Witness Flags - Should Witness Downvotes Exist?
I'd like to take a brief interlude in my witness series to ask a potentially controversial question:
Should we be able to downvote witnesses?
I decided to take a look at this topic having not formed much of a prior opinion. Truthfully, it's not something I've felt the need to use yet nor would I clamor for this feature personally. However, these are poor reasons to avoid giving the idea its due consideration.
The truth is, "negative" voting, or voting against rather than for, a candidate, is as old as democracy itself.
From the Belhaven University blog:
"Ancient Greece had one of the earliest forms of democracy, since at least 508 BC. Each year, the Greeks had a negative election — voters were asked to cast a vote for the politician they most wanted to exile for ten years. Votes were written on broken pots, ostraka in Greek, and from this name comes our present word to ostracize."
"If any politician received more than 6,000 votes then the one with the largest number was exiled. If no politician received 6,000 votes then all remained. If there was a fairly even spread of votes, nobody would get over 6,000 and no one would get exiled — hence only very unpopular politicians were ostracized and exiled."
As @dantheman eloquently points out in his series on "The Politics of Self-Voting", an economy needs to have the option of both up and downvotes to create a sustainable balance of incentives and power. From his post:
Allowing only upvotes is akin to only allowing those with a favorable opinion of an issue to express an opinion on that issue. It can be interpreted as a form of half-censorship of "negative" opinion.
What if there is a witness that a hypothetical voter has ideological differences with that cannot be resolved, and they wish to vote against the policies or style of that witness?
For example, for any with an ethical or faith-based objection to gambling, there would be a number of witnesses grossly unqualified to represent this voter. Whether or not a witness downvote draws from the same pool of 30 witness votes is immaterial to the main point. Should this voter not have the right to express their stake's share of voting power, whether that be to the affirmative or to the negative?
Is the "upvote-only" restriction on witnesses fundamentally arbitrary?
Would Steemit become more or less fair with witness downvoting? What other important issues are at stake?
If you have any additions or errata for this post, please let me know! I will see that they are voted to the top of the comments, and will make the appropriate edits (if possible).
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Sources: @dantheman: 1, 2, Belhaven.edu
Copyright: @dantheman, Belhaven.edu, flglacrosse.com, Steemit, fggam.org
I personally believe all the downvoting should be stopped. You say that having just an upvote is a only half a vote but I disagree. Silence is a sufficient powerful negative vote in my mind. Negative voting allows for the tyranny of the masses or whales to extinguish new or controversial ideas - which is censorship. I know the reasons of paedophiles or terrorism are used but this is no different to governments using the same excuse to justify increased mass surveillance. So, for instance if Steemians's like this comment they can upvote it. If they don't like it there is no need for them to downvote it, but simply vote for another comment. Selective use of positive voting is the best way I believe. So, to conclude, I think it's a great idea witness's can't downvote otherwise that gives them the power of a mini media mogul and surely that is precisely what we're trying to avoid here on this platform?
"I personally believe all the downvoting should be stopped."
Note that in this case, this downvoting has nothing to do with previous downvoting. This downvoting doesn't affect rewards either, nor is it really all that visible.
"Negative voting allows for the tyranny of the masses "
How is positive voting not the exact same tyranny of the masses?
"extinguish new or controversial ideas"
We're talking about (political) votes here, not votes that hide posts.
"If they don't like it there is no need for them to downvote it, but simply vote for another comment."
Not according to Steemit. The downvote tool is acceptable to use if you think something has too high of rewards (accordig to them/the "culture" of Steemit)
"Selective use of positive voting is the best way I believe."
This may be true, but I don't think we yet have sufficient reasoning or argument to support this, and I think you are talking about the wrong type of voting still.
" I think it's a great idea witness's can't downvote otherwise that gives them the power of a mini media mogul and surely that is precisely what we're trying to avoid here on this platform?"
This makes me think you didn't actually read the article. You're talking about taking away the normal Steemit rights of witnesses (ie, witch hunt them) so they can't flag/downvote.
