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RE: STEEM's Biggest Villian
"...a massive downvote on a whale is like a mini upvote for everyone else..."
This is factually correct, and you do not address that fact. You bring up another aspect of such acts that @markymark did not address instead.
Steem does not need profiteers. It needs investors that seek to build value into the endeavor, and this is done by encouraging creators that market Steem with their posts and comments. Profiteers are poor substitutes for that. In fact, they are not similar at all in their effects, and should be eschewed even absent angel investors. Sucking value out of the platform does not benefit it at all.
Okay, so let us assume that it is correct. Let's assume that a massive downvote on a whale is a dusty upvote for everyone else. We don't know what the size of this dusty upvote is and the people who receive it aren't going to notice because it doesn't register on their account as an action. Even if it did, it would show as less than 0.01.
So, in essence, he's going around and bullying large stakeholders for using their stake on their posts. I'll tell you one thing, one of the few motivating factors causing people to buy a larger stake in Steem is to have a more powerful vote, and this gives them access to distribute more rewards from the pool than if they invest less. In this, the coders convey that because of the amount of steem you hold, your vote is more meritorious than someone else's.
I'm not talking about moral merit either, I'm speaking to fiscal merit. These investors in the blockchain chipped in more for the pie. Ergo, they get more slices. Now that makes sense to me. It is logical, and it is sound. Yet, it is only within the realm of upvotes that this is logical and sound. John and George both invested $5.00 in a twenty-dollar pizza. They can take their slices and give them away, or eat them, and that makes sense. However, when you throw downvotes into the mix, you're saying; Or they can have a pizza fight, ruin each others respective day(s) and make a mess of things.
@valued-customer, I do realize that you're stuck on the notion of morality as it pertains to stake-weighting. It's a fair thing to consider, and to some degree, I see and respect your argument. However, keep in mind, I'm thinking from the perspective that the value of Steem is only possible because of investors who create demand and value when they both buy and hold steem, this is why I believe the coders gave larger holders more access to the pool.
However, if you want to get into the notion of morality; You must realize that all of this bickering is over an inflation pool. If it's not right or moral for the federal reserve to inflate, or create fiat currency, then what are we fighting over? A corrupted pool of wealth of which each newly generated steem further goes to devalue every other steem already in existence.
Is the reward pool the swamp? Are we like congress critters bickering over pork-barrel spending? Can anything be moral in this regard? Can the use of the currency itself be any more moral than using any other fiat in existence? If you have a million bucks in a high yield savings account and collect a generous APY, because that's how the system is set up, is that moral?
What if every other customer at the bank had a balance that doesn't exceed 50k; and then suddenly they were informed of how much your APY is in comparison to theirs? Does that make you the bad guy for doing business with the bank? If you uproot your money and leave after the mobs get their pitchforks and force you out, that'll be fewer loans that that bank can lend to that community.
I very much appreciate your considered and substantive reply. However, you have misapprehended my purpose. Money has no value intrinsically, at all. It only has value in relation to people. People are generally morally motivated, with ubiquitous tendencies to vices, I do admit.
Considering Steem only as a financial mechanism renders it devoid of value. It is the people that use Steem that give it value.
Who cares if they self vote? Stake weighting enables substantial stakeholders to manipulate the rewards pool and take from it for themselves. This does not increase the distribution of Steem and does not put upwards pressure on the price of Steem. The reverse is true, because users that post and see @berniesanders self voting an insulting and inane comment for 30 Steem (Bernie, don't pretend you don't) while they get nothing, or only pennies for an hour or more work go away mad.
That decreases the market for Steem, and puts downwards pressure on the price.
I am not extemporizing morality. I am advocating sound business practices. Chasing away the market is not a sound business practice, and user retention to date reveals that Steem is not executing sound business practices in this regard. [@smooth and I discussed retention. He feels it is 7% or more, and I feel it is 5% or less. Either way, it sucks]
Build up the people using Steem, and you will build value into the price of Steem. HF21 does the opposite, and we are observing the results today. I elsewhere (replying to another comment of yourse) discuss how investment and profiteering differ. The former is a tide that floats all boats by increasing the value of Steem, while the latter only profits the profiteer, while decreasing the value of Steem, decreasing the ROI of the entire community as a result.
As to morality, I account the former good, and the latter evil, but no one cares what I think is right and wrong. The concept of fairness exists, and is not merely a human cultural construct. Octopi, crows, and dogs act way out of proportion when tidbits are not fed fairly to them and their peers. Hell, dogs will fight to the death over scraps - because it involves their social standing.
Steem is primarly a social media platform, and social media has proved to be the most profitable business model on Earth, so the FAANGs demonstrate. Steem, due to the encouragement of profiteering and focus on financial rewards, has failed to benefit from the socia media business model nominally, and here we are.
Build up the users, and you will increase the value of Steem. Put the horse before the cart and we'll get somewhere. It is people that have value, and money is worthless without people to value it.
Let's assume that is correct because it probably is to one degree or another. There is no promise of rewards, and the Steem white paper pokes fun at that suggesting that people will get under-rewarded in comparison to the work they put in because it exploits human psychology in the same way that gambling does. However, wouldn't it also be true that if we had 5 aspiring whales who bought into Steem today at 500k each, just so they could self vote, that that in and of itself would drive the market value of Steem upwards?
