My STEEMBETS project was flagged for vote buying. I withdrew it. Then, a very similar project emerged and…it was not flagged at all.
Hi there. I would like to understand if my project is politically correct or not :-)
IDEA
The basic idea is to offer bets on sports, politics, etc, through the following mechanism:
Post defines what the bet is about. To participate, you upvote the post as an entry fee.
Next, you must upvote one and only one of my comments, namely the one stating your forecast, e.g. “Clinton next US President”, or “Trump next US President”.
All SBDs and STEEM earned by the post make the jackpot, to be split in equal parts among winners.
This is a fun way to redistribute SBDs (or STEEM, as an alternative option) across the community, as participating whales would contribute to the jackpot more than minnows, while claiming the same winnings. Now, what happened?
FACTS
On 30th August the @steembets account was created by my team. On 1st September, I published a post to introduce the idea above and to offer Clinton vs Trump as inauguration bet. Then, I got flagged by one whale for “vote buying”, and criticized by others for the same reason. Ok, fair enough. I decided to withdraw that post. However, since I had paid some money to get a “promoted” slot, in order not to waste the promotion money I changed both the title and content of the post, transforming it into…some serious stuff :-) I also apologized for my sins, and moved on to other projects. This is the post URL, which (if you read the URL text) reflects the original content of the post:
But…a few days ago, I discovered that a very similar project (although not identical and admittedly presented in a much more structured way) was being voted, supported and not flagged. It’s presented here:
I should say very clearly that I have nothing against @steemsports and I am not making any plagiarism allegations or similar.. @steemsports is a great project and very well presented. However, since the underlying mechanism is virtually the same as the one I advocated,
I just want to understand if using upvotes as entrance fees/jackpot resources for betting is regarded as acceptable or not by this community.
If so, I think there is room for all of us. As a matter of fact, if I go ahead, I have plans to focus on European events. So, is the light green or red…?
Talk to @smooth. He is the one who seems to lead all of the anti-vote-buying charges . . . .
I did contact him. No reply yet.
It might be more to do with being a relatively unknown on the platform.
Promoted posts need to be flag proof though or it's going to kill the utility of it.
There also needs to be a way to appeal being flagged and having that flag removed and the post re-run or the promoted fee returned to the person paying it. Otherwise it's theft from the user since advertising by definition needs to be innovative and we really don't have rules per se.
For example we trade votes all the time in steemit.chat
Agreed. Remember high school? You had to be in the cool kids club to become the prom king or what have you.
Also, it's sad that someone like @claudiop63 would be considered "relatively unknown".
He had a top 50 introduceyourself post, has been on the platform for a while, thousands of SP, makes posts a lot, etc.
I'm not disagreeing that this could be part of the issue, but I think the cool kids club needs to at least open up to include a more diverse group of dedicated Steemians.
Peace out.
Hopefully these inconsistencies will be weeded out!
@kus-knee (The Old Dog)
Strange story.
Being decentralized, Steemit can behave in different ways depending on who's flagging who, so there is not a central authority to blame, just single users.
Not that I have much authority here because I'm fairly new to the Steemit community but I'm not sure what is meant by "vote buying". I think we all promote our posts with hopes of getting a lot of a upvotes as that is how we as a community and individuals can be successful on this platform. As a minnow who has never had a real following anywhere else it can be difficult for those of us who don't necessarily content create but still would like to obtain a following by offering rewards to participants of our posts by offering cuts of the payout. Correct me if I'm wrong but I feel like that is totally within reason!. Steemit is a self-policing platform so other peoples opinions will differ but I feel like the only posts that should ever be downvoted is those that consist of plagerism.
A lot of people are buying upvotes atm. And more so during these down times. It is not a totally useless strategy, but should it be done right now when the SP is so low and the reward pools are so drained?
There is a huge discussion on this thread. Come and give your point of view :)
https://steemit.com/steemit/@yoda1917/randowhale-booster-worldclassplayer-users-just-halt-for-a-moment
A lot of people are buying upvotes atm. And more so during these down times. It is not a totally useless strategy, but should it be done right now when the SP is so low and the reward pools are so drained?
There is a huge discussion on this thread. Come and give your point of view :)
https://steemit.com/steemit/@yoda1917/randowhale-booster-worldclassplayer-users-just-halt-for-a-moment