Interview with @Anyx (witness #7) Founder of @cheetah and @steemcleaners

I am swept away by the depth and beauty of @anyx's words. Here is a person who cares deeply about the Steem Blockchain, and the Community around it.

Here, we meet @anyx the Acedemic, the Photographer, the Cryto Enthusiast, Miner, Community Leader and Witness.

Interview with @anyx

@newsteem: In your Introduction Post you not only introduced yourself, but also announced your intent for witness. How much did you know about Steem and being a witness before you jumped in? When you first came here, did you envision yourself as the Standard Bearer for anti-plaigerism on the platform? To put it another way, When you joined what was your vision of your existance on Steem, and how has cheetah and Steemcleaners changed that view?

@anyx:

Oh gosh, reading some of my old posts is certainly a blast from the past. I actually wrote that post the very first day I found Steemit. It helped that I was familiar with all things code, being a computer engineer, so it took only a few hours to set up my very first node. I had joined the slack, set up mining (back when that was a thing!) and realized a witness was not much different from mining. So, I started helping other people set up their miners, and got a few witness votes in return. I had no idea at the time how I was going to fit into the community -- I figured back then that I would just be some guy who posts his photography, and mined the coin like any other coin. How naive I was. :)

As an academic, plagiarism is something I take very seriously. Thus, once I started watching people post, it became pretty clear to me that Steemit was doomed to fail if it didn't have some way to tackle abuse. I recognized that investors would want no part in a site that is best known for plagiarism, DMCA requests, and a dumpster of copy-paste-everything. But I also recognized the potential; if we could curb abuse, and actually find a new decentralized way to reward content creators that breaks the chains of the traditional publishing route, we would have something special. So, I started investing my time in the original steemitabuse channel in slack... and the rest is history.

^{(source: Matthias Appel via: @anyx and @cheetah back up witness update)}

@newsteem: So it wasn't long after @anyx made his first post on Steemit that @cheetah came into being. The first mention I can find of Cheetah's existance is from This Post in which you lay out a bit of the groundwork but mention

I hope that this bot is only a band-aid, and that we can fix the real problem at the roots.

The same sentiment is reiterated in your Open Letter to Steemit
Where you state your frustrations and sum up with this:

I think the developers need to take serious action, and this needs attention. Cheetah bot is not a solution, it is a band-aid. We need to figure out a better way to stop this from happening in the first place.

Obviously a year later, we still do not have a permanent fix. Over the course of that time, do you have any opinions you could share as to what you would like to see in the way of a permanent fix from the Steemit Corporate team?

@anyx:

What's important to note is that crypto is a haven for people who fall into the libertarian mindset. There is a wide range of ideas within this space, but a common theme is being against large government, opposed to central control, and anti-censorship. Obviously, cryptocurrency ticks all those boxes, hence the haven. Yet, what happens when you group these people together is that their ideas also extend to other things, not just financial, and you see a common theme of people being against censorship in writing, against central control of copyright, and so on. There is a big audience here who don't even believe that there should be such thing as copyright, and who believe that taking someone else's work and passing it off as your own is perfectly fine. So, what this means is that there isn't a big push towards any form of control of content on the site, and thus the Steemit team have not been under any pressure to change.

I think as Steemit gets bigger in growth we are going to see some changes occur out of necessity. With more DMCA requests handed to Steemit Inc, they are going to have to start seriously considering the ramifications of legal action. Fortunately, I also think that the plans to add community structure will help greatly to curb abuse, as the ability to grow a community would then include proper posting etiquette, and not being able to get into a community would be a barrier to entry for rewards. The end result is people being more careful and not just shitposting in hopes of reward.

So, Steemit Inc, get communities ASAP!

^{(@anyx via: Chicago Skylines Part 3)}

@newsteem: In Cheetah's FAQ we learn:

Cheetah is an informative robot that might comment on your post. If she does, she will claim that she found similar content somewhere else on the web. This is because you likely copy&pasted some form of content -- whether it be your own or not.

The interpretation of the comment is up to the voter who reads your post: the comment, in general, means that the voter will likely desire an understanding of the source of the content that you posted.

You go on to state that: Cheetah does NOT flag on content detection, she upvotes.

What do you think is most misunderstood about Cheetah and her mission that you would like the Steemit community to better understand?

@anyx:

One that you've alluded to is very important: A comment by Cheetah is NOT an accusation of malicious intent. It's purely informative. But there's quite a few other misconceptions that I think are also equally important.

