My Steem Improvement Proposal
I've no idea whether this idea is technically feasible or not, but if it is, I do think it would solve one of Steem's weak points.
The weak point in question is the Troll Attack. As its name implies, the Troll Attack is an attack on the Steemit ecosystem by a troll who has managed to acquire vast quantities of Steem Power (usually via purchase). Such a troll can vote down good original content, vote up pirated crap that can be found on most anywhere else on the web, and generally create a poisonous atmosphere for all.
Why would anyone do such things? Because that's what trolls do.
Many of us remember the days (only several months ago!) when trolls ran amuck on Steemit. That problem was largely solved by implementation of the reputation score a while back. But, reputation alone can't end a Troll Attack when the trolls has accumulated lots of Steem Power (SP). Here's why:
A low reputation score has no impact other than to hide the posts and comments of those with low rep, thereby likely depriving the poster of any material author awards. While this is effective against trolls who care about posting and the associated author awards (which is the majority of them thankfully), it does nothing to offset the influence of the troll who cares nothing about posting or the associated rewards. Some trolls have managed to accumulate vast quantities of Steem Power and use it to poison the ecosystem while never or rarely posting a thing.
My proposed solution (and again, I'm not even sure it's technically feasible) is to change the way voting weight is calculated. Right now, one's voting weight is entirely a function of one's Steem Power. Hence trolls with high SP and low rep can still terrorize the system by depriving great authors of awards and voting up crap. Who are these trolls? You likely know a few of them already, but some may out themselves explicitly by choosing to flag this post.
It seems to me that the viability of Troll Attacks would be greatly reduced if voting weight were a function of BOTH Steem Power and reputation score. So, perhaps voting weight would be equal to one's SP balance multiplied by one's rep score. Or, if we really wanted to weight the importance of rep, then the the SP balance multiplied by the square of one's rep score. Either would give people with high rep more voting influence per unit of SP than those with low rep. As a consequence, folks with high rep would have more say over the distribution of author awards and could more easily counter the poisonous votes of trolls.
I'd love to hear the community's thoughts on the viability and advisability of such a change.
YES.
I have a terrible troll on my ass [el-mago/steemshitlist] who has been reputation killed to -4..but still he and his extra account are still able to down vote me a few dollars..which they do..for every post i make now..as soon as i post it..because I DARED to comment on said user posting plagiarized stuff at one point. he ignored me and then insulted me so i flagged..then the real fun began.....i detailed some of this fun journey with steemit trolling here and its ongoing because of the very reasons you have stated. despite being downvoted to oblivion he still keeps buying steem and has threatened to make multiple accounts over the coming weeks..>< so ya im totally down for this idea
Hopefully my upvote here will help you some.
awe, thanks sean <3<3
myself, i hope THIS idea catches on...i really like steemit and i don't want it to be overrun by monsters.. ><
For what's worth, you got my vote as support here my friend.
I totally believe this kind of people will eliminate themselves in the long run. As you said this guy's reputation score is -4. His "fun" game will end soon and he won't have a chance to grow on the platform if he ever decides to become a user with a normal behaviour.
Don't let these people take you down!
im trying!!! super frustrating tho...
Upvoted for "I've no idea whether this idea is technically feasible or not" ... and not making the issue only about fair use of copyrighted content.
many links and posts are well outside fair use and fall under copy-write such posts linking YouTube and copy paste reposted links
here is the YouTube explanation on fair use with there standard license
Agree, SP is the only thing that gives you influence here, it decides about everything and it is available to purchase. So SP decides about how much you earn, how many followers you get, how many comments you get. The Quality is not important but the SP is. I completely agree that this is a big vulnerability of Steemit. If say some guys with a lot of money decide to destroy the Steemit they probably can, IE YT or FB can financially support that kind of action in the future. But like other already said, Trolls with a lot of SP can also have a high reputation, how to solve this issue then. Maybe there should be an option like REPORT A TROLL and when someone is reported many times say 100 or so (I dont know about the number) his power would go to 0. Some kind of public Steemit court that can take away your power (not money) just influence.
Consider that people with bigger SP have very big incentive to keep trolls in check, Right now it's mostly a matter of UI and coding skills for me to be able to automatically negate a troll actions.
If the solution can be coded and implemented into UI and system itself even better. In some cases algorithms do better job than human mind + emotions.