I don't think that would much affect Steem price for long. Extant whales would get fiat for their Steem, which they would not reinvest in Steem, but spend on hookers and blow (at least that's my assumption based on my knowledge of extant whales), while the SP of the new whales would not encourage anyone and would have a negative impact on user retention as normies fumed at the shitposts making $200 on trending while they got nothing.
The White Paper assumed that 30% of rewards would inure to those normies, who are presently only getting around 1% of them. Casinos don't long survive and profit if they don't parade some winners from time to time, and 1% is woefully inadequate to lure in gamblers.
I don't think 30% is a joke really. It's far more than most folks get IRL, compared to banksters.
Distributing Steem to ordinary folks and great authors would encourage them to post, comment, and interact, and ordinary folks are innately social - they want to benefit others. It's why upvotes on Fakebook and Reddit exist. Handing out 30% of Steem as rewards to those folks would distribute Steem more widely, and they would gladly upvote their friends and good authors more if they could. They're not spending it on hookers and blow, like whales. Those that do never become of greater import to the Steem society. Some folks need potatoes more than they need bigger upvotes to hand out. I am glad if I can help them with my upvotes, because I want them to have potatoes a lot in that case.
Potato buyers would not have ire at Steem as a result, and would be likely to invest in Steem if they become sufficiently potatoed, and also to recommend it to their friends, putting upwards pressure on the price.
Angry folks that see the $200 shitposts on trending while they are reduced to eating recycled food will never invest in Steem, and never recommend it to their friends, and they will leave, putting downwards pressure on the price.
User retention rates indicate the latter is happening a lot more than the former. That's bad business.
I've concluded that we need to admit to ourselves that the whitepaper got it wrong. We can't get any good measure of a post's value based on the weight applied to a post or the number of votes. This, because the stake-weighting is real, and so are the bot armies and vote trails. That said, first thing needs fixing is the trending page to hide problems like $200 shit posts. Algorithms will do it better than the community can. It's not optimal, but it's the truth. I'm just talking about the way things are presented on trending. The page should show multiple popular tags which include the best of the newest articles in each.
I reckon the White Paper got some stuff wrong, too.
Whose gonna choose the 'best'? I reckon trending will work just fine if we eliminate profiteering, which isn't that hard to do. The Huey Long algorithm will fix it quick. Prolly plenty of other ways to do so too, and if better minds than mine set about figuring them, better proposals than mine will come up.
You know what, after reading the whitepaper; I’m no longer opposed to Marky’s actions. I want him and his downvote posse to get the lid on this bucket of crabs and jam it on tight. This is because Steem is a trap and we’re all doomed. If he can win big enough at flagging, it will prevent new stakeholders from falling for Steem’s machinations. I find the crabs in a bucket mentality disgusting and systems designed to get people to operate in such a manner is a trap. The fewer people who fall for it, the better off they’ll be in the long run.
The communal downvote mentality is a communist training program. Set these folks loose in the real world and they’ll eat each other alive. Steem got some things right in the realm of gamifying content creation, but the whitepaper is using all the wrong analogies. It’s clear to me the authors of the whitepaper are the real profiteers, and everyone else pushing the dials and turning the gears are fodder for their end game. Guess what’s for dinner, we are. It is heartening that other systems are taking this open-source model and running it in a better way regarding distribution, and also by not encouraging a culture of rampant flagging.
Going forward, I will stop orbiting Steem in favor of WeKu. I’ll still syndicate to Steem, but they’re only worthy of my sloppy seconds at this point. Perhaps I'll make occasional exceptions for contests. One need only need look as far as the WeKu whitepaper to realize that they’ve done a complete overhaul of the Steem model. I think they’re pulling it off, and when BTC rises, the smarter money will settle with the sounder whitepaper. Whereas, the intention behind Steem comes off like a scammy, cruel, joke. Next time I’ve got to approach the unknown with a bit more skepticism.
As far as your observation on who will choose the best, it doesn’t matter, and this is because the system never worked. I’m not saying an algorithm will fix the problem in its entirety, but it can make it less imperfect by judging content (not based on stake but) based on quality, syntax, grammar, spelling, and the length of an article. The video content would be more tricky. There would have to be different algorithms to satisfy the order in which videos get listed.
You’ll never eliminate profiteering. The ninja miners have that secured from the start. While you add content for peanuts, your adding value to a platform that the profiteers have already owned, increasing the value of the shares which belong to them. The best way you can stop profiteers from profiting is to stop giving the platform content. If that were my intention, I wouldn't publish on Steem at all.
All of your points are well taken. I am aggrieved to think I may have imparted my cynicism to you in our conversation. That's why I don't talk religion LOL.
I haven't been to Weku in a long time. My first visit there did not inspire me, but I do hope they're improved.
The only profiteering I have considered on Steem is regarding rewards, and that's not that hard to make uninteresting to stake weighting manipulation by simply reducing post and comment rewards below a cost effective level.
I also feel that the ninjamine deeply devalues not only the token, but the platform and community. Maybe I should have another look at Weku now, and see if that community has grown where Steem has instead shrunk.