One big one is that Cheetah is NOT a tool for censorship. This is true for two reasons: 1. Cheetah does not care about the ideas within your content, only if the content itself already exists elsewhere, and 2. It's fundamentally impossible to censor on the Steem blockchain.

To expand on 1, some people claim that Cheetah is trying to censor their ideas. But there is no way that Cheetah actually understands the ideas of what you're saying, she only checks the content similarity and originality. She's completely agnostic of your views.

And to expand on 2, It's impossible to censor on the steem blockchain. Even if someone downvotes all your posts, makes your reputation go into the negatives, you voice will still be heard here. Just go look at @berniesanders for the most well-known example. Negative reputation, his posts greyed out and downvoted to oblivion. But is he being censored? The engagement he gets clearly refutes that.

Another big one I want to point out is that neither I nor Cheetah have 'special powers' on the blockchain. We're just accounts with the same rules as you and everyone else. People routinely ask me to "remove this person’s rewards", or "delete this account" or something. I can't do that, the best I can do is inform, all within the same rules as everyone else. In fact, my main account @anyx would not even be considered a Whale, so I don't even have the 'special power' of being influential on the blockchain. The only influence I have, would be by social reputation -- the real-life kind, not the Steemit version.

Finally, Cheetah and I don't do this for the money in the traditional sense. I'm a long-term thinker and planner, and I'm not trying to game the system for present rewards. What I do want is the success of Steemit, because that will generate more success in the long run. Cheetah solely exists because I want to improve the platform. For the first year, I didn't do much to fundraise for Cheetah; I asked a few times when the coffers were getting low, but I felt that if my witness pay paid for her expenses things were fine. What people often do not understand nowadays (given that I now post logs on Cheetah) is how much she costs. With activity of Steemit going crazy, she now costs over $100 a day just from API calls. The logs and rewards I get are strictly meant to offset this cost, not fill my pockets.

^{(source: @anyx via: My Tour Through Paris)}

@newsteem: In our Interview With @steemcleaners We didn't ask about @cheetah. However, @steemcleaners and @cheetah obviously work hand in hand. Can you briefly describe how Cheetah integrates into the Steemcleaners mission and assists that team in working for the good of the platform?

@anyx:

They obviously work hand in hand, because I started both! :) Cheetah was my first initiative, but I realized at the time that if Cheetah was going to be only informative, we needed a group to actually be informed and take the necessary action in response. So, a bunch of us got together and Steemcleaners was born. The other notable founding member still around today is @patrice, whom still plays a major role.

There's a few things to note about the separation of Cheetah and Steemcleaners though. Of course the first one, which some people confuse: Cheetah is the bot, and is used as an informative tool. Steemcleaners is not a bot, it is a union of people with real brains. Secondly, Cheetah is "controlled" by certain Steemcleaners members, but not all: there's an internal process we go through to ensure we're not overstepping our bounds, and only senior members in Steemcleaners are able to control her. (Interestingly enough, there was actually period of time before @pfunk was a member of Steemcleaners, but yet had control over Cheetah, so the two initiatives were very disjoint at the start.) The reason to keep the two disjoint was to promote the idea of Cheetah being informative, and occasionally generating false positives. Steemcleaners would be the actual brains to follow-up.

@newsteem: What can the rest of us out here who care about the Steemit platform and it's future do to help combat those who are abusing the system?

@anyx:

I think the best solution is to change people's mentality. We have an opportunity on Steemit not just to make money from rewards, but to fundamentally change the way we think about social media. A lot of people think short-term, "How can I get more money for my post". We really need to think long term, "How can I ensure the success of Steemit so that we all will benefit". It's a mentality shift, and unfortunately not an easy one with payouts displayed so prominently.

Steemcleaners isn't truly scalable, and I still think Cheetah is a band-aid. We need to ensure that new members are thinking about the long-term success of Steemit -- whether it be replacing corporate controlled social media, or offering liberty, freedom, and censorship immunity, or offering a platform for creators to be rewarded outside traditional publishing routes. The opportunities we have here are mind blowing, but we need to ensure people are thinking about them and telling others that this is the goal, not increasing your own post reward in the short term. Otherwise, it's the Tragedy of the Commons, and Steemit is doomed. I made a post about this a while ago, but it's still quite relevant today: The Steemit Tragedy of The Commons.

So, I'd say the best thing your average Steemian can do (aside from report abuse to us and help if possible), is to also try and shift people's mentality to see the long-term benefits of our platform, and try and drive the whole community in the direction of collective prosperity.

