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*some photophop work
This one is unedited : Top global trending starting from 3rd post.
*some photophop work
This one is unedited : Top global trending starting from 3rd post.
Maybe as a community we should start exposing these voting rings so people can know who is contributing to this and who is working to prevent it? Reputation should matter, and if some people who otherwise have a high reputation are enabling what others call abuse, that's worth discussing.
I have people who vote for me, but I have no voting agreement with anyone. If I was to some day show up as being part of "abuse" I don't think that would be my fault as much as the people who decided to vote for me even if the community disagreed with the rewards payout. To me, those are the people we should confront and that includes those who run voting bot services which enable this to happen and profit from it.
I appreciate you discussing this and the downvotes you do to protect the perception of the value of the rewards pool. I know, as an investor, that's a double burden you have to take because you're not only not making money on your voting strength you could be making, but you're also exposing yourself for whale flag wars.
It's also challenging to directly defined voting circles and abuse. I have friends of mine who I always support and some of them support me also. Is that abuse or natural? Who's to say and what role does the quality of the content produced play? Hopefully we can all figure this out as we vote up or down based on perspectives.
We're two years in, the community has tried 'exposing' and all manner of things. It is clear by now that the mechanism is badly broken.
Do you think we have enough visibility yet? To me, we could do more. This could be a regular topic of discussion with actual data. Weekly reports (maybe even daily reports?) and ask for engagement from the voters. I too often see people complaining about the author without calling out the actual voters who are doing the distribution from the rewards pool. Why don't we focus on the voters more? Why don't we have reports that don't assume blame, but instead try to explain? There may be valid reasons why some people decide to add others to voting bots. If we don't know those reasons, we can think it's a scammy voting ring. If we do, maybe we can reset our expectations on how (and why) people use their own Steem Power as they choose.
Many of the examples I've seen of people caring about the rewards pool distribution are (IMO) immature comparisons to "rape" instead of rational, non-judgemental discussions trying to understand why certain people vote the way they do.
People have reasons. Our ignorance of those reasons doesn't justify our moral judgements. If, on the other hand, we know those reasons and can clearly articulate them in ways the community at large can fully agree (or disagree) with, then it's possible support for those people will be removed or added. If there's still disagreement about the value behind the reasons for a vote, then it's not an issue we consensus on, so even more discussion should take place before we claim the community has figured this out and our solutions to it have failed.
I think you are in a denial over the fact that most of these are actually enrichment schemes that involve paid voting, hidden common ownership of the voter and author accounts, or off-chain payment schemes that leave no evidence on the platform itself.
I'm not moralizing here. I don't blame people for responding to the incentives as the platform presents them. It is just that the incentives are broken.
P.S. I agree the 'rape' thing is sensationalist, not precise, and not helpful. My personal focus is not on name calling or even focused on any specific individuals. It is on looking at the mechanism and what it incentivizes. Currently the answer, unfortunately, is a lot of non-value-creating behavior.
I’m not in denial as much as I’m suggesting a path forward which would expose it clearly. If asked “Why do you vote for X?” and the honest answer is “Becuase they pay me in bananas / sexual favors / Slim Jims / pieces of paper with dead people on them / piles of coke / (whatever)” then it becomes clear. If they lie about it and are inconsistent, I think over time, that becomes clear to the community also. If in the off chance they have a legit answer, then we all understand more. I’m simply assuming good intentions first. If they don’t want to talk about their reasoning and are unwilling to justify their vote with a rational response, then what you’re describing becomes more clear to everyone and in a way that makes as few assumptions as possible. Innocent until proven irrational.
The recent call-out of @ranchorelaxo is an example of what I mean. It’s telling that he/she/it did not defend themself (yet) but instead @haejin did.
I agree, looking to improve the mechanism is the best, long-term answer. I also think we have to work within the system we have in the mean time. I’m also not sure what technical or system solutions would improve this activity since it’s a common thing we see in most systems with humans involved. It’s possible a better identity and reputation system could help, and I think that’s part of what SMTs and their Oracles may provide. The “reputation” number we have now is silly if we have actors on the system that many are frustrated with which hold the highest reputation on the system.
As to moralizing, I get what you mean, and I do fall into that trap quite a bit due to my upbringing, but I also look at it not so much in terms of good and bad but in terms of long-term rational self-interest which values oneself as part of a whole and irrational short-term decisions which harm others and oneself in the long-term.
IMO you are not suggesting a path forward as much as suggesting what has been done over and over again for the past two years (with little, if anything, in the way of real progress).
And then what? No response at all, and as far as I can tell @haejin is still earning something like 6000 USD per day (i.e. 2 million USD per year) for doing little to nothing to add value to STEEM. It isn't a small number either, that's around 0.25% of the entire market cap of STEEM going to one person/scheme with little or nothing to show for it. Even if this individual 'calling out' approach were effective, what would happen is that the account would quietly go away and the scheme would be rehatched under different names, possibly different 'content', etc. The one thing that remains the same is the clear incentive to maximize individual earnings.
After two years of repeated and unchecked abuses (despite numerous calling outs), it becomes very much a question of the insanity of doing the same thing and expecting a different result.
Long-term rational self-interest at the moment probably coincides with just maximizing individual earnings, because so many other people are doing it anyway and will very likely continue doing it, especially when the best answers we can come up with are: a) more of the same; and b) some poorly-defined and poorly-analyzed future 'solution' that probably won't ever even be fully implemented before moving on to something else (which is actually more of the same: Remember when 'curation guilds' were the solution, and then linear rewards?).
