Reward Pool Rape: Why The Whale Wars Might Be Far From Ending
One week ago, I wrote a post and suggested a solution see link here that might help stop the ongoing whale wars between @berniesanders and those he accused of raping our reward poll with 8+ to 10+ daily posts ( flooding the system with their own posts and making average of 250SBD+ per posts) . Moreover, some steemians , examples, @anomadsoul , @transisto and @papa-pepper ( and many more) sent in their pragmatic suggestions through their post in hope of solving the issues.
The conundrum, however, is: will there ever be a solution to the problem? Will people use the premise of free will in a decentralized (uncensored) ecosystem as a base to continue doing what will be a disadvantage to all members of this common polity? Will there ever be a common sense solution or should steemit inc continue ignoring the issues, hoping that it will solve itself or should they come up with a pragmatic solution in the next HFork 20? Here are some few points:
Note: There are many factors that are negatively affecting steemit viability ( scam/spam posts, last minute mass comments / posts upvotes, bad quality posts , wallet / chat scams , spammy upvot bots etc) however for the purpose of this post, I will focus on reward pool rape issues.
Human Nature: it is argued that bringing back the post limit of 4 will help however not solve the issue because people will always circumvent by opening another accounts and continue self / group upvoting thus creating another big issue. This is a classic case of human nature (not all but majority of us are greedy) which will not allow an individual to agree to a common sense compromise and make peace with his/her community members-thus putting an end to the flagging wars.
Uncensored argument: Some people will rightfully argue that in an uncensored platform, no member has the right to tell others what to do or not do thus no need to suggest posting limits to people posting 8 + to 10+ daily- when steem blockchain provided us with top platforms (steemit, Dlive, Dtube, busy.org, Zappl, Dsound, Utopia, Dimania et al ) that makes it easier to post multiple times daily.
I concur to their above argument however looking at it in a quality perspective, (I do understand that quality is subjective ) is it possible to post 8+ to 10+ quality posts daily? Is it possible to engage through replying all comments on those posts? Is it possible to reward all good comments on those posts? Or is it a situation of just throwing out posts, upvote it with your massive steem power, use your contacts/ fake accounts massive steem power to upvote it, be on all trending pages, get many upvotes from steemit community members and then avoid / ignore other people that supports your posts and then continue the same thing on daily basis?
The simple pragmatic solution (no perfect one here , so pls send in your own suggestions) is that, sometimes we should remove the self-centered greed in us and put ourselves on the conditions of many minnows who earn their daily bread through platforms like this and thus share some love with them by at least taking in the amount of posts we can manage a day which will be beneficial to new and older members (quality posts) , respond to comments, upvote other people great posts/comments and thus put a smile to someones face through compromise and compassion-this in return will add more financial benefits to the individual and community, however will human nature allow it? ( remember that the evil in human nature can disguise in free will or uncensorship and destroy this platform for all due to extreme greed and disregard for others ). It is , however, time for us to bring out our best through compromise, compassion and empathy!!!! I wish you all a blessed weekend.
Send in your comments, resteem in order for your contacts to join the discussion and upvote in order to send in your support.
Click here and read my former post:Why steem cheap price is a blessing for all investors
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The rules for rewards must be tightened up. Remove auto-upvoting. Limit the amount of rewards that can be given in a day. Throttle, but not eliminate, self-upvoting.
Good suggestions indeed,thanks
It is not possible to come up with 8-10 quality post every day,curating and communicating with your audience even if you do this full time.I don't even follow accounts like that,I hate to be 'used'.
Good point indeed, thanks for your comment
Thanks point indeed, good for your comment
Great points and post . I read most comments and it portrayed my expectations of how people feel here. majority of steemians are fed up. curation does not work anymore because of whales and their bots. Imagine even if you source funds to buy sbd for upvotes, the bots join and share your curation. If you post in dmania, dmania bot shares from the curation upto 50%. steemit has turned from a lovely community where one works hard to to engage and get followers who reads and probably upvote your good posts from their feed to a platform of bot. Send a crab, upvote with a bot and you done. More worryingly, bots are using bid based crab to rip people off. Folks like Jerry Banfield has even turned to a bot to rip off people legitimately. A friend paid him 10sbd for upvote and got 7+sbd in return total. If asked he said its bad timing cos its bid based bot. Greedy folks posts 10x daily and upvote themselves with no reply on their comments. Minnows joining now does not stay for the community anymore as there is no more love. Most of us who wanted to use steemit as business option to make a living and market steemit to all and sundry are discouraged. Steemit is turning into a mess and if @ned dosnt take action to safe his platform, the greedy whales will mess it up and go for another option. The next hardfork should address most of this issue. We not saying turn here into a socialist platform, no. but let there be limitations to how some individuals rip off. This is my humble take. This post is worthy of my 100% upvote
Thanks, very good post !!!!
