Are flagging wars destroying Steemit?
I'm on hold as far as bringing new people to this platform.
I'm ashamed of the flagging wars.
I'm ashamed of the negative downvoting when people could be posting positively for content they like.
I'm ashamed to see the fighting over the reward pool.
Why does Steemit have such slow growth? I've been wondering this for a while and have a few theories.
One of them is the behaviour shown by B.S. amongst others, the flagging wars and the use of bots for abuse in general.
So, what happened this time?
B.S. (aka Randowhale) makes an abusive posts with swearing and accusing the steemit community of cowardice for not obeying his call to stamp on his chosen victims.
I didn't flag or downvote him - I just commented that his post (with swearing and threats) is no example for the community.
I also added that I was sure he'd show cowardice himself by censoring my comment.
He did.
He then also downvoted a random innocent travel post of mine.
Ironically the post he downvoted was a demo-post made as a teaching example to a new user. What will he think? How does this censoring come across to new users and old?
Is this an adult playground or a serious blogging platform for the conveying of thought, information and ideas?
B.S's behaviour and his actions and the fact they are allowed, in my mind, represent a serious flaw in Steemit as a platform.
How can an account with a minus reputation be allowed to wield such power?
Look at the downvotes. Theses are all fake accounts - as in not run by a unique individual. All bots run by Randowhale aka Bernie Sanders
Here is the original post. Harmless or needing to be flagged?
https://steemit.com/travel/@tarquinmaine/back-riding-a-350-bullet-in-india
This post was to encourage my friend mentioned to post about his bike restorations.
How is my friend going to view this behaviour?
Playground bullying?
I'm on hold as far as bringing new people to this platform.
I'm ashamed of the flagging wars.
I'm ashamed of the negative downvoting when people could be posting positively for content they like.
I'm ashamed to see the fighting over the reward pool.
What do you guys think?
Come on people - this is meant to be first and foremost a positve experience for all to share ... !! 🤔
Yes yes yes!
Sadly I had to dig around for this post, but the downvoting button seemed to appear for me today. The whole idea of it kills the idea of the free market of ideas and content that lead me to Steemit.
My whole page here is "reporting" on politics and war. So now if I get a large enough audience and post something they might not understand or be "offended" by, the post should go negative?
This is like going into a business you hate and screaming for it to be shutdown. In a civilized world you just do not interact with that business and let the market decide if it provides a worthy service.
The pack mentality will ruin this place.
I can agree more. I'm highlighting this petty abuse because of the bigger picture regaeding precisely what you say fringe belief opinion and news. I'll be following you for sure. PS I went to steemit and the head programmers are like single minded dogs who believe in the pack. I brought it up with one and he said "downvoting is great because I can use it when I know I'm right." I asked for an example of when that was possible and when I pointed out he very well might be wrong about what he bkved to be true (the subject is a passion of mine) he stood up and stormed away in a huff.
I am in complete agreement. I made a similar post a couple days ago and someone replied that I seemed like a well-meaning person so I shouldn't get mired down in flagging wars and just go back to creating content.
While there is some wisdom in this, I have no interest in spending valuable time carefully creating posts only to have them censored by some capricious and malicious user and his bot farm.
Like you, I'm taking a step back and waiting to see how this all plays out. I think it's indicative of changes that need to be made at the platform level to keep flagging abuse from being a profitable enterprise for certain whales.
If it turns out the only way to have one's voice heard on steemit is to buy up a ton of SP and destroy other users' content, this is not the kind of site where I will be spending my time.
Agree
I'm not happy to say I can't agree more....
It's making difficult to bring serious people (academics, celebrities, investors, businesspersons, etc), those who care about their image or brand, to the Steemit platform. The main trending page has too much spam and flagging nonsense. Gentlemen! Serious people don't play games. (Is what I'd like to say to many large Steem stakeholders.) I'm often embarrassed to bring up the topic of Steemit. They will take one look at the site, and wonder why I ever suggested the thing. This keeps the value of Steem low, because it occurs on a collective scale. The people who are interested in content primarily cannot curate because while many, they specialize on content, and lack SP. Distributional problems create further distributional problems, to the extent creators of the platform, who have the largest stake, publicly doubt if it can be fixed.
Yes, you nail it eloquently. Bernie Sanders bought his steem power and didn't earn it via posting or curation.
So he's been allowed immense power that hasn't been earnt in a positive way. His bot Randowhale earns money and steempower by cheating the system.
He has the highest negative rating yet still wreaks havoc.
I have some AMAZING people who would bring incredibly high value to the community and propel steemit and steem as a currency to the stars, but how can I, when the atmosphere is like some teenage all-boys sport locker room?
(NB- most of my steempower was bought as well!)
Steemit has restored my faith in humanity. Ill be sure to follow your page and keep up to date with upvoting your content! I'd appreciate a follow or upvote :)
I'd followed you before reading this comment! I believe there is zero need for downvoting as we can simply re-direct the reward pool by positive upvoting. Flagging is needed in some form but is being seriously abused - eg the example above.
``I believe there is zero need for downvoting as we can simply re-direct the reward pool by positive upvoting.'' Exactly. It's a zero sum game, gift economy. Upvoting other posts redistributes the pool the same way as downvoting, but makes impossible to cheat. If only upvotes existed, it would force stakeholders to curate better, if they wish to reduce rewards of spam.
Precisely! Comments need curating and spam will just fall off the bottom and become a layer of sludge no one is interested in. I get the feeling people are so concerned about their curation rewards they stay away from curating comments.
Is a Shem a platform like steemit started to be corrupted with this style of people I resteemit and upvote , needs to be show
oh no, this bernie sanders guy again. fucking psychopathic asshat made me stop using steem more often.
Yes dear friend i m agree with you
Its right all the points you mentioned
Thanks for the backing!
It's sad to see posts made with great efforts being downvoted so easily !
@rossenpavlov