I'm talking about allowing a witness down-vote in the same interface for your standard 30 witness votes.
Thanks for the detailed reply. Hands up my comments were not specific to your post. I was talking in a more general way about downvoting in in all cases not just relevant to the witness issue. Also I should just not have use day the term tyranny of the masses as I've not experienced that in steemit all all. I have experienced people with power downvoting completly innocent and honest observations in scientific debate simply because they didn't agree. It was in my mind dangerous censorship as the discussion was on the safety of certain chemicals used in agriculture. I simply believe in the use of positive votes (or lack of them) as the way forward and the whole concept of downvoting is a seemingly minor but potentially major flaw in an amazing platform.
"talking in a more general way about downvoting in in all cases not just relevant to the witness issue."
I definitely agree with your stance on general flagging. Too often used, not very constructive in the majority of cases.
"whole concept of downvoting is a seemingly minor but potentially major flaw"
If we can't flag, however, there is no way to stop abuse. Double-edged sword.
Interesting idea, but I don't think it's a good one. For instance, there's already vote and downvote abuse on the platform, mixed with politics and disagreements. This cannot be allowed to happen on the witness side, because let's say the top 20 witnesses are running reliable servers, and for some reason some whales decide to collude and downvote 11 out of the 20, while upvoting their own candidates running a malicious fork. We end up losing more than 50% of network reliability because of political disagreements and render the blockchain open for takeover! DPOS is based on trust, without it, the blockchain would crumble.
"downvote abuse"
I'm curious, what would you say constitutes downvote abuse? I'm not sure myself. Given "reassignment of rewards" is listed as an acceptable flagging reason, and reward distribution is highly subjective, I find it a tough topic to tackle.
" let's say the top 20 witnesses are running reliable servers, and for some reason some whales decide to collude and downvote 11 out of the 20, while upvoting their own candidates running a malicious fork. "
Correct me if I am wrong, they would need to be very large whales to pull this off. If they took over Steemit to destroy it with a malicious fork, the value would rapidly go to $0. What possible motivation would they have for doing this? It's not any different from the fact that you could buy Apple and then run it into the ground if you had enough money. It's not really a problem typically. There's no rational motivation. Even if you wanted to hurt someone at Apple, it would literally be cheaper and easier to just have them killed.
Perhaps I'm missing something there?
"DPOS is based on trust, without it, the blockchain would crumble."
Why does that trust end at allowing downvotes?
What if you were limited to 1/3/5/X downvotes, and they had other stipulations, such as reputation or account age?
Note: I don't have a strong opinion either way on this one.
yes. there are certain "witnesses" who might have earned a downvote or two by now... then again... might be used to flag witnesses based on personality differences
An interesting thought to consider is whether this:
"flag witnesses based on personality differences"
is actually a bad reason? As Dan notes in his articles:
"Votes for Sale
The next point of concern is that if there is a public database of voters and who they are canceling (necessary to determine who can cast a positive vote), that people could pay others to cast negative votes."
"The right to vote includes the freedom to vote for any reason. Denying someone the right to vote because you don’t like their reason is tyrannical. Everyone votes for selfish reasons. It is like denying a woman the right to sell sexual services. Her body, her vote."
Pure vote buying must be worse than simply a personality difference, yet perhaps it is also not actually a problem?
Really interesting idea. My initial reaction was "no way" because I immediately visualised it benefiting a corrupt whale cartel who could keep opposition down (establishment of a corrupt whale cartel is one of the big threats to STEEM viability long term IMHO). On the surface it sounds like a terrible, negative idea at first....
....but after reading through your post maybe it needs some serious consideration and I guess I'd be looking to the post downvote trends/behaviour and effectiveness of community groups like steemcleaners to self-regulate as a guide to whether it would work as intended (for ecosystem benefit) or would be open to abuse.
