube and all the demonetisation that occurred - which is why I came to be such a fan of Steem in the first place. To see the same thing over again here is immensely frustrating to say the least.

It isn't a one-off, as 3 of my posts in the past week have been downvoted and I've lost 90% of the rewards. The scary thing for me is that I have absolutely no idea how long this will last for. Is it gonna be a permanent thing? Am I effectively gonna lose half my income from now on?

Steem has been very good to me, which I'm very appreciate of. But you have to ask - if a large crypto YouTuber can't make a great income on Steem, then who on earth can? And when you consider that 50% of rewards go to curators, I'm left with approx $15USD worth of rewards per post, often for videos that take 6-8 hours to produce. Is that excessive and worthy of being downvoted? In my personal opinion, no.

And just to clarify - I have made exclusive posts for Steem on multiple occasions. And I have to pay a monthly fee to upload to @3Speak, which I'm more than happy to do. And I've made several videos about Steem that have led to adoption. So I absolutely consider myself someone who has invested a lot into this platform.

a large crypto YouTuber can't make a great income on Steem, then who on earth can?

YouTube earnings comes from advertising. Steem earnings come from inflation and (if you are cashing out, which apparently you are) selling pressure which drives down the price of Steem and hurts everyone's investment. YouTube can therefore afford to pay you merely for having an audience, Steem can not.

Steem earnings need to directed to rewarding activities which directly contribute value back to Steem in order to avoid an inflationary death spiral.

You may be a successful or very successful YouTuber but:

  1. Do you recruit your large YouTube audience to join Steem and engage with you on the Steem platform? Can you cite metrics (even estimated) on how many you have recruited, and how many remain active after some period of time?
  2. Do you promote Steem as an investment in your YouTube content? Can you cite metrics on net investment over time (again, estimated is fine)?
  3. Do you leverage your success as an influencer to promote Steem when making other appearances? How frequently and how effective has this promotion been?
  4. Is your Steem content generating large amounts of traffic which in turn drives new user signups and/or investment. If so, what are the metrics on cost per user, attrition, etc. relative to rewards paid out?
    Etc.

If not, then congratulations on your success and I wish you nothing but continued success, but sending a regular paycheck of Steem rewards to you (and others like you; this is not meant to single anyone out) to cash out does not help us.

I feel like you have the best intentions but are thinking about this in the wrong way. And I'm saying this out of love for this platform.

Content creators just want to create content. Those kinds of questions almost sound like you expect me to become a sales rep for the Steem blockchain in order to be deserving of rewards on Steem.

You know how often I promote YouTube, Twitter, Facebook etc? The answer is never.

Merely posting content on this platform, should be enough to earn rewards on this platform. Steem absolutely will NOT succeed long term if you expect anything more of content creators - they will simply go elsewhere.

If there's any problem here, it's related to the game theory and mechanics of the Steem blockchain.

That's the nature of any platform where earnings are not derived from advertising, subscriptions, etc. There aren't many of these (maybe just one), so yes it can seem a bit strange.

It is Steem stakeholders, not viewers, who are paying you. Unless you are returning value to Steem stakeholders (or alternately/equivalently the Steem platform itself), paying you is a waste of money.

One obvious way to contribute to the platform would be exclusive content which at least draws users to Steem who want to see it (ideally with some sort of visible metrics on effectiveness in actually doing this). But I see from other comments that you aren't even doing that, your content are just reposts where you expect to get some extra free money from Steem for doing a few clicks to repost. How does that help us?

That's not at all meant as a personal attack, in case it sounded like one. Again, I wish you the best to earn on platforms where you are being paid by viewers or subscribers alone, if that's what you are after.

Steem is a different beast, no doubt.

How many people here have got YouTube videos with more than 20,000 views expressing their love for Steemit?

Great! No question it is value add. I wasn't aware of that video, so it is definitely informative.

Now as a content creator, I'm sure you have some idea of a market value on views, typical conversion rates, etc.

How much do you think 20k views on a piece that is two years old is worth?

Yeah, backlinks to steemit in video description, that's great. Dtube is upvoting embeds from YT without any links to Steem

I'm contributing to the platform in the form of content that I've put hours into creating. Without content creators such as myself, there is no content, and thus no reason to be on Steem at all.

