I am shocked!!!
Already when I read (yes, really, LOL) your first three outings of the day, I became sad, thoughtful and disappointed. The users you named (and probably hundreds more!) are the ones laughing at us banding together to fight dwarves who spam, farm and just copy. I said this weeks ago to @kiwi-crypto regarding his spammer hunt. And also to Steemit Inc. Except that Steemcurator asked me for names, nothing happened.... :-(
These terrible circles have been around for years, there are always bandits exploiting the system. The fact that now with Booming the Steemit-owned accounts are involved in the "business" kills me. Where to start, where to end? It seems like a bottomless pit to me. We small users can't do it alone, even if all honest users join forces with their SP. I so hope @steemcurator01 acts. However, I don't think the downvote system is enough for that as long as these greedy criminals can keep opening new accounts. It would be important that this problem is strategically addressed at a round table. There should be good coders who have ideas for a programming solution, we can't do it with manpower alone, no one is that attentive.
I agree with this. I have advocated to change the rewards payout to something modeled after a 2nd price auction for years. This is how Google does their ad-words price discovery, because the method naturally rewards people who bid their true perceived value. For example, see:
Of course, there are ways to game that, too. No system can be perfect, but I strongly suspect that it would be preferable to what we have now.
If such a payout system were adopted, single "booming" accounts would be forced by the incentives to self-regulate their voting strength. I believe that this type of plagiarism enterprise would be more expensive to implement and easier to detect.
Thank you for your constructive feedback.
I have read both articles. Your approach is very interesting. I didn't understand everything, but the "karate scoring" (proof of reading, LOL) convinces me. I'm especially pleased, knowing little of higher math and computer science, that the idea seems to be codable, even already coded by Google as a second price auction.
Well, my gut tells me that we don't even need to discuss it further. I feel that we are dealing with a tangible scandal here around "booming". I expect an official statement, otherwise my trust in Steemit Inc. is destroyed.
I believe that they already changed the keys. I also hope that they issue a public statement. Big delegations from Steemit have always been a double-edged sword. This is far from the first time that they've been abused.
I'm genuinely gutted and stepping away from Steemit as a result - the-gorilla#4289 if you want to keep in touch.
Gonna contact you.
Thanks for everything!