Yes, agree with your point @julianita. Those who own big amount of SP feel the need to protect this site from going to shithole, to keep it alive for as long as it can.
I'm actually 50-50 here, I disagree with moral policing and stuff like that. ButI also understand that Steem as an autonomous system need its users to self-govern the site. And at the same time it's scary to see whales drama like this, especially for small people like me. People with money can easily abuse the system and make it bad for everyone else.
Whatever it is, I'll stay positive on this issue, I see a big potential of Steemit in adult & NSFW topic. This site could host the most awesome GoneWild community ever! Heck, I'll personally will promote this site to the GW community on Reddit. With the vote & reward system, tipping and microtransaction, oooooo this gonna be good.
If every you push steem to r/gonewild let me know, I've good some juicy rewards to get them started.
What if I told you, some of the biggest trolls around here also have a high rep ?
Some of the highest rep accounts are some of the worst users on the platform. This is true.
Exactly...and isn't the rep score just based on number of posts? If so, a troll bot could get a really high rep score pretty fast.
No it's based on all votes/downvotes an account ever received.
Ohh gotcha...do self votes count? If so, couldn't a bot just self upvote?
Possibly, but it takes some serious SP to get a high rep.
That can be easily resolved at any time by those with even higher rep.
Unless the highest reps are the worst ones. Which is mostly the case here.
I was thinking more in "rewards for flagging" direction. It is obvious, if post gets a lot of flags, then the people who discovered it should be rewarded.
I like this idea. Rep score takes work to grow. There is no shortcut. Just as accumulation of Steem Power indicates a financial commitment to Steemit, growth in rep score indicates a long-term commitment of time and production of good content. It would make sense to have both influence rewards.
Indeed. Reputation is the closest thing to vetting on the platform, reflecting the confidence of the community. It should have more value, as opposed to wealth, which is no more reflective of the value of ones ideas than the length of their legs, or the color of their hair.
Most of the wealth of the world is no more determined by the individuals possessing than those traits, being the result of luck, inheritance, and sometimes clever investments. Neither should SP keep it's possessors from freely curating and providing their choices for our benefit.
I agree with you, and think we can improve further by adding a third type of reward - the reviewer reward.
Allow high reputation to review content that has been flagged. If it's legitimately a rules violation, they confirm it. If it's not, they say so, and after a threshold, the flag is removed and the person who placed it loses reputation and does not get that voting power back.
Whatever happens, it's clear something needs to change. A few minnows on our minnow support project have been targeted and only able to fight back because of our support through it.
Interesting idea. In many ways, @steemcleaners (and the steemitabuse chat channel) is trying to fulfill this role because it's not done on the blockchain directly.
Good post thanks for sharing
This comment has received a 0.09 % upvote from @booster thanks to: @hamzaoui.
Hey @sean-king I certainly agree steemit needs a bit of protection to keep the quality high. The reason I fell in love with steemit are the good and always up to date articles . Right now steemit is still young and most people on it respect the ecosystem, but if it get popular in the main stream there are some dangers ahead. I don't completely understand the upvote / flag situation. Could be a bit more nuanced and more algorithmic.
I've seen this idea floated around before and it's an interesting approach, but I also think the reputation system may not be robust enough (as currently implemented) to take on this responsibility. It also further increases the barrier of entry to new accounts which start with such a low reputation. There's also the concern of some bad actors having higher reputations then they should or the concern about sybil attacks. If building a reputation can be done (even by bad actors, even if it takes them some time) that might be easier than dropping, say, $500,000 to power up as a whale.
I wonder if we could have something like a rating and review system. With that, people could rate interactions they've had with others (1 to 5 stars, etc). Having a human-powered system which could then give people (and the steemit interface) the opportunity to adjust accordingly would be nice. It could, as an example, hide reviews by default of people who have a certain threshold of bad reviews themselves (similar to how a low rep can't impact a high rep). It could also show posts by default for people with good reviews who have been flagged by those with low reviews.
As for that impacting payouts? Not sure that would be a good idea though. I dealt with many months of being flagged right before payout. It was certainly annoying, but I built enough of a following that I was still able to enjoy nice rewards. I had an opportunity to chat with the individual and they told me they would stop their flagging campaign. I haven't seen a flag from then since then.
It's still definitely a problem and I'm not really sure what the best long term solution is that doesn't create other bad consequences.
I'm glad we're talking about it though. :)