Time To Wake Up and Fix Steem's Voting Problem
Enough is enough!
I'm not an economist by trade, but I'm a design-thinker at heart. The game is to learn, experiment, think, and tinker with stuff. With some of my limited experience dealing with application projects from infancy to maturity, I'd say that mass user behaviour is usually an initially-unpredictable beast that must observed diligently over time, and then tamed later for the good of whatever platform they're operating in.
While promoting culture X, Y, and Z may matter in changing behaviour, I'd say that UI/UX design is much more important, especially when it comes to the alignment of economic incentives after discussing with @trafalgar over the past few months.
If you've been using Steem for the past two years, you'd probably feel that Steem is on the precipice of something great. It has the shape of a gifting economy, a speedramp for cryptocurrency worldwide domination. But it's not working as well as it could be because now most users accumulating their own votes, instead of giving them out to actual contributors. And it would seem that some think it really requires account-based voting along with some cultural shift for any changes to take place.
I'm here to say that stake-based voting can be salvaged and improved for Steem's universality as an open, permissionless platform. Every account has people behind them after all, and stakes are just as good, if not better measure of identity for a massive community.
Make voting great again!
I've discussed about Steem's lopsided economic incentives before in here and here. But the point that I want to drive can perhaps be better illustrated through the following classic trolley problem:-
Kill one or kill five? Obviously, most will choose to kill one. This is exactly every voter's binary situation on Steem: either vote oneself or vote others. Due to Steem's skewed economic incentives for self voters (or vote sellers, traders, exchangers, etc which are all effectively the same thing to maximise SP accumulation), most will choose not too sacrifice too much and reserve more votes for themselves.
There's mental energy in economic decision-making here, even if you've read through a post and found it highly valuable and deserving. Because there's a huge sacrifice in voting others, if compared to self voting. Check out page 28 of Steem's whitepaper here. I think whatever the paper claims is failing massively at this point in time. Tipping or gifting doesn't mean anything if we vote on ourselves!
In fact, the mental energy in making a decision is so huge in the classic trolley problem that it has been proven that it makes most people freeze as well, preferring not to do anything about the situation instead. Check out VSauce's real life experiment of the trolley problem. It’s a highly recommended watch:-
But surely it's a major waste of time to go around encouraging people to change their voting behaviour and singing songs about a better culture on Steem when our situation is as shitty as the classic trolley problem? Either kill one or kill five. So the change that needs to happen can be illustrated by modifying the situation:-
Now, this is more like it! Kill five.. or five. Screw the classic trolley problem and turn it into a non-problem. Make things more or less an equal sacrifice / advantage no matter how one votes. This is the whole point of what I'm trying to say in one of my recent posts here: https://busy.org/@kevinwong/distributing-wealth-should-be-equally-profitable
But of course, the total advantage of 100% reclaiming one's votes is always going to be there unlike as idealised in the image above. But my point here is to change the economic incentives in a way that doesn't seem like a super huge disadvantage for curators / distributors like what we have on Steem now.
Not everybody is a motherbleeping bestselling author, especially not all the time!
In fact, the network could use more curation works. Now most users are just posting whatever and accumulating to no end, encouraging spammy behaviour. And please, even if your posts are consistently highly valued in trending, it doesn't mean your content is actually good or if you're a great content creator. Do not delude yourself, especially if you've been selling your soul to do so.
This is why the economic incentives need to change. People are going to try to maximise their earnings anyway, so it's better to balance the system more for curation so that less people will create shitposts around the clock for the purpose of maximising their position. Of course, contributors planning to accumulate SP will post as usual. My point is to have those with good amounts of SP spend more time curating than creating posts to vote themselves (or trading their votes, etc which will all mostly and eventually end up going to those doing the same thing).
Let me give you a taste of how much I've been losing out since mid-2017
I'm still operating more or less the same as before because I believe that we can grow the network simply by curating and voting more outwardly than inwardly. It's just plain economics of network effects. At this point in time, I'm effectively earning ~1,100 Steem Dollars, which is only ~15% of my minimum potential earnings for having about 200k SP, just because I'm trying to grow the network by distributing to others instead of myself.
