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RE: STEEM's #1 Crippling Flaw
Whale's have a right to their "disproportionate" power, as bloggers can even become whales. HOWEVER, if Whale's can take away a blogger from rising up and becoming a whale themselves--through the means of flagging / down voting--then this is obviously a problem. STEEM's protocol is unknowingly allowing this, and it is a deep flaw in the long term sustainability.
@jerrybanfield ----^
Technically bloggers can only become whales if they are helped by whales. Look at the distribution of rewards and where the voting power behind these comes from.
I am generally sympathetic to a "no-voice-can-be-silenced"-policy and unlimited free speech.
I just don't see flagging as the issue here! Maybe the way steemit.com handles reputation scores and the fact that posts with enough flags get hidden... that might be an issue.
I still stand behind the fact that the community needs a tool to protect the rewards pool from being drained with scams or ill-gotten-content.
The problem that flagging can be abused to silence opinions stems from disproportionate power (both in highlighting or hiding content) and the way content is presented.
eh! gotta stop you right there.... technically, bloggers can become whales by pumping their normal day-job paychecks into STEEM :D steemit.com handling "flagging" is a totally different thing, I do believe that the websites should be able to have content flagged. However, at the protocol level, flagging will remove rewards from someone. This effectively invalidates other's votes. This is where the problem lies. Does anyone have the right to remove your vote? Of course not!
still love you fraenk:)
I made a longer reply to your link elsewhere, but this is still the crux of the matter that I don't "get." Imagine 10 of us vote on whether or not to remove flags, (Steemit has agreed to implement our ruling we'll say), myself and 3 other people say we want to keep them, thereby losing 6 to 4. Has my vote been removed? Have I been censored?
You may be looking at it from the standpoint that everyone got a positive (+) vote, so no! But it's the exact same consensus mechanism we achieve with flagging.
This vote could be structured as two different posts.
Post #1: "I want to remove flagging!" Gets 6 up votes (+6) and 4 flags (-4) giving it a score of 2 (+2). 6-4=2
Post #2: "I want to keep flags!" Gets 4 up votes (+4) and 6 flags (-6) giving it a score of negative 2 (-2). 4-6=-2
No matter how you frame the process, the result is that I voted and my vote was removed, censored, and didn't count if I follow your thesis.
I don't ascribe to that though. Voting for one alternative is the same as down voting the other option. The idea that only positive voting is valid is flawed. For example, if you have done no voting today, and then proceed to use 20 full power votes on content you find to be good, the amount of value you contribute to their rewards is pulled away from all the other posts on the platform. You have weakened tens of thousands of votes and decreased rewards on thousands of posts through your upvoting actions. You are removing rewards from far more people then you are giving them to!
Alternatively, if you go find 20 posts of plagiarism and spam and flag them, the value you remove is distributed elsewhere. With 20 clicks you have done the same as going around and giving small up votes to every other piece of content on Steemit.
It's mathematically the same. Period. Arguably flagging is far more effective at distributing rewards more widely to deserving users. 20 * 100% flags are a lot easier to manage then 10,000 * 0.2% upvotes.... but they do the same thing.
Perception is entirely different, people may take flags personally, but that speaks to a need for rebranding and educating, not removing.
well, yeah... buying a whale-share is of course an option, too :P
I totally understand your concerns, but I stand behind the argument that we need a tool to combat scenarios as the one linked.
Without the ability to negate the 3000 votes from fake accounts, this could go on indefinitely, without anyone being able to ever do something about it. A network of thousands of fake accounts would keep growing upvoting numbered comments.
It's a tough nut to crack. I'd really like to see an approach where voices cannot be silenced, but at the same time i wouldn't want to open the doors for capitalizing on fake accounts.
love you too! I'm enjoying this thread!