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RE: 100 DAYS OF STEEM : Day 33 - Tackling Abuse on Steem - Part I - What is Abuse?

These are questions about both unique short-term circumstances and long-term solutions. I don't think anyone's stake should be restricted, meaning Steemit should vote however it wants, but user accounts should not be frozen or censored on the blockchain level. Obviously there is some community incentive to prevent certain bad actors from accomplishing their stated purpose of milking STEEM to lower the price in an effort to support HIVE. I think it is reasonable to prevent that with downvotes.

The situation begs for a long-term solution and I think there is wisdom in seeking it through logical, mathematical, and computational principles rather than relying on personal values or opinions. There are no clear rules or agreement about self-voting, bid-botting, or even what is abuse, and the blockchain allows it without any warning, so users are essentially invited to violate undocumented and vague community standards resulting in downvotes, hurt feelings, and an overall bad user experience. If we reward authorities to fight abuse then they are encouraged to create anonymous accounts that spam to collect more rewards and power. We are spending plenty of time and energy everyday fighting abuse, but at what cost, and is it really necessary?

We already have many mechanisms in place to limit the effects of abuse. RC costs limit some denial of service attacks. Front ends like Steemit and Steempeak can censor negative users, spam, or other undesirable content. Stake-powered voting allows investors to choose which content they want to reward. So what is the problem? I think a lot of the concern is about users self-voting 10 spam posts a day. Why do they do that? Because they are forced to vote 10 times to maximize rewards.

A solution for spam is to allow users up to 1000% of current voting power so they can vote once per day for full rewards instead of having to vote 10 times per day. This would reduce spam and the need to downvote posts. Also, change rewards to pure linear, remove dust vote threshold, remove timing aspect on curation algorithm, and make a simple checkbox on each front-end for automatically voting favorite authors once per day, so every STEEMpower holder gets a fair return on their investment for a minimum amount of participation.

To succeed, STEEM should be simple, intuitive, easy, fair, and fun. Right now we have primitive content discovery tools, a reward curve and dust threshold that punish small wallets, a curation timing algorithm that favors automated robot voters, and unclear community standards that depend on personal opinions and moods, which can leave users empty handed and discouraged.

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