How would you like your post rewards flagged away, some posts even down to 0$? Is this the Steemit you support? Campaign to stop the abuse of berniesanders

in #steemit7 years ago (edited)

I have been the target of abuse of power by a rich ruler who can remove any amount of rewards I get just because he wants to. This new Hardfork 19 gives the rich rulers even more power to abuse content posters and get away with it, because the overall mindset of the big shots on Steemit is that they don't seem to recognize the issue with flagging enough to want to deal with it.

Here are some of the sections in this long post:

  • Three months of flagging abuses
  • Leaving the bullshit injustice for a week
  • Come back to post with flags to welcome me
  • How would you like it?
  • Rich rulers have the power to decide who gets the most rewards, and who gets to keep rewards
  • Steemit: where you can flag for any reason, just call it "over rewarded" to justify it
  • Coming back to regular posting after over 2 months in protest
  • Hardfork 19 has worse flagging power abuse
  • Bernie rich ruler abusing more users
  • Bernie's sock-puppet accounts
  • Change?
  • Posts on the Flagging and Centralization of Power Issues
  • Other posts on Concentration of Power and Flagging Issue
  • Solutions

Three months of flagging abuses

This has been ongoing for over 3 months. I challenged the plutocratic rich rulers who get to do whatever they want with respect to flagging people and removing their rewards for whatever reason they want to make up and never need to explain themselves. I was met with more flags after doing that, targeted more for speaking up about an issue of abuse of power, and even allies turned on me.

Some whales (smooth) didn't like my posts on consciousness or morality, seeing those posts as "not the type of content that will help steemit attract, retain or grow a user base,", so my posts was flagged because it was rewarded more than others posts they want to get rewarded. It's that simple, but they try to validate it with BS justifications that are irrational, inconsistent and hypocritical (as the post above explains).

Scroll back 4 months ago to the end of February if you want to see it in my timeline.

Leaving the bullshit injustice for a week

After trying to tackle the flagging abuse for a week or two, I left for a week to get away from betrayals and a largely apathetic community with few supporters for the flagging issue. I didn't much feel like posting content to a social-media content platform where I was being treated this way. So I dissociated from Steemit for a week.

Come back to post with flags to welcome me

Then I posted 1 post, and it was flagged. I waited another week and did another test of posting for a week this time, to see if I would get flagged. I was flagged on 66% of my posts in that week.

I could not benefit from Steemit like other people could. How would like you to have this happen to you?

How would you like it?

Imagine posting for months on different things and earning a following of supporters that chose to upvote your content. Everything was working on that positive-allocation of rewards. It's like each time someone upvotes content you produced, they are "buying" the content. Then imagine a rich ruler comes around and "unbuys" the "buying" votes others have allocated to your content. People can like your content and upvote you to allocate rewards according to their SP. But then someone who doesn't like you, or your post, can come around and take away that support. They can take away all the upvoted rewards if the have the SP to do it.

That's a real solid economic model to attract people. Come to Steemit, where you the content you produce can get a "buy" from an upvote in a way, and then other people, like rich people, can take away those "buys" and "unbuy" what they want. It seems like some sort of negative-economics!

This is the reality of Steemit. The rich rulers can take away your rewards without any measure of appeal or justice for abuses.


Rich rulers have the power to decide who gets the most rewards, and who gets to keep rewards

Rich rulers can take your rewards away, anytime, because they want to. That's what the code in Steemit allows. Can you do anything about it? Nope. The rich powerful rulers are free to abuse their power any way they see fit. It mostly goes unnoticed because it doesn't happen often, and most people don't have many followers to pay attention to the problem, and most people on Steemit are too busy with their own posting and making money to care about the flagging issue. Many were all too happy to have someone that has more rewards than them have those rewards taken away and put back into the reward pool for them to get a piece of.

Overall, people cared more about making more money than recognizing how bad this flagging issue is for the platform. Only when they get flagged does it become an issue. I have been flagged for 3 months now on nearly ever single post. I even flagged some people who were friends with or supported by the abusive rich ruler to show them how fun it is, and they got upset when little-old-me flagged them with my tiny SP amount compared to bernie's sock-puppet whale accounts. They don't care when someone keeps getting abused and stands up to speak about it, yet they get upset when they get flagged to prove the point of how flawed this is.

