Steemit Strike: Apology to Followers and Announcement of Indefinite Break from Blogging
Due to many issues relating to the current @abit curation experiment I will be going on blogging hiatus for awhile.
I wish to apologize for the emotional, machine-gun-fire nature of my last few posts, and state my position more clearly.
I contribute at least one quality content post to this platform a day, and often times 3 or 4 of them.
I am tired and demotivated now, after seeing minnows crushed, and high-quality content providers flagged and punished for the fruits of their efforts in building a valuable audience.
I am going to pull a John Galt here, and walk out of the Commie warehouse. When this madness abates, I will be back.
I am dedicated to this platform come rain or shine, and this is me (just as these whales are doing) expressing my voice (exept I am doing it via inaction on the chain).
I would like to recognize @berniesanders for being the first big whale to drop out of this "experiment" which is discouraging new user adoption, and loyal, long-time user content creation, promotion, and curation.
Please watch this video for a more detailed explanation. Cheers!
~KafkA
Graham Smith is a Voluntaryist activist, creator, and peaceful parent residing in Niigata City, Japan. Graham runs the "Voluntary Japan" online initiative with a presence here on Steem, as well as Facebook and Twitter. (Hit me up so I can stop talking about myself in the third person!)
It's sad that he won't even acknowledge that actual users are leaving or suspending their activity here. Just keep going forward with the terrible idea. Because fairness, or whatever the reasons are.
@berniesanders is right - if there's an actual problem, fix the damn code. This is just bullshit and it's causing real problems with real users and investors.
Actually @ats-david we spiked hard in account-creation yesterday.
We also spiked hard in comments
And also in Price
All the new sock puppet accounts coming to milk the system
Yeah, it's not surprising that something controversial will spike activity. That doesn't mean that these people are actually new users or that the activity is positive and productive. How many posts and comments have been about this stupid "experiment" and how it's just not good?
Then you have the @steemitblog post about the hard fork, which always gets people talking and voting.
And the price spike...well, that has nothing to do with any platform activity. It will also be temporary, since the Steemit, Inc. accounts are now going to power down, as they have already started.
I created an account and threw a ton of SP at it. I am upset about the people leaving exactly as the video states.
I was instantly wiped out by a @smooth brown noser that I flagged in the mix. (the real whales didn't flag me - it was never me who was flagged on anything.)
I was responsible for the price spike yesterday and am still powering up. I vow to spread the wealth and harm the harmers. My intro: https://steemit.com/introduceyourself/@htooms/introduction-my-first-day-here-but-i-still-made-the-news-hi-whales
Sad to see you leaving but I totally get your reasoning. But I also know: You'll be back.
This post just gave me an idea. We who post are one of the backbones of this platform. We could also "experiment" and call a Pen-down strike to oppose this madness by not posting anything for a period of 48 hrs. Then they can flag away to their hearts content. But we can show them that if there are no posts, flags are irrelevant.
abit doesn't care if people leave. He said it's a good thing if they do.
Did he explain why?
Yeah. He said that people who are here for the money should probably leave anyway. I guess he doesn't understand what STEEM/Steemit is, which is troubling, considering that he's a top witness.
"He said that people who are here for the money should probably leave anyway." This doesn't make any sense. That's the whole point of blogging here instead of somewhere else, you might make some money.
Well, tell him that. He doesn't seem to comprehend it.
Check out my latest post !!! Im tired of being treated like crap by these bully whales !! I SAY STRIKE !!!
https://steemit.com/steemit/@karenmckersie/hello-abit-smooth-steemit-stike-notice-is-on-your-experiment-did-not-work
I'd support that. Whether you realize it or not we are on the same page in pointing out that the system is broken and needs to be revamped to remove both the whale domination of influence and the need for downvoting to limit that influence. We may disagree on the particular nature of the problem but we absolutely agree that there is a problem
I do realize and agree that we need to find a solution, but I strongly disagree with the approach taken of using flags to achieve an end. Flagging on steemit, AFAIK, is seen as a form of violence by most who have its best interest.
I may be wrong, but I feel the same logic used to write good computer code may not work when it comes to human emotions and this experiment is trampling quite a few, as you can make out by the surge in angry posts/comments lately.
If it was an attempt at waking up people to realize the broken parts of the system, it has worked marvelously, and some users have gotten so shaken up with this "enlightenment", they are even ready to leave the platform.
So, as another user who seeks success for the platform, I implore that the experiment be reconsidered and a healthy debate started again, because after this fiasco I believe we will have a meaningful one.
I respectfully disagree that the experiment is clearly harmful just because some people choose to interpret actions or react to them in a certian way. I would suggest you read some of the comments and posts from many users who find it to be a positive thing and do not consider reasonable, measured downvotng to be a 'violent' approach (most of my downvotes on this initiative, FWIW, are <10% vote weight and have only a modest effect on not even reducing rewards but merely reducing the amount of increase of rewards). You can find some of those posts and comments on the Trending page, but there are many others.
Thanks for your comment @smooth!
It's a free market. People paid and also worked for that influence. Synthetically trying to redistribute everything is a self-important move, in my opinion, that is severely compromising the platform. You vote down people's posts, but then your own trail voters upvote your bot posts. I'll be back blogging when all this stops and I'm not punished by Communists for working hard to deliver content to my valued audience.
On this point I disagree. We have a voting system and my vote and views on why to vote are as valid as any other (and also, BTW, part of that free market). Nothing is 'synthetic' here.
