Bloomberg Technology Posts Follow-Up Article Focusing Upon Flag Wars
The other day, Bloomberg Technology posted an article about Steemit and how it is changing the Internet. They used the term "financial internet" to describe how posters are paid to provide their content. They included some quotes from @ned which further emphasized the point.
Overall, it was a great promotional piece.
As uplifting as that piece was, I was saddened to see the same publication write a follow up to it. I will saw the new piece was candid in it review of the situation which makes it even worse.
Since the article on the 27th of February, we took a closer look at Steemit. What a first looks like a revolutionary idea is nothing more than a remake of some of the same issues on Facebook and other social media sites. Steemit is engaged in a "flag war" over the way rewards are paid.
Greed seems to be the central issue with one "troll" taking too much. In a decentralized forums such as this, the community polices itself. The problem is being dealt with in a warlike manner with sides being drawn.
We saw a number of posts using the war analogy stating the "troll" has to be killed, slaughtered, and maimed. Some even went so far as to post pictures of the heads of some people on farm animals.
In lieu of these facts, we can only conclude this site is a trollers paradise. Like many aspects of Facebook, it is filled with hate and anger. So in this regard, it is good competition for Facebook.
Well, at least we caught their attention. How do we all feel about it?
Of course, this article did not appear but it could. What happens when a site like Medium publishes something like that? Is this the image we want to portray?
Personally, I do not think that it is very appealing to people on the outside.
Is it safe to say that we do not want to be known as the blockchain that is always at war?
Do not worry, this isnt an attack article, as much as a solution to the dilemma. A lot of this is to help people understand what marketers know and see. Image is everything.
I take the freedom aspect of decentralization and the blockchain to be of great value. We all are living under systems that enslave. For the first time, we are seeing a way out of this, at least to a degree.
So the first question I have for people is are you for freedom or for slavery?
If you are for freedom, then a basic fact is that anyone on this site can be as greedy as that person wants to be. We see varying degrees of it all the time on here. There are people who will not upvote an article yet vote a four word comment for $7. Heck, we saw one individual upvote a comment to the tune of $2K.
At the same time, the community has the freedom to find exception with the greed of certain individuals and take action. Like those individuals who exercise their freedom to engage in greedy behavior, I agree that it is totally in the community's right to counteract that.
So the question is how do we go about that?
People feel that a flagging war is the answer. The problem with this approach is war is perpetual. We know the banksters are constantly touting it. Greed is their motivation. They dress it up nicely with patriotism, nationalism, and protection from terrorism. Yet, they care nothing about that. At the end of the day, it is greed...they profit it.
Some have put forth the option of limiting the number of posts to 4 a day. This could be a solution that solves the problem but at what cost? If one believes in freedom, how can one say yes to this option?
Do we want to be known as the blockchain of limitation? "Come and use the STEEM blockchain, but not too much".
We have an application called Zappl which wants to be a replacement for Twitter. How many Tweets do you think people send a day? Well it doesnt matter because one is only sending 4 Zaps.
Thank you for reporting that school shooting live via Zappl but you reached your 4 Zap limit so come back in 24 hours. But we are really interested to know how this turns out.
Steepshot is another application that is designed to take from the Instagram crowd. Again, are we going to limit one to 4 pics a day?
Naturally, if gets worse is one wants to Zap and use Steepshot in addition to Steemit or D.Tube.
"Come to STEEM and use our wonderful applications...but only a little bit."
Not quite the image we want to portray in my opinion.
So how do we solve this?
The answer is not war. What people are doing on here is akin to crapping on your living room floor and rubbing it in the carpet. Who does that? Angry crowds...
Have you ever noticed when people violently protest, they do not go to a rich neighborhood and and start torching stuff but, rather, do it in their own neighborhood? We all watch that knowing it makes no sense, yet arent we doing the same thing? If the war was taken to Facebook or YouTube, I might understand it.
The answer is really very simple. Part of the problem appears to be that too much posting is taking place on an daily basis that pay out some high rewards. Hence, the community feels that it need to cut that down.
So how do you combat a few posts taking too much out of the reward pool.
The answer is MORE POSTING.
According to @pablopenguin's post this morning, we have roughly between 70K-80K posts a day.
https://steemit.com/steemit/@penguinpablo/daily-steem-stats-report-friday-march-2-2018
What would happen if the posting suddenly jumped from that number to 250K-300K per day? What would happen if some of those people with 100K SP, instead of downvoting 10X a day, posted 10 times a day and upvoted themselves? What if everyone tripled or quadrupled the number of posts each day?
The answer is you would have something similar to a DDOS attack. We would see overwhelm.
Here is a solution that takes care of the problem without attacking anyone. The reward pool would be diluted to the point one or two individuals could not counteract it. Remember, one can upvote oneself 20 times a day, but not at 100% unless willing to exceed the 20% daily replenishment limit. Anything after 10 means personal dilution.