I felt like hardly anyone cared since they weren't affected, and few actually want a solution to be implemented. Steemit Inc. certainly doesn't view it as a priority.


Steemit: where you can flag for any reason, just call it "over rewarded" to justify it

Did you know no one used to flag for any reason they wanted? Did you know there used to be no "over rewarded" justification as a co-out to flag any high-earning posts you don't like?

It would seem like a simple solution to remove the justification for flagging for "over rewarded" since it's a BS excuse used to flag things you don't want to have rewards.

"I don't like you, your post, or the person who upvoted you, so I'm flagging away some or all of your rewards."

That's the real reason many people flag rewards away from others. It's just bully behavior that isn't supposed to be in-line with the community-driven philosophy that Steemit alleges to be about. What kind of social-media community would support this behavior, where rich rulers can go around flagging people and taking away rewards their supporters allocated for their content? And they get away with it, no consequences. The Steemit whitepaper posited that "good whales" step in to mediate "bad whale" behavior, but no, it doesn't happen. That's all voluntary. If no one wants to counter a bad-whale behavior, the bad-whale behavior goes on with impunity. This is the plutocratic state of Steemit.

Why can't I keep the rewards on my posts?

Does it makes sense to you?

Would you like this to happen to you or others? It can. And as you see, it does (read below for a recent example of the abuse of others).

At this point I could have kept posting and just taking it, dealing with it, saying nothing, and just keep the rewards I get while nothing changed. But I was very dissatisfied with Steemit and how many people supported this flagging, and how others simply accepted it without objecting. Few people could recognize the issue. I dissociated from the platform that I no longer felt very connected to, and protested the flagging issue by no longer posting regular posts (which only hurt me).

I continued to post every few weeks here and there about the flagging abuse and how this behavior is not good to keep users, or attract new ones. But I was told to stop complaining, stop whining, and talk about solutions instead. Yet, my previous attempt at talking about solutions was called out by the rich rulers as more complaining and whining, to which their supporters complimented this mindset. These people don't want to hear solutions from me. I will try to provide solutions again, starting here at the bottom of the post, and in more posts until this is resolved.


Coming back to regular posting after over 2 months in protest

In June, I checked Steem and saw the price of payouts had gone up. I decided to try posting again. I said to myself maybe now I won't get flagged? I will wait to see if the flagging stops (at least I get to keep some more SBD compared to months ago...) If not, I will bring up the flagging issue and continue to post rather than stop posting like last time which only hurt me in terms of losing supporters and not gaining new followers, and of course the rewards lost.

So I posted. And sure enough, 12 hours before payout, bernisanders and his sock-puppet accounts (along with some lackey followers maybe) start to flag all my posts as they reach payout (minus 2 or 3).

My whole blog page is filled with flags on each post pretty much.

He even flagged my one post today, rather than wait the 7 days... He took 2/3 of the post payout away...

Hardfork 19 has worse flagging power abuse

I went from being flagged down 50% or more like being flagged 100% down to $0.

I called out the "Equality" hardfork 19 as a joke for real equality of the platform because all the rich rulers still have all the centralized power to decide who gets to keep their rewards. The recent hardfork proves that they now have even more power than before to flag people. When the hardfork hit, my post that was already flagged went from having some $xx amount (I don't remember how much), down to $0. That's how much more power the rich-ruling-plutocrats-that-can-do-what-they-want-with-impunity have.

  • Flagged to $0
  • Prior to flag

Neurotechnological Threats Require an Updated Understanding of Human Rights
Authorities Conflict Over Immigration as the EU Fights for Dominance


Bernie rich ruler abusing more users

berniesnaders has been called out by Ned Scott, the CEO of Steemit, month ago, as being bad for Steemit and he should just leave. berniesnaders has continued to be a problem for the community, despite the false image and appearance of being a "good" person to those who provides his SP power to, such as the curie group who loved bernie for his "good" SP lending power, despite all the other mistreatment he has done to other individuals on the platform since he has been here.

@markrmorrisjr

@seablue

@steemtrail

He recently went on a tirade against @steemtrail's & @instructor2121

There are more people in the past that he has targeted for flagging, just because he can. He has the psychological profile of a classic adult bully. This is a very sad and broken individual who enjoys being a bully.


