This whole article takes into assumption that all bid-bot operators, delegators, or users, are all doing it for profit only, and have no intention of creating value in the network.
This raises a problem of subjectivity. For example, Suesa's post was very clearly not doing it for profit, but that can only be known if you knew the person. Context becomes an issue, quality and value becomes an opinion, and no investigation will reliably give you a true answer to this assumption in general.
With that in mind you inevitably end up arbitrarily flagging every post regardless of its context, and contribution to the platform. I agree with the sentiment on the whole, don't get me wrong, but a higher status of responsibility & regulation is going to be needed if it's to avoid backlash.
For example, as a curator, I don't just upvote things using our tag, nor do I upvote simply 'good' content. I have to visit their profiles and check their comments and previous posts to get a contextual picture of who they are so I know they're not just abusing the system for profit. Takes time.
What about everyone freely doing anything including downvoting, and not talking about it? Just like nobody ever asks anyone why their posts are receiving upvotes. Edit: i know this sounds like a jaded response lol
lol,.. I made a post about that once. Nobody ever posts.. "why are my posts earning this much?" Love the comment.
Subjectivity is not a "problem" it is something to be expressed with your votes. So if you think some activity is adding value to Steem then upvote it and if you think it is not adding value commensurate with its rewards (which often translates into real negative value when consider the massive growth of the blockchain that results from all this bidding and botting, which in turn is making it increasingly difficult and costly to operate and could eventually kill it), then downvote it.
Totally, I'm simply pointing out that the post is written in a way that the method doesn't take into account what the content is, its just an initiative that looks at the trending and bot situation and flags according to that, nevermind what the context is and I'm not sure that is wise without some extra regulation. because people start flag wars over this stuff and makes the platform look childish af - all on trending.
IF you think something is overvalued, then flag, but I question whether flags should be used simply based on a glance at the total price and whether a bot was used
I think that was my point anyway, I kinda forgot now.
It's amazing how touchy some people can be, just the other day I gave some little flags to a bunch of image copyrighted spammer posts and the guy just imploded:
If you are not doing it for profit, there is an option to decline rewards.
Also, your friend Suesa (which got downvoted by my page) clearly got a very large % of his visibility and rewards from the bots for this article. I can see how it's a coincidence here as he doesn't use bots usually, but nonetheless his article should never have made trending. Without bots, it would have been near the 50$ range, as most of his other articles. The 500$+ he got from the bots, I consider as abuse, and I downvote it. I would do the same to anyone else.
I agree in a perfect world we would all waste our time to see if users are real and abusing or not. However, people who have time (i.e minnows) don't have the power, and people who have the power (whales), don't have the time.
Downvoting arbitrarily based on the % of value coming from bot upvotes is the best way to select and avoid personal wars. At least with this tool, it's clear I have personally nothing against all the people I downvoted yesterday. If we started doing it selectively, egos would come in and people would take it as a personal attacks.
Reasonable opinion. While I don't necessarily agree it is the best way, or even the only solution we need, it is certainly a reasonable one at this point.
First of all, @suesa contributes - a lot - for the community and the new Steemian. This is something you cannot see or will read about with that bot you created. Completely transparent and utterly unethical, based on a gamble and some shallow calculations, leaving all possible ethical aspects OUT of it.
Second of all, she did not even buy the votes herself, she doesn't really care for that either. It was a gift from someone who follows her and he wanted to reward her for -all- the time and contribution she already pledged on and for Steemit.
Third, yes that post had a 'too high' pay-out, for a joke. I downvoted it for 2 cents, "here are my 2 cents".
Fourth, she, as a contributor to the Steemit platform is worth so much more than that single stupid post's pay-out.
Lastly, who the fuck are you to judge -like this-? Can you not see the bigger picture @heimindanger what the actual fuck you have created? You are playing with other peoples money, based on crap. If you want to remove the crap, do it manually and do it with your own judgment.
Agreed, 85% of the rewards generated by bots is way too much, especially that the post is worth 800+, she wouldn't have made near that amount without the bots. It was a cute little joke, but now it's time to get off the trending page.
I think this is beneficial and it reminds me a lot of The Whale Voting Experiment, even if I wasn't on Steem back then.
Test: You got a 5.00% upvote from @jga courtesy of @fukako!
It is a personal attack, and you are now on my shitlist.
Trying to remove responsibility for your actions from some "tool" just makes you a tool.
"If you are not doing it for profit, there is an option to decline rewards."
Great idea if you want nobody to see your post. You are fucking naive, @heimindanger
Lex if you're going to sell your account it would be nice to let the community know. For your own good mostly because whoever this guy is running your account is making a fool of you.
look who is talking...
I have to agree.
I think it's informative to consider the tools you have recently begun to use in this regard.
You have changed, sir.
Very very good points, nice to see someone really laying into this.
Well, it wasn't on profit, I agree with you on that one @mobbs but it's still a shitpost that doesn't deserve to be on Trending, it doesn't even deserve a dollar since it brings no value to the community. It's just a failed joke. It's a subjective opinion.
I know Suesa, she's doing good, but many other guys are doing good too and don't earn that much in half a year. Regardless of the quality, no post should make $800 unless it's a project update, like the ones that start with D.
Conclusion, even without taking into consideration the context we can clearly see that most of the Trending posts are overvalued and deserve flagging.
Sorry but that sounds a lot like "mob rule". When you write "it doesn't deserve a dollar since it brings no value to the community" you are implying that you are the one or among the ones who decide what brings and doesn't bring value to the community ... Who gave you that role or what makes you think you are entitles to it ? That there is only one way to define "the community" and it is obviously the way you (and those who think like you) define it ...