Awesome Work!
Keep it up!!!
@cryptoinvestinfo
What is your favorite hardware Wallet?
Good point indeed, thanks for your comment
It’ll never be fixed. The people with the power will refuse to back off due to profits. Likely the only solution will be to restart Steem with a max vote dollar value, limited posts, and some sort of system to stop bots.
Then another competitor will come in. Good enough eos is working towards that and should @dan come up with similar stuff, he would ensure such nonsense doesn't take up eos like steemit.
Hopefully
I have been thinking about launching a steemit clone, the source code is available.
Do you think their would be a good market for this?
Why not. If it works well like steemit and allows folks the true freedom plus favors new members, do keep me posted to join in the marketing.
Observations :
I have said this a few times on this platform, Steemit reminds me of the early days of the internet. It was free, wild and full of unlimited potential. Hacking was not done to destroy but to disseminate information to the people , empower them. Then the idiots moved in and while it still remained a place with huge potential darkness had it’s paws on pretty much every aspect.
People don’t like to see it, they say the Internet brings out the worst in people. I say it brings out whoever you are behind the mask. The Net is a reflection of our world population and let us be honest, most humans suck! they are greedy, self involved brats who really do not give a damn about anything outside of their own event horizon. Some are more ruthless than others and have accumulated enough power in which they can control the masses and the masses are to lethargic or comfortable to do anything about it.
The above history is repeating itself here on the Steemit platform the problem is that our history also shows that creating more rules, and giving more individuals the power to created said rules, always leads to a shitshow where some get fat and the rest is just vegetating.
The Solution :
So what to do about it well either we need an incorruptible benevolent dictator to regulate everything (not seeing that ever happening unless we are finally invaded by more advanced aliens) or we need to implement a system where community trumps whales.
The vikings often settled major disputes in the community in a gathering called a Ting. people would speak their case and then the ideas were upvoted by the greater community by hitting their sword on their shields- the idea with the most noise won. Obviously we are not going to post videos with us rattling our armour but we could code a digital equivalent within.
How?- let us say that after a certain percentage of downvote power (regardless if it was triggered by whale or the rest of us lowly meerfolk) the post would be put up for evaluation by the community. The posts payout would receive a 3 day delay. During that 3 day period the community could discuss on the post why it should, or why it should not receive the payout. During the quarantine period two buttons would appear, one to approve one to deny. Everyone in the community would have one vote and regardless of rank their vote would be equal in worth. The decision over the fate of the post would be determined by the ruling of this virtual Ting. The judgement would thus lay in the hands of the whole community not only those with the huge slices of power. A voting system like this would keep the Whales from being corrupted by power, but also curb some of the jealousy downvotes people love to engage in. - just my two cents.
I like your solution, my problem is that whales can buy as many accounts as needed to be the community and approve their rewards. Though maybe reputation and account age could help with that.
I also suggested that @haejin do an analysis of his own post rewards as well as other accounts. This would at least bring more light to their actions.
Maybe be ip based option can deter multiple accounts on same computer.
it is a solution but do we really want to be traceable in a world where our governments are not to be trusted ...
Good point but if it will deter multiple accounts use, it should be looked into except folks can still bypass it using VPN Servers. Well, let's see what the next Fork holds.
nods, hence the amendment above
Wow what a very good comment..thanks a lot. However the limitations is that many people (mostly whales) that have more than 10 accounts will use it to vote and thus we will never have perfect democratic voice unless the community select at random 100 individualy (flesh and blood , not bots or cloned accounts) who will physically upvote or downvote the post
Court system of jury :)
Maybe, it's very interesting case but it will not happen soon if we consider how the US developed from Wild West to the first economy in the world. Freedom matters, but society can create laws and rules.
Valid point! so then let us refine the process to having a computer generated equivalent to jury members who are called up to vote on a quarantined post. Each post getting its own set of Jury people.
Good point however it is a job for the witnesses and management-hopefully they will read all these comments and act accordingly
Nods but like in the world outside when the government does not take action it is time to stand on their toes ;)
The judgement will lay in the hands of those who control the most accounts.
Wow, what a guy!!! you share solid things with us through your posts...this one , is one of my best as it teaches us to bring out our best through compassion and empathy...upped 100% , thanks a lot and happy weekend
Welcome and thanks for your comment
I do wish that Steem was so skewed in favor of the rich, and has some mechanisms to stop the "rich gets richer" phenomenon...
Unfortunately, our world works for the rich...steem power is the key
You know @charles1, you're right! This is our DAILY BREAD. This is why one minnow-like me is trying to push to get more SP to help the same person as I am. And it is very hard for someone like me to continue on the way I'm doing since last year I started. I have to get help from a whale that I know. Well, she has a big heart to help others especially, when at the time of CHARITY WORK.