I have created exclusive content on multiple occasions. And I've made positive videos about Steem that have gotten thousands of videos on YouTube and led to hundreds (if not thousands) of new people enjoying Steem.

I've done more to assist Steem adoption than at least 99% of people here. Fact.

What does "repost" even mean? Like, I record a video on my camera. It gets posted on YouTube AND Steem AND other places. Why isn't the YouTube video considered a repost of a Steem video? I make content for all platforms.

You don't seem to be viewing things from my perspective, so I'll give up trying to explain. But Steem will never, ever, ever, ever, ever succeed if people are expected to act as sales reps in order to get rewards. Ever, everrrrrrrrrrrr.

Without content creators such as myself, there is no content, and thus no reason to be on Steem at all.

There is unlimited content and links to content on reddit along with engaging discussions and a huge user base. #19 site on the entire internet according on Alexa (I've seen higher rankings using different metrics). No one is paid to post there. There is also lots of content posted to twitter, facebook, etc. where again, no one is paid. A lot of non-monetized content gets posted on YouTube as well.

I could go on and on. There are certainly opportunities to get paid (a lot) to produce content by using certain platforms (generally ad-supported, less often subscription-supported), but the idea of not being paid (a lot) by a platform to produce content means no content on the platform is absurd.

What does "repost" even mean?

I don't know, I just read that. I assumed it meant older content being reposted. If it is new content posted simultaneously on multiple platforms, then non-exclusive would be a better description.

act as sales reps in order to get rewards

There is no one thing that constitutes contributing value, and claiming anything that does is being a 'sales rep' is taking it to an illogical extreme. Some people might want to actively promote, others can do other things.

Compare the two:

  1. Creator who posts exclusive content that must (since it is exclusive) draw an audience to Steem if it has an audience at all. Creator both actively and passively (since the content is exclusive, any links to the content are promoting) promotes Steem.
  2. Creator who posts on Steem in addition to posting on a bunch of other sites and does nothing else to help Steem.

Which does it make more sense for Steem to (highly) reward?

It's literally impossible to make a full-time living on Steem right now.

I'm one of the most generously rewarded people on here, and will maybe earn the equivalent of $200-300 USD per month. Impossible to survive on.

And even if I did make the leap to post exclusively full-time on Steem, there's absolutely nothing preventing one or two whales from downvoting my content like they have been over the past week, on three occasions.

And this is the problem with down voting for "overrewarding" too. It makes it impossible for people to earn enough on Steem to post exclusively.

If I can earn $60 on a YouTube video, why would I post exclusively on Steem when (especially after downvotes) I might only make $5 on a video? Rational people won't do that.

So you're preventing people from going full time on Steem. If you want a platform full of hobbyists, that's fine. Or only people who are so rich that they don't need financial compensation, that's fine too.

But Steem won't attract professional content creators with this overrewarding downvoting nonsense.

It may not be censorship in the strictest sense of the word, but in my opinion still acts as a proxy for that if it leads to less people seeing my content and 90% of my income being lost in a post with a single downvote. It's not much different to the adpocalypse on YouTube and all the demonetisation that occurred - which is why I came to be such a fan of Steem in the first place. To see the same thing over again here is immensely frustrating to say the least.

What's different about Steem and YouTube is that the latter is a monolith whereas everything is up for public debate on Steem. As you can see, this post you made seems to be on its way to being rewarded rather well for the points you made and the discussion you have sparked.

It isn't a one-off, as 3 of my posts in the past week have been downvoted and I've lost 90% of the rewards. The scary thing for me is that I have absolutely no idea how long this will last for. Is it gonna be a permanent thing? Am I effectively gonna lose half my income from now on?

That too, is up for debate. @ocdb is not controlled by some single asshole but a group of curators in charge of an account most of whose SP is delegated to it.

Steem has been very good to me, which I'm very appreciate of. But you have to ask - if a large crypto YouTuber can't make a great income on Steem, then who on earth can? And when you consider that 50% of rewards go to curators, I'm left with approx $15USD worth of rewards per post, often for videos that take 6-8 hours to produce. Is that excessive and worthy of being downvoted? In my personal opinion, no.