I guess this drama currently unfolding goes to show why anarchy cannot work - every guy with a metaphorical gun implicitly assumes that things are "right" or "wrong" according to a scale of values that he takes for granted and believes absolute, and also happens to be his scale of values ...
Also saying Suesa's post shouldn't make that much because other posts more deserving do not earn nearly as much is again a very "communist" way of looking at things (it implies "everybody should be judged and ranked according to one rule" - it basically ends up encouraging conformism and kills creativity)
Most of the Trending posts are "overvalued" - is one way of putting it that implies that there is one definition of value (and you are using it).
Paid votes using bots are a bad idea I believe but in this case the cure is worse than the disease, in my opinion
Yes, everyone is. That's why we get to vote.
Another way of seeing it is "nobody is".
I can decide what brings value to ME. But I shouldn't judge on behalf of THE COMMUNITY, nobody placed any power-of-attorney in me ! I can only talk for myself. You can only talk for yourself, you cannot suddenly decide that, because YOUR PERSONAL JUDGEMENT says that it doesn't bring value to you then it automatically means that it doesn't bring value to THE COMMUNITY.
Actually, I'm not sure you even realize the enormity of what you've written ... We get to vote FOR OURSELVES. Your vote indicate what is valuable (or not) FOR YOU! You have absolutely NO RIGHT to imagine that you speak on behalf of THE COMMUNITY.
YOU and THE COMMUNITY are distinct entities. THE COMMUNITY as a whole cannot vote. What is valuable for it results from the aggregate of individual values. If you flag something that many people upvoted it means you are challenging the judgement of the people who upvoted, you are defying them, by annihilating the effect of their vote you want to deny them the right to express their appreciation. It is extremely destructive.
In case the value comes from bots then it means you are defying and challenging the current steemit system. You can do that indeed, I too believe the current HF19 could do with some tweaking, but I think downvoting is the wrong approach. We should instead plead with whoever can do something about it to change the system.
If you want Steem to be successful then you (speaking generally, not just you personally) need to be assessing what in your opinion adds value to the community (especially the community of investors who have entrusted their capital to STEEM/SP) and what does not. And then expressing that with voting. Because otherwise there is no mechanism to ensure the investors' money being spent on rewards is actually delivering value, and instead those who value their own personal enrichment will prevail. Investors will then abandon it and it will die.
There is no 'free money' here. It all comes from investors who buy in. Unless limits are put on those who want to take that money and put it straight into their pockets, investors will turn off the lights and the party will be over.
You are wrong.
Thank you for taking the time to debate. I'm preparing a more elaborate answer that I'll publish as a standalone post because I am convinced the debate is central to the future of steem (the blockchain system)
What value does it brings to the community that it deserves to have such a humongous payout? Does it help people? Change someone's life? Does it develops the ecosystem?
The whole idea of this platform is that if the community find a post valuable enough they upvote it. If you upvote a post up to 800 with bots, 85% of the votes being bought then who is the one deciding the value? You or the community?
I have my definition of value and others have theirs, but that is the idea, if people find something valuable (whatever that means to them), they use their VP to upvote it, showing their appreciation.
For example, your post is in Trending on the tag Steem, way above mine but you bought all of your votes, and I didn't. The community upvoted my post because they found it valuable. So what does that mean, your post is of better quality because it has a bigger payout?
How's the cure worse than the disease? If someone from the community finds your post overvalued, they flag it. The rewards someone bought, go back to the reward pool and the whole community is benefiting from it one way or another.
I agree with your analysis, I think the whole idea of self-voting and bot voting is extremly misguided and said as much in the beginning. But then everybody answered : "these are the rules of this platform, if you don't like it you can go away". Ok, if these are the rules and self-voting and bots are part of the game then what people are doing is just playing the game by the rules.
I agree the game is rigged (a guy from Nairobi or Aceh has little chance to be able to buy several hundred $ worth of bot voting) but the solution is not "opininon wars" that are ultimately destructive ("I think your content is not valuable so I harm you") but rather correcting the problem from its root.
The root of the problem is the "Sybil attack" that the Steem whitepaper acknowledges as a challenge yet it brings no solution, quite the contrary it lets the reader think that it is a good thing to have a system that is vulnerable :
The flagging was not intended for "over-valued" posts - especially when the guy paid for the exposure with his money, it was intended for spam, trolling, etc.
The cure is worth than the disease because it seeds discord and calls for revenge, it generates destructive strife instead of healing and community building. It distracts from encouraging constructive contribution and channels effort and energy into destructive behaviour.
Have a look for instance at the ideas that are presented and inform this post from @lishu, especially the Ted talks he links to.
Every educator will tell you that in order to build and educate gently you need to 1. encourage desirable behaviour (obviously) and 2. ignore undesirable behaviour. Punishing should only be reserved for extreme cases.
To get back to solving Steemit abuse, I am convinced that the solution is to have true, real, provable identities.
As you hinted, the value should be indicated by the communities (plural, very important ! otherwise we go toward a mirror image of the "politically correct" that so suffocate our societies today). But you can't build communities when you don't know who you are talking about, when you cannot tell whether two accounts are of the same person or of two different persons or are bots.
This platform has no rules, and this is the beauty, the people can decide what's acceptable and what's not thus the bots don't have to be part of the game.
It's not a vulnerable system, it has no central authority that can stop bad stuff happening, but the community can decide how to operate and flagging is the only way to stop bad stuff. When I say community, I refer to the whole blockchain as a community.
The flagging was meant for whatever the individual wants to use it for. We have plenty of low-quality posts in Trending that are just overvalued, bought most of their rewards and certainly deserve some flagging.
