The irony is that I started upvoting mindhunter because of this video https://steemit.com/hf20/@jerrybanfield/we-double-our-steem-power-upvoting-ourselves-every-181-days from @jerrybanfield.
I didn't have time to post and upvote myself so I made a deal with @mindhunter. He was effectively buying votes from me like the dozens of other vote buying schemes on steemit.
I started upvoting mindhunter's posts and had to upvote his comments when @newsflash started to notice and flag.
There was no ill intention from voting at the last minute, it was purely to make the most out of my vote.
This has been discussed in lenght the last few days and people can read my posts to see my stance on it.
If a minnow was doing this there would have been no flag and no one would be bragging about it, so this means large stake holder are discriminated, they can not use their steem power freely which is stupid considering they are the ones feeding the whole thing.
Ultimately the question we need to ask ourselves is : Do we want to prevent investors from making money? and is there a good and a bad way to make it?
My response is that everyone supports the system by default just by owning a share in it and so they should be able to use it as they wish. You have to stay powered up in order to profit from the system thus profiteers contribute to increase the price of steem.
I have stopped upvoting @mindhunter a few days ago because @newsflash was flagging all his posts. I realize there may be other better ways of supporting the community, however I didn't have time to scout for content and voting for @mindhunter was the easy hassle free way of doing it.
@jerrybanfield I think you are an asset to the community, what you have done for steem so far is amazing which is why you are both on my author and witness voting list. You definetely deserve the top spot.
I don't judge this behavior morally - maybe everybody has the right to post 10 minimalistic posts per day and then just upvote them (like @sandrino does) or also his comments.
The question is however what would happen to the Steemit community if everybody starts doing that, because it's the most simple and effective way to earn steem. Will we still see elaborated long articles and communication between the platform users? And in case not, what would that mean for the growth of the community and the Steem price? I fear the consequences would be everything but positive.
If everyone did that, you'd see a race to the bottom in quality. A trend like that wouldn't be so hot for Steemit's reputation. But it is a beta product and it's going to take time to work it out.
Since that kind of activity seems beyond my sphere of control, I'm just going to focus on the content.
I'm afraid I agree.
Also, I applaud you for focusing on the positive (ie. where you can make a difference, authoring).
I hate to make the "snowball effect" argument, but it does seem that Steemit would devolve into a cesspool of circle-jerking that was not much better than a MLM scheme if we were all to maximally exploit the system as "allowed" by the code.
Curation of content is not very incentivised and most people do not spend time on things with low short term gains. @mindhunter was not doing anything different than what many other people are doing. Mindhunter just did it on a larger more detectable scale. Whats kind of even more ironic is the fact that even @jerrybanfield is profiting from this because he is writing about it with a profitable post. :)
I think we need substantially higher curation rewards. We should make self-voting or vote-trading the LESS efficient way of maximizing Steem gain.
Even super-saiyan human curators like @ats-david may have trouble keeping up with curation rewards relative to straight-self voting, if the rewards I have seen from curation are any example.
I'd love to hear his thoughts on how we could make curation more rewarding.
Lmao right! At the end of the day everyone is here to make money :-)
actually no
Lol, yeah, your existence is probably contrary proof to the assertion you responded to.
While I am very grateful the rewards have been so great from using Steem, my main hope is to collaborate with all of us to help heal our world here and help empower each of us to have a good life together. The existing companies drain employees of life while draining the entire planet of creative energy into a funnel which then allows advertisers to maintain control over the majority of the planet. I hope with Steem we have a chance to break this cycle and empower every individual to earn enough money to pay for basic necessities by sharing here.
Yeah, no.
I am not here simply to gain money, but rather to use a platform where financial incentives strongly discourage trolls, and the blockchain precludes removal of posts entirely.
While there is nothing wrong with money itself, and I don't hate it, capitalism is dependent on value being delivered in order to gain capital, and so many tricks are used to simulate value that real capitalism just seems to not even be possible.
Every crypto has the potential to deliver capital gains to the investors, and each seems to have a different use case. Steemit is the use case that seems to me to deliver the greatest capital appreciation potential to investors.