That depends also on what else is there on Steem competing for the same rewards. You crosspost most of your crypto posts from YouTube. I'm guessing you earn on YouTube, too. But yes, I do value your contributions, which is why I've had you on autovote for a long time and continue to comment on your videos.

If this type of excessive downvotes keep coming, I'm going to have to reconsider my delegations.

And just to clarify - I have made exclusive posts for Steem on multiple occasions.

I see.

And I have to pay a monthly fee to upload to @3Speak, which I'm more than happy to do. And I've made several videos about Steem that have led to adoption. So I absolutely consider myself someone who has invested a lot into this platform.

Your sweat equity spent on your videos is no doubt considerable. I've always found your content to be well-researched and very well thought-out. They have a lot of potential to drive traffic to Steem, which is why think they should continue to occupy the top positions among high-earning posts.

This will actually change after Communities which are now in private beta. Communities disentangles visibility, downvoting and flagging. After Communities whether a post gets hidden will have more to do with the rules of a given Community and not whether the post was downvoted. In short, we agree that the current implementation is not ideal. While it is not technically censorship, it can feel like it. The implementation arose out of necessity but can be, and is being, improved.

Just going over the great comments here as a reply to your post...

The perfect content for a great YouTube video!

Dear @louisthomas

It may not be censorship in the strictest sense of the word, but in my opinion still acts as a proxy for that if it leads to less people seeing my content

Things can get easily censored on steem. It hardly matters that some content will be stored on blockchain. What matters is: will this content be diplayed to our audience ?

It doesn't matter much that "The Steem blockchain retains everything". It's a bit like saying that all your data and activity on facebook does also stays forever (and it indeed does). If people cannot access content easily - it's as this content doesn't exist.

Yours, Piotr

Damn straight! Well said Mak :D

Dear @markkujantunen

Excellent comment, however I do not fully agree with you.

I think you're overreacting this time. You're not being censored on Steem. Nothing short of a hardfork can censor anything from the Steem blockchain.
You haven't even been censored from steemit.com.

I'm not sure what do you mean. Things can get easily censored on steem. It hardly matters that some content will be stored on blockchain. What matters is: will this content be diplayed to our audience ?

It doesn't matter much that "The Steem blockchain retains everything". It's a bit like saying that all your data and activity on facebook does also stays forever (and it indeed does). If people cannot access content easily - it's as this content doesn't exist.

It's important to understand users behaviour.

You are not being censored or victimized.

The truth is that you won't get far telling someone who feels like being a victim of abuse, that he/she isn't (in your opinion) a victim. Wouldn't you agree?

Yours, Piotr

Let em downvote I got your back. I am at steemfest just seeing this crap for the first time. Don’t worry Louis I appreciate what you do for steem and the content you make is top notch. You content won’t be collapsed again.

Thanks Dan. It's because of great entrepreneurs such as yourself that I remain hopeful about the future of this platform. Thanks for all that you do :)

I guess this is exactly what decentralisation means: A balance (in this case between your 'enemies' and your supporters).

Nothing to do with censorship. OCDB joining the Curangel DV trail has caused some issues with DV moderation, but they will be addressed I am sure.

Remain blessed 💪

Posted using Partiko Android

Let the fight begin.

Lol... Dude!!!

Posted using Partiko Android

😂 SMH

Posted using Partiko Android

So DAN, 4 months ago you made a post about free down votes.

Screen Shot 2019-11-11 at 9.20.47 PM.png

And my answer to your post was that the down voting will bring death to the steemit platform.

Screen Shot 2019-11-11 at 9.25.27 PM.png

Since those trolls started to down vote me for nothing I stoped to use steemit and so are thousands of people that are getting down voted.
What is your opinion about down voting now when you are getting down voted for no reason?
I guess you thought you are untouchable because you are a whale. (or you thought you was)
My point is that people are down voting each other when they get into a conflict. And that is an abuse and its just getting worse. If steemit don't disable that down vote button this platform is going to hell. (but mabe its what they want)

You have it twisted, I am very pro downvotes. It is the only way we can express our opinions both way. I am simply expressing my opinion here. In the end it will balance out, people who agree vs people who disagree.

I downvoted that other post because I thought it was overrewarded (though I'm pretty sure my vote didn't put it below zero).