I don't think you're right; you can't just ignore the undesirable behavior, if you see bullshit, you have to call it out. Otherwise, if you ignore it, that person doesn't learn anything and just moves on with his life thinking he did the right thing.
I don't think that's the solution, far from it. Many people want to stay anonymous because it's a matter of privacy since it's a blockchain and everything you say stays here forever. In case something happens in the future, those people don't want to have their views linked to their identities here forever.
When I write "ignore" it shouldn't necessarily be taken literally. The usage of a strong word ("ignore") is to divert the reader as strongly as possible from "punishment". I do think that some gentle remark, for instance how to improve a post so it's not bullshit anymore, is more appropriate than simply "ignore". I try to do as much when some Aceh-based steemians come begging for upvotes :-)
Then about the anonymity: it's anyone's choice but someone who chooses to be himself basically makes an implicit pledge to all the other participants: "I choose to be myself, therefore I pledge not to behave like a d*ck or a moron in order to never be ashamed of myself in the future".
One can easily imagine the reverse from someone who choose, on the contrary, to be anonymous: "I wanted to stay anonymous because I want to keep the option open of someday behaving like a complete d*ck with impunity". Maybe that was not the motivation of someone in particular but those interacting with anonymous characters have, by definition, no way to tell beforehand !
The problem with this is that some people are harmed when information sources are targeted for retribution. Anonymity is necessary for some truths to be revealed. Anonymity can be abused for the annoying of others, but is existentially important for certain content to be available.
That availability is vastly more critical than preventing trolls. Simply having a rewards mechanism almost eliminates trolling on Steemit. Losing anonymity might cost lives, or will preclude sensitive content from surfacing on Steemit because of the danger of source targeting.
Particularly as censorship and laws restricting free speech proliferate, anonymity becomes ever more important.
I also fail to see that verified identity will impact content quality, trending, or rewards pool mining substantially.
I don't follow your reasoning but maybe we live in different contexts and have different backgrounds. "Information sources targeted for retribution" ? I would be curious if you had a concrete example maybe ? Like what, someone sending a hitman to your house because of what you wrote on Steemit ? Wow. I wouldn't want to live in your neighbourhood if that is something that looks likely in your context ...
"Losing anonymity might cost lives" ? Wow, really ? Are we talking about Caracas here ?
Censorship and laws restricting free speech proliferate ... for no reason ? Or do you choose to only look at the empty half of the glass ?
The relationship between verified identity and content quality is, to my mind, as follows: if I put effort in my post and craft a good post I am proud of and this post is appreciated by readers then their appreciation will be linked to my real-life person. Because this reputation is on the blockchain, I can take it anywhere with me, it accrues in time. If I was the first in 2018 to write a seminal article about the future of society under crypto as my verified-self I can boast about it even 20 years later when my prediction comes true and then bask in the glory of my realized prediction. So I have a strong incentive to try to write good articles where I display my knowledge, my ability to analyze facts and make sound predictions, etc. All these turn into unique assets associated to my real-life person, assets that I can leverage later.
If instead I am using, say, @regaemuffin as screen name and some fan art as profile picture I have no incentive to take myself seriously and write thoughtful articles because those require effort and who cares.
As I try to explain, including in this post trending and reward pool mining need first to be tackled correctly by Steemit in the next HF. Once that is implemented correctly, then verified identity should discourage people from abusing in a too obvious manner, as negative reputation would be associated with their real-life persona.
Test: You got a 40.00% upvote from @jga courtesy of @fukako!
Hi Juliàn, are you on discord by any chance ? May I contact you somewhere ? Thanks
Yes, contact me on discord: jga#0699
Regards.
This is not so.
Code is law. Software is little more than rules.
This is a difficult one, I agree that bots are kind of a plague in the steem ecosystem and it can really go sideways as we progress.
However, I also agree that some solutions can be worse than the disease. It will take a lot of finesse in dealing with this, and out of the box thinking.
The idea is that forces that counter themselves will result in a lot of power being used for this conflict, while forces that complement themselves build on each other and take us further. Sorry, but this subject is one for which I have no practical proposal yet. Maybe the communities should take a moral stance at least and communicate to the users that bit-bot-ing is shitty behavior that might lead to exclusion from certain groups, but this can also go sideways really quick.
In my opinion bot voting and multiple accounts shouldn't be allowed.
"One person, one account". The blockchain is powerful because it can mediate and allow real people to find consensus and built trust. If you allow fake accounts then it's all useless and we are back to FB and the rest.
How that can be implemented, I don't know.
But for as long as bots are allowed and the Steem whitepaper says, black on white "Eliminating "abuse" is not possible and shouldn't be the goal." (page 15. I disagree, but who am I?) then downvoting people because they have used the system as designed is destructive and harmful
Yep, bit-bots might be to cost of uncensorability. Personally, I would prefer a level of abuse rather than censorship or the need for identity.
But the fact we are having these discusions is the way to aproach this problem :)
Why not? If someone manages two different accounts differently, you can relate to either identity per their behaviour. If they simply have multiple accounts they manage with the same behaviour, why would you treat either account differently?
What difference does it make who is the actual meatbag behind the behaviour?
Well, the root being discussed is botvotes for profit. Thus decreasing the profitability of the botvotes by flagging is directly getting to the root of the problem.
How would that impact buying botvotes, selfvoting, or circlejerks?
I can easily see how it could prevent people from speaking forthrightly. I do not see that as a benefit.
