Are curation rewards part of the problem?
Are curation rewards part of the problem?
After watching the drama between a couple users unfold this past week, I have come to the opinion that curation rewards are a double edged sword; harming as much as helping to the platform. Curation rewards provide financial incentive to upvote a post and make it more popular in the hopes that others will follow and make the post even more valuable. The end result (dependent upon when you voted) is that you get paid a small percentage of the posts total earnings. While this is good in theory, does serve to get some authors noticed, it is also one of the most abused functionalities of the Steemit platform. This abuse manifests itself in a number of ways. Low quality users that primarily rob Youtube of content create bot armies that continually upvote their posts as a result they garner a small profit from the spam article they upvoted as well as the curation rewards that will eventually filter back down to their bots.
In many ways I see it as similar to the pump and dump scam found in the cryptocurrency market. A user creates a garbage post, uses bots to upvote (pump) it so it appears popular, regular users see it a post with a lot of votes and join in hoping to make curation rewards in event the post explodes. The post does mediocre at best, and the rewards are distributed (dumped) with the lions share going to the original author and his army of bots. The regular users that joined in get a penance of the rewards and essentially wasted their vote on a scam.
The other and more insidious way in which I think curation rewards hurt the platform is that they entice users to upvote content that they either disagree with or downright do not like based simply on the fact that it’s a guaranteed payday. For example take the posts by @berniesanders and @haejin regarding the great Steemit Feud of 2017. Both of these authors are consistently making $300 or more per post regardless of content. In fact many of the highest earning posts consist of nothing more than bitching about the other user. To that end I don’t particularly like either user and I think they have both acted in a transparent manner indicative of greed and crowd manipulation.
That aside I too find myself tempted to upvote their posts at the 30 minute mark out of sheer greed and to grab some SP as I know they will go up. I think that when you have a system in place that entices users to upvote based on greed regardless of content it needs some looking into.
Thoughts?
I've actually given up on the curation rewards thing... At best I've made 0.02SP a day (and 0.15 SP total) upvoting posts after that 30 minute window - and it made me do exactly what you mention... upvoting posts that I didn't necessarily agree with, but I knew would rocket in popularity.
So I'm not doing it anymore. I'm only upvoting my friends and content I enjoy or learn from, from now on... the way the system was intended.
I'm also going to invest in this platform each payday... in order to grow my account and eventually counteract these bad whales and their misuse of their votes.
I do think the platform will eventually even out as more people adopt and invest in the platform... the whales will eventually be diluted, and I, for one, can't wait.
Nah, not as long as things like rando exist.. the whales will just get richer each day.. no way to win...
I don't entirely believe that... I honestly think that if I work harder than the whales, and invest more then I can eventually make up the difference and affect change as much as they can. Yes they've got a huge head start on me, but while they're wasting time fighting flagging wars I can create content that new and old users can enjoy.
Tried that to mate.. others enjoy it whales flag it and act like dicks.. very demotivating.. not sure why.. I guess it stems from disappointment really .. which in itself stems from expectation.. I should of defaulted to experience and not had expectations and would of thereby avoided disappointment.. rethinking it all at the moment.. on the fence as to continue or just abandon and go back to trading..
Aw man... this sucks, I'm so sorry, last I saw this post was at $8 and now it's invisible. I can't believe you're being targeted for an objective and informative series of posts... this truly sucks.
Maybe take a break for a bit since you've lost the love. I think this is an important part of your quest as well... the pitfalls as well as the highs... it's not easy and there will be times when you take a hit... same as trading.
This makes your quest all the more important... especially for newer users to the platform.
Yeah I agree.. but I'm not taking a break, fuck this dude..
That's the spirit!
We'll keep grinding away and then maybe we can help the next generation of whale-bully-bait.
I've noticed this too. It is very strange indeed. It really raises suspicions about the entire process. I mean, who in their right mind is going to upvote a private quarrel?
Neither has individual voting power to do that, not in their "public" accounts anyway.
The only rational answer is the automated bot “pile on” that you mentioned – “rational” in the sense that it’s doing what it’s programmed to do, but, long term it’s far from rational as it ultimately destroys what it intends to reward.
When significant amounts of the reward pool are finding their way to hopelessly meaningless posts, there certainly is a problem. I hope we find a solution. But first, in order to find a solution, the problem must be clearly identified, and you know what they say: follow the money trail.
Good initiative and good post.
Yeah, maybe, it will likely get down voted as well... Steemit = North Korea..
There are influential whales who downvote when they think it's necessary, but the crazy thing about down voting is that is uses up the same percentage of your voting power that an upvote does!
It costs you to downvote and nobody gets any reward.
Think about that for while.
I agree, it's a pretty dumb way of doing things.
The feud is a natural thing! You put people in a system. People naturally find ways to bend and brake systems. Exploitation is one of the ways of man! My thoughts are that there will always be someone somewhere getting over
What's not natural is that they be rewarded for their brawling, well, unless you compare it to a cockfight, and then the question becomes one of whether it is something we want on Steemit.
true or abusing their power
Your last paragraph makes so much sense...
I do that also(.) to high earners knowing full well that their earnings will certainly go high irrespective of their posts just to earn some SP ..
Yeah its pretty sickening when you think about it..
You need a minimum of 1000 sp to bother curating other posts. You might receive .001 at your current level. Its better to make good comments on posts of people who upvote good comments.
Nah, that's useless too.. If you take the time to make a good comment and its not agreed with you will just get bot voted down. lol.. Not sure what the best method is here for now... It's certainly not good content..
Yup. steem doesn't seem to naturally reward good content. And that's the problem of this platform in a nutshell. It's simply not designed for good content.
true it is designed as a ponzi scheme to victimize lower level members