I'm even more sure that this whiny post is overrewarded, so I'm downvoting this one too.

No one is entitled to rewards on Steem

Anyone can post. You posts are not censored or removed. However, earning rewards happens at the end of the voting period based on a consensus of stakeholder voters. In my case I'm judging whether, in my subjective view, the posts are adding value to Steem as clearly evidenced in one of the following ways: a) attracting and retaining new users to Steem (for example influencers who not only have a large following, but who are also demonstrably promoting Steem and bringing their audience to Steem); b) attracting and retaining new investors in the STEEM (or even SBD) token; c) development of new apps/games/services etc. (or contributing to the development of the core Steem blockchain itself) which make Steem more useful and will serve to support (a) or (b); d) improving the immediate fundamental economics of Steem (e.g. by burning STEEM and therefore reducing inflation); e) generally small rewards (with some potential of occasional viral "lottery effect" which serve to directly attract new users, serve as a token of appreciation/respect/tip exchanged among users (usually comment votes), and distribute Steem to new users.

Routine blog/vlog posts which give one's opinion of the day on various topics which are a dime a dozen on the internet are not contributing high value to Steem in my opinion. I'm perfectly okay with seeing them get moderate earnings in the range of a few dollars (which is vastly more than they would get anywhere else), but if more than that, I consider them overrewarded, especially if the high rewards are consistently repeated (milking). Again, this is all my subjective opinion, and while other stakeholders opinions may differ, they are all entitled to their opinions, and upvoting/downvoting accordingly.

One last time: You don't "earn rewards" due to earlier votes and then have later downvotes "take them away", that's not how it works. Again, rewards are only earned at the end of voting, when the blockchain assesses to the overall consensus of stakeholder voters.

Thanks for taking the time to explain how you feel, Smooth.

With all due respect, I must say that I disagree with you for the most part.

Quite honestly, when this kind of downvoting is taking place it destroys any desire that I would otherwise have to invite people to Steem.

My message at one time would've been "if you don't like being at the mercy of employees at YouTube, join Steemit!"

But now you're just swapping being at the mercy of YouTube employees, with being at the mercy of individual whales who subjectively decide that your content isn't worthy or is "over-rewarded".

The lack of an audience here (compared to YouTube), is supposed to be negated by censorship resistance and being able to earn a cryptocurrency. When downvotes can lead to legit posts being hidden on Steemit.com (the most popular app on this blockchain), then you're effectively destroying the two reasons why somebody would choose Steem in the first place.

And though you might say that the rewards weren't "earned", and that they weren't really taken away from me, that's how it feels psychologically when you see $X one minute, that becomes $0 the next.

All of a sudden, I feel more policed on this platform than I do on YouTube.

You might think I'm being dramatic, and that my opinion doesn't matter. But I suspect many content creators would feel the same way, which is very bad for Steem in the long-run.

But once again, thank you for at least taking the time to share your thoughts. Unlike other people who have downvoted me.

My message at one time would've been "if you don't like being at the mercy of employees at YouTube, join Steemit!" But now you're just swapping being at the mercy of YouTube employees, with being at the mercy of individual whales who subjectively decide that your content isn't worthy or is "over-rewarded".

Again, there is a huge, huge difference. YouTube can unilaterally not only shut down your earnings, but remove your channel and all of your content. On Steem, not only can't you be removed, you can always market and appeal to other stakeholders for upvotes which offset or exceeed the downvotes. This is entirely different from YouTube's absolute and arbitrary authority where you have no recourse at all.

As for "whales", how much of your earnings/upvotes are coming from whales? Please don't selectively blame "whales" for downvotes but silently enjoy the whale upvotes. If you don't like whales having influence over rewards, and would prefer to live or die on the basis of grass roots support, please ask your whale upvoters to stop too.

There's really not a big difference in practice. If every post of mine gets hidden and downvoted, that's effectively the same as being shut down. The technicalities of it all are irrelevant in practice, even if that's not the case in theory.

Steem is way more arbitrary than YouTube right now. YouTube will ban me if I break the terms of service, otherwise I can make as much money as I like without fear of one person influencing that. While as with Steem, somebody can have a huge impact just because they don't like me or the colour of my shirt or whatever. It could be for literally any reason, and nothing stops them.