The problem is that we cant flag it or wont. Im all for this (well with a different approach) and even i wont flag undeserving posts. Because, you know what, those that can buy their way to the top of trending frequently have the power to run me in the ground. Who cares if what i do brings value to the steem platforms. Retaliation is a sure reaction.
I propose that we look at bid bot owners and talk to them. Short term they are profiting but in long term this will destroy steemit and steem based platforms. EOS is just behind the corner waiting.
Once you get upvote bot owners to adjust their practices (yes at a cost to their profits) you will have a much healthier ecosystem. It doesnt have to be perfect but any move in the right direction is a positive step.
This will literally kill steem in the long run.
I dont care if people upvote themselves. Its their sp, their invested money but the upvote bot owners are here to blame.
When the facebook fiasco was made public i didnt blame those that abused the system, i blamed those that put the system in place. Now, Ned probably wont fix this, but we can police ourselves and those that profit from such a loophole.
Im a bot user myself. But i keep the use to the smallest of scales. Bots have their use but the abuse they allow to happen makes them have a net negative effect.
@guyfawkes4-20 we believe we are adding adding massive value to the community with a unique Steem platform (not more tools or steemit styled interfaces) and yet this system has failed us.
After a months work on a unique open source platform we get neg votes because we seek to rise above the crap posts.
Very disappointing.
There is a very simple solution to this that will eliminate the mob rule, that will effectively stop the abuse in its tracks... And thats a simple matter of having the bot owners
That way the decision if something is a justified upvote or not is completely in their hands. They still keep control of the trending pages, but guess what?! Crap content isnt going to get as much exposure anymore!Smartsteem has a 3 star rating and thats great, but thats not nearly enough to stop abuse. Even those with 3 star ratings start abusing the bot after time when they see they arent getting reprimanded. I tried to recommend this to @therealwolf but since im insignificant here it probably went by him.
I know this would be hard to implement and i dont know even how to go about that, but im sure there are people that could figure it out.
Yes... This will hurt bot owners profits and those who delegate to them but, cmon guys, this is hurting Steemit badly.. Take up some responsibility. People arent even checking the trending page anymore.
....a planktons opinion.... :D
It's not realistic in my opinion to expect people who have a life to just sit there 24/7 and review articles above a certain amount. I promoted my last post with (among others) a 50 SBD bid through smartsteem. It's a pretty long post, almost 10' reading (about 2000 words), how is the guy behind smartsteem to read all that and decide whether that post is worth 50 or 30 or 200 ? Especially when he has maybe 20 posts like that day-in day-out ?
I think bid bots shouldn't (somehow) be allowed. How to prevent that ... "is left as an exercise for the reader" ... :-)
Well you pay themfor their work. As a curie curator i couldnt tell you how many lines of text i could go through in 2 hours. Probably a 100 posts. And how many 50SBD or 100SBD bid bot payments do you think there are? Not many. You find those willing to do the work and give them a cut. Curators are payed by Curie and all Curie makes is from curation. Not a full blown business like upvote bots.
The problem is that there is no will. And wheres no will theres no action. Outside the coding im positive this could work.
I think you are being a bit pedantic with the wording. I think all value is subjective. Even money. But I can still say "overvalued". I would argue that he is not the one to determine the value of a post but rather he is one to determine the value of a post.
Whales have been flagging for disagreement of rewards for over a year now. I disagreed with flagging for that reason because it is based on aggregate earnings of a user over many other up-voters when the flagger has nothing against the post itself. I find I agree with you.
" you are implying that you are the one or among the ones who decide what brings and doesn't bring value to the community"
It is their Steem Power, it is precisely their right to use it to downvote content they don't believe brings value to the community. How is that 'mob rule'?
Yes, that's the whole idea, the individuals should be the one to decide what's valuable and what's not for them through upvoting/flagging. If the author is upvoting himself to Trending with bots, then the whole purpose of this platform is lost, but the community can still decide to flag, which is a much-needed action.
Still, I don't think that bots will ever be killed, but they can still be improved.
The bots could be killed if a superbot was created, enough delegation given to it and it began targeting all the trending/hot posts that were using vote bots. I believe Grumpycat proved this with his/her targeting that if people start losing money (in that case, bots that vote after 3.5 days) that vote buyers will modify their behavior to avoid the monetary loss.
Yes, if the people with the stick start pushing the bot owners towards change more, they would have to comply at some point.
Think "worshipping different gods" (disapproven but sometimes tolerated) versus "witch burning" in ancient times. If you use your steem power to upvote whatever shitpost you want, that's your right and freedom. When you use it to harm someone, to do (financial) violence onto someone it's not equivalent.
I am convinced downvoting should be used very, very sparingly, only when there is a manifest abuse.
I also do think having bot voting and paying for upvotes is a bad idea and should not be possible but as long as their are allowed downvoting is understandably seen as stealing from the pocket of the guy who paid for his upvotes ...
Good then please commence downvoting regularly because there is manifest abuse on a huge scale including as described in the post. If you don't agree then that's perfectly okay, but those of us who do see it that way are going to express it with our votes.
By "abuse" I meant posts attempting to promote demonstrated scam schemes, phishing posts, child pornography or other such egregious abuses. I think it's a very, very slippery slope to start calling abuse the fact that suesa post racked up $900 or that yallapapi scored $500. I haven' t read the others in the list but I read those two and I upvoted them.
