RE: Whales: You Have Some Flagging to Do
I think the problem cannot really be solved by flagging (the bigger the abusing accounts the more hopeless it will be to fight against self-voting with flags). Instead of that the system should be improved in a way that self-voting, circle-voting and spamming would be less attractive again. That can be tried for example by ...
implementing diminishing returns when upvoting the same accounts (including own ones) again and again.
reintroducing the restriction to four full paid posts per day (from some hard forks ago) which was very reasonable.
thinking about other ideas like a sigmoid reward curve. Due to it's flat begin it would be far less attractive to upvote posts on which nobody else is voting (self-voting of comments would be less attractive). As it also ends flat, extreme rewards (like with n^2) would be avoided, as well.
considering also other ideas like the one of UserAuthority from @scipio.
Other ideas appreciated!
There should be an open discussion (and yes, I especially would like to hear more from the witnesses here) about how to solve the self-voting problem.
As @scipio showed mathematically, diminishing returns is easily gamable, just not by people.
@scipio's idea is pretty sound, but isn't a cureall.
Sigmoid rewards curves, diminishing returns, 15 minute curation windows, yada yada yada. All such mitigations for the original problem that making rewards financially manipulable results in financial manipulators capturing almost all of them, are just further complications of a broken mechanism.
End curation rewards. They aren't necessary, and do nothing but present an attack vector. Equalize VP, or nearly so, by some metric. Doesn't really even matter much what the metric, rep, UA, equality, is, what matters is that folks have voices and earnings based on their content.
End bots. It can be at least largely done. Right now there is zero effort to curtail bots. Captchas and 2FA that revealed keys necessary to vote would almost completely eliminate bots - because making bots good enough to defeat those things is expensive.
Steemit needs to be less winner take all, and more community oriented, if it's to become a lasting community.
I know you're sincere, and think often about this, and I do appreciate that.
Thanks!
There is some truth in that!
However, also your suggestion of equalizing voting power would have some flaws: by creating many, many new accounts someone could get easily a very big influence one the platform by doing many votes (or flags) with many accounts instead of a few heavy votes ...
I agree that the voting weight of some big stake holders is too high, but investing own money to buy STEEM should still be attractive ...
And concerning the manipulators you are right, there will be always ways to game the system, but I think at least we should make it a little bit more difficult than it is now.
I share your ideas to reduce the influence of bots.
Edit: I should add that in my eyes it is a really big problem that nowadays one can write more than four fully rewarded posts/comments per day. This increases spam (and self-voting of this spam) a lot.
By preventing bots from doing this, the manual labor involved makes it unprofitable.
I reckon it's a moot point, however, as the actual market for Steemit isn't us, or even the whole world, but those 39 accounts that possess most of the Steem in the world. No changes that better distribute Steem seem to be desirable to that group, as a whole.
Bots are their best profit centers, and rewards their dividends. While the White Paper calls for disbursing ~30% of rewards to the hoi polloi, very few rewards inure to accounts that aren't whales.
Folks that are getting $.02 per post just have no dog in the fight. They don't even have a dog.
All the controversy regarding excessive rewards, returning rewards to the pool, self-voting, all of it, simply doesn't affect minnows. It's kinda like idolization of stars. Minnows are living vicariously through the whales, dreaming of ever having any rewards to guard from greedy self-voters.
All the flags on the platform in a month return about 5% of rewards to the pool. 5% of $.02 doesn't even register. None of this matters to minnows in real terms, just like Kardashians' love lives.