The other aspect to this is everyone needs to upvote their daily 20% that they get. Whether it is comments or articles, both count as part of the author pool
This approach ensures that an article like I described at the start of this post is never written. We want to make STEEM an attractive place for people to come. Activity is something that does that. Since we have a situation where many deem the reward pool being unfairly tapped, I feel this is a proactive solution. More posts will only garner more attention for this blockchain and give the search engines more to index.
If 10 posts are taking too much with 70K daily posts, then let us triple or quadruple the number of daily posts to make those 10 less of an impact.
That way outside eyes only see the increase in activity necessitating another uplifting article on a site like Bloomberg Technology without realizing their was a situation to begin with.
Form a marketing perspective, it is not a good idea for a start up entity to get a negative reputation. Why not approach this from a positive aspect and make sure everyone wants to be here?
If you found this article informative, please give it an upvote and resteem.
To receive the free basic income tokens you are entitled to and help end world wide poverty, please click the following:
Pictures by Google Images
Those that perpetually flag, have been flagging something they didn't like before they ever got to steemit. Many people arrive here with the idea that not only can they make a fast buck, and or attack those that are doing the same or they feel they are the righteous, flagging the outward averous in others that they deny in themselves. They are part of this ecosystem like all of us.
They are addicted to the war of red flags and I applaud them, with a wtf look on my face, why? Does anybody realize how much energy goes into staying that miserable? For me, herein lies the lesson about the antagonist that roam these Steemie seas.
Among all the red fish minnows dolphins and whales there are sharks and bottom feeders and false killer Whales (that is an actual species) But as you say: upvote or flag? Its simple math. But for the predatory type, nothing is never that simple.
Good perspective Solution.
Couldn’t have wrote ut better than tou did!
Shouldn’t it has to be like: Read and upvote or ignore and move on!
While I do see the need for the flag functionality, it has become overly used.
I did use it today! But that was flagging a porn related bot, commenting on my not porn related post!
Wow...porn bots..weird, yes flagging a porn bot is less emotional, lol I guess some people will flag each other until maybe steemit decides to change the color to a soft more peaceable tone instead of the "warning stop light red...lol"then maybe folks will calm down...what do you think.. a pastel peach flag? next witness meeting...maybe they will look into this ;))
And as incentive after 4 flags a month, everyone that flags after 4 has to pay .02 sp to the reward pool for each flag thereafter~*
Lets take them the least understandable color for men: appleblueseagreen.
Still trying to understand that color, its even harder then trying to understand Steemit!
I too do not want to fall prey to being a massively negative person and waste my time reporting others and flagging them just to be mean. Even if someone disagrees with my point of view, I still won't flag them because I want to think that most people have good intentions.
Right on....steem on
Excellent idea! I’ve been thinking along similar lines. Rewards are distributed based on upvotes. Flagging someone else’s post doesn’t distribute the rewards anywhere else. You actually have to upvote to distribute. Your suggestion addressed this issue and I think we’d see an increase in distribution and user activity! Hopefully this idea will gain some traction! Thanks for the post. Resteem
I fail to see if 10 posts out of 70K are taking too much out, that tripling the number of post wont reduce the impact of the 10 posts by 2/3. And it might even have more of an effect since the emotion will be drained out of the situation and those who delegated to each side might take their SP back and start posting themselves while commenting on other content they like.
We need more organic value! You can’t make money flagging. I prefer to stay out of the way and not cause too much trouble. It’s amazing to see how far some people will take it. We need more quality! I think we’ll get there over time.
It is part of our conditioning. People feel justified in their own rationalizations often to the point of even doing destructive behavior. This is seen with addicts all the time. They justify what they are doing even though they are destroying everything around them, including themselves.
Fear is a power entity that we all deal with. We do not like to feel out of control. Nor are we too keen on someone else having more than us...especially if we perceive it as ill gotten gains. And when we are fearful, we tend to attack.
Nations do this all the time and the governments that wage this battles use propaganda as a means of getting the masses to support it. People justify it in their mind that they are doing the right thing...the old protagonist/antagonist. We need someone or something to hate...then we feel validated in engaging in destructive behavior.
Watch after the Superbowl or the NCAA finals....mobs do all kinds of crazy stuff and people feel justified in doing it.
So as amazing as it is, it is not surprising considering mankind's history.
So true. It’s an addictive society. One justification or another. Great points!
This would definitely help, but I still don't understand how more posts = more rewards for everyone else, it would just dilute the voting across more posts right? I must be missing something
Yes it would dilute the voting pool for everyone, including the offender. Posting accounts for 75% of the reward pool. By more people posting, the reward pool is spread over more articles. Since one is tapped at 10 100% upvotes, unless willing to dilute by adjusting voting weight or using more than 20% daily, he or she is powerless to combat the dilution regardless of how much SP one has. It is the same reason the whales are losing power each time I interval I post in. Too many newer people putting up articles.
