RE: Understanding Steem's Economic Flaw, Its Effects on the Network, and How to Fix It.
Yes I remember you were broadly in favor of 2/3 when I first mentioned these solutions in chat around 7 months ago. I'm glad we agree on this much
I doubt I can convince you of the benefits of slight superlinear, but I'm going to try.
I feel that it's the centerpiece, or at least as important as the other two measures listed here. At the heart of what favors content indifferent voting in terms of profit maximization is that vote/sp is identical (roughly speaking) irrespective of where it's cast. Variation in reward for any given sp weighted vote is crucial to making it more difficult to mindlessly price votes for bid bots, favor good curation more, and generally helps content reflective voting behavior to out-compete content indifferent behavior.
It has the added benefit of forcing all profitable posts/comments into the light as rewards will likely need to be substantially high before they're 'profitable'. Similarly, it'll likely get rid of a decent amount of profit based comment spam as low payouts are generally not worth the vote invested.
The curve can really be quite mild, maybe lower than n^1.3. It can even have a linear tail to prevent some form of large scale collusion among whales to pile on etc. Remember, ultimately the idea is to come up with a set of economic incentives that will allow individual voting behavior that provides the greatest returns to be not content agnostic, and therefore, add value to the protocol by having it actually function as a content discovery platform. I feel that with only greater downvote incentives alone in the form of X% separate downvotes, it won't be sufficient as there's still a risk to casting a downvote but no direct individual reward. Enticing it further would probably have the downsides of toxicity outweigh it's benefits.
'The idea is to use just enough of these measures...' I should clarify my statement here. I meant as most potential measures (superlinear, downvote incentives, higher curation) all have a cost, it's perhaps preferable to use a combination of different measures to a smaller extent than fewer measures to a greater extent. I can't prove it outright but I think that's less costly to the system overall.
I think for projects that truly require a linear token, that's the perfect place for SMTs.
You're one of the most intelligent witnesses Smooth, and I wish we saw more eye to eye on this. Again I'll take 2/3 over nothing. But I just can't shake the feeling that if we keep linear, it'll always be an avenue that's subject to abuse no matter what other economic disincentives we build around it.
Downvoting (if not crippled) already introduces the necessary non-linearity in my view. It functions as a form of consensus-finding much like superlinear, without the flaw that larger stakeholders (and/or larger groups of stakeholders) can collude to take more than their fair share. It does exactly what you say in terms of e.g. bidbots because bidbot posts that attract downvotes would lose a share of their rewards and NOT receive a linear payout.
It is much less subject to abuse (including by bidbot-like schemes, which could easily gain under superlinear) because you can only push rewards non-lienarly away from non-consensus payouts, but can't push them toward yourself (directly or indirectly).
I feel downvoting is just a better solution to this exact problem, but if it is given a serious try and doesn't work then I'd be more open to reconsidering superlinear. Though, still, I'm skeptical it would just introduce/reintroduce more problems. Perhaps a bit more superlinearity at the low end (to prevent dust farming) that transitions to linear as the rewards become significant would be okay.
I'd actually say the opposite. Superlinearity with stake weighting will always be perceived as unfair (and for good reason in my view). In the case of SMTs with uniform voting, superlinearity could be a better fit (though I still expect would be abused). Likewise SMTs might serve some subcommunity where the cultural context makes the lack of 'fairness' not a problem or even an advantage (pure speculation here).
I do support free downvotes (what reggae said in chat is what we meant by 10% free downvotes, although he calls for 20%)
But I can give you a fairly good reason of why I think X% free downvotes (X% separate pool) itself is insufficient
Recall that I believe we're in this mess because under the current economic incentives, content indifferent voting out competes content reflective voting in terms of rewards.
Now how would the rational selfish actor behave with these new free downvotes? Well rationally, they're not rewarded for them regardless of how accurate they are and open themselves to retaliation, which have received a concomitant reduction in cost. You may argue that it's in everyone's best interest for us to use our free downvotes wisely, but if we could cooperate like that, we could make linear and 25% curation work as it's to everyone's detriment that we all engage in content indifferent behavior. Yet here we are.
Essentially, downvotes alone won't get you there because you're not rewarded individually more for being an outstandingly accurate downvoter like you would be when in comes to upvoting (in a functional ideal curation economy). That is to say, downvoting won't get you the price discovery features that upvoting brings which is what it would take for your above statement to hold true.
In practice, I don't think people are as rigid as I just outlined, and I think downvotes would for the most part be used wisely especially if we enable them to be delegated. The cost of retaliation would generally be a lot lower than, say forfeiting 75% of your returns, which is what the price of good voting behavior is currently. That's why I support them with other measures.