Are they worth that much ? Heck, who am I to judge ? Are Cristiano Ronaldo or Neymar Jr worth the money they are making ? In my opinion no, but again, who am I to judge ? Some people take from the same "reward pool" (the sum of all euros printed by the ECB) and directs those euros to Cristiano Ronaldo and Neymar Jr. That is the system ! If I disagree, I try to do politics to change the system. But I'm not "downvoting" Ronaldo and Neymar
When @heimindanger and others downvote @suesa's post and @yallapapi's post I feel insulted ! I feel that my very right to upvote a post is being questioned ! Do I have a right to express my liking for a post ? Because I feel that the flaggers want to deny me this right ! They want to censor my right to vote posts that I consider worthy of my votes !
You are Steem voter and that is precisely who judges. That's how this decentralized system works.
Who the hell are you to be above questioning? This is a decentralized system run by voters. Voters have to be free to disagree or it is meaningless and dysfunctional.
BTW, your right to upvote the post is not being questioned. You can do so any time you want. Others can downvote any time they want. The system adds up the votes and allocates rewards. End of story.
The power of the voters is highly centralized, and thus the system is highly centralized. All it takes is enough money to capture it. It makes no difference how many voters vote. It only matters how much money votes, in regards to rewards and witnesses.
Since the money is highly concentrated, power is highly centralized in the accounts the money is concentrated in.
Hi again, I've published a more (too?) detailed analysis why I believe using the downvote might be useful for the economics of the reward pool but detrimental overall to the Steem system
https://busy.org/@sorin.cristescu/steemit-and-the-fractal-society
You don't seem to have the slightest idea of human psychology and of sociological mechanisms. You remind me of myself 20 years ago.
If only you'd admit that you might be able to learn something and maybe be ready, with strong arguments, to change your mind, that would already be progress.
"downvoting is understandably seen as stealing from the pocket of the guy who paid for his upvotes ...". Huh. That is the exact opposite of how I see it. I see buying a huge upvote to put your own post in trending as stealing from the pocket of everyone else who is posting without paying for votes. The reward pool is finite. Buying your way into trending decreases the payout going to other authors. If anything, the community coming together to flag an author who bought huge votes is stopping theft.
That is correct if someone has the monopoly of that behaviour. But when doing that is available to everyone, there is a pesky things called "game theory" and "Nash equilibriums" who stick their fingers in the spanner.
To be clearer: the fewer people buy upvotes, the bigger the incentive to be the one that cheats. The situation is not stable and evolves toward a Nash equilibrium: people start paying more and more to bots to get on trending page - it's the system that's broken and needs fixing, not the actors who are inside the system and playing by the rules. You can indeed attempt the latter but it's self-defeating if the system stays broken.
None of which changes the fact that this behavior is in fact "stealing" reward from the users who chose not to do this behavior. None of this changes the fact that buying votes to trend a post puts the lie to "proof of brain". I love how quickly "this behavior is allowed so it is okay" is forgotten when it comes to flagging. You can't have it both ways dude. If you truly think that just because other people are going to do something, and it is "allowed" by the code, that it is okay for you to engage in a behavior that is objectively bad for the long term health of the STEEM blockchain, than it is also okay for users to flag you for this behavior. I fail to see how this is hard to understand, or even debatable. Users with large stake in this platform absolutely should be flagging the crap out of any post that buys its way to trending under the current system which does not mark such posts as advertising. Failing to do so is putting nails in the coffin of their own investment.
I fail to see how you fail to see the fatal flaw in your reasoning: who and how defines "crap" ?
If you define "crap" by "anything that buys its way to trending" then you stack the deck against any talented minnow writer who basically has no way to come to anyone's attention.
Take a look for instance at my very early posts (after the "introduce yourself") I had put a bit of work in them and while I don't think they are necessarily stellar I am pretty sure they are better than $0.00 with no votes and almost no views. I just happened to be a minnow who knew nobody else on the platform and believed the "proof of brain" theory - I was naively thinking that "good content will be discovered and will well-up by itself". It didn't.
Now look at @yallapapi. I think he had produced some distinctive content that I wouldn't have seen if he hadn't bought his way to the trending page. What he writes has value, I think, and is useful. But without buying his way to trending a lot less (and I mean A LOT LESS, like in ZERO) people would have noticed him.
He uses a mechanism not only permitted but used by many others before him in order to draw attention to his posts. Nothing unusual. Are his posts "crap" ? I wouldn't say so, on the contrary, they are a really great read. So for me defining "crap" by "anything that went to trending based on paid votes" is shortsighted and wrong. Especially since the guy paid for that advertisment with his own money.
You (or @heimindanger) are free to say that @yallapapi's content is crap but that is, in my opinion, mobbing, censorship, and basically stealing and abuse, like what grumpy cat used to do.
But if you also find that his content is actually rather outstanding then it would turn out that not every paid post that trends is crap after all ... the picture is mixed and things become a lot more complicated, like in real life. Things become debatable.
So you are entitled to your opinion that "whales should be flagging the crap out of any post that buys its way to trending" but I am also entitled to mine that this will lead to only circle-jerking whales trending for any minor "contest" that they, in their magnanimity have the kindness to organize. it will basically leave no realistic avenue for isolated minnows to get spotted for the content they produce and will drive them away from the platform.
How is that good for the long-term health of the Steem blockchain ?
Voting to prevent reward pool rape isn't financially harming anyone. It is voting to determine how the current reward pool is divided. An upvote is an upvote in favour of giving a post/comment a slice. A downvote is a vote that a given post should be paid less.
Not really sure what any of that has to do with religious persecution.
"Reward pool rape" needs defining. When someone with a lots of SP and consequently a lot of VP publishes obviously shitty posts every 6 hours and upvotes himself, as I believe haejin is (was?) doing, I believe that qualifies as "reward pool rape".
When a guy pays with his own money to get his post trending he's only getting back what he has put in. He pays X and the bot upvotes for a value of X. If you downvote Y he only gets back X-Y < X so you are financially harming the guy who paid the bot.