I'm fine with whales being able to upvote whatever content they like. But psychologically, there's a gigantic difference between not getting upvoted, and being actively downvoted. It's a really crappy feeling for a content creator who might have spent 10+ hours on an individual video. It leads to a lot of anger and frustration, which I don't think is welcome or helpful for this platform.

I'm just sharing the perspective of a fairly large content creator in the crypto space. And I'm telling you that I think the way this plays out is disastrous for the morale of content creators on this platform. And I'm saying that as someone who hopes it succeeds.

There's really not a big difference in practice. If every post of mine gets hidden and downvoted, that's effectively the same as being shut down. The technicalities of it all are irrelevant in practice, even if that's not the case in theory.

At a minimum, you have recourse to appeal to other stakeholders. On YouTube you do not.

In addition, as others have told you, most of the other UIs do not hide content based on votes. That's about half of the usage. So in the worse case, if every post of yours got hidden (which hasn't happened; in fact one was, so this all seems rather drama queen, don't you think?), you would lose about half of your audience on Steem, not all of it.

But psychologically, there's a gigantic difference between not getting upvoted, and being actively downvoted

We know for a fact that the platform can not work without downvotes. So whatever negatives come with that, we'll have to live with, or come up with ways to mitigate. Perhaps you could make some constructive suggestions on the latter.

Personally, I have suggested many times that rewards not be shown in real time, only after payout, to help mitigate the perception of "losing" rewards. TPTB don't agree with me on that, I guess, since it hasn't happened.

Suggestion: restrict downvotes to spam and abuse only. Everything else, like "overrewarding" is too subjective and just silly. It leads to arguments and bitterness.

Other suggestion to help price of Steem: make it much, much easier for anyone to advertise on Steem and/or appear on trending page. The cost would be burning Steem.

They're good suggestions, but unfortunately both at least somewhat unworkable.

I appreciate the sincere engagement in any case.

I'd add this though:

too subjective

There is no such thing as "too subjective". All rewarding in Steem is 100% subjective. There are no objective criteria such as a revenue share that factors into it. You get rewarded by convincing stakeholders to subjectively value your contribution, and no other way.

It is possible that some UIs might decide to share their ad revenue or other revenue with creators. I suggest you take that up with them. To the extent they do, downvotes won't matter, since no one can downvote what a UI decides to pay you. (And similarly, as stakeholders we have no say in whether or not they do pay you, even if I think they should.)

He's raking in steem rewards for also uploading videos to steem, he's going nowhere. He's stacked plenty of sats dumping his steem earnings on blocktrades.

https://steemdb.com/labs/author?grouping=monthly

"Big YouTuber" setting the world on fire? Give me a break.
https://socialblade.com/youtube/channel/UCpceefaJ9vs4RYUTsO9Y3FA

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im gangbanged by ocdb and curangel all time despite being her over 3 years, having 30000 follwoers and loads of readers.

people delegated to ocdb to upvote good posts and pay them back curation rewards yet the bot and its owner abuse the power upvotign circle of friends and themselves while attacking others one by one.

I'm sorry to hear that :(

I knew spammy posts could be hidden. I didn't know that legitimate posts could be hidden

What a stupid statement.

You're not being censored, everyone can still see your posts. On frontends different from Steemit it's not even hidden under a button.

You're not entitled to any rewards just because you post to Steem.

Edit: I disagree with those huge downvotes on your particular post, but I'm tired of people whining about getting downvotes, so I might expressed myself a little harshly.

I was complaining more about how the downvotes led to my post being hidden, than the effect it had on rewards. That looks and quacks like censorship, even if it isn't, strictly speaking.

It isn't censorship. It is a few people being assholes.

Steem-blogging lacks property rights and the freedom of (dis)association. You don't have the ability to disengage with people. And that's why steem-blogging cannot work. When 5 mentally unstable people can ruin the experience for thousands of other users, it's just going to fail.

The silver lining is that tribes (and hopefully communities) do have property rights. If someone is being a jackass on palnet or steemleo or any of the other tribes, they can just be muted by the community leaders. So while steem-blogging can't work, tribes and communities at least have the possibility of working.

Show them you disagree with their downvote practices.