That's me missing out on an extra ~9,000 Steem Dollars per month. But I'm not the only one here and I'm surely nowhere near the ones that are sacrificing the most. There are more users working for the greater good, much more than I ever could, but earning much lesser than most. Surely such an economic system can't be taken seriously in the long run.
I can't do this forever, knowing that I'm making a huge sacrifice. I've only started calculating this recently and to be honest, it's unbearable to be the sucker. My asian father will tell me that I'm being stupid. Top Steem witnesses tend to be okay with their "sacrifice" because they're already earning a handsome amount maintaining their nodes.
But I'm not a witness, like 99.999% of the rest of us on Steem, although admittedly I had it much easier as a content creator back in 2016. Regardless, my position is maybe ~25-40% bought in with my own money. Imagine what it's like for the rest of us. Nobody's going to be the sucker forever. The system needs to be de-suckerified to some extent.
If I'm being honest and think about my experience of Steem for the past year, it certainly has become way more stressful and shitty, probably because of this lopsided incentive that promotes some kinda arms-race behaviour and experience. It's not healthy, and something has definitely changed fundamentally since HF Equality. I don't think I'm alone in feeling this, it's just that I'm a late bloomer as usual.
So I'm sticking with my position as previously expressed here: https://busy.org/@kevinwong/distributing-wealth-should-be-equally-profitable that could likely close the gap. So dear developers, some of us have already solved the puzzle and hope to have reasoned it out well enough over and over again.
Some may say it's taking a cut from content creators, but I'd beg to differ because the game will change and may even improve Steem's position in the cryptocurrency landscape. All it takes is just 20 more IQ points, guys. Time to end this madness and make Steem great again!
I hope we all don't need to start selling 100% of our votes just to make a point here. I may even keep repeating this same post until the developers get that it's urgent AF. I think waiting for SMTs to solve this puzzle is a bad idea.
As from our discussions, I also believe that this is predominantly a problem of misaligned economic incentives. I also don't think it's inherently true that stake weighted voting necessarily leads to rampant bid bots/self voting and a trending page that resembles the spam folder of my inbox, it really all depends on how the economics of the system work.
A blockchain protocol needs to have a sound economic system that correctly incentivizes behavior that adds value to the platform and deters behavior that is harmful to the platform.
With our current system of linear rewards with 25% curation, what is the best way for most large stakeholders to maximize value? Vote selling, self voting etc. Then is it a surprise that 50-70% of all active Steem Power is participating in these actions? No, it's completely expected. Well is this behavior good for the system as a whole? Of course not, it completely undermines the ability of this place to function as a content discovery platform, which inevitably leads to Steem price under performing.
As I've argued before, this is not a problem of individual misbehavior or bad culture or inability to discover good content or bad ui etc. We've just got a flawed economic system that provides the very action we don't want with the highest rewards.
And realizing the fact that if all the stakeholders behaved contrary to their direct economic interest it'll be better for everyone including themselves is not a solution. No individual stakeholder can entirely trust the voluntary generosity of other stakeholders. And the only way to defend your own stake is to contribute to the very behavior that's making it worse for everyone. This is why you're finding it more and more difficult to continue being a 'sucker'.
I still believe with the right economic adjustments, we can make desirable behavior provide competitive or even superior returns to the problematic profit maximization behavior we have currently. Something like 50% curation, modest superlinear (which would incidentally solve most of the spam problems we currently have as well) and increased downvote incentives would be a good rough guide.
Lifting curation is a direct 'cost' as it basically is just a method of reclaiming your vote rewards (100% curation is basically = 100% self votes barring minor distribution differences). However I believe it's necessary for curation to have a chance of competing against the aforementioned behavior that's bad for the platform. Of course 100% curation would mostly defeat any incentive for content creators to create any good content so that can't be a real solution. Therefore, the idea is to come up with the minimum curation % that could still be reasonably competitive to current profit maximization behaviors when other adjustments are made. I believe that 50% is probably in the right ballpark.