^{(@anyx: via: Chicago Part 6: Lincoln Park Zoo, Continued)}

@newsteem: Your responsibilities not only include Cheetah, Steemcleaners and maintaining your position as Witness #7, but you are also a PhD Student, and have worked a couple of Internships. How do you balance everything on your plate? How much time do you estimate you spend on maintaining Cheetah on a daily basis?

@anyx:

Hah, funny you say this. I've been pretty stressed lately from lack of time, and it's been extremely hard to balance everything. A PhD Student (Candidate now, actually) is really a full-time endeavour. Being a witness and contributing to the Steemit ecosystem is also a full-time endeavour. And with all that, running Cheetah and administrating Steemcleaners... is another full-time endeavour. Throw an Internship into the mix and you've got a recipe for disaster. My email is flooded, my TODO list is a book, and I dread logging into Steemit.chat or Discord or Telegram or Slack because it might mean a hundred PM's to respond to. Each. I bit off a lot more than I can chew this last year, and I haven't been able to catch up with everything I've intended to do. As you can imagine, I don't get much sleep.

It's a temporary situation though (I think [I hope]). After my PhD, and assuming a bunch of other factors, I'd like to do just crypto full-time. I've met a lot of amazing people this year, and I think teaming up and doing some entrepreneurship is in my future. :)

@newsteem: Busy seems to be a common theme in this community.

In a post on 3 October, @penguinpablo notes that @misterdelegation delegated just over one million SP to @steemcleaners SP Powered Up Yesterday. This brings the vested power of the acount to right about 1.09 million SP. That's quite a bit of abuse flagging power. In your view, does this extra voting power influence the work that the Steemcleaners team does at all? Or is the intent simply to be able to negate more unwarranted rewards?

@anyx:

The delegation was something I requested and campaigned for. That's kind of my job at Steemcleaners at the moment; I administrate, manage, and liaison, a bit like a CEO. Funny enough, I don’t claim any rewards from the Steemcleaners payouts (everything goes back to the rest of the community), so I'm an unpaid CEO. :)

The delegation was something we desperately needed -- the influence to remove reward from clear abusers. We no longer use the account to upvote anything. It's not going to influence the way we work for the most part, but just allow us to do our jobs quite a bit better.

^{(source: @anyx via: Wandering in Amsterdam, Part 4)}

@newsteem: So hot on a lot of people's minds right now is Steemfest 2 coming up in a few weeks. Toward the end of your witness post dated 14 June, you mention that you had a blast last year and were excited to be going again this year. Is a trip to Lisbon still in the cards for you? And for those of us who have joined since the first Steemfest and really don't know what it is all about, can you give a brief overview of what Steemfest entails and why it is important to all Steemians, not just Witnesses and Whales.

@anyx:

Yes! I'm incredibly excited for Steemfest 2. The first was an amazing opportunity to meet and network with other Steemians, and put faces and personalities to names. I've got my tickets, and I'll be arriving early to help set up with the @firepower crew.

Steemfest is seriously an amazing opportunity. I'd say it benefits most the people who may be "unknowns" more than the Witnesses and Whales actually: the opportunity to network and showcase yourself is a big one. I know I met a few people at the first Steemfest that I now support with upvotes. But more than that; its just an all around good time. Hanging out with like-minded individuals, and people you chat with all the time... it's like getting together with old friends after a long time apart. @roelandp also did an amazing job with the events and set-up last time, and I expect this years to be equally amazing. I can't wait!

^{(source: @anyx via: Anyx, Cheetah, and Steemcleaners; witness update - 06-12-2016)}

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Perhaps you'll agree with me, that this is one of the best interviews we have conducted so far. Very moving!

I'm looking forward to meeting you at Steem Fest!

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If you'd like to help the efforts of @anyx and @steemcleaners, please use this report form when you come across plagiarism, and what is commonly known as spam :

Steem Cleaners Link Drop

References

• Hello from Anyx
• @anyx @cheetah and @steemcleaners Witness Update 9-18-2017
• @penguinpablo - Another Huge Sum of Steem was Powered Up
• @anyx @cheetah and @steemcleaners Witness uptate 6-14-2017
• FAQ about Cheetah
• @anyx - Anti Spam in the era of Bots and Automation
• The Steemit Tragedy of The Commons
• Steem Cleaners Chat Server

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Thanks for reading "The Inquiring Times" by @newsteem

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