The Heck is going on with Steem?
The Heck is going on with Steem?
From a community standpoint and the way things work here, Steem was never a perfect place even if the technology is working perfectly, it’s a finished product, but the community still has issues. We have a lot of people investing their time, the most crucial resource, into building communities, helping others and just having genuine conversations with people for fucking nothing but they are outshined by those powerful ones that handle the money.
If you take a look at the Trending page right now it’s filled with shit, anyone that has even a bit of common sense will realize that many of those posts are overvalued and not deserving to be there and even more than that, some don’t deserve a dollar. Of course, the quality of a post is subjective, but I think we can all conclude to the fact that some posts are just not worthy enough of their rewards.
Disclaimer: This is just a rant, I have no idea what I’m talking about, do your research.
I wanted to make this post for a while, and with the latest things happening in this space, I realized that it is about time. I truly hope that @BernieSanders after writing this post will start flagging more trash because, for fuck sake, nobody deserves that many rewards for contributing with nothing through their post.
The BidBots
I think we can all agree on the fact that the upvote-selling bots are cancer for the platform because a dollar bought by someone else on their posts it’s a dollar less for another person since the money is being taken from a common reward pool. It is a zero-sum game; if someone abuses the reward pool the whole platform suffers to some extent, it’s a bigger deal than you may think.
I bet that when @Dan designed this platform, he didn’t visualize people buying/selling upvotes because the whole fucking idea of Steem was that people are rewarding other people through upvotes if they find value in the content they provide. But if even one person is buying votes, then the whole system is rigged because it is not organic anymore.
Of course, I’m not that naive to think that this whole issue will end at some point, the bots may remain here forever, we won’t be able to kill them. The best for everybody it would be if someone would create a bot that rewards quality content and it’s run by humans. But, we’re still far from that.
Coming back to reality, as @Steeminator3000 said, the whole fucking Trending page is for sale and that is damn sad and all that is thanks to the people powering up the bots. But of course, they don’t mind the fact that they are hurting the platform as long as they get their buck and everybody else is doing that; it slowly becomes the norm.
But the bots are not directly the issue they are the symptom of a rigged system since many minnows and dolphins can’t earn shit if they are not using the bots thus that’s their only option. Sometimes I don’t even blame them since many whales decide to keep the VP for circlejerking instead of helping the overall community, but almost no post is worth fucking $800+ especially if most votes are bought.
The (Lack of) Flagging
Flagging is not an issue, but the lack of flagging on this platform is a big issue because when people are posting worthless shit and are getting paid for it, they are getting paid from the money that someone who’s helping the community could receive, from your potential money.
The whole purpose of the flag button is to take away the rewards from shitposts since there’s no central entity on the blockchain that can delete a specific abuse post. Flagging is very healthy for the whole community because the money removed from the posts go back to the reward pool and are eventually spread to more deserving people.
In fact, there’s an interesting experiment started by @abit that I know of from @exyle, that you can read more about here but the idea is that if whales started flagging instead of voting, the minnows and dolphins would have a significant influence on the platform. What I took out from there? If people start flagging more, everybody else wins. I was chatting a bit about the experiment with @whatsup, and she said that it was one of the most peaceful times she experienced on Steem and that even the minnows had influence, an opinion shared by @exyle too.
Source
But of course, why would people flag and earn nothing when they could just upvote and earn rewards either through curation or post rewards, so there needs to be a separate VP for flagging, you can read more about this idea initiated by @Transisto here.
In a utopian world, there would be no need for flagging since no one would be abusing the platform and be posting worthless crap but we don’t live in that world. We live in a world where people are abusing the reward pool in all sorts of ways, and the flagging is a much-needed action.
Conclusion
The overall idea, I think we need more people to start flagging the crap, it’s healthy for everybody especially if the content flagged is only upvoted by bots and is complete crap. Nobody deserves an $800 post, besides maybe the big projects that help the community. Most issues Steem has are from a community point of view, and that is because people are people, people like instant gratification, they think are entitled to huge payouts and forget to think long term.
Many people are looking forward to @Dan’s new social media platform based on EOS thinking it will solve all the problems and as far as I know, it may solve a lot of stuff, but I’m afraid that people will fuck it up regardless. Anyway, this whole ecosystem is still new, and it has to grow up, to mature and I still think we have a long way until we get there but in five years we’ll all be looking back at this moment laughing, hopefully.
