About my flagged posts...
Lets look at the case of me, @maticpecovnik.
I joined steemit about a month ago. I decided I wouldnt strive for money, instead, I would try to write about things I am passionate about. I was hopefull I would get some attention with the people with the same interests as me and we could build a nice little community discussing these topics.
I started writing about my line of work which is Fusion and physics. I put a lot of effort and heart into what I wrote and I guess it showed because, soon, I was noticed by the @SteemSTEM community, which promotes Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics topics. I was extremely grateful for the visibility these upvotes gave me and I decided I should work even harder. My followers continued to grow at a slow and steady pace and I got more and more consistent views on my posts.
All this attention and upvoting allowed me to reach about 700 SP with a vote worth of 0.15 SBD. Magnificent! Thank you all for supporting me. It trully means a lot.
So here is where it takes off...
Yesterday I am browsing the trending section. I notice some guy ranting about steemit. I must admit, I am a sucker for a good rant, because I feel I learn the most about something when I read rants about it. I dont know why, that is just how I am wired. He mentioned a guy named @haejin is taking almost 7% of the daily reward pool. I thought to myself, this guy must be a beast at steemit. I should check him out. He must have some amazing content.
I checked the guy out and his content was pretty much non-existent. Also his engagement in the community was non-existent. You might say: "But @maticpecovnik, he posted 8 posts just yesterday. You do that in a week." Well yeah. But I dont measure the engagement level by that. His posts are all the same. Literally half the words in his posts are copy-pasted from post to post. He changes only about 4 lines of text so the text fits the crypto-analysis he does.
I am not saying he is a bad analyst. He might be a great one. That is not my problem.
My problem is he milks the steemit community dry. Lets just make a quick calculation. On average he makes 220 SBD per post. That is 8x220 = 1760 SBD per day. At current exchange rates between SBD and STEEM that is about 2500 STEEM per day. Right now he has 21,391 SP invested. This would mean that he would get all his SP in about 9 days. His account must be very young then... Wrong. I was scrolling through his posts and I got bored at posts that are 2 months old. His account is probably much older, and yes he has not been getting these rewards from the beggining. But he has been getting them for about a month. This means he got 220x30 = 6600 SBD. If we take the average exchange rate for the past month of 1 SBD = 5 STEEM this means he earned 33000 SP. That means that he has earned more in one month than he has invested back in the steemit platform.
Lets look at another example of his non-engagement. On his 8 posts he gets about 500 comments while he writes about 8 comments per day. Most of these are replies to his commenters. He is not looking out for content and starting engaging conversation.
Meanwhile most of the steemit community is writing about stuff they trully feel passionate about and they put true effort into their post, and they get paid bellow 1 SBD. Most of the SBD these users get is converted back into SP so they can help to grow the community. That is exactly what I did. Also I reply to every single one of my commenters, and I also comment on other peoples posts if I have something worth saying.
This line of thinking got me to the point where I wanted to do my due dilligence for the steemit community in the curation side, so I flagged 3 posts from the user @haejin, costing him about 0.4 SBD. This must have really hurt @haejin and his livelyhood because he decided he would take his revenge and flag 6 of my post which cost be about 100 SBD. That is about 170 SP right now, which hurts me quite a lot. That is a sixth of my current SP.
I guess this is steemit for you. Some people do their due dilligence. They invest in the platform, they write quality content and engage with the community by commenting and upvoting quality comments. And these people mostly get f****d. While other people abuse the curation system, spam posts without much effort going into them, get consistenly upvoted by the same whale and earn a shitload of SBD. When the curation system turns against them , they proceed with babyrage and decide to destroy other peoples posts just for the fun of it. Steemit. Curation. Very nice...
I think there are some pretty easy ways around problems like this.
- Limit amount of rewarded posts to X per day.
This number should be around X = 1, 2 or 3. More than 3 post per day should be considered spamming. You cant write more than 3 quality posts per day. Even 3 is stretching it.
- Make flags anonymous.
I got revenge flagged for essentially doing what this platform is designed for. Curation. This should not happen! It must not be allowed to happen.
Simple measures that could help the community a lot. Please upvote this post for visibility, so the real players can see my proposals.
I dont care about the rewards so I will send 3/4 of all the SBD that is earned in this post to some people I think deserve more rewards on their post. I dont know which people will be the recipients yet, but I will decide soon. I will post the screenshots after I send it so you will be able to see I am true to my word. The remaining 1/4 I will keep and reinvest in SP which will allow me to keep rewarding quality posts.
EDIT: I guess nothing will be given out to others because I got flagged by @haejin again. RIP.
