RE: Zuck it Mark!
I see you are looking to the negative side of everything, which is ok if you feel like it. I said blockchain and not addressed particularly Steemit, I did that in other parts of the post. Trustless society it does not mean that there will be no cheaters, unfortunately every kind of social system, from Roman Republic, Roman Empire, Ancient Greece, URSS, Socialist Cuba, Capitalist US, have shown that there will be always crooks.
Indeed, we see first hand how it is that so in Steemit, due to the inherent transparent character of the Blockchain. Yes, it sucks, too many abusers over here, but thanks to Blockchain you can know who they are.
I, as moderator for SmartSteem, look into solutions which can curve the abuses. But, as you know, once you take down a cheater, two other proxies account come back. Is it not that so, when a capitalist company, private and closed source code as Activision realises one of their last crappy COD video games and gets flooded with Cheaters?
Is not a problem of the system, the virus lies in ourselves.
I wouldn't know much about video games I never got much into them. I was merely comparing apples to apples as far as social media goes. I read a article on here the other night where someone created 80 accounts and another was worse then that:
There is currently 80 accounts for zhiyin all created through the Steemit account creation process. From @zhiyin1 to @zhiyin80 for a total of 1,200 STEEM Power delegated by Steemit Inc.
This doesn't sound like a lot of STEEM power but this is free and it isn't the only accounts in their network. There are many more. There is one network with over 20,000 accounts.
https://steemit.com/steemit/@themarkymark/steemit-creates-accounts-for-scammers-and-nobody-else#@themarkymark/re-charitybot-re-themarkymark-re-ausbitbank-re-themarkymark-steemit-creates-accounts-for-scammers-and-nobody-else-20180410t042542603z
Then there was this one:
https://steemit.com/steemit/@samueldouglas/how-many-spam-accounts-does-it-take-to-screw-up-a-network#@sunlit7/re-samueldouglas-how-many-spam-accounts-does-it-take-to-screw-up-a-network-20180412t055302754z
...I think things like this are a bit more concerning then if I was being spammed with political advertisements. I don't think this kind of abuse runs that rampant throughout the financial system(s) currently in place where a group or individual could create that many accounts unnoticed and, well, basically rob the bank. When dealing with blockchains/money/crypto there has to be a lot more trust in the system then what we currently see going on to have crypto/blockchain become something that people want to invest with and be secure knowing that these kinds of abuses aren't running rampant through the system because you are absolutely right that history has shown we will never be without crooks.
Sunlit7 you are making a great point, but actually, saving the distances is exactly the same. In Twitter or Facebook, how many bots account do you need to create a great scam, just look at my post about Twitter. Is the same, is an intrinsec problem of any society. Where there is a system, there are loopholes and exploits. Is that aggravant to the point that a whole democracy could crummble on that. Just take an army of bots to create a trending topic on Twitter, pay a couple big media outlets and you can change the mass opinion.
It will be nice to make a dissertation on the risks of AI and automatization for Democracy.
Thanks for the links and your meaningful contribution to this post.