Bernie's sock-puppet accounts

Here are the 100% known berniesanders accounts:

  • bernisanders
  • steemservices
  • steemservices1
  • thecyclist
  • engagement
  • nextgencrypto (witness account)

There are probably more.

Suspected bernie accounts since they flag with him (but could just be lackey friends who support bullies):

  • theyeti
  • thebotkiller
  • yougotflagged

He defends this project like his own, so it probably is:

  • randowhale

bernie sees himself as a "hero" for Steemit, being a bully and flagging people to "help" Steemit. Yet, he's the one person most responsible for continued bullying, mistreatment, and abuse of power towards other Steemians. He's a liar who make false claims to justify his behavior when he isn't just making up bullshit to justify himself anyways, time and time again. Proof is in his comment, which I have addressed in my first post on the issue. Go look at how much he is a liar on @steemservices. He is the #1 flag abuser, and he calls his account "Combating Flag Spam"... LMAO! He's the top flag spammer!

This is the two-faced double-dealing behavior bernie does. People think he's so great for the money power they lend him, and how he votes for them, etc. or how he's part of projects like @randowhale, so everyone loves the guy with money to give you rewards, right? But he's doing "good" with the right hand, and then evil with the left hand. Wake up people.

Did you now bernie used to have "OG Bad Whale" as the name on his profile? No joke. The bully is proud to be a bully.

Do you think Flagging with SAVE Steemit?

Sounds like a BRILLIANT plan to me! What about you?

I see more and more people wanting to be part of platform that support this behavior by condoning it.

What a community chooses to ignore and allow, is what is de-facto automatically supported by letting it continue with impunity. Steemit is a platform that allows flagging people for any reason to take their rewards, it's just frowned upon as behavior because you won't get many supporters or be liked for doing that. Yet, the rich rulers can abuse their powers and even get people to support them in this bad behavior.

That's the sad state of consciousness for many on the Steemit platform: they support bullies and abuses of power. Many people join in on targeting those victims the rich ruling abusers target. Many people, or most, follow those with the money and support the behavior of those with the money. They aren't detaching from their subjectivity of disliking someone they approve of being flagged, to see the flag-issue as a platform-issue.


Change?

When will it change? When enough people demand a stop to this. It didn't used to happen. Undoing the voluntary "rules" won't resolve the issue, so no point is removing "over rewarded" flags for people like berniesander who don't give a shit about the rules anyways. He's been voting on posts as a sock-puppet whale with many accounts since the "no-whale-vote" experiment started, despite that being a new rule the whales were supposd to adhere to. He cheated the rules through sock-puppet accounts.

Steemit isn't a real functional community that can deal with injustice, abuses, and other problems of behavior. It takes numbers of people to untie together against injustice when the "managers" or "rulers" won't do anything about it.

Can we change this? Can Steemit be a real place for community development, or are we always at the whim of allegedly "benevolent" and "wise" managing rich rulers of the platform? Or are we just to accept things as they are and not let certain individuals be targeted by rich rulers who like to bully others around?

Letting whales flag content, reduce visibility, because it doesn't have a view quota; or goes over a reward quota for content they don't recognize value it provides to Steemit or in people's lives; or is voted on by whales they don't like; is an irrational and ridiculous code of conduct to engage in and will not help the success of Steemit. If you don't have the right # of views, comments or some other criteria, bernie thinks thats a good reason to flag someone and take their rewards. Yet he only does this to people or posts he doesn't like. That's some real consistency and integrity for ya! A real thinker... He's not the only whale to act in a hypocritical and inconsistent way.

Trying to punish content that adds value to Steemit, or individuals lives, is not a path to success for a platform, nor a way to retain content creators or promote more content creators from joining Steemit. This is bad whale behavior. This needs to change.



Posts on the Flagging and Centralization of Power Issues

Here is the chronological list of my posts since I started to call this issue out. It's a shit load of crap if you want to see how the rich can flag you for any reason they want and get away with it. Most of these were in the first week of dealing with the issue.



Other posts on Concentration of Power and Flagging Issue


Solutions

Vote negation is a horrible idea, and a flag council can be part of a regular site, but not so much a blockchain like Steem but it could work at least from the main Steemit site. Anyways, forget about these two things.

Penalties

There are posts as far back as 3-4 months ago about flag/downvote penalties to voting power. Why not implement this? There are various schemas for penalties, from voting power deduction to actual STEEM/SP costs to remove rewards from someone.