A decentralised and democratised community needs a different way of thinking and a different method of governance. My initial reaction was very much an Old World one and I'm aware of that :)
I appreciate the open mind. I think it may be a useful tool with some restrictions, but as I said, I don't really feel the need for it personally. However, I think others might and I see that desire as legitimate.
" I immediately visualised it benefiting a corrupt whale cartel who could keep opposition down"
If they did this, they would destroy the value of Steem. To accomplish this, they would have to have a (very) large amount of Steem. I think it would be like buying every Microsoft share so you could ruin the company by voting in terrible board members. Even if you did it...you'd benefit the people you'd be trying to destroy by buying up all the shares and driving up the value first...and you'd end up with nothing.
It would literally be cheaper to just put a hit out on whomever it was you wanted to take down.
It's a bit like how representative democracy works today. You're either in on it....or you're not. Yeh, sure they might destroy the value of the system, but if they're making good money in the short term do they really care?
As for putting out hits on people, sure that works too. Just ask Hillary ;)
"Just ask Hillary ;)"
Uh oh, hot potato.
ya id dodge this one
Indeed.
PS - I would love to be able to exile politicians for 10 years. Shit, they would clean up their act real quick if we did that!
We could send them to the Peta camps, where you are exiled to if you lose faith in democracy:
I'm trying to read this with friends over, which is rude to you and to them, so I'm not sure if I missed this somewhere in your post, but I think downvoting witnesses could work if there were stipulations that you hold a certain reputation, that you've already upvoted witnesses, etc. I don't think minnows new to Steemit should be able to downvote a witness, but I hope I'm not being classist here.
I didn't mention any stipulations on the downvote, but I certainly think a wide variety could be considered. Reputation or account age could be options, with higher numbers allowing more (or any) downvotes.
" I don't think minnows new to Steemit should be able to downvote a witness, but I hope I'm not being classist here."
I don't really think it's classist, I think you are just (rightly) assuming they are less likely to cast good votes. However, given the natures of dpos, minnows have almost no ability to move the needle on witness votes. I saw a good infographic recently that demonstrated this well, but I don't have a link off-hand.
"trying to read this with friends over,"
The multi-tasking is appreciated!
Excellent post. Yes. Absolutely yes. Why should they not be downvoted?
It is not up to us imo to argue whether or not is is morally correct to allow a certain vote to a witness. But more so, should that freedom be restricted?
"But more so, should that freedom be restricted?"
Agreed. However, most people don't realize that the restriction is the anti-freedom part.
Look at anti-gun nutjobs...
If people were fair then it would have been a good idea, but then probably not, because there would have been much less of a need for it.
The way things are, I believe that such an option will be abused like everything else, but even then I saw much worse ideas being adopted in this platform and elsewhere, and it may be worth of giving a try at for a while and will be interesting for sure.
" I believe that such an option will be abused"
How do you predict they will be abused? Collusive downvoting to control the witness slots would destroy the value of Steemit and the future profits of any colluders.
Not necessarily.
Any such colluders or just 1 big player could present a well functioning alternative of his/their own.
Consider berniesanders.
"Any such colluders or just 1 big player could present a well functioning alternative of his/their own."
That is true, I hadn't considered that. Of course, I assume this would be vulnerable to the same result.
"Consider berniesanders."
You mean, as an example of abuse?
He fights some abuse while committing abuse of his own.
And as an example of potential abuse of such witness voting.
Who is more likely to do such a thing?
But then, there are about as big players whom could downvote him so hard as a witness.
Very interesting topic, i believe we are in Beta and hopefully steemit team will do a lot of amendments.
Upvoted
Indeed, this would be an easy feature to add at any time.
I don't think the downvote possible or nonpossible option makes much difference at the moment, since the distribution of steem power is so concentrated.
But down the line, into the future, I can see that the downvoting option would be preferred over the upvote-only option.
A fair point. You may be right about the current situation, but Steem is diffusing over more and more hands gradually.
We should definitely have the right to downvote witnesses
That would make witnesses accountable for their actions. If a witness does something bad, we can retaliate by downvoting on him.