While I don't see any problem with authors that produce content focused purely on wealth accumulation being considered valuable, and upvoted accordingly (I hope this indicates that I am not jelly, as I do not post such content, and am not focused on wealth accumulation), it is a fact that gaming the rewards pool drains it of rewards that would inure to authors and curators that deliver such valuable content.
That decreases the rewards available to promote the creation of such valuable content, and strongly incentivizes folks to simply game the system, as you found to be true.
I reckon were the system such that content creation and curation were strongly incentivized over gaming the system, you would have no compunction about using those means of improving your profitability.
Since that would increase the value of the platform, and thus increase the value of Steem, you would see significant capital gains as a reward for your investment in Steem, which I also do not denigrate. Indeed, I strongly support the capital gains mechanism, as it is a true capitalism - as long as it isn't the result of less fair businesses, such as the defense industry promoting war and the profiting from selling weapons to nations through capital gains.
At the end of the day, you seem to be focused on making money, and that's ok by me, as long as the means you use to do so don't harm others. I see certain games and financial manipulation as strong negative impactors on the potential of the platform to grow, and to deliver on it's potential to create uncensored content and overcome the controls on capital used to devalue humanity, and concentrate wealth to the point where 85 people have more than 3.5 billion.
There is a point beyond which wealth accumulation is untenable, and I reckon the world has passed it. YMMV. Perhaps you simply want to be the 86th. I am not stating that you do want that, but that, if you are only focused on wealth with such a goal, I consider that evil.
People are worth more than money, and money is merely a veil behind which real wealth is concealed.
Actually, I'm here because the blockchain means my posts / profile can't be erased from the internet by some totalitarian freak who hates free speech. The money is a nice side benefit though, don't get me wrong.
hahaha you are right!!!
@azfix you're right the combined power of all the systems we are not noticing is probably more than the top 10 authors combined from bot networks voting up comments $1 or $5 hundreds of times a day to authors posting on hot topics like this and then getting a lot of upvotes as has happened so far here on this post. None of us can totally separate our selfish motives from our unselfish ones :)
The problem is that short term selfishness often doesn't lead to long term success. If finally everybody came to the conclusion that it would be much more easy to upvote ones own comments or articles only, the quality of articles would decrease rapidly, new users would be completely frustrated (even more than already now) and the steem price would decrease as well. As long as only few accounts are doing that it may work very well for them - if all are doing it that's the END of Steemit.
It's a bit like the classic prisoner's dilemma.
"The prisoner's dilemma is a standard example of a game analyzed in game theory that shows why two completely "rational" individuals might not cooperate, even if it appears that it is in their best interests to do so."
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prisoner%27s_dilemma
I agree with you there on the curation vs. posting decision. I love to write, so I tend to write more than curate. But we need curators.
I read some time ago that the best way to allocate time for steemit is to post 2 or 3 times a week and spend an hour or two per day just curating and commenting. I'm beginning to get the sense that is what needs to be done.
You are on track and have discovered the key to getting more exposure with good comments that show you have read the content. Manual curation is important no matter how big we all get on steemit. I am not opposed to bot voting but it needs to be with reliable consistent content creators and checked for quality now and then.
Good comments are critical to gaining followers.
Unfortunately, I don't think curation is rewarded nearly as much as it should be, game-theoretically.
Are you really asking this question ? "is there a good and a bad way to make money?"
@snowflake thank you very much for replying here along with upvoting the post and voting for me as a witness! I love that you started the upvotes after the most I made :)
You have made a powerful point that I agree with in that investors need good motivation to hold Steem Power and be active here. It will not matter what authors contribute if too many investors pull out and dump Steem because of an inability to earn a good return. I know as an investor with my life savings here I feel I have a right to get a return also. Curation currently does pay but not nearly as well as posts or upvoting ourselves.
The question is how do we both ensure authors and investors both have a way to share in the rewards that most of us are happy with? Currently it is not simple or easy for either. Authors struggle to get started while authors at the top are consistently rewarded. Investors not posting or wanting to spend hours reading articles each day to decide where to give the very powerful upvotes have few options to get a good return in both time and money while investors setting up systems to guarantee a return often are earning a lot from auto upvoting posts accepted by curation guilds to upvoting authors that consistently earn a lot from posts to accepting a portion of the upvote back as a thank you.