Threshold for Flag Acceptance

There is also a threshold that can be set for flags to apply based on # of users who have a criteria like X amount of SP, for example 5k. If a post is an issue and 30 people flag who have more than 5k SP, then it gets that SP applied based on a consensus. This way abuses of single power players cant be applied unless there is more consensus that there is an issue in the first place. Instead of 1 single person decided who can or cant keep their rewards, there will need to be more people to validate such action taken. The same can be applied to upvotes if desired.

So there are some good better "solutions"!

If you have a better one, AWESOME! Bring it! Let's at least make flagging harder for bullies to abuse!

Is the part of the community that doesn't like me going to pay more attention to the flagging issue now that I mention real viable solutions?

Is Steemit Inc going to pay attention to solutions and implement them?

What will it take?

I don't know. It's been three months and no real movement has been done on the part Steemit Inc. to resolve this issue (HF19 is not part of a flagging solution lol, see above). It's not like it's hard to see that it is a problem. Add a fix on the next hardfork and see how it goes, just like all other changes Steemit Inc. puts for hardforks.

Steemit Inc, add a flag correction to the next hardfork and see if it's rejected or accepted. Pick anything that can act to correct this issue, like a penalty or threshold, and see how it goes. It's better than continuing to do nothing about it.


I'm going to keep posting about this each day, and more and more people can see what Steemit stands for and allows until it changes. Nothing is going to change unless more people get involved and care to change the flawed state of Steemit. I will keep talking about this negative issue in Steemit until people recognize it enough to demand this change from Steemit Inc. One or a few people doesn't cut it, nothing changes. More people need to get involved. If you're worried about this "bad-mouthing" and giving a bad-image to Steemit. Well maybe you should be worried about the actual problem and fix it to give Steemit the right image that people are proud to belong to. I am not proud of Steemit for how this flagging issue keeps on going.

Who is with me on this?

The more we all talk about it, the more Steemit Inc will pay attention and get something done about it.


Thank you for your time and attention! I appreciate the knowledge reaching more people. It's a real issue that more people need to be aware of as it represents the state of how Steemit functions.

Take care. Peace.


Please consider supporting me as a Steem Witness by voting for me at the bottom of the Witness page; or just click on the upvote button if I am in the top 50.
I stand for what's right. I try to help change the world for the better by changing minds with knowledge, and this applies even on Steemit. We need to change the flagging situation!

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Rich rulers have the power to decide who gets the most rewards, and who gets to keep rewards

For this exact reason, for a year now, you earned more or less over $100,000. Considering your level of writing, even if you were The Highlander you wouldn't be able to do it in several lifetimes. You were able to do so because you gained the favor of the rich rulers who had you on their auto-vote cash machine because they happened to agree with your early chopraish absurdities.

Did you complain about equality then? Did you ask for let's say a 50% decrease of their power so other users can enjoy the privilege of writing crap and making bank?

No, you got even greedier posting more and more google spin-off posts, earning a shitload more while others like me where braking a sweat, writing original articles for pennies.

The shit hit the fan for you due to YOUR abuse of power. YOUR absurd favoritism. It was a surprise landing from cloud no.9 now wasn't it?. But hey, I guess, another fork, another whine from Krnel.

I think that every member deserves a fair shot to his or her efforts here and no one shoud be continously punished for disagreeing. This platform will be very successful if we all work together as one family and not one group against the other. Lets resolve this issue peacefully and give all equal opportunity according to the persons efforst here including @Krnel ... pls guys, lets forget about the past and think of the futre which will be very bright for all if we are united..win win for all of us. Love this platform, fired up and ready to go!!!

Darn. You Switzerlanded this one like a pro

Welcome buddy.

He won't reply. He never does.

He wrote in the post...

Here is the chronological list of my posts since I started to call this issue out.

I counted 32.

Thirty-two posts about flagging and other crap.

Gee...I wonder why people have mostly stopped paying attention to his complaints. And it's not like most of these are short and to the point. They're 100,000-word essays about how everyone is bad, how voting needs to be regulated, how his own posts are so much better than everyone else's, and how much more "conscious" he is than other users.

FFS...give it a rest. That's how all of this originally started.

Quick, somebody grab some ice for that wicked burn.