The point is the increased number of posts would enhance this blockchain by making it bigger. We would get more organic traffic since the search engines would have more to index. There would be more activity which would get newer people involved.
Plus it would eliminate the possibility that an article like I fictionally wrote about in the post appears in Medium or any other publication.
More posts mean that, ultimately, more upvotes will be generated, which will lead to more Steem. Delegations just move Steem around.
This is how I think it works, but I'm not sure either.
I'm sick of hearing about this stupid flag war.. it's definitely giving Steemit a bad rap. People are mad because someone is making money.. isn't that what we're all here for? Here's some advice..
LOL It is a good thing I wasnt drinking any coffee when I saw that or I would be wearing it.
Thanks for the laugh @davedickeyyall....when my VP replenishes, I give this a bit more of an upvote.
You ever wonder what it would be like if stoners ran the world?
Only when I'm high
So you are saying you think about it all the time? 😁
Classic!
I've actually never heard of the flagging war. I'm kind of not surprised something like that is going on though, as that is the only way to really hurt someone right now.
Hi Task, I've been doing my best to contribute to the number of posts. Even invited friends from Cuba, France and South Africa. I have friends in the most disparate places I know hehe. Cubans have migrated to every corner of the world.
About trolls, most people hate them but they are actually very healthy to keep conversation edgy and alive. If Facebook, Youtube and Twitter continue on their banning wars they will become very boring places and lose their audience. It's already happening and that's the opening we need for decentralized social media to take the baton. regards
I know at my friend. You are involved plenty plus you have two little ones to keep you dancing like Fred Astaire.
We both know that over time, as this place grows, we will see less of the issues we have now and more of issues we are not even confronted with.
As for FB and YouTube, they are our best allies...their censoring rampage is upsetting many. I am hoping the sign up process ends up streamlined so we can accommodate the newer people. I believe they are looking at coming on here in droves.
I agree we don't want a perpetual war against spam. There must be a more efficient way to stop spam, I don't what to lose most of my time here flagging. I barely have time to comment and post here.
Spam is a prime example. We fought that for 25 years and it is still commonplace. From the first days of email, spam soon followed. Now we see it in our texts, on our instant messengers, on forums and social sites, and anywhere else they can think of.
All the "fighting" barely slowed anything down.
We also see this with trolls....they are all over social media...silence one, there are three more.
Like you said, there needs to be a better way to handle it.
The question is how? One thing can be done, we can have an automatic flag button, for example, if you flag someone in one post, and he comes back to comment on the next post you have to flag it again, right? If you have an automatic flag button for that person, every time he comments your post he will be automatically flagged. Do I make myself clear? This won't stop spam but surely will help.
This button will only be available for you in your posts.
I never tried the mute button...isnt there a way to mute someone....what does that do?
Hahahaha. I don't know, but it's funny that we are talking about one futuristic button that doesn't exist, and suddenly maybe he exists and we don't use it.
I think it mutes the person but only for you, the others on your post can still watch the comment. So, this is not the "futuristic" button I was talking about.
Yeah perhaps...speaking out of school....proposing something that already exists....and we arent using it.
Isnt that the story of most people....we want something not realizing it is right under our nose.
Mute is broken I think, needs an update.
In regards to the spam solution, could we just block users from commenting on our posts? So similar to mute, but blocks everyone from seeing the comment.
This could lead to other issues though, and I know the spammers might just make new spam accounts, but maybe it would deter them.
I mentioned it here
I have looked at this post for over twenty minutes and compared it in my mind with other solutions proffer by others. And honestly, I don't know if we can ever tackle this except the faulting members of the community let down their greed and reason with others.
What could we have from this? - total dilution. Those who already have could survive. But what about the new comers trying to settle in this platform. Those who's upvote is worth less than $0.01?
Whatever form this war will take, it's those down the ladder that will feel the impact the most. This will result in the proverbial two elephants fighting where the grass always suffers.
That is true. But, dilution from more activity has a net positive effect. To start, there is a lot more going on which would, at least in theory, attract more people. Also, with that many more posts each day, we would see more organic traffic since the search engines would have a lot more to index.
So wouldnt the net result be that the price of STEEM increases? So in real terms, at least for those who are using the currency to survive upon, trading STEEM to fiat would yield more since the price would be higher. Sure it is possible that it wouldnt be...but that exists if what is presently taking place escalates and word starts to spread that this is a site of attacking and people trying to sabotage each other.
And I think we all suffer since this place has the potential to impact millions of people in an uplifting manner. Plus, from a financial standpoint, we will see everyone with SP affected if it spreads to the point of sending the price of STEEM down.