I have no idea if Steem will be like MySpace and EOS like Facebook, or the other way around, or both succeeding but one thing is certain, this thing still has issues, and we need to fix them. Hopefully, more will start taking action and stop pretending that everything is fine because it's not.
the problem is the nature of capital, not people themselves. Capital accumulation will simply find the most destructive person to lead the group.
Yeah, Capital, In-and-For-Itself, has its own self-consciousness that recognizes only those other self-consciousness that are willing to propagate its spread, increase its dominance and help defend it from those that wish to end its consciousness. It cares little of moralism, national pride and will of the people, the tyranny of capital will always favor those who help it (the ruling class being the bourgeoisie), but it doesn't care for the factionalism and sectionalism inside the bourgeois class who bicker amongst themselves to fight for the spoils generated in their ruling.
Absolutely agree, bid bots are the worst part about steemit right now, but how do we get rid of them. The separate flag power is not a bad idea, but we might see some massive flag wars if that happened. Who knows though, maybe it would work out.
There are only a few things keeping steemit from taking off:
Other than that I feel like the experience is really great and natural feeling.
The trending page sucks, and I feel like very few people who have been here more than a month use it, but when new people show up and see what terrible posts are making money it's a bad look. We need some whales to step up until we have new solutions. If you've got over a million dollars worth of steem do you really need to keep stacking? If anything the value steem gains from being amazing after we work through this BS will be more than worth it.
The bid bot dilemma continues to baffle me, there has to be a good solution, I think this is the main thing that needs to be worked on right now
Fortunately the issues you've mentioned are on the front-end Steemit level, not the Steem blockchain level. This means that even if Steemit doesn't fix these issues, the blockchain will live on and another Steem front-end service with a different curation model could take over.
Excellent point, but it also means steemit, if it stays in tact, will remain abuse-able on some level. People could still use this front end to vote themselves with voting bots. At least it seems that way, maybe it wouldn't be enough if everyone moved to a new front end.
Steemit is just a website, a door for the blockchain; it has nothing to do with the issues mentioned above. Steemit could disappear over-night, and the issues would remain the same, people can still access the blockchain through @busy.org or one of the other countless apps.
Steemit has no issue and nor Steem, from a technical point of view, the issues are at the level of the community and how they decide to act on the blockchain.
Yes, ultimately the problem are pesky humans ! :-)
Precisely what the followers of Marx and lening have discovered in their quest to build Communism, the workers' paradise !
They've discovered that humans are cheating weasels who, if an avenue for abuse is left open, will use it to perform abuse !
They discovered that humans do not in any reliable way "give according to their ability and take according to their needs" but rather tend to "give as little as they can get away with and take as much as they can get away with".
"Sad but true" (c) Metallica 1991
Could a new front end use different rules? I know steemit is close to rule free, but I'm guessing(not sure) some other front end could either introduce something to beat out bid bots or ban them(which would mean centralization in some form...)
Interesting, but isn't that just because Steemit encourages such behaviour because Capital is still privately owned?
👆
I am not sure, to be honest, I think that having a separate VP for flagging would not create that much chaos. Like with guns, people are not murdering each other every day because they can, they just keep the guns for self-protection. It would be interesting to see more flagging.
I think out of the problems you mentioned; the biggest one is the lack of support for newbies. I used to say that anybody should work for six months until they can complain but that's not enough. I know plenty of quality and persistent people that are still not earning much, and it's damn sad. Nobody wants to work for free for a huge period, once this issue is fixed, Steem is ready for mass adaption.
This is an interesting post that brings many good points, as @heimindanger said, whales should try to tighten the belts of the bot users, obligating the bots to change.
Ya, I just read that post, really cool idea, and if the flagging vp was introduced it would destroy bid bot abuse, I wonder how it would affect total payouts. Either way we need to try some things out during beta, I think the flag VP is a great idea for testing, I feel most users are honest and would downvote crap while leaving the good stuff intact. Some of these posts making bank are ridiculously worthless
Thanks for takin time and writing this we need more people like you working to make this place functioning
No problem, I really want this place to turn out great, there are a few things I dislike, but overall I see this type of platform as the future. What would really be amazing is a partnership with Medium, which might need a write-up to brainstorm the possibilities...