You can indeed argue that it is the bots that are doing the reward pool rape and I will agree with you. But then you should "punish" the bots, not by taking money from the guy who paid the bots (for as long as the bots are officially allowed at least).
You can argue like grumpy cat that, for instance, one shouldn't use bots for posts older than X days but, when steemit allows bots, that basically means that you are making up your own rules (on top of those of the system). You become a kind of vigilante: you take your own gun and start dispensing what you believe to be "justice" of your own accord, following whatever rules you edict.
That is what I call "mob rule". I was comparing this with a village that suddenly decides that a lady living alone is a witch and then proceeds to burn her at stake of their own accord (ok, my analogy wasn't very well formulated in the previous post, I hope now I got it a bit better)
Payouts which exceed added value to the platform, community. and stakeholders (especially the latter since they, or more accurately we, are paying 100% of the rewards).
This analogy is BS. Equating receiving smaller or no monetary payments with being lynched is absurd and offensive.
Sorry, the analogy was indeed too extreme.
But the point remains: when you think content is good, you upvote. If you think content is not good, you don't upvote. But you don't flag, unless it's a clear abuse (scam, phishing, etc.)
Flagging posts that you think have higher reward than look ok to you means that you are questioning the judgement and defying either the people who upvoted ("you think this is good content but I think you are wrong, this is bad content") or the very system of steemit (with bots and all). If the Steemit system leads to absurd rewards because of bid bots and other abuse then the correct approach is to tackle the issues with the system, not each and every post that exploits a broken system
I personally question the judgement made explicit in page 15 of the whitepaper (see above) as I believe that even if completely eliminating abuse is never possible, it definitely MUST be an explicit goal of any sane and self-respecting society. But I'm not starting my own militia war by downvoting abusive posts. It's profoundly destructive to the very system we want to see thriving
"Reward pool rape" is an unfortunate term that should probably be replaced. Rape is as bad an analogy here as you comparison of downvoting to religious persecution. Both are ridiculous appeals to emotion.
The concept behind the term, which I understand as the mechanised generations of rewards to deplete the reward pool in an industrial manner, without the reciprocal creation of good content, is however a valid problem faced by the steem system that does need addressing.
The ONLY means we have been given for addressing the issue is downvoting. It is the responsibility of SP holders to use their power to address the issue, else steem will become useless as a platform and the reward pool may as well just pay SP holders a dividend instead of rewarding content creators (because that is where bidbots are taking things if left unaddressed).
Aside from the "ONLY means" part I agree. I proposed another approach in the other response. 1st: change the philosophy in the whitepaper - as important as the Federalist papers for the US. 2nd: change the code to at least discourage or better yet make upvoting bots impossible to exist. They are not needed, they do not serve any useful purpose.
But while these two things are not implemented, keep the system stable, as it is or else people will get discouraged and desert it, IMO
Bidbots are a scam scheme that robs the reward pool. Instead of putting the rewards in the hands of content creators, it goes mostly to maintainers of bidbots and those that lease steem power to them. By making the bots unprofitable to use, or risky to use for undeserving content, then this is literally the only way to use the free market to punish the bots. Anything else would require top down authoritarian intervention, which would pretty much defeat the point of having a decentralised system. SOMEONE has to decide what constitutes bad acting. The WHOLE POINT of the steem blockchain is that this decision making is DECENTRALISED, with power to make these decisions in the hand of INVESTORS, those that hold SP, proportional to their investment.
Steem allows bots. Steem also allows downvotes. You can't argue (sucessfully) that because one is allowed, another thing that is also allowed isn't right.
Look, it is this simple, users of bidbots are complicit dupes in a scheme that robs and reduces legitimate content creators of their rewards. It is the users, and those that lease to and build bidbots that are economically harming others. They reduce the amount of the reward pool that goes to creators (with oer 75%-85% of the reward pool going to bidbot maintainers and their SP leases). This reduces the incentive for genuine and quality content creators to participate, which in turn reduces the quality of the system, which prevents the value of STEEM increasing, which harms ALL investors.
Who, other than those with the SP to downvote these bad actors do you propose do something? Do you crave some centralised authority to come in and lay down the law? Ned? Steemit Inc? How would you have them do this without compromising the decentralised nature of the platform?
Those 37 accounts, out of upwards of a million accounts that have been opened on Steemit, wield the vast majority of VP, and thus power is centralized in those accounts, and not decentralized at all.
Almost all of that stake held by those 37 accounts was mined and not purchased for fiat, I believe.
In my opinion Steem shouldn't allow bots, I think they poison the well. Downvotes are a good tool, if used with clear guidance, according to a set of rules, specifically as a defense mechanism against clear abuse. I want to argue (my deep belief) that using downvotes to rank the perceived value of a post that is not an obvious abuse (scam, phishing, etc.), even without bid bots, is a very slippery slope of destruction.
I mostly agree with your argument about bidbots and their users but punishing the users is a bit like saying "all German soldiers in WW II were complicit in a horrible thing so they should all be killed". Ok, maybe my analogy is a bit extreme, but I hope it won't detract you from the message: it's the system that needs to be fixed! Punishing the victims of the system because they participate in the system is ill advised.
Yes, IMO Ned and Steemit who have coded this blockchain system based on a manifesto called the steem whitepaper should
Ammend that manifesto, most notably by changing page 15 to read "Eliminating abuse is not possible yet it should always be the explicit goal of the platform" (unlike the current version which implicitly condones abuse by saying "shouldn't be the goal"
Implementing new rules in the code to make bidbots at worst unprofitable for those who would try to run one, at best downright impossible
Frankly decentralization is great but if I have to choose between a completely 100% decentralized platform that is a complete jungle and a platform that is not 100% decentralized but is safe to use and has structure, I take the latter every day.