Both are top witnesses. If you disagree with their downvoting remove your witness vote.

https://steemitwallet.com/~witnesses

We can't have dead weight dragging us down any longer.

#deadweightwitness

I already don't vote for them, but it doesn't matter much.

Interesting perspective Neal!

It isn't censorship.

Correct. All the other front ends show that post normally. On steemit.com, it takes a couple of clicks to see it.

It is a few people being assholes.

I agree with you in part. That post didn't deserve to go to zero.

Steem-blogging lacks property rights and the freedom of (dis)association. You don't have the ability to disengage with people. And that's why steem-blogging cannot work. When 5 mentally unstable people can ruin the experience for thousands of other users, it's just going to fail.

Oh, come on! It certainly has been working out find for you and me and thousands of others.

The silver lining is that tribes (and hopefully communities) do have property rights. If someone is being a jackass on palnet or steemleo or any of the other tribes, they can just be muted by the community leaders. So while steem-blogging can't work, tribes and communities at least have the possibility of working.

Communities and tribes are/will be an improvement. But stake will continue to have as much power over pending rewards as ever as it should because stake is ownership of the common reward pool. There will be more coins, which means there will be a larger number of pools and thus more a better distribution of ownership.

What annoys me is that your whole belief of steem depends simply on whether you earn or not. Do you know about SMTs, communities, the scalability, the proposal system? Does all that go out the window simply because a whale is bullying you? Bad situation for you but doesn't mean the system as a whole is broken or not worth believing in.

You make it seem more unfair than it really is. You were uploading 1 minute videos answering an easy question and getting top rewards on the platform for a while. I can't speak for @ocdb but I would guess that they thought you got too much for 1 min videos.

That said, I think downvoting you that much is unfair, but your reaction isn't good as well. Instead of trying to understand why and talk about it you straight up throw a tantrum threatening to leave steem.

I'm never happy to see content creators leave steem, but if you think we need you that much, well, just leave. Steem will be successful with or without you.

As for suggestions, I think bundling up one minute videos into a longer one will help you get rid of those downvotes, or maybe keeping some of the steem you make. Most importantly, grow up.

If content creators aren't happy - Steem will not be successful.

What he's saying is there is so much more to focus on... perhaps our issue is the focus on steem rewards pool. The objective is perhaps to not focus on the steem rewards pool in the future. And bring in other income sources to lessen the mental dependency. There is so much else about blockchain social media that that they are interested in... time to make the UX more polished

If content creators are people who want to post one minute videos and be a top earner on an international blockchain, yeah they won't be happy.

Well Louis my thoughts are it is wrong, basically if someone has a lot more money than you they can cause you to possibly lose money. Cheers mike

Bloody hell I’ve just had a look it disgusting you need to speak to this person

Well Louis my thoughts are it is wrong, basically if someone has a lot more money than you they can cause you to possibly lose money.

Incorrect. Your pending rewards aren't yours until they're paid out. Nobody can touch any funds in your wallet.

Downvote is now an evil idea. Your previous article was very important and totally an unique video. But I don't know why steem give us a downvote option..some whale totally absuse the system. Steem should be friendly...if they continue do it then nobody invest here. We love steem as we never left from here but something should be changed to take steem at it's real place.

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I call BS. The abuse was orders of magnitude bigger when there was no separate downvote pool like now. I've seen people being targeted by certain assholes with massive stake for no good reason. But the community has come to their aid had healed their posts.

Agreed. I'm not a big fan of downvotes either. All it takes is one spiteful whale to destroy you.

The big picture is that without downvotes Proof-of-Brain wouldn't work at all. I think we have ample evidence of that.

Without downvotes this platform would be nothing but a cesspool of even worse abuse.

I agree with you. But they should be more careful about downvote. Downvote is only for spammers not for best content creators.

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Disagreement over rewards is a perfectly valid reason for downvoting.

Even this post has almost $9 in pending rewards. I think @louisthomas is and will continue to be well rewarded on this platform.

Really feeling for you especially when I follow your blog for Crypto investment related posts. However, downvotes can be reversed. You can chat with them on discord.

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Thank you for your compassion. But I don't like the idea of having to beg people not to downvote me.

That should definitely not be done. Just go on making your posts.

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