The other two adjustments (modest superlinear and increased downvote incentives, for example separate downvoting pool) have the advantage of having no direct cost to the system. Admittedly they have significant indirect costs. On balance though, I think with the right numbers they can push the tip the advantage in favor of good curation over vote selling/self voting when it comes to profit maximization behaviors.
The idea is not to prevent people from maximizing profits. Relying on the collective and voluntary generosity of all the large stakeholders is a recipe for failure. The idea is to align profit maximization with behavior that's better for the content discovery initiatives of the platform.
With respect to SMTs and Good Person Tokens (1 account 1 vote, oracle etc) as a solution, I won't get too much into the details, but I'd say the best realistic case is that it's too far away and we'll need something in the interim. SMTs likely won't come until the end of the year (at best) and they'll need time to mature before they can really help in terms of content discovery and curation (even assuming they work perfectly).
Witnesses and developers should make changing our underlying economics to better align with good content discovery behavior a higher priority.
As I try to spread the ideas below I add my comment not only under the main article but also as response to your comment, because otherwise I guess you wouldn't get aware of it:
Some time ago I formulated some ideas to make self-voting, circle-voting and spamming less attractive by ...
@clayop had a similar idea.
When I wrote these articles some time ago I really had hoped that more witnesses/big account holders would have joined the discussion!
This is an incredibly important subject to discuss. @kevinwong , and some excellent points, @trafalgar
I think something like what @exyle explained here is going to happen eventually.
This way to go is placed somewhere in the middle: The big guns here will start financing / supporting projects instead of individuals. Projects that could give them a nice ROI, compared to selling upvotes. A REAL, LOGICAL OPTION for them to invest in. And these projects will benefit individual creators in different ways. They could be a middle ground: Good for the whales, good for the minnows.
No more "doing it for the right reasons" or "your quality does not deserve it!" or "effing trending page!!"
Unless they really re-think the curating system and make it actually worth it against the alternative, I think this is a more down-to-earth solution.
Incentives are what changes things, not decent or moral behaviour. This is true in every other field - Cheaper solar panels and windmills are what it takes to get off fossil fuel for example - not combined friendly thinking.
You must be from the UK. Such good humor in the vid. Unfortunately, for now, you are right. Incentives are just that: motivation to change.
I am from Denmark, but most Brits who live here says the humour, and the weather is very much the same.
Denmark...the land of the happy socialists. At least that's how most in the US see you folks. I'm composing a post today on what I call Cooperative Abundance... a concept that may, one day, effectively replace socialism, at least in part.
Many blessings. Hope to see you around.
We are not socialists, but a combination of Libertarians and social democrats (which is what you can call social conservatives). There never was a revolution here and we have private property.
We pay high income adjusted taxes to have a free health system, free education etc. That might be the reason for the confusion.
Blessings to you too. I am around most days :)
Interesting. Perhaps you are not aware but frequently when "progressives" here in the States want to promote socialism they point to Denmark as a good example.
Peace.
Socialism is a bit of a rubber-concept. You could use socialism in a broad general sense meaning a system that takes care of its poor, but almost all western societies except the US has a public health care system for example. If that is what the progressives mean, we Scandinavians are socialists, but so are the Brits, the French, the Canadians etc.
And then it can be a system where you have collective ownership of the means of production. Like communism. We are not that kind of system. We are still a capitalist system.
I think that the US discussion has been a little off when it come to what socialism actually is since McCarthy or maybe even before that.
...and if we took away the $5.4 trillion in subsidies to petroleum industry, that would de-incentivize using petroleum...
There is that too.
Any reasons to think this would be better than n2?
I do support modest superlinear (~n^1.3ish, but capped after a certain point, lets say after 1,000,000 sp worth of votes, then linear afterwards) in conjunction with higher curation (~50%) and increased downvote incentives
I think with n^1.3 you probably get most of the benefits of n^2 (wisdom of the crowds, forcing all 'profitable' behavior into the light, making it difficult