Thank you for this @maticpecovnik, and I'm sorry this happened to you. Revenge flagging is such a childish thing to do.
It just sucks. I lost a lot and at the same time not so much. I can make it up in about a week, it just sucks that some people have the power to take away all the worth of all the upvotes from smaller fish. What is the point of the smaller fish, then?
Sorry this happened. I resteemed to help and upvoted this post. Don't stop posting. You'll take a hit on your rep, but the more you post, the less he will be able to do. Also, post a comment and ask readers to upvote that instead.
I did a PageRank algorithm quick-fix for yours.org spamming problem. You create a directed graph of users based on who follows who and then run a PageRank on them. The fake accounts add almost 0 value to the rank of the account they follow. I want to build a steemit fronted called flowit one day when I have the time. I would also fund a project like that if someone decided to build it.
That sounds very interesting. I am not really a computer wiz so I will have to check the concept out in more detail when I have the time.
It's totally "underrated" concept. I'm actually brainstorming with a couple of crypto enthusiasts to create a coin that would use "Proof of Flow" instead of PoW or PoS. It would mean in our opinion fairer distribution of wealth and cheaper electricity bills. Gonna run an ICO soon and probably fork DOGE, hah.
Well I hope you can do it. It sounds very interesting.
DId a bit of brainstorming. The easiest solution would be to create a flowit bot, that would be loaded with steem power, and would upvote users with good Rank based on the fair algorithm. A bot like this could be done in a week by one developer, but I can't afford a week right now. If you have connections with steem witnesses / other important figures you can forward this idea, I am willing to power up the bot when it is made to give it a boost.
Revenge flagging should be put to an end as soon as possible for the betterment of the community. Revenge flagging doesn't just hurt the author but the future of the platform too.
I agree wholeheartedly. I think this can be done quite easily by just making flagging anonymous.
True. This needs to be requested.
I support you! To make a quality publication, a person should think it over well. Of course people can copy a few other people's articles and get paid for it. But is this the meaning of Steemit?
Exactly. Such behaviour should be punished. This can be done with flagging. But will people flag unworthy posts if they get flagged into the ground as a revenge?
One person even if this person is a whale should not take such decisions.
I agree.
you are very correct @maticpecovnik! that is a big problem i think steemit have to work on it. people that write from their heart, what they love doing best don't even have up to 5 votes at times. especially newbie steemit like me, newbie steemians are undervalue i think something should be done about that! i am wishing you a prosperous new year.
I hope you catch your lucky break man! Happy New Year to you too.
I recommend using X for multiplication on Markdown based sites (such as Steemit and Reddit), because otherwise they become italicized text markers, as has happened in your post.
Thank you very much. I usually remember this, but this time I guess I forgot.
I find it sad that some people could be so jealous or so starved for attention that they would flag or revenge flag a fellow author's legitimate posts.
It is pretty sad. Destroying content that was produced by someone with a passion and who put a lot of work into it, just for you personal amusement.
It does make one truly cautious to attempt to flag a post because of the angry village mob mentality. A truly frightening concept.
Maybe flagging should only be able to be used for calling out such things as abusive or indecent content, and another means of 'disliking' someone's post invented. Personally, I just prefer to walk away quietly.
I also believe the majority of users here would much prefer to find quality content to read rather than quantity. Otherwise it really does begin to seem spammy, and milking the system. Such a shame for the rest of us who really do strive to make engaging, thoughtful or entertaining (sans memes) posts.
In the end I guess all we can do is what feels right for each of us. :)
Maybe a majority would prefer quality over quantity but the problem is that some people who make true money do not care about quality because they dont need to. The circle-jerk of upvotes is enough for them because every post they post gets upvoted to 200 SBD. Why should they make 1 quality post and earn 400 SBD if they can spam out 8 and earn 200 SBD on each one.
First of all, as I understood, that astrologist spammer is getting something around .6% of the pool, not 6-7. Somebody made a wrong calculation and it went 'viral'. Maybe things have changed tho.
Anyways. My 2 cents. Since I registered, I have had a feeling that something is off in this platform. People keep talking about how it is not a website, but a community. We all should contribute with quality content and sing kumbaya around the curating fire.
And to some extent it works. I participate only in a very small section of the site, reading and writing about cage fighting. And like martial arts in real life, it is full of friendly and respectful people. Comments are long and often have real discussions. I imagine it works in similar ways in other subsections.
But then you see this bullshit that you addressed today. I followed you because you write really cool shit. Your posts are excellent. And you try to play along the ideals of the site, start small, invest in quality and surf the wave.
