That's okay @johntims thanks anyway. Everybody wants to ignore this problem and not stick their head up for fear of pissing off the wrong people. I'm not one of those people, I might not be a whale but I have invested here and what we are seeing I'm convinced is rampant insider cronyism, it's obvious to me. We're human and susceptible to corruption however marginal it may be. Could easily be the downfall of steemit in time.
If it is cronyism... who is it hurting? You need to answer that first. How does your status or my status change by their actions? Short of how you may perceive it in your mind, I don't see it hurting anyone. So for it to be cronyism of the sorts that people typically throw that label around (me included) I'd need to see it blocking or hurting someone. Yet since votes create steem power and steem dollars without taking them out of some fund we provided I see no way it can be hurting you. It is potentially up lifting people that could later be more effective at up lifting you. Also that power starts somewhere because they were here before you. It has to spread out from them. Though there is a way you can defeat that. You could spend real $$$ on Eth or BTC and then buy steem power and accelerate faster and your votes would be more powerful. I don't have the $$$, and I haven't spent a dime here. Everything I've gotten here I've gotten without spending a thing. I see posts and may have moments of envy much as if I happened to see a person winning the lottery. Yet the person that received those votes, they did not control those votes. You can down vote and attack the people receiving the votes... yet that is like attacking the beggar because a rich person gave him money. It will do absolutely nothing to the rich people, though it very well might the beggar. You really need to stop looking at this thing from the perspective of how money, taxes, etc happen in the real world. Something like this has never existed. When someone is voted for it is not as if they are using taxes they stole from you to pay someone for that vote. So unless you can find a legit reason other than you don't like their choices, and the trending page sucks for how this hurts you then SERIOUSLY think about it, all that is left is envy. Yet once you realize that no harm was done, and potentially good things could come from it then hopefully the envy falls away and you'll be free from this cronyism, ponzi, crowd that is so busy trying to frame this thing in concepts that have existed before.
I do think you have it in you, and I think this post I am replying to is likely one that you wrote before some of my other replies to you. You may already have come to this conclusion. Just in case you didn't I felt the need to reply because without that HARM the actual down votes harm the beggar, not the person placing the vote. I KNOW they make money (a lot more than a beggar) but I believe you are smart enough to understand the analogy and why I am choosing it for comparison. Help me make this positive, help me lift people up. This place has problems, and I too think some stupid crap gets voted on. I just know the solutions people are proposing are not solutions and will actually harm people. And other than I think what the votes are on is often pretty dumb, they are not actually hurting anyone. What you propose as a solution could hurt people.
I'm really not indulging in envy here. What I'm talking about is different, I'm glad for those who are recieving, truly. However, if the goal here is meritorious curation and content creation , well then that is being abused. Voting your buddies money, this is a market here and in that sense there is a lot of questionable backscratching going on.
Well people do have bots that follow them. Someone has decided person X always writes cool things so I'm going to write a bot to always up vote X's posts.
That does kind of suck.
Yet complaining about it won't fix that. They did give us a free environment. There are exploits. They may prove to be a problem.
I don't see them fixing it on the blockchain, but since everything runs on top of that and steemit.com is just an interface for the blockchain I wouldn't be surprised to see people make different portals from steemit.com that show information in other ways. It won't stop the bots. You have to scrap the freedom to fix the exploits. Someone decides who's voice is important and who's is not, that is where the decline stops because you've now allowed a human to force their subjective views upon everyone. So it IS a good thing, but it is also new, and we have a lot to learn about how to deal with an environment like this.
They can't give away money. They can't take your money. They can't redistribute money. It is free.
At the moment the system is lopsided but I do think that is going to even out over time. It actually has begun if you look close enough, but it is a slow process for now. Actually, it is pretty damn fast, but it is slower than many people would like.
They are approaching this like it is a finished product, when it is still in beta. Some strange things can happen, but with the steemit.com code being open source I completely expect to see other portals to interface with the blockchain. Your money, and your posts reside on the blockchain so it doesn't really matter which website you view it from.
It is truly a paradigm shifting moment I believe. I am sure we'll encounter problems. They won't be solved by us attacking each other... you and others inspired me to write what is my personal favorite of my posts so far... check it out.
