RE: Say goodbye to your #rewardpoolrape @haejin!! It's time to do the RIGHT thing.
This is exactly what I have intuited from what I've seen on Steemit even though I haven't delved deeply onto the mechanics of the platform. I've been watching for several months but not wanting to invest any time/energy/money into it because it seems like this is the seriously rigged game where the big whales literally profit of the contributions of the little guys voting and writing and posting. Can you explain specifically how this rigging occurs. Is it just by upvoting themselves or are there other tricks to it?
This is a real shame because the idea of a blockchain based social media platform is brilliant and has so much potential. Its said that it has turned into a Feudal society where a handful of people own everything and the masses toil to line the pockets of the lords. That is not something I want to participate in. I hope Larimer does launch a platform an EOS. Hopefully a less complicated one without 3 fucking tokens to make it work as well.
To answer your main question, I see 4 ways SteemIt is rigged (although there may be more)
Some of these overlap in use and definition, but here's the rub: Whales can effectively upvote, self-promote, and otherwise rape the rewards pool in a way that is "behind the scenes," so as not to appear to be completely self-interested, maintaining the appearance of a "do-gooder" while chomping down on the minnows as if they were a Great White Shark.
Haejin is the current "black sheep" and target of the other whales because he's new to their game, they don't like the fact that he's beating them at their own game, and he does not go to extreme lengths to hide the fact that he's upvoting himself about 90% of the time. Since that is easy to see, it makes it easy for other whales to turn the masses against him - while they are doing the exact same thing, only they're much more covert about it.
But, again - none of this really matters to most Steemians, because you can make a minimal investment, participate, and EDUCATE YOURSELF about cryptos, trading, photography, or whatever your fancy happens to be.
Simply trading STEEM coins is just as legitimate an asset as any other token currently out there, if not more so, and you can buy massive amounts of it & trade it & take massive profits off of it - so long as you do not power it up and get it entangled in this social media flag battleground, where it take 13 weeks to power down and get it back out.
And, there's massive amounts of breaking news, tips, etc. for people who are just learning about cryptos. Once you learn how to broadly read the markets (bonds, NYSE), trade multiple digital assets, and do it with a plan that works (cutting losses short & letting winners ride up a bit) - then you will have learned a major skill-set which will serve you well. SteemIt is an excellent place to learn how to synthesize this kind of information and how to put it to use for yourself, making profits.
So, I'm not totally down on SteemIt. It is an awesome place. I just have no illusions about trying to become a whale on here and embroil myself with all of this B.S.
One more important point to make: current SteemIt rules allow for self-upvoting. This enable everyone to essentially use their Steem Power as an interest-bearing savings account, by choosing to use your steem power to grow it, like compounding interest. I believe that is a very legitimate use of anyone's steem power. However, you will run into whales who hate that - because it reduces their ability to receive even more payouts. So, the masses of Steemians have been conditioned, through peer pressure, to see self-upvoting and self-interest as being almost "evil." This is simply not the case. It completely blows my mind that you have people on this platform who are telling other people how they think they should be using their investment - not taking profits but giving it away to everyone else. Well, what if I have 8 mouths to feed? Or, I'm donating large amounts of money to help find cures for cancer? Who is anyone on here to judge anyone else for taking a profit? This is where the DownVote gets misused - people get downvoted for self-upvoting. In it's basic form, this can only be called "abuse." It is Economic Violence, a tactic used by some of the worst kinds of Sociopaths on earth to control other people. It has no place on SteemIt, IMHO.
Furthermore, the "Reputation" score on SteemIt is misleading. Some of the biggest @$$holes on the platform have 70+ Reputation. They are good at hiding behind their computer screens, but some of them fall well within the Sociopath/Psychopath category - as many of these types of people gravitate toweards the successful high-level, high-finance jobs.
So, it is not surprising, to me, that we find this kind of chaos and B.S. here on SteemIt. People with large amounts of money trying to use it to control the behaviors of everyone else. I find it best to steer clear of the battleground, pick up what useful nuggets I can find, and then do my own thing - trade cryptos and make a profit, and make my physical stacks of Silver and Gold even taller than they already are. Nobody on SteemIt can downvote my stacks. Really, once you learn how to take electronic money and turn it into real money - in your safe, at home, in your own pocket - everything else is just so much hot air. Almost every single "Trending" and "Hot" post only got there through the deployment of about $50 - $500 of buying promotion Bots, buying Votes, and self-upvoting through multiple accounts. In turn, this generates "HYPE" and interest from all of the minnows on SteemIt who go and upvote it further. This is where whales screw over minnows: it's not that they are producing better content, it's that they are generating much more hype and exposure for their posts. Anyone can do it, with a little bit of learning and a lot of time invested - it is not rocket science. I just don't have 8 hours a day to devote to writing a blog and worrying about the politics on SteemIt.
So, how big is your stack? I bet you that mine is bigger! :D
Good luck to you and thanks for the convo.
well said