It is tempting to equate decisions which benefit oneself at the expense of others as irrational, but that is wishful thinking and moralizing, unless the rules of the system make this irrational, and they currently do not. Nor is it clear that @haejin earning around 2M USD/year is in any way irrational (for him and his affiliates).
The most likely solutions I see that would probably work are:
So what's the solution?
It has to come at the coding level, no?
I feel there is no simple solution, because Steemit is constantly developing and adding new features without addressing the current issues. And with more code, come more bugs, so the old bugs/problems will keep piling up until the sand pyramid collapses. I sincerly hope that doesn't happen and to prevent that, the system needs to halt anything unecessary (or not in production) and focus on the present problems. Once we have a solid foundation that WORKS for a while, then we can happily move on to other aggrandizing things.
I can compare the current state of things to the myth of multitasking. Trying to do everything at the same time is NOT productive. Fewer Priorities Leads to Better Work.
We have some interrim solutions in place but the definitive solution would likely require a code change. However, if the witness ranks have been compromised by the abusers, the likelihood of that happening is remote.
Check out @flagawhale if you would like to see a grassroots and crowdfunded approach to fighting high order abuse.
I thought that the wars of flags can only be on our platform Golos (fork of Steemit for russians) (sarcasm)
As I expected people are all the same:)
It is better to maintain good posts than to fight, there is still one pool. If good posts get upvotes, then scoundrels get less) We need to use positive reinforcement.
There's also this useful quote to consider:
"The only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is for good men to do nothing."
I think it takes both positive reinforcement and clarity on what is accepted and what is not based on action which includes downvotes.
What does it mean?
It's sarcasm meant to show that top trending content is serialized content self-voted by voting rings and that the comment section is littered with spam posted with the sole purpose to expect to earn a penny or two.
o yes, I understand now. it seems they have abused this platform. thanks for sharing sir ...
Being new to this platform, 15 hours in, I've seen some rubbish published here where the content is little better than an article spinner output with a catchy image. Surely this platform is better than that.
I would like to see more action taken on the part of the community to flag these type of submissions, otherwise there is a very real risk that what we see here will become little more than junk mail, and as users, we'll need to wade through a heap of crap to find something of value.
I would cite particular cases, but I don't want to give them any more exposure than what they have had already.
Totally agree that the more congruent with the intention of the platform that a user's actions are, the better the place will be. But, money is money, and opportunistic individuals will seek to take advantage where they can, rather than doing the right thing in many cases. Sad situation that people are so bloddy lazy.
Just imagine if every analysis haejin did was numbered... Then everyone on there would be serialized except the negative rep guy who's trying to improve the platform and the one legitimately unique article on there.
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RIP Trending
Perfect analysis! That's what I thought. Those whales just don't wanna stop getting richer and richer.
They should at least dedicate one 100% upvote for community each day . But guess what , they want every penny for themselves !
Yes .. I agree with you @transisto
Thanks for your comment ..
Dear sir @transisto
I ma a new steem member in steemit platform please give me some advice for success in steemit platform please help me sir and visit my blog and resteem my post
hey! that seems to be a criticism.
yup that's the exact strategy here going on
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I’ve been saying for a while that the trending tab needs to be renamed. If it was called sponsored and we had a real trending tab based on actual organic votes that exclude all vote buying, we’d have a more transparent and community based platform! Gotta to change the names of the tabs!! Thanks for the post!!
I so love this. At least I can voice my opinion. In my candid opinion none of those post deserve the trending position. A repeated series post of some sort does not represent what steemit stands for.
Maybe I am yet to get it, but until I get it, trending should be taking out if those are the kind of post found on trending.
Good quality post that speaks steemit do not stand the chance to get upvote not to talk of trending. Sucks big time..
Content isn't even useful on here anymore. No knowledge shared. What's the point? The same people get on the trending page everyday. A platform where people comment just to earn votes from whales. No engagement with normal users. And it sucks prety much that 80% of the content on steemit are about steemit! Where's the knowledge?
Came for the weird crypto faucet, stayed for the weird crypto faucet. That's what us normies are here for, right?
@transisto,
Do you think those posts are not worthy enough to be at trending list?
Why do you focus on the multi-part content? I follow a few of these people and they’re covering travels in various countries so part 1 might be about an experience in Europe but by part 100 they’re talking about an experience in Africa or something.
Are the articles written deserving of this high payout? Probably not, but most posts on SteemIt are overpaid. We’re suffering from too much money, too little content, and money being horded.
What I learned here :
Steemit is not only about UPVOTES & Money
It is about writing..
It is about reading..
It is about knowing people and their side of the story..
It is about learning..
It is about finding a path to follow..
It is about keeping yourself motivated to write better..
It is about broadening your thinking..
It is about spending your time productively..
It is about making you think from a different perspective..
It is about writing without any expectations of UPVOTES..
@transisto
lol, I used the bot tracker frontrunner tool and voted on this, but it is 9 days old. Looks like frontrunner tool views posts past payout as having $0 in votes for calculation of curation:
Quite interesting interaction I think.
@transisto did you just drop 100SBD to have bots vote on something beyond the payout window? Hopefully you have some experimental idea behind that and it wasn't an error. Also... WTF? I thought bots had max post age, lol.
Like I said many times, this places brings out the worst human emotions. Greed and jealousy, and the people who could truly do something about it are sadly the ones who are the most jealous and the greediest. Its not about whats great content or not, its about sharing and altruism, and there isnt a lot of that about :-(
by the way, if you want to see yourself trending, its easy. Start a new tag, write an article and use your new tag, hey presto. You're top of trending under your own tag..nice ego boost and a smile on your face :-)
wow that was amaizing..
resteem your post sir..