That's okay @johntims thanks anyway. Everybody wants to ignore this problem and not stick their head up for fear of pissing off the wrong people. I'm not one of those people, I might not be a whale but I have invested here and what we are seeing I'm convinced is rampant insider cronyism, it's obvious to me. We're human and susceptible to corruption however marginal it may be. Could easily be the downfall of steemit in time.
If it is cronyism... who is it hurting? You need to answer that first. How does your status or my status change by their actions? Short of how you may perceive it in your mind, I don't see it hurting anyone. So for it to be cronyism of the sorts that people typically throw that label around (me included) I'd need to see it blocking or hurting someone. Yet since votes create steem power and steem dollars without taking them out of some fund we provided I see no way it can be hurting you. It is potentially up lifting people that could later be more effective at up lifting you. Also that power starts somewhere because they were here before you. It has to spread out from them. Though there is a way you can defeat that. You could spend real $$$ on Eth or BTC and then buy steem power and accelerate faster and your votes would be more powerful. I don't have the $$$, and I haven't spent a dime here. Everything I've gotten here I've gotten without spending a thing. I see posts and may have moments of envy much as if I happened to see a person winning the lottery. Yet the person that received those votes, they did not control those votes. You can down vote and attack the people receiving the votes... yet that is like attacking the beggar because a rich person gave him money. It will do absolutely nothing to the rich people, though it very well might the beggar. You really need to stop looking at this thing from the perspective of how money, taxes, etc happen in the real world. Something like this has never existed. When someone is voted for it is not as if they are using taxes they stole from you to pay someone for that vote. So unless you can find a legit reason other than you don't like their choices, and the trending page sucks for how this hurts you then SERIOUSLY think about it, all that is left is envy. Yet once you realize that no harm was done, and potentially good things could come from it then hopefully the envy falls away and you'll be free from this cronyism, ponzi, crowd that is so busy trying to frame this thing in concepts that have existed before.
I do think you have it in you, and I think this post I am replying to is likely one that you wrote before some of my other replies to you. You may already have come to this conclusion. Just in case you didn't I felt the need to reply because without that HARM the actual down votes harm the beggar, not the person placing the vote. I KNOW they make money (a lot more than a beggar) but I believe you are smart enough to understand the analogy and why I am choosing it for comparison. Help me make this positive, help me lift people up. This place has problems, and I too think some stupid crap gets voted on. I just know the solutions people are proposing are not solutions and will actually harm people. And other than I think what the votes are on is often pretty dumb, they are not actually hurting anyone. What you propose as a solution could hurt people.
I'm really not indulging in envy here. What I'm talking about is different, I'm glad for those who are recieving, truly. However, if the goal here is meritorious curation and content creation , well then that is being abused. Voting your buddies money, this is a market here and in that sense there is a lot of questionable backscratching going on.
Well people do have bots that follow them. Someone has decided person X always writes cool things so I'm going to write a bot to always up vote X's posts.
That does kind of suck.
Yet complaining about it won't fix that. They did give us a free environment. There are exploits. They may prove to be a problem.
I don't see them fixing it on the blockchain, but since everything runs on top of that and steemit.com is just an interface for the blockchain I wouldn't be surprised to see people make different portals from steemit.com that show information in other ways. It won't stop the bots. You have to scrap the freedom to fix the exploits. Someone decides who's voice is important and who's is not, that is where the decline stops because you've now allowed a human to force their subjective views upon everyone. So it IS a good thing, but it is also new, and we have a lot to learn about how to deal with an environment like this.
They can't give away money. They can't take your money. They can't redistribute money. It is free.
At the moment the system is lopsided but I do think that is going to even out over time. It actually has begun if you look close enough, but it is a slow process for now. Actually, it is pretty damn fast, but it is slower than many people would like.
They are approaching this like it is a finished product, when it is still in beta. Some strange things can happen, but with the steemit.com code being open source I completely expect to see other portals to interface with the blockchain. Your money, and your posts reside on the blockchain so it doesn't really matter which website you view it from.
It is truly a paradigm shifting moment I believe. I am sure we'll encounter problems. They won't be solved by us attacking each other... you and others inspired me to write what is my personal favorite of my posts so far... check it out.
https://steemit.com/steemit/@dwinblood/let-those-shouting-cronyism-ponzi-and-corruption-be-the-first-to-cast-their-stone-upon-the-beggars