A(nother) discussion on voting and reward pool rape

A couple of days ago, a prolific poster that provides market analysis attracted a new patron voter, a whale who has been voting just about every post at 100% with a 300 dollar odd vote.

At the time of me writing this and by using @ausbitbanks's steemviz.com/pendingpayouts page, the account has:

78 total pending payouts : 7710.744 SBD total

Remember that this is only with the support from less than 3 days of whale support with most other posts in the 30-40 dollar range. This is also after heavy flagging from @berniesanders, @thejohalfiles, @grumpycat, @bayrene and many more.

If there are no flags and the support goes for a week, the user will have a weekly payout of around:

78 total pending payouts : 23400 SBD total

That's 7% of the weekly total reward pool? For one user? I don't think it matters how good content is, no one deserves that kind of return on a platform with 30,000 active users. I wonder if he will power it up? I also can't see his wallet past 22 hours ago which is very weird but maybe a glitch?

But, there is another curiousness here in my opinion, there has been no slowing down of posting from the user nor adequate response to the flagging. Just, business as usual. Perhaps he doesn't understand the flagging system (he has been here 5 months he should) perhaps he doesn't care, is greedy, is in on the scam, being paid to take the abuse, paying for the upvote through an exchange, I don't know but, I would have thought some kind of response would have come.

For the 11 months I have been posting at Steemit, I have worked very hard and was posting around 35 full articles and stories per week. I love writing, I love posting but now, I limit how much I post. I actually halved my posting schedule and I literally want to post more but hold myself back. Instead of posting as much, I instead spend time in chat doing a few different things there.

The reason I hold back is because a couple of months ago, I started getting some much welcome support from @blocktrades who often vote a few times a week on my work. I am very grateful for their support yet, I am not going to rape the pool as I see this behaviour as detrimental to the community, platform and the price of Steem in the long-term.

Not that I could rape it though as intelligently, they manually vote and spread their power over a wide network. Yes, some get more support than others and not everyone agrees with their choices but, they even take the time to vote on some of the good comments too. If you do happen to see this @blocktrades, thank you, it is highly appreciated and I have got many DMs thanking you for the comment support too.

But, a whale need not spread their wealth and increase the value of the platform at all, they could self vote only, or like the case above, vote one particular account only. Now, instead of @thejohalfiles, @blocktrades and others like them who are prolific supporters of content, they are instead using their voting power to flag down pool raping activity.

What a pathetic waste of their time and value, but one thing should be apparent to observers, the whales do care what happens to the platform, and they are willing to pay the costs to protect it. This is what 'being invested' means, they have skin in the game and must protect their investments. They may not always agree how this is best done though.

I have thought about this before and asked the question but, never found an adequate response. What happens if a 'Mega account' comes in and chooses to rape the pool? What if their 100% vote is 5000 dollars (I estimate that to be about 20M Steem but @penguinpablo's steemnow.com will only calculate to 10M - first world problems). That means that their 10 daily votes are larger than the daily reward pool itself.

Who could do such a thing? Banks, corporations, countries.... Bored bitcoin maximalists? What happens if they choose to only have Russian propaganda in Trending or worse, Flat Earth Society news? This brings up all kinds of questions concerning censorship, remember, they have flags too.

This is a stake based platform and they would definitely have stake. It doesn't mean they care about the platform's future though. 20 million, 100 million for that matter may be throwaway money or their champagne budget.

I was thinking about a possible (ridiculously naive and I expect it to get shot down very fast) solution to such cases that will at least make it harder for such things. What if there was a voting cap on how high a vote can go but if one has power beyond the cap, more votes are allocated.

For a Simple example: if the cap was 100 dollars, a voter who has a 300 dollar vote can only vote to 100 but will get 30 100% votes instead. This may cause lots of other problems I do not know but, I thought I would just add it here as a catalyst for discussion.

So, for discussion:

1- What happens if a very large account chooses to rape the pool
2- What happens if a very large account only votes pro-yadayada content
3- What happens if a very large account flags content they don't like
4- Is there a possible solution to any of these issues

I don't have answers but I feel somewhat morally obligated to raise it for discussion. I am not naive but I think Steemit/Steem has a lot more potential than we have yet seen and it is not just to make people rich, it could really make a difference in the future. But, that future is under constant threat from short-sightedness and the greed of a few.

I can't put myself into the shoes of a whale but I know that I would likely try to find a middle ground between profit and protection of my investment, where protection comes through the development of others like me. Those looking to both profit and grow the platform, to create more like us who spread it further.

We have talked a big game, but to do better than the governments, banks and corporations we admonish, we have to do differently from them. Will we manage or are we destined to repeat what they have taught us?

Taraz
[ a Steemit original ]

Edit: This is my 5000th post - 1041 articles, the rest comments.