When some spammer with a big stick then decides that he (her?) and his posse will take revenge on you for using the platform as it was intended, then this whole community (?!) should have a HUGE outcry. If not, then this particular front-end of the Steem media token is already dead. We will see how it plays out.
Thank you for this comment. It really means a lot.
Maybe I didnt see the decimal point. Could be my bad! Entirely possible.
I really dont know what to say man. I completely agree with you and I couldnt have said it better myself. The only thing I would add is that I really dislike the headstart the early adopters got. I mean I get it... First come first serve and everything. But the benefits should stop somewhere especially if that person is now completely screwing the platform. Now these early adopters, aka whales, can shit on us, the small fishes as they wish without any real consequences.
I've learned the hard way not to poke at the mean whales, having spent a week on bernie's auto-flagging bot. And all I did was ask a question. Not flagging or anything. Yeah, I was this close to leaving the platform, but I think there's more good than evil here.
The whole @haejin situation is not something we little fish can solve or even dent. The only thing we can try and do is aggressively encourage steemit inc to do something about the current state of things. And the sooner the better.
Sure, other people are cheating the system and earning way too much money while the hardworking majority see peanuts. Ironically enough, this is exactly the kind of economy blockchain technologies like steem are trying to defeat. And here we are, with our own oligarchs and scammers who end up sending life-threats to those of us who speak up (see @themarkymark).
Bottom line: don't waste your anger. We're here to share what we're passionate about and we can't fix the flaws in the system. That's what the witnesses and steemit inc are there for.
While I agree on everything you said, I am also an idealist, so I refuse to believe nothing can be done. If we, the little fish, let the whales play their game, without even raising our voice, then the platform is doomed. I will not stop posting stuff I am passionate about, but it does sadden me when this kind of abuse is possible on a "decentralized" blockchain.
We only need ~200 accounts with $1 votes to bring his rewards down to a (more) reasonable level - it is far from impossible. Here is our guide on how to flag from an anonymous sock account or through anon delegation to this account.
https://steemit.com/haejin/@steemlegion/steemlegion-help-take-down-haejin-without-fear-of-reprisal-anon-account-creation-and-delegation-tutorial
There would likely have to be a massive outcry of epic proportions from all us tiny fish collectively. But to whom? I don't begin to understand what goes on behind the scenes, who makes 'the big' decisions about how things work, but ... will it really change anything? I read Dan's post. Doesn't seem like there's anyone coming in with a magic wand.
The other thing you're dealing with is human nature, and it doesn't make a difference as to which platform you are on, you'll get the same personality types doing their same old personality type stuff - be that good people, aggressive people, or thieves.
The good people get sick of the taint so move on and for a while it is great, but then in sneak the others and you're back in the same situation just on a different site. I noticed this a lot on forums. Heck, we all know neighbourhoods have them IRL.
But don't lose you passion to change things for the better. You never know... :)
I know my attempts might be futile, but that does not mean we should stop trying. If we stop trying then we are under the tyranny of silence, which we orchestrated ourselves.
More than anything, this is a learning experience. Steemit is not the last platform to try and reward authors for contributions. Others will learn from it.
I didn't say nothing can be done. And we do need to raise our voice, just in a way that will MOVE things, not just fill the blockchain with posts like this one, you know? Yes, it's always sad to see people abuse an amazing ideal. It happened with communism, and it's happening with steemit. You can't plan an economic system without investing a lot of time and thought in dealing with its abusers. Our role is to poke the good whales and witnesses into fixing what is broken. Because we can't do it otherwise.
And I guess I am an idealist too. It's why I am still here after having bernie kick the life out of my post and comments for like a week. :)
Well this post is not just ranting and raving and not offering any solutions. The almost entire point of this post was that we need to solve this for the betterment of steemit and I also offered two solutions that might work.
Here's one I think might actually dent the issue:
https://steemit.com/haejin/@steemlegion/steemlegion-help-take-down-haejin-without-fear-of-reprisal-anon-account-creation-and-delegation-tutorial
You say we, but in truth there is little we minnows can DO aside from, well, aggressively inform. Not rant. Didn't say you were. In fact, would not have replied if I felt you did.
That was my point exactly. As you see I have been flagged into the dirt so there will be no informing from me.
I was flagged into the dirt. Ask anyone - it did NOT stop me from speaking out on Discord channels, in private conversations and in comments.
You are right. There are other ways. It just sucks that it cant be done on steemit. This is effectively a kind of censorship if someone who doesnt like my post, just makes it pretty much invisible.