The first and probably main attraction point of Steemit is the rewards. If they become completely unpredictable because any passing whale might feel that your content is not good enough, the platform will die ...
You know what's worse than getting $0.01 for a post that took 2 hours to write ? It's seeing it valued at $5.00 today and then at $0.01 the next day because some random whale thought it "not good enough" for $5.00
Great Projects , even crucial one's like mine don't get exposure to many eyes. Sometimes one has to make a decision whether to use bots to get their word out, or do it organically which many have pointed out as being extremely hard to do. It's not the average bot user's fault that the network has been construed to fit the agendas of the most powerful here. We're left with little option as minnows and dolphins especially. They've built these highways now man, and the majority of people are not willing to ride horse and carriages anymore. I don't know how to fix that I have to be honest. Perhaps we could propose an option in the steemit.com permissions tab to "allow" promoted content in which case each bot owner pays a percentage of it's earnings or gross delegated SP into a fund that pays each account that opts-in to view "promoted" posts? Use that SP for something good that will help people. Using it to power up in order to fight a war with bots will only cause more anguish for the innocent people caught in the crossfire. I'm not saying do nothing and it's our own right to protect ourselves from any threat, But we can launch bullets without guns too.
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That's a great idea. How about the folks opting to receive promoted posts in their feed are recipients of the overage? Seems fair to me.
Sorry I'm so awful at keeping things succinct:
This is obviously your opinion - it's a subjective statement and that's my point. Your idea of value appears to be website projects that start with D.
It depends what we want from Steemit. Do we want a trending page to just be a list of steem dates and steem promotion and steem analysis and steem complaints, or do we want something 'trendy'?
If we're to have a trending page of 'trendy' posts, currently the only way to do that for the vast majority of cases is to either be a team of very skilled coders with huge delegations, or be someone with enough money for bot promotion. Right now there's just no other way.
$800 is surely excessive, but on the flip side I upvoted a single post of mine to $150 once, partly for international women's day, partly because I got flagged by some haejin goon, but that $150 post was totally invisible, I had to scroll several loading pages to get to it past all the haejin crypto jargon, posts like today's 'Double Bubble Analysis: update' and'Monthly Steemit Top 200 POWER UP List: March 2018' The post awareness of the hell women go through around the world went by comparatively silently.
Of course, mainstream adoption nis going to want to see things like inane april fools posts, travel blogs, philosophical discussions, political views, pranks, games. Natural social media material. So whether or not you personally find the post funny or clever, the fact that a high-rep individual contributing a lot to the community had some fun and somebody else got it into trending, to me, is totally fine and really one of the few good examples of bot usage.
Again, 800 could have been halved with the same effect, but much less? Back you go to obscurity, replaced by crypto steem bull patterns, 'Steem experiment: Burn post's and so on. (Actually today isn't a bad day for variety, but you get the idea)
I said that only the projects with D, the big projects that help grow this ecosystem, the ones that have countless hours of work behind them are those that deserve 800. But I didn't say that they are the only ones of value, the only ones that deserve big rewards.
The way I see it, it's straightforward, does a particular post helps the community? Does it brings any value to people? Does it help the people? Does it change something for the better? I think you see where I'm going and if the answer to some of the questions is affirmative then that post is valuable.
Now I'm asking you, what value does that post from @Suesa brings to the community that it deserve to have such a huge payout? None. Let's even say that the post reached its whole purpose of being funny but that still doesn't mean that it deserves so much since we have plenty of other posts a lot more valuable.
I feel what you mean mate, but if people didn't abuse the bots anymore there would be a lot more room for the quality, valuable posts to make it to the top. I had in the past some of my posts upvoted organically to 100-200 even 200+, and they did not reach the top because there were too many posts upvoted by bots.
The discussion is not even about that post from @Suesa but a reflection of what's going on on Trending. So yeah, the page is filled with shitposts that are outshining the quality and organic ones just because they paid for votes. The solution? Either stopping the bots (not going to happen) or flagging the posts, so the users don't abuse bots anymore (doable).
Sure, although don't see why the 'trending' page should be filled with 'helpful' stuff. It should be filled with 'trending' stuff. You don't see twitter trending tweets about twitters dev team or how they've helped speed up tweet times, you see people's every day lives and loves and adventures. That is inherently what I see as 'valuable'.
But you're right, it's not entirely about suesa, we both agree that the bot situation is a big-ass problem, and as I said, I don't even disagree with this idea, I'm all for it. I just think there should be methods to prevent arbitrary and blanket flags, something more objective than simply 'this post is shit and presumably just for profit based on my opinion'. Perhaps you are right that things over 800 bucks should be only for big projects - perhaps bots can set tiers for such things; registered projects having the highest/unlimited bid limits, everybody else capped at, say, $400.
The problem with flagging is at best it makes a temporary statement. Even all the activism on steemit made haejin's posts go from, at the peak value time, $450 down to about $400 a pop. Flagging is almost nothing more than a symbolic statement at this point until people learn to band together via powerful communities (flag-a-whale being a hopeful example of that)
Yes, I see what you mean, I think the Trending page should be filled with what the community thinks it's valuable. If they consider a post being of quality, they upvote it, if more are doing so, it reaches Trending. But the whole purpose of this platform is lost when people are using bots to get to Trending, 85% of the votes being bought.