Kelso.jpg

$100000!!! Is that true? It's 5am here and I'll be laughing about this all day. Thank you.

Thank you. Actually the laughter didn't quite last the whole day - I descended into the usual cynicism.

Guys really it's not a good situation. It must be ended. Steemians do appreciate the content that both of you generate and we can clearly see it by the upvotes. There's so much warm and good down there where people don't care too much when they upvote content and comments and really happy. They think that Steem is a wonderful placem a magical garden but in reality there is tones of shit in the bushes and it started to smell. I wish i didn't knew about that but the only thing that could prevent it is that someone did a mistake and it surely wasn't me.

Steem Whales are snakes, crocodiles and sharks in reality)))

p.s Goodluck to you @Kyriacos and goodluck to you @krnel. Remember that jealousy can kill.

I am not jealous of him . I m just criticizing his hypocrisy.

I think that big whales and witnesses could have resolved their conflicts without throwing shit on a fan. In our places we call it Santa-Barbara after the elf-titled tv series that was quite popular.

Have a good time.

edited. nvm.

@krnel, I support your stance on this.

You have always stayed levelheaded and it isn't really fair that someone with so much power has targeted you essentially. Life sucks.

The only real solution I see as attainable in the long run is for large-stakeholders to develop solutions to combat problems like this with steem power.

The other problem is the 12 hour only flag period. Not sure what the white paper lists as the reason but that is just ripe for flag abuse. That really needs to go.

This is vests vs. vests.

Thank you for the support. It does suck. It's been 3 months. Everyone can keep their rewards, except a few like me?.... Yeah...

The vests for vests leaves most of the power still in the hands of the rich rulers. How do you propose a solution? The vote negation? I thought of that as horrible, where someone doesn't even need to know when you post, or run a bot, they could just cancel all your votes... That did not seem like a good thing to implement to me. Let me know what you're thinking. Thanks.

The 12 hour thing was that they wait until just before the 12 hour vote-ending prior to payout (because you can't vote on posts that are paying out in 12h). So not flagging when I post the post, or the next day, but 7 days later...

It certainly does place the power in the hands of rich rulers. If the platform is going to thrive, those rulers (at least some of them) need to be sensible or at least appeal to a community. There needs to be a vigilante community of large stakeholders available to negate abuse of the flag. While there is certainly a freedom to disagree on rewards and such, the flag is not supposed to be abused. Your posts making zero are a clear indication that steem is operating far from economic equilibrium. I am certainly thinking a lot but there are a lot of hard problems in decentralized systems as you are intimately aware.

Ugh... I mean if the flaggers really just disagreed with the rewards don't you think just a few percent downvote would be appropriate. There is no sense putting a post that hundreds of others enjoyed down to zero. That does not reflect the value of the post. That is not how steem is supposed to operate. The waiting until the end so their actions can't be adjusted for really shows the intention.

Now I don't want this to come across the wrong way, some might see this as sucking up or whatever... you are one of the few bloggers here that has really driven a following and constantly puts out quality content. Now I don't do much reading of philosophy and most of your posts go overlooked by me. That doesn't mean I will go and flag a post making hundreds because a large community enjoyed your content. You have always stood a sense of reason so in the posts of yours that catch my eye - your opinions hold strong weight.

There needs to be a vigilante community of large stakeholders available to negate abuse of the flag.

I agree. But how to do that, because we aren't there. What feature to do this? Do we organize a Clean-Flag Community on steemit.chat for whenever someone gets flag abused? Then we all vote to cancel the flag? I have found that people don't like to stick their necks out on an issue that could get them targeted and reduce their rewards as well. People have given me support behind the scenes, but publicly, or in their own posts, that's too risky for them. A steemit.chat place or discord server for Anti-Flag Abuse would put an eye on people and make them reluctant to join such an endeavor?

Thanks for the feedback again, appreciated.

We are certainly not there yet.. the cart is leading the horse. I think a Clean-Flag type thing would actually be a good first start. Steemit is really hard to find content. A lot of the time, content that I really wish I saw, curated and resteemed gets lost in the mess. This probably happens with some abused posts. Having a place to put things like that in front of eyes would be nice.

I do see what you are saying about confidentiality... I don't know what to do here... hopefully we can chat about this further. I really want to get to the bottom of these problems from a game theoretical standpoint.