How do we make it easier for investors and authors to help each other in a way that readers enjoy the most?
I appreciate your reply here especially because writing this post with you as both a top witness upvoter and the upvoter featured in the comment felt like walking a tightrope. I am very relieved to read your reply and am grateful for your kind feedback here!
I think we should go back to a 50/50 model. Currently it is 75% authors 25% curators but used to be 50/50 which was better imo.
According to this rule https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1%25_rule_(Internet_culture) only 1% of users actively create content, so why should the 1% authors receive more than the 99% lurkers?
Someone was saying recently that there is too many authors compared to readers on steemit. I believe a 50/50 could rebalance this ratio a bit. It's important that we have engaged users that actually read content..
"so why should the 1% authors receive more than the 99% lurkers?"
Well, the obvious answer is 1 author provides more value than 99 lurkers. Or 999 lurkers. Or 9 million lurkers. Lurkers are useless.
Curators are not lurkers, they are hard workers who can't be differentiated from lurkers by 99.9% of us other than by stalking the steemd page and looking for votes.
I'm defining lurker as non-author who doesn't vote.
I fully agree that curation should be more rewarding, but perhaps something between 25% and 50% would help. Maybe a small portion of the pool each day could be set aside as a boost to curation payouts. Perhaps the formula itself needs changing.
This jerrybanfield post is the first time I'm seeing your comments. Great curation efforts!
I'll be following you now.
Thank you for your support!
I would tend to agree with that.
I am also agree with the 50/50 but then you also should re-think the VP curve ... The people should have the possibilitty to vote more often ... In general people vote less now and they tend to go to authors who always get good rewards... I know everybody is not here for the money but the majority part are...
With the equality update it does seem like an adjustment to increase curation would be helpful!
You handled this very well and your response is quite valuable.
I don't actually have a problem with @mindhunter or especially you in this matter. I feel that not only is it the right and responsibility of anyone with investment to use it the way they want but also feel that we need to implement reliable ways for investors to easily profit here on Steemit.
The key to the price of $teem going up is new investors, and big ones are the ones who really make it jump up.
Yet big investors are only going to come here if they can reliably and quickly/easily profit on their investment. If it takes time its not worth it because most people with a lot of money are already very busy making money....
Great to see you a part of this discussion and contributing your intelligent and reasonable perspective.
This is an important topic. I can see how anyone who is not making good rewards would be upset by something like this but they wouldn't make ANYTHING at all if it were not for the big investors.....
SO rather than try and make the investors figure out how to game the system how about just provide easy and clear ways for them to profit on their investment simply and quickly.
I very much enjoyed reading this post and seeing your comment made it even better.
SteemON!
Your position completely ignores capital gains. Capital gains is the ONLY mechanism that gets folks to invest in BTC, for example.
Consider this: @jerrybanfield made a post not so long ago that showed that mathematically he would be able to double his stake in 180 days by only self-voting. That's about 150% gains per year.
However, if Steem is at $1, and then goes to $20, then that is a 2000% gain, and that can happen in less time than a year.
By allowing financial manipulation of the rewards pool to provide 'dividends' for investors - and the largest holdings of Steem, indeed most of the Steem in existence, are the result of insider information and mining before the Steemit platform even existed - then this is essentially the same as fractional reserve banking creating wealth out of thin air - but only for the banks that are permitted to do so.
Merely working hard, and saving up enough money to invest cannot result in gains competitive with those banksters, nor the early miners, so those parties will always gain more in such systems.
Steemit authors producing valuable content is a far more valuable creator of appreciation in the price of Steem, as the recent skyrocket of Steem price at the end of May showed, as that was the result not of major investors buying Steem, but of many new accounts being created on Steemit.
The bottom line is that financial mechanisms that appear to be swindles are suppressing the growth of Steemit, and repressing appreciation in the price of Steem, and that is a far more profitable mechanism to reward investors than self-votes. The widespread perception that Steemit is being gamed by folks like @mindhunter and @tamim is a huge problem for not only the author community, but for investors.
I don't know if your responding to me, but I don't disagree with what you said.