It won't let me upvote for some reason, reply and I'll remember
A lot of great points - BUT - flagging is being used for straight out censorship by people like vaxxers, zionists, libtards and vegans.
When there is a real circle jerk issue flagging does nothing at all.
Flagging could turn Steeemit into youtub...
It is true that lack of the obvious incentive is deters many from using the downvote button as intended but, we know of course, there are broader incentives that just aren't as apparent to most for example geneal post quality on the platform and the implications thereof.
I pitched the idea of a community flag incentivization project to @timcliff on his "Make Downvoting Great Again" post and @steemflagrewards was born.
Now, I am not one to buy votes so it's not suprisingly that not a whole lot of people know about this but we are growing. I've also started the @flagawhale project which is heavily engaged in helping to recover rewards from the collusive voting abuser Haejin.
To put it short, we pay for downvotes on abuse using Python scripts but much more. I believe we have made a significant impact in making downvoting more interesting with our rank systems.
What's missing? Community support is critical and wider knowledge of the projects would go a long way. My intent is for these projects to operate as flag force multipliers for the community and to grant the lay user ability to leverage out system once we develop the app.
@guyfawkes4-20
It would mean a lot if you look into what we are doing. We have discord, a few bots, and a passionate core moderation community and a LOT of room for growth.
Humans are greedy by nature. They want everything to themselves, they want it now and still come back for more.
Flagging is definitely the most obvious flaw of steemit. Before flagging can work in the system, then everybody's flagging has to be equal and seperated from voting power. I mean you can't really expect a minnow of less than 500 SP to flag a whale of over 100,000 SP.
That will be the end of his steemit. Flagging as it is like giving power to some people to do as they like. Even if they are abusing the system, not many people have the power to call their blunt...so what's the need?
I have seen a whale used derogatory words for a group of people on a chatting app. You know why he can do that? Their combined is probably not up to half of his own and they can't try shit with him.
Even if we don't have the same investment, we should have the same power to decide what is good or bad for the platform.
Yes, the abuse of power is a big problem but not all whales are like that, and if someone's doing bad shit, the other guys can just step in as it happened before. I don't think giving everybody the same flagging power is the solution both because then anyone could create multiple accounts for flagging since they wouldn't have to invest anything extra and because most minnows still have no idea what's going on around here.
That's a great idea, separating flagging power from Vests.
Couldn't agree more. But the core problem is that if upvotes are so easy to turn into real money (delegation to bots, selling votes), then upvoting good content feels like spending money, similar to putting money into the hat of a street artist. This is fine if you are taking about little money, but every millionaire/whale will prefer to keep most of the money that his upvotes are worth for himself.
The only way to keep bots away would be if a strong VP account flagged away every bot vote, but then you still have the problem of the whale circlejerk. I really want to believe in Steemit, but sometimes I think that Steemit just can't work as it was designed due to the inevitable human egoism. EOS or any other platform couldn't change this core problem.
Yes, I agree, that's a huge problem. The whales could make enough just from Curation Rewards and Post Rewards, but of course, it's human nature always to want more. They are making just decent money that way, the norm in the real world is 10% ROI per year, but their investment is already making more, has already paid them back tremendously.
One strong account is not enough, we need many more to join, but that's a hard task.
Steemit Inc would have enough SP to do that. But then there are talks about how bots are good for attracting investors, which is true. But we have to ask ourselves if attracting more investors is worth destroying this platform.
Indeed, Steemit has enough SP, but as @Ned said at SF2, he doesn't want to get involved, so people don't think he has favorites, so I don't think there's too much hope to see any flagging from their side.
It's sad when the investors hurt the community through their practices because they would not earn anything without the community.
There will for sure by no flagging by Steemit Inc (I mean, c'mon, Ned doesn't want to play favourites but then he decides to delegate to dMania instead of to a curation project?). And no witness could ever become a top20 witness without the support of huge vote sellers like freedom, so the Steemit oligarchs won't change the system - the only way would be to start a revolution, but historically we know where that would end!
Well, I have staked my ground, my stake, my reputation and my rewards on this for months now... The only result has been my rewards are suffering. No noticeable changes otherwise.
Yeah, I know the feeling but we can still hope for better days, and I do think they are coming. :)
Most of the vote bot power is owned by @freedom.
https://steemit.com/busy/@fow/freedom-original-steem-miner-is-a-major-vote-bot-investor