I also want to say I left a comment on bernies somewhat rude post just now. As someone impartial to the situation I wanted to point out how it is his right to act like he does but I questioned his tactics.

I just want the best for everyone.

I don't have all the answers.

Would you like to talk on discord voice? Or text chat on discord of steemit.chat? https://discord.gg/CK8CWwr you can find me as KrNel there if you want.

So you think it's the right of feudal land owners to treat others they way they did? For plutocrats to do what they want, mistreat others, and that's a "right"?

It's not a right, it's only a "right" cooked up in a flawed system, coded that way. The feudal system was flawed. Plutocracy is flawed. Just because a system was created that gave "rights" that aren't real, true, good, rights, doesn't make them real rights.

Just got on discord. We can chat sometime soon, I have some buieness this week!

The feudal land owners is a complex situation just like it is here on steem.

Go call steem flawed?

Again, I don't read philosophy or whatnot but I am not to say the value it gives to others.

Maybe there is a point of redistribution of the reward pool to some new users?

What's your discord name#number? I'll send you a message, as I can't find you in the SteemSpeak user list...

Steemit is flawed in terms of people being able to resolve issues. It all over-simplified to run on money-power, which doesn't create favorable social and communal dynamics for success.

The reason for the 12-hour period was a fix to the 7-day hard limit on post payouts. There is the huge potential for abuse by upvoting in the closing minutes on a post, so they implemented a period where there can be no more upvotes. It's essentially a "review" period where overvalued posts can be downvoted but upvotes cannot be added and flags cannot be removed. Anything vote-related that increases the value of the post is denied.

Of course, the easy solution is to have a 48-hour or 72-hour window that can be extended. The 7-day period was never explained...why was 7 days even necessary? Three days, plus extensions based on weighted votes, is plenty of time and a better solution than a week with the current flag-only period.

Why nobody ever listens is beyond me. I'm pretty sure that I pointed out this exact problem when it was being discussed prior to the last hard fork and immediately after it was implemented. Predictable problems...nobody willing to listen or nobody that cares. But that's the Steemit, Inc. team. They always know best.

That's exactly what I remember reading now. There is certainly lots of potential for abuse at the end of windows. I don't know how much separation into two windows for abuse changes anything.

I don't know why people don't listen to reason either. I remember reading your words. Steem is complicated for a reason; operating far from equilibrium is much more fun for some people.

I think there are plenty who care. They will be the ones to jump ship when another service implements a "better" economic model.

Who knows. Always have my support.

Well, if the people writing the code don't care or ignore the valid criticisms - as they often do - then one obvious way to get their attention may just be to exploit the poorly written and implemented code. If they continue to see the problem and don't bother to address it, then perhaps we know their position on the matter.

In any case - as long as the exploits exist, you can expect them to be used and abused. Not that this is necessarily "abuse," but there are certainly some rather easy fixes.

Right you are. That exploitation becomes more complex when the system is not operating optimally. Maybe it is easier. I don't know. We can only find out by trying. I'm not much of a coder but...

Wow I hope they change this soon! It's not right for people to flag for whatever reason they want. Everyone is offended these days and it's up to us to stand against that. You should be rewarded for your hard work, not punished for it. We're all with you on this!

Thank you for the support. I appreciate it :)

Something needs to be done if it hasn't already been taken care of. No one should be a bully. No one has the right to be that way.

Indeed. But we aren't in our personal physical community where people can unite to do something about any issue. It takes people to ask for changes from the coding staff at Steemit Inc., I guess like a government. But we don't have a contact email, so we have to post about it is the equivalent of getting their attention I think. I've posted about it, some other people have too. Maybe this time something will come of it? hehehe... Thank you very much for the support.

You're by far one of my favorite Steemians with constant great content @krnel! You go out of your way to help minnows as well! Resteemed
bu.jpg

Thanks for the support :) Some minnows I have helped directly, usually if they care for truth and whats right to some degree by posting about it. I do indirectly help all minnows on Steemit and people of the world, as you and others do, by speaking truth to falsity and calling out the BS immoral behaviors. :) That's my witness campaign for Steemit. It's about the work I put out to change things for the better, not the coding I can do for Steemit. The information can help make Steemit a better place, but people mostly want the fake positivity mask instead of facing the negative truths and doing something about it.