I was replying to you, as you seemed to be of the opinion that the accounts referenced were just doing what was financially rewarding, and that was ok.
I hoped to convince you otherwise.
A truth about investing is that the greater the potential reward, the riskier the investment. This is certainly true with cryptos like Steem. It is why Steem could reward investors that bought at $1 with a 400,000% return if it goes to the price BTC was recently at.
But, if Steemit continues to permit mining the rewards pool with the scams the two highest paid authors on Steemit are running, well, the price of Steem will never rise to that level. Only showing that the use case for Steem, the Steemit platform, can grow and continue to drive adoption of Steem by paying account holders in Steem, can those gains become reality.
No one should be more outraged and against such scams than those that have plunked down hard cash for Steem.
Yes, but any crypto currency you can invest in has the potential to go up at base value. I mean bitcoin doesn't even have a platform, product or anything its its value is thousands of times what was invested.
To me the attractive part of investing in steemit is that that investment can be USED but currently its not really that easy for an investor to get immediate returns. If there was then people wouldn't NEED to GAME the system like is happening.
We need to accept that fact that investors want to make money and build that in for them. Also I don't think there is any crypto that didn't have insiders getting the biggest stake on the early. Thats just the benefit of being on the inside. Sucks for others but good for them. Its just the way it is.
Minnows are being voted down every day for misuse of the vote buying programs. These posts should also be flagged for disagreement on rewards.
@whatsup The 'disagreement on rewards' thing comes from the false idea of scarcity. People wouldn't care what others were earning if there was unlimited money to go around. The good news is that there is unlimited money, since the price of steem can increase indefinetely. Unfortunately the majority of users fail to grasp this concept.
You are so wrong, The price of Steem can go up infinitely high but not if more people do what you're doing. Not only are you sucking the LIMITED supply of new Steem from the pool reward, you are making the value of Steem go down because you do not promote good content.
I think there is a worse problem here which is censorship through flag abuse, because I believe in free speech. Why did you flag Roger Ver?
I noticed that transisto and his accounts promote core, other than that he seems like a nice guy
He can support core without abusing flags and engaging in censorship driving good people who love their mothers away from this platform. I'm kind of a free speech kind of man.....
Hi! Please let me know which article or comment. I believe everyone has right to free speech
He along with others flagged @rogerkver's last post for no reason. Now @rogerkver no longer posts.
Lol, I still don't get what you did, flag, vote and withdrawn, but I can't see what on steemd. Can you please say what was the order? Thank you in advance for the effort
I personally really don't care what you or mindhunter do with your stake.
Don't kid yourself that you are creating infinite resources here.
I bet the price of your votes would go down a bit if they were flagged.
If someone does care, they should just flag it and move on, we don't need all this "press"
How do you expect steem to pay the millions more users in the future?
Didn't get any of that, maybe too obvious?
There are deeper implications that comes with the flag. I wrote a post about it recently https://steemit.com/moderation/@snowflake/the-last-missing-piece-of-the-steem-puzzle
I have to at least partially disagree that the idea of scarcity is false.
It's a fact of human life. There is only so much Steem. The more that is inflated to weak hands and sold, the less it's all worth.
The present amount of Steem is not unlimited, and rewards are based on extant supplies, not future theoretical supplies. There is a limited pool of rewards at the time of any payout, and those payouts are proportional to the weight of the votes applicable to them.
Thus, when @mindhunter and I are both being payedout at the same time, the amount of rewards I receive are less the more rewards he is payed. I am not jelly, and do not write in order to receive rewards, but many, many do, and since @mindhunter's rewards aren't based on curation, but on buying votes, this practice directly diminishes the rewards payed to others.
It isn't a false idea of scarcity that is fooling people. It is false to contend that, because Steem can continually be inflated, our current rewards aren't impacted by scams and schemes that draw from the rewards pool.
It is frustating to see minnows comes up with a 4hours of post and not hitting a 1/100 worth of that self voting post of a whales. To have work hard is the only choice of minnows and to work smart if the smarter choice of whales.
Yep, but unfortunately, it's still Reward = Quality * Reach.
It's not Reward = Quality.
Steemit, like Life, is a popularity contest