I have never denied it is part of the free market. I am not saying it is "unfair" either. I am saying it is a misguided and illogical at balancing things out which, contrary to its stated purpose, doesn't help smaller users but hurts them. It punishes success as well in established users.
Sucks to see you go albeit temp.
.
What I meant by free market is that these whales are free to band together voluntarily and use their Steem Power as they please.
Ironically, in the supposed interest of helping small fish have more power, and take away influence from whales, they are using their whale influence to now crush small users.
Thanks for the thoughtful comment.
And yeah, if I were an investor, I woild certainly be a little concerned with all this.
.
Right. I see your point. My point is that within the real free market, Steemit is a private enterprise, and thus the stakeholders can do as they please.
If Steemit were a model of the free market, then yes, I see your analogy and it makes sense.
Either way, there are consequences for actions, and I think this whales will find that out.
.
This platform allows for downvoting. It is a private organization that allows for this activity. There is nothing anti-free market here. This analogy is to me, an apples to oranges comparison.
.
Is there anything truly a free market?
Welcome to hear examples.
Is there anything truly decentralised?
We are working towards an ideal that does not yet exist. Perhaps it will never exist.
Is it not an oxymoron that we attempt to gamify and place valuations but seek for equality?
Equal opportunities does not automatically mean equal fulfilment.
I think too much effort is placed on trying to make things "fair" since we know that things never were fair in the first place.
The free market (bigger picture) allows for Steemit to be this thing that it is now. That is my point. That is all I am saying.
The free market may decide that these actors not mimicking a real-life free market suck, and thus Steemit might fail when users leave.
Get it? I am not saying you are wrong. I am looking at it from the real-world, macro perspective. I am not viewing Steemit.com itself as the all-encompassing free market. It's not. It's a website and a platform and thus subject to these dramas.
It may continue and succeed, or it may fail. I think, like you, these silly whales are helping it to fail.
They are not crushing small users, they are only negating votes so that more users have a weight and can make a difference in reward distribution.
Smooth and co wouldn't have to downvote any post if other whales stopped voting, so blame those whales for not wanting to improve power concentration.
I have seen the small users downvoted, so that is not true.
And besides, @abit claims in his latest post whales exercising their influence is "unfair."
Why is stakeholders with more vests having more influence unfair? That's the whole point of stake-weighted voting.
What do you mean with small users? newbies or users with low SP?
I don't know if you followed debate recently, but the big problem currently is that the utility of steem power is essentially 0 because the large majority of users have no influence at all and they would have to buy at least 10k usd to be able to give a mere cent to someone. This means that we have a system based on stake that is completely out of touch with the reality, most users will never be able to be a whale. The whole thing should be scaled down to reflect the reality of users on this platform.
Regarding your question. Why is stakeholders with more vests having more influence unfair? I think abit said that in the context of the reward curve, the n^2 algorithm give a huge advantage to whale which is unfair.
This is what most users don't understand about this experiment
If a fix is needed, the code should be changed.
I am talking about both new users and those with low SP, I have seen their posts grayed-out, downvoted into oblivion, and heard their discouragment.
This experiment was not announced, has no real clear methodology or controls, and is punishing effort in true Communist fashion, by penalizing both new users and those of us who have worked very hard to build up an audience.
And of course whales can stop the autovote at any time. Who doesn't know that? And what is wrong with that?
The influence is off balance, perhaps, so the code should be changed. People should not be flagged for effort. This is very discouraging and an ugly move on the part of these "experiment" whales.
@berniesanders figured it out and left.
New users are not being downvoted, only users with whale autovote.
You worked hard to build an audience but all your payouts are coming from a few whales. Your audience has no impact on your posts. And it's like this for everyone on this platform.
New users are indeed being downvoted of they are lucky enough to get a whale vote. See what I mean? It's not my opinion. It is happening.
elementm was downvoted because her post was autovoted by a whale https://steemit.com/art/@elementm/flowers-in-the-backyard-and-account-verification
investigator also got downvoted for the same reasons https://steemit.com/photography/@investigator/trilogy-or-photo
Posts that have not been botvoted by whales have never been downvoted .
You said above:
That is factually not true, as I have just demonstrated. 3 days on Steemit is a new user.
Second, according to @abit, you are also wrong. Not only whale votes (and it is not only whale bot votes it seems) but also posts voted on by whale-like groups are systematically being targeted.
If I am not mistaken, this includes curation guilds.
If the voting weight is detrimentally imbalanced (and indeed I think it may be) let's change the code.
This is a stake-weighted platform. Those that do not agree with stake weighting are free to go elsewhere.
I worked hard to earn the trust of those (even powerful NON WHALES) who put their bots on me. Now their say in my content's value is being destroyed because of a few misguided whales and their disorganized "experiment."
You are simply incorrect that new users are not being downvoted, and that only whale bot votes are being "counteracted." Read @abit's blog for yourself.
My votes were consistently adding one cent to users' content, because I have been grinding on here since day one. I pretty much have no money to invest in this, but have made it all blogging. Now users like myself are punished for this effort.
Let's change the code and adjust n^2, not throw the baby out with the bathwater.
Well said.
I am in full agreeent ! I put your link to this post in my STRIKE NOTICE POST I just put up ! Check it out !!
https://steemit.com/steemit/@karenmckersie/hello-abit-smooth-steemit-stike-notice-is-on-your-experiment-did-not-work
good point.
I now find that I no longer care much myself.
buzzkill
Be strong in spirit.