I really feel what you are saying here ... And you have a big point of that! For my part, I have a solution or suggestion if it will work.
Why does not the Steemit owner hire a person to work internally to check abusive person? There is a lot of easy ways to solve this problem but they need to discuss it first the possibility; the negative and the positive. This is just my opinion and if there is a general meeting I would like to join to listen.
You know? I admire the @curie of the project that they are doing. They help the Steemit community and help others to maintain the good quality post.
And I hope, the other whales realize that the SP delegated to them must be used in a proper way to help other minnows. To boost them and share their knowledge and experience in life.
If the majority ask me what should I do to the SP that they will delegate to me? My answer is, I will use it to all CHARITY WORK that I am doing and to boost the other small minnow who does losing hope of writing. And I will build a community of a CHARITY WORKS to help other needy people. This is from the bottom of my heart for a long time.
Very good comment, I agree. I wish you success
Excellent work dear friend @ charles1, as always, it is true that many things are happening on the platform that negatively affect her. since the beginning of the platform that I publish four post a day, I did it even with the 17th fork when I did not earn 1 cent for the publications, I do it because I love sharing on the platform, some time ago I was forced to publish more post a day, as you know my family and I live from what I generate here on the platform, my compensation has decreased by more than 80% for this reason I had to do power dow to face some economic commitments, today I am publishing six post a day to do in total 20SBD and I see that day after day my compensation continues to go down, what I never thought would happen to me, I do not feel like continuing to publish, I feel tired and unmotivated, I see that only a few They worry about others and I see many who are making a lot of money here, multiple accounts, voting their own comments, voting bot, selling votes, in short everything that is already known.
I like the organic system, I do not use bot for my votes, I do not buy votes, I really do not know what the solution would be, but I feel very sad because I see that this is not going well and I had the hope that what I put together in Steem Power will be my retirement of juvilacion, apparently to the step that we go I will not be able to do it.
I wish you a great day dear friend
Thanks a lot for your great comment. In fact , rewards are not what it use to be because many people have been taken over by human nature and thus ignores upvoting other people posts. I will always upvote your posts as I normally do and wish that you will get back your success which you deserve. Patience and consistency are the solution...happy weekend.
I love this! Thanks for sharing and I've gat lot to tap from you man! Bless you!
Welcome and feel free to read my older posts for more tips
excellent comment @jlufer when i joined steemit june 2017 it was not like this. folks work hard to engage to build followers whose posts appear in trending. If you manage to have over 1k+ followers then you are sure of earning good via curation reward for quality posts. All these ended with whales greed and intro of bot upvotes. Hardly no one visits posts to read and upvote quality contents only sell sp for money. Greed has overtaken steemit and this will cause mass migration to a platform that is more justifiable since it seems steem mgt are reluctant to hurt the feelings of the greedy whales. Nice comment. lets keep in touch. upped
Thank you for this post @charles1.
I agree with the sentiment. Steemit is no different in many regards to real life. War is messy, has unintended consequences, and tend to rage on.
What you mentioned about the minnows is an observation I made. They are the ones who are affected by this the most. Many of them do depend upon the upvote of others. My upvote for a comment went from $.40 to $.13. Granted some of that is the pullback in the price of STEEM. Yet not all of it is.
Wars tend to keep going. This one is going back and forth with each side trying to garner more support. Sadly, the large number of posts are still rolling out at a high payout plus everyone else is engaging in behavior that I dont think they want to have people see in real life.
People often profess to be about love, humanity, and compassion yet then we see actions that go completely counter to that. Of course, there are those who do not espouse those values and walk through life bullying everyone within site (for some reason White House comes to mind at the moment). Empathy is a great concept to apply to this situation.
Many have reached out in an effort to try to reach a compromise but the fear and greed are in full force. At this point, being right appears to be all that matters.
Fortunately, STEEM is much bigger than Steemit. The ecosystem is much more powerful than what we are seeing. But you are right, there are going to be some who hold onto the bitter end.
We can only conduct ourselves...nobody else. Applying some of your suggestions is a great idea for the day. Thanks again.
Welcome and thanks a lot for a great comment...I am sure that you will be a big success here. Happy weekend.
This is by far one of the best posts I've read about this war. The poolrapists don't give a fuck about minnows, or any other users, money has corrupted people and it will keep this way till the end of times. We are selfish by nature, and when it comes to money its a lot worst. You idea of a solution is the best we can hope, and the only thing that could stop this war will be if those who are raping the pool take a moment to think about the ecosystem, in my opinion that thing will never happen, anyway great article man, couldn't agree more with your thoughts bout this thing killing STEEMIT.
I came back to steem after a few months hiatus, I have heard that whales have been very selfish and upvote for themselves before, but it looks like things have gotten a lot worse if there is a new term being thrown out there called "poolrapist." It looks like things are pretty grim now.
Welcome and thanks a lot for your comment