Am I Frustrated with Uptrennd…

Several fellow Uptrennd’ians have expressed frustration and concern with the latest set of controls to limit scammers, bots, plagiarism, and low-quality posts.

I understand where you are coming from, because many of you have explained it very well in your OC posts (which is awesome by the way).  But I think your perception of Uptrennd, as primarily a tool to earn a few dollars a day, is not the true purpose of the site.  Earning crypto is a great benefit and one which encourages, through rewards, more and better interaction.  

At its core, Uptrennd is a social site that brings people together to have meaningful interactions and learn about a common interest (currently limited to cryptocurrency).  The more a community communicates, shares ideas, debates, and works together, the stronger it becomes.  If the system allows people to easily post junk, flood it with cut/paste materials, outright plagiarize from other sites and authors, or allow scammers to harvest the limited number of coins, then it undermines constructive engagements and weakens the platform.  Uptrennd will fail if such poor behavior is allowed.  

Personally, I see the controls which have been implemented, as necessary for the overall long-term health of the site.  It will make it more difficult for those who just want to quickly post low-value content, run bots, encourage fraud, or open masses of fake accounts to vote-scam.  These steps will drive up the quality of the information, insights, and encourage beneficial social interaction for those who are truly interested in the community and topic. 

I don’t see these controls to be final.  There may be more, depending on how the scammers and plagiarists respond, or there could be an easing based upon other mechanisms of trust or reputation.  They may switch to different controls that are more effective or efficient.  Time will tell, but they will need to be as agile as the people trying to get around the rules and act in unfair ways.

Right now, Uptrennd is in a crucial early stage where it is growing fast.  Proper steps must be taken now to define fairness, encourage good social exchanges, and discourage ‘gaming’ of the system or the flooding of low-quality engagements.  If a good foundation is not built now, then Uptrennd will not last long.

So, to answer my own question "Am I Frustrated with Uptrennd", no.  I think this is necessary for the long term health and success of Uptrennd and the prosperity and happiness of the Uptrennd Nation!