As far as I noticed, the big projects don't use bots; they are reaching trending thanks to the support received from the community since they are doing something beneficial for everybody. But yeah, the bots need to set some more limits.
Flag-a-whale was a beautiful movement, and even if it had many people behind it, it's sad that the outcome was not the one desired.
I guess we have to wait and see what happens now. :)
I wonder if that post was posted on any other platform on the internet, would that have earned even 10$.
$10? Nah, maybe like $1-2 but Steem likes to reward shitposts. Anyway, it's sure as hell not worth $1000, the price that it had after the Steem pump.
It would be really awesome if 20 people who put real efforts on their posts, gets 50$ each instead of one post getting 1000$.
I'm powering down and dumping this whale club for good. Heck, I might even come up with a tool and big ass campaign for people to do the same, just like @heimindanger did to protect his posts while green with envy from others, it's not really about bad content is it?
See, he didn't do this out "love for Steemit", he is just protecting their monopoly on post positions and that of his big whale friends. We are not stupid, you gotta let the little fish play too once in a while or they will just just leave the pond...
Are your posts so good quality that they deserve $200 to $700 payouts? Give me a break, you use your Whale group for that, something a lot more questionable and damaging to the platform than using bots and that's the real problem with Steemit, it's a Whale Club and people will just get tired and leave...
Countdown to freedom:
@mobbs: I appreciate your more nuanced and holistic view of this debate. The "solutions" I see are often one-sided and dramatic. There's a lot of complexity to this that must be thought through.
I like how you analyzed things. Bull's eye my friend :)
She was not using bots for profit... for what then? For vissibility? XD Cmon, please!!! I understand your point of view but you are defending just that, your point of view because you do not know exactly why did she use the bots ... I am pretty sure was for profit as everybody who use the bots do.
Pd: I am complete against the use of bid-bots on the Steem blockchain for whatever reason ... that will be normally profit, even if you want to say something nice at the bottom is just that
I've said this a few times now, I didn't buy the bots. Reggaemuffin thought it'd be funny to have an April Fools joke on trending and bought the votes for it.
Personally, I'm not really a supporter of bots, but there isn't much that can be done about it. I even doubt that people will keep using this tool to keep flagging after a few weeks.
Glad to know was not you. Looks like he have a very "expensive" humor ... anyway, this shows me one more time why this bid-bots are a problem for the Steem blockchain in general.
Yes, like had happens every time some tool like that came to light. You do not get anything for flagging and also you loss VP ...
Out of curiosity, why would Suesa's post be exempt?
Regardless of context, people can decide for themselves whether the content of the post itself is worth the value it is drawing from the pool. The post must be compared to its total draw on the pool on personal judgements of value, not context.
Granted, @heimindanger should add a link to the posts in question so people can more easily read and judge for themselves but there is no way in my thinking that a shitpost should have over 1000 dollars on it.
I can't tell who is talking to whom on this post anymore, but since I know you I'll reply to you. Simply, I didn't state suesa's post should be exempt. I just pointed out that the assumption that she did it for money was incorrect. But yes the only qualm I had was that it was described as an artbitrary flagging, which is risky and controversial
They highlighted the problem didn't they? Even the large, heavily rewarded, many eyes already on accounts will use bidbots just 'for a laugh'. Nice role modelling.
For 'disagreement of reward' the content has to be judged on what it takes from the pool, paid or not. That content may not have been worth the value it would have made organically but went over 1000 even after flags. Error in judgement by reggae but saying that it wasn't her that ordered it rubs salt into the wound considering the circumstances and the one minute lockout voting which stops all minnows who support her from getting curation returns.
I agree that context might be important at times but a lot of the context in that argument was being left out of the conversation.
and yeah, the UI for long chains sucks ass.
Well, the problem @heimindanger is facing is that the posts in question are upvoted by the very non-subjective methodology you complain about his flags being flown by.
Essentially you both are in agreement that votes ought not to be based on profitability. IMHO, @heimindanger has the better argument, since his flags are only flown in response to purchased upvotes, which discourages purchasing votes.
I reckon that best forces personal and informed curation by attacking the mechanism that causes the problem directly.
I do believe an additional metric that included frequency of purchasing botvotes would better target the most egregious effectors of the problem @heimindanger intends to impact.
This would have precluded @gardenofeden's flag (if their comment here is factual) and also your contention.
This isn't a bad idea.
You're right, I basically agree with the concept on the whole, but I'm simply taking into account the reality of the likelihood of it being effective. We know from haejin that almost nobody is willing to sustain high-value flags to accounts, let alone getting $500 down to 0. There's just nobody on the platform with that kinda money and that kinda focus, and those who do care take thousands of flags to get rid of a couple of bucks.
This is not going to change any time soon and no initiative of self-policing is going to consistently cause any impact whatsoever - consider 'flagawhale', probably the largest community of flaggers for this cause that are, together, imperceptibly ineffective for the most part. Haejin still makes as much as he ever made (minus steem value) and bots users and owners will continue to profit.
The problem of bots needs to be disincentivized from the core, not from self policing.
With that in mind, blind flagging is not an effective methodology in my opinion, because nobody will want to waste their precious SP, whereas flagging based on your subjective consideration of value upon viewing a post, is something that should be an active part of the steemit culture. The rest is an inherent flaw that needs fixing by STINC somehow.
The thing is, even if we get all the current bots to agree on certain rules and regulations, it's a verbal contract and thus hardly binding, and any new bot services that prop up are going to instantly see how to take advantage, and do so. All it takes is a single millionaire to come on board and we have ourselves yet another crisis we spend weeks on battling with futility until we forget about it, until another millionaire comes on and repeat.