I am not saying it will, just that it could.
I've read your post with pleasure, as you genuinely try to find a solution that will be better for the ecosystem.
I agree, a war is never the best solution, even worse a perpetual one!
You mention upvotes are preferable to downvotes and I agree they generally are. But as a strategy to dilute the reward pool to the point it will become uninteresting to an abuser to continue his or her practices I disagree.
At least, this will not be done without high costs in terms of quality of the posts. So we deal with one problem to get into another?
Let me ask you. How much time did it take you to write this post? At least a few hours I imagine. Posting three times more, do you think you'll have time to write such a post?
An abuser will never ask himself such questions, because the quality of what he or she posts is irrelevant.
I see a potential peaceful solution to this: reintroduce mining to steem blockchain.
Those who are only interested in the economic aspect, should find comfort there, while those who genuinely want to create content or curate, will hopefully feel less pressure from those who don't.
Mining?
Why? Do you want a slower blockchain? Do you want to deal with the scaling issues that BTC and ETH have?
And quality is a personal, subjective term. Some who post Steepshots consider it quality, while I might not. But that is up to the person. Same with Zaps..I can send out a Zap in under 3 minutes...some might not say it is quality while others do...
And the reward pool is going to get diluted over time as more people sign up and post more articles. MY point simply is to push it forward by the people on here taking the initiative to increase the number in a large way.....
If there were 1M people on here posting articles daily, 10 articles would not make anyone's radar.
No, if that's the trade-off, I don't want either speed or scalability issues.
Yes, quality is subjective. And you changed the approach about number of posts. But nonetheless, from stats there is an average of 40-50 thousands active accounts daily (maybe a little more if my memory doesn't serve me well). Not 1 million, regardless if the total number may be close to that number.
Maybe the solution would be to get more of those sleeper accounts active again?
And 10 articles daily would be unnoticeable at current number of posts as well. There are probably much more than that. Plus the comment farming, spamming, etc.
I never professed there were 1M posts on here.....I was saying IF there were 1M posts on here, 10 posts would not be an issue.
I do agree the inactive accounts waking it would be great help. There are over 750K people signed up (how many are real versus bots/dup accounts is anyone's guess)...getting even 200K of them to start posting would go a long way to helping the issue.
Part of the solution in more people is streamlining the sign up process which I understand is being worked on.
So we might see a difference in 2-4 weeks.
Yeah, that's what I've heard too about the ETA on the sign up process improvements.
I remain with the hope that at least some of the new comers will be interested in the content, whatever its source app may it be.
Ultimately, you will have a mixture.
There will be many who come on here and spew all that is going on in their lives including when the dog crapped on the floor. Then others will have serious aspirations in terms of the content created.
Personally, I am not into creating Memes or really even seeing them...but DMania is a big application for many.
And as we saw with the cryptokitties and pokeman games, sometimes what we would consider a bit dopey takes off and is embraced by the masses.
Personally, from a STEEM holder perspective, I hope there is our version of cryptokitty on here with it generating millions of transactions a day....as silly as it might be, it is good business for STEEM holders.
Oh, don't get me wrong! I'm ok with any kind of content which has a genuine consumer. Hopefully with the communities we will be able to disseminate better what type of content we want to see.
What I'm not ok with is someone mimicking content creation of any type and which has no audience just so he or she can collect rewards. That plus the usual spam, but I believe that can be overlooked easier, if it isn't overwhelming.
That's interesting that Bloomberg saw what is going on, and reported on it. It is defiantly important for everyone to keep posting good stuff.
Something I noticed when most people report on the stuff going on on a website is they like to report on the bad stuff. YouTube with censorship, Steemit with flagging wars, and so on. While this is bad PR, it gives us something to look out for and fix. Not every report is good, but I think that this one shouldn't be taken lightly. Maybe we can fix the problem of flagging before it gets worse.
I don't know how to flag, and I don't want to learn. I don't look at what a post makes, I only read the content, to see if it deserved an upvote. I can only try to create content that people might want to upvote. Maybe they need change the flagging problem, by needing multiple accounts to press that flagging icon. I'm not very pleased with BT's review today. Maybe they need to take a better look before opening their mouths. 😎
I would say the answer is making it easier to find quality content over high paid content, and fixing the laughable flagging dynamic. Steem will evolve slowly, but surely.
Also, I've done the math of reward pool abuse and 80%+ of the voting power on steem isn't even being used... meaning everyone that does vote is worth 5 times more than they should be.
I would love to see the data on that....that is very interesting.
https://steemit.com/steemit/@edicted/doing-the-math-on-reward-pool-abuse
So this math assumes that it takes 40 SP for +$0.01 upvote. Given this assumption, one can double their money on Steem in less than 2 years even though the Steem blockchain only has 10% inflation. (also assuming the price of steem is stagnant and not including compound interest)