Lol, you were just tooooo good, you became a threat their dominance of the platform.
There were a number of us that have had a fraction of your rewards that got shadowbanned, too.

Yeah I know there are many people before me that have suffered under the boot of the plutocrats. Tip my hat to the history of people who got unjustly flagged. Not getting rewarded is one thing. Everyone needs to get attention to get followers, etc. But removing rewards is a whole other thing. You would think that people who post interesting things and get supported for it would be able to keep the rewards of their success on Steemit. But that isn't the case for everyone, and it just keeps going on... lol.

Not when the level of support you receive threatens tptb's control.

As a nascent technology I can understand their need to control it, but in the process of doing that some feelers are gonna get bent.

Bernie says it's the rants that are making him upset, as right as they may be, I get that, it's hard to market something when it isn't being applied fairly, best to keep the complaints off the front page.

I hope ya'll can resolve this, you do put out some excellent posts.

the history of people who got unjustly flagged.

Some of them are making comebacks,...

My complaints don't get to the trending page lol. Not enough people care to get it that popular.

I tried no to talk about it. I posted 1 post in a 2 week period, and still flagged in March. I tried again in June, 2 posts each day for 2 days, those were still flagged. I'm not allowed to keep the rewards from 1 post made in 14 days. That's the reality of how much I'm just taking rewards from everyone else... and not posting regular posts for nearly 3 months... yeah I took so much of the reward pool during that time... lol.

Thanks for the feedback.

Hmm, that does look bad.

I wish this didn't have to happen to you.

Vote negation is a horrible idea

All the solutions you propose are convoluted. Vote negation is the most straightforward, stake-for-stake equal way to deal with abusive voting. In a stakeholder governance system everything will ultimately come down to how much stake is abusive and how much stake is willing to counter that abuse. Vote negation removes all other costs associated with policing abuse. And abuse of vote negation can be policed exactly as easily as abusive votes by the same method.

Convoluted because they have more to it than simply vest-vs-vest? I don't see that as a valid reason to not implement something, simply because it requires more variables to implement... I read about vote negation after thinking Dan's idea would be great. As I understood it, anyone could apply their vests to cancel out others. They don't even need to know when someone posts or run a bot, the vote negation would just do it automatically lol. So I wouldn't be in any better boat. Can you explain how vote negation would be the solution to flags? Does it involve gaining support from high vested users to counter someone's flag votes? So if you're just a poster, you can still get flagged unless you have high SP support. Please help me out on how this would work as a solution. Thanks.

The problem with policing abusive voting right now is that it involves many extraneous costs. Partially social costs (collateral damage because we only vote on posts, not votes), a lot of attention and bandwidth on the network.

The costliness of policing discourages even those with the inventive to do so proactively. In practice only those things that can be discouraged with reputational damage gets policed (petty stuff like plagiarism). It favours the abuser because the costs are disproportionately carried by the policer. Remember that in the early days Dan and Ned did police abusive voting, but it involved far more time than they could spend, and they took lots of flak due to collateral damage.

If someone negates your vote, all it takes off someone else delegating you the same amount of stake to counter it. Costs in attention, blockchain resources and collateral damage are eliminated. As long as a stakeholder is willing to intervene, abuse is easily countered on a stake against stake basis. The largest stakeholders do have an incentive to intervene in abuse that undermines the value of the network.

You've made more posts about power structures and complaining than I've made.. generally in my entire year on steemit.

I think that's toxic behavior and indicative of LQ posting.

Low consciousness posting.

There is nothing wrong about a post on power structures here and there. Steem is operating far from economic equilibrium and there might be unique and interesting situations emerge. It might be worthwhile for a scientific and critical look at how steem power structures. That is not what krnel writes about...

Low consciousnesses posting...

of all the options, I'd go with "Threshold for Flag Acceptance" as the best to deal with flagging abuse.

It's decent. But then someone could create 30 accounts and divide SP into them LOL...

you know trolls, always eager to put that work in... LOL

For yet another rant without bringing anything new to the table, this post is grotesquely over-rewarded again with 550$ ...

Can't please people who don't like me, like you. Solutions? Nothing to the table... just old solutions that apparently get ignored so why keep bringing them back up, just shut up, right? LOL. Awareness of the issue for the newbs who don't know how Steemit works, nope nothing there, nah, don't let them know what's happening... Nice way of thinking ;)

As if to prove every point ...

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