"Upvote my post and I'll upvote yours"
Why wouldn't this work?
As intelliguy mentions, what supposedly prevents this is whales (big SP holders) eventually downvoting you. This doesn't seem sustainable for a large community and should be addressed.
It's probably hard to prevent, but we should be implementing graph clique analysis in the steem blockchain
This is akin to vote selling, which I've discussed in my FAQ:
https://steemit.com/steemit/@intelliguy/steemit-faq-frequently-asked-questions-common-myths-and-misconceptions
If you're not careful, an automated whale bot is going to seek out your voting power, and the people you vote for and reverse your votes with downvotes. You really don't want that.
Thanks for that @intelliguy, we needed that!
Thanks for chiming in intelliguy. I've just read your FAQ. You say this won't work, and the reason you present is "don't do it otherwise a whale will downvote you". But what happens until then? Whatever is payed out is payed out, right?
Shouldn't this be prevented at a more fundamental level?
Also, how do you downvote someone? I don't see any icon. Is this exposed on the blockchain but not on steemit.com?
What about the fact that you're going to lose respect and burn the value of your name? All of your vested balance you've earned will have to start all over again with a new account. Make new friends, get new followers to find you.
It isn't a whale downvoting you, it's a BOT, owned by a whale, who will downvote you. Bots are relentless. They don't sleep, they work 24x7 and they can do a lot of damage. These "good bots" that stop system abuse exist already. You just haven't caught the attention of robocop yet.
You don't have to convince me of how negative this is intelliguy. My concern here is that we're relying an bots coordinated by a few people on what is supposed to be a decentralized system. You can't track down every post when there's billions of people on steem. If the system is exploitable, people WILL exploit it.
There's something about your reply that I didn't understand, though: " All of your vested balance you've earned will have to start all over again with a new account". How can a downvote ever remove currency you already have? Are you sure about this?
You make an account called john. He posts, does well for a few months, and earns himself $1,200 steem power. That helps him get around. Everytime he makes a new post, he upvotes himself, and instead of it going $0.01 he's now showing $0.10 now. People have bookmarked his page and he's popular.
john one day wakes up and starts thinking "hey! I could use my steempower of $1,200 in a collusion group vote". Things go well for the next month, and he gets $1,400 of steem power. A few whale bots start to realize john isn't writing stories anymore, he's part of a newly identified vote selling business.
Everytime the john account votes now. A whale bot comes behind him and downvotes whatever he voted on. Effectively ruining the power of john's vote. The vote group kicks out john seeing this. john's account is now tainted. That $1,400 he earned in steempower is now worthless for upvoting purposes. He decides to power down the $1,400, and start a new account on a new name that the bot no longer knows about. He starts off with $10 steem power and has to start all over again.
Yes, he doesn't lose his $1,400. But what he does lose, is the effectiveness of the steem power itself, if he abuses it and a whalebot contradicts his votes.
I think it's already prevented. No high steem power will vote such a post when the exchange is a vote from lower steem power. Also it applies on high to high steem power upvotes exchange. Why would people with decent earning will exchange upvotes that will harm their status. No one wants to be banned when they can earn it without violating rules. There's no such method or way on cheating here. Well that's my point of view. Everyone has their own opinion. =)
You don't lose anything by upvoting, ever. The rewards you get come from newly minted steem. Also, you cannot be "banned" from steem, it's a distributed system. You can get banned from steemit.com, though.
After reading the whitepaper, I'm still not sure if this works or not, but time will tell. If it does, the devs need to be aware of it
I think they addressed this when they changed upvote payout. Now the first to upvote it only get's 1% of the payout, and the other 99% goes to the author....after about 15 minutes, then the curator reward is split between Author and the upvote (times vary), then after 30 mins it's 100% for the upvote (if there is any payout left). This prevents bots from just upvoting, now it's a human vs. bots thing!!
Darn it, I was the first to vote on your article.....well lucky you. J/k, but at least you are getting paid now!
Why do not whales upvote everyone? Do not they feel generous?
The payouts are split between upvotes. It's very much like a lottery - if everyone wins, the payout is one cent.
ok!
https://steem.ly/F
far more effective would be "comment on my post and i'll comment on yours"