Alone, they're insufficient, with 50% curation, maybe it'll work out, with slight superlinear, the chances are best.
Still, the benefits of slight superlinear cannot be understated, and I feel its detriments are exaggerated. People are really suffering from n^2 PTSD. n^1.2-n^1.3 should give us most of the benefits at a fraction of the cost. To say that all forms of superlinear are bad because n^2 didn't work out is like concluding all forms of inflation is crazy because 100% hyperinflation was mental.
Overall 2/3 might work. But I truly feel most are wrong with respect to the benefit/cost ratio of slight superlinear. Without which the numbers probably need to be pushed a little higher...
I don't find the situations analogous at all. Altruistic or socially-optimal voting under the current system has an obvious and huge immediate cost, so it is a pretty easy to expect it to be heavily disfavored under the current system. To cooperate and sustain it would be a huge effort with large coordination cost.
By contrast, free downvotes have very little direct cost. There might be some retaliation, but that also might be implausible (if someone is downvoted by 5 or 10 different voters, are they going to retaliate against all of them; vote power limits alone might make this impossible). It is far more likely to expect that some altruistic or non-myopic self-interest to kick in there, when the cost is much lower, the way it does when people make small (positive) edits to wikipedia and such.
I would agree it may not be sufficient, but I don't think it is clear it is insufficient just because it isn't directly rewarded and therefore perfect game theory might suggest ignoring the option altogether. Though to be perfectly mathematically precise, if you have any active content eligible for a payout, downvoting does benefit you, however slightly, and likewise, long term good-of-the-platform considerations also benefit you, if also slightly. Again, it is more likely to expect these considerations to matter when they aren't offset by a huge direct cost. After all, it doesn't cost much to physically click downvote if you don't like something, as people do millions of times per day without any incentive on reddit, etc.
BTW, I do think downvoting (assuming it happens a reasonable amount, which is uncertain; see above) brings price discovery, not directly, but via its effect on upvoters. That's precisely non-linearity in action. Upvotes have more 'oomph' if they don't get downvoted, just as they would have more 'oomph' if combined with other upvotes (or, at least, more stake) in a superlinear upvoting system. So people upvoting who want their votes to have maximum value (either for curation or reward purposes), a natural desire, need to consider what is more or less likely to be downvoted. That brings price discovery. In the extreme case, if you upvote for N rshares and get downvoted for N rshares your vote then has no value at all. That's clearly inefficient and unprofitable voting you would prefer to avoid.
I feel we've fallen into the trap of narcissism of small differences.
I did concede that in practice this is less likely later in my comment which you covered in your first two paragraphs above. Whatever differences of opinion we have regarding downvotes are relatively academic and negligible in practice. I support X% free downvotes.
The conversation in chat with the group was, perhaps unsurprisingly, not too constructive. Right now we have an economic system that rewards content indifferent behavior 4x more than voting behavior that's beneficial for the platform. Maybe adopting 2/3 of our measures is sufficient to turn this around if superlinear is out of the question.
Ideally I think it's better to have a system that still leaves enough to incentivize authors and I think something similar to our proposal can get us there. Failing that, 100% curation which you proposed or no inflation rewards other than paying witnesses (they're similar in some ways, obviously not identical) might be entertained. This basically will be like reddit, where there's no rewards so no incentive to act dishonestly, but with a crypto wallet attached. I think this isn't great but it could work.
I'm reluctant to try this path without at least a serous attempt at making this place work as it was initially intended. I don't consider hyperinflation, n^2, 25% curation, linear very serious attempts. But of course, it's not up to me, thanks for your time.
I'm not sure that discussing small differences is narcissism, but I agree with the core message there. Clearly we agree on most of this voting incentives issue and have agreed on most of it since the first discussion of it (several months ago). It is the people who don't agree with it to the same extent or at all who are getting in the way of something being done, not you or me.
BTW, I'm not sure if you are aware but the original policy mix was hyperinflation, n^2, 50% curation. The switch from 50% to 25% was very foolish and I disagreed with it at the time. The 3-1 ratio to overcome is terrible regardless of the curve.
The downvoting feature should be disabled - not strengthened.
Work on better reward schemes, not arbitrary punishment features.
There probably isnt a better reward scheme that doesn't involve downvotes. Even with downvotes it isn't clear there is a scheme that will work well, but that is the best chance.
Anything that lets people push rewards toward themselves and/or their conspirator is likely exploitable. Downvoting works because it doesn't allow doing that, only pushing rewards away from a particular point and scattering them to the rest of the community.
To strengthen the system we must weaken the individual actors.
On the matter of disabling downvoting, I had an idea to do exactly that, but not for the reason you probably would like. My idea is to disable downvotes and watch the system collapse (worse than it already is). Then, perhaps, people would learn an increased respect for the value of downvotes.
Weakening the individual lessons the incentive for individuals to invest here.
Less investment means lower price.
This is the exact same reasoning behind Marx's failed ideology. And it will fail for the exact same reason.
All systems are ultimately wealth creation vehicles for individuals. Lessen the ability for individuals to earn, and they will support a different coin with better economics.
The better one is able to reward an individual, the stronger the community.
Weakening individual voters from unilaterally directing rewards does not weaken the ability of individuals to earn, in fact it probably strengthens it. The reward pool is short term zero sum. It always goes to someone.
We don't need to get into Marxist ideology to see that people voting for themselves (either directly or via obfuscation schemes which accomplish the same thing) does not accomplish anything productive for either the individual or the community. It is a dog chasing its tail. It is like going into business and then going out the back door of the store, walking around to the front and walking in as a customer. Pointless.
The way to earn in a non-Marxist sense is to offer something of value and then have actual customers (i.e. other than yourself) want to buy it. Translating that back to Steem, post something of value and then have other people vote for it. Since we can not prevent self voting (people can always do it through other accounts or obfuscation schemes), the only way for the system to reward actual value is to have other people to identify non-value and object to it earning rewards. There is no other way.
Everyone here keeps going around and around without facing the real problem.
By definition, most people can not create above average content.
The changes that are being tossed around in the OP will take away the majority's ability to earn Steem.
Which takes away the majority's incentive to hold Steem. Because to hold Steem means an 8% per year loss to inflation.
And without an incentive for the masses to buy and hold Steem, it becomes worthless
Value is not necessarily the same as content. If I see a real community of users joining Steem, posting pictures of their dinner, and getting upvoted by their friends, all while helping to recruit other friends to join Steem, I'm not going to object to that at all. The content may be worthless in a broader sense but their presence is not, and it is perfectly fine to reward it.
To be fair I am not a fan of the superlinear concept, at least not beyond some very minimal level, because I do agree that it shuts out the non-stars if taken too far.
The 8%/year thing is kind of nonsense. Any successful cryptocurrency will grow in value by a lot more than 8%/year. Typical growth rates are 30% to hundreds of percent, even averaged over several years. Even passive (non-voting) investors who are 'losing' 8% per year would benefit enormously if Steem really took off, and getting the rewarding mechanism to work better is something that can help it do just that.
The reason to hold STEEM is not to milk out a few percent of more (potentially worthless) STEEM in rewards by exploiting the voting system, it is because you think that STEEM is going to be worth a LOT more in the future.
What you are advocating will stop Steem's growth in its tracks.
How many accounts are here? How many will produce "quality content".
What will the rest of the accounts do once smooth and friends start downvoting their work? Have you not engaged with the community? The biggest issue for most users is that nobody upvotes their work. Now you want to have others to downvote it? You realize that the downvoting will be arbitrary right? Most likely accross political lines. People stop creating content here now, because it isn't rewarded. Just wait until it starts getting downvoted and see how long people last.
All that will happen is that those who write articles or comments that most resembles mainstream thought will be rewarded most - that is human nature. People upvote things they agree with - and with a cheap downvote, they will downvote what they disagree with.
You can see that dynamic at play already in this very comment thread. Say something popular, and receive upvotes. Say something unpopular under your scheme, and you will be downvoted.
Welcome to the Steem echo-chamber.
Not to mention that those who want to continue to upvote themselves will simply open multiple accounts to obfuscate their actions.
Also, even if you are successful, then what is Steem? A place for professional authors and photographers to reward each other? That's a pretty small community.
It certainly stops being social media if every post is critiqued - and then has no possibility of reward if it doesnt meet with smooth's definition of quality content.
If I take a picture of my dinner and my friends here like it - the way people use Facebook - is that quality content? Will I be critiqued and downvoted by a professional photographer who is envious because I have more friends (and thus more reward). Do you not understand that this is how downvotes will be used?
Why fucking bother post on Steemit at all if there is no incentive to be here? That's already the biggest reason people leave - they were told they could post here and be rewarded for it. And they don't get any votes. Now you want to make it even harder for a minnow to profit? Not only can he no longer invest in himself, but now he has to please all the critics? Why wouldn't someone just go to back to Twitter or Facebook if they arent going to be rewarded anyway?
One downvote large enough to erase someones entire earnings for a post that she worked hard on - that is all it will take for someone to leave here and never return. And it will happen in droves.
There is barely any growth (in fact over the past few months probably shrinkage). New users sign up but churn is massive. People don't stick around. Web traffic is declining, too. https://www.alexa.com/siteinfo/steemit.com
That's exactly right, because the voting is being used by people who self-enrich. The (broken) economic incentives push the system in that direction. New users who show up won't be the targets of downvotes to any great extent; they're barely visible and no one has any reason to downvote them if they are being sincere in their participation. The targets will be all the worthless cookiecutter paid-vote crap that you see on trending day after day which does nothing to attract traffic and sucks the reward pool away from the newcomers.
You are contrdicting yourself here. Taking a picture of your dinner and sharing it is not 'working hard'. If you post your dinner and people enjoy seeing it and reward you a little, that's great, but if you aren't rewarded, it is the same as Facebook and hardly the end of the world. People who do work hard to make a big contribution will occasionally be downvoted too. That will sometimes happen and is unfortunate, but they will also benefit day after day when their ability to get rewards is not destroyed by parasites using self voting, paid votes, etc. Better protecting of the reward pool from the rampant and growing self-enrichment that exists will benefit those making a real value-added contribution far more than it ever hurts them.
If I had a STEEM for everyone who got downvoted and said they were leaving and will never return I'd have a lot more STEEM than I have now! It is absurd, and even more than that, self-limiting. If people do leave (which they don't) then there are more rewards left to retain the rest of the users and attract new ones.
There is no perfect system but we can make it less grossly dysfunctional than it is now.
A downvote isn’t “punishment.” Some people may use it that way, but it is essentially just a disagreement from one stakeholder on how rewards have been allocated by other stakeholders.
You are a veteran member. You know that's not the purpose of downvotes in the original paper. It's to vote against things that are otherwise offensive and you want to save other people from seeing it.
Downvoting based on reward smacks of envy or banker's haircuts .
Good lord!
Even more reason to get rid of the downvote in todays environment.
It wouldnt take much much of a stake for the same group that are responsible for FB and Twitter taking down conservative, freedom, and anarchist sites to completely censor Steem.
Except...a downvote doesn’t “censor” anyone on Steem. It is only an interface function that hides posts and comments when they are into negative rewards or reputation. Other interfaces that are not Steemit don’t hide such posts and comments.
Until you have downvote bots with thousands of accounts...
It's stake based, so more votes doesn't matter unless we return to some kind of superlinear scheme. It just makes it look intimidating.
Just like demonetizing Vloggers on YouTube doesn't censor them either...
Was Pewtiepie censored? No. Did mainstream media take away his ability to continue to earn in the same way as he was? Yes.
Downvoting opens up Steem to the exact same kind of abuse.
Imagine the Saudi royal family buying up a massive stake and then using government apparatus to downvote anyone critical of them...
Demonetizing is a quaint concern at this point when lots of content is being BANNED altogether from these sites on a daily basis. I say having Steem thrive so it can provide a censorship-resistant platform where people can communicate AT ALL is a very worthy goal even if it means some people may get unfair or undeserved downvotes.
Rewards are a nice bonus, but you are never entitled to them. And it is also worth considering that Steem also provides censorship-resistant payments, so content providers, activists, etc. can get donations, sell memberships or merchandise, etc. and support themselves in ways other than rewards, and without being completely BANNED by Paypal, Visa, etc. Again, 'censorship' by downvoting seems a quaint concern when measured against the the serious threats to freedom that exist in the world today.
I dont understand how you all cant see this.
Even among yourselves right now - people are taking a side on this comment thread - and upvoting the points they agree with.
Which comment in here represents good content?
Votes are always used to reward those opinions that people agree with.
Downvotes will be used the same way.
This is absolutely true, but this only regards economic incentives.
I note that our interests aren't merely economic, and neglecting other metrics precludes competence at effecting other rewards that are more valuable than money.
I keep hammering on this point because I am confident that only by considering those more valuable aspects of society can we resolve economic imbalances caused by only considering economic factors. Finance is integral to society, but it is not the only metric that matters. Failing to use other metrics forces economic metrics to primacy, and thus profiteering is unavoidable, as when only economic metrics are considered, only financial profit matters.
I note that problems sought to be resolved involve non-economic factors, and those factors must be valued and rewarded to rationally address those issues. Effecting non-financial rewards is necessary to achieve non-financial goals. There are other valuable considerations, such as friendship, content quality, and societal felicity, that are necessarily exchanged in social interactions. Proposing only economic functions as solutions precludes successfully aligning the economic aspect of social media with the actual value of society.
We need to get out of the pure "dollar term reasoning", think outside the box, bring in a second dimension, a second yardstick, that is what makes us human and not cold calculating machines
We need to come together and create communities around shared values. A set of shared values inspire human behaviour even in the absence of economic incentives (see religion and ideologies).
We need to start a series of thriving, vibrant steemit "passions" as there are already examples around "open source software" (@utopian-io) or "science" (@steemstem)
Mini societies that curate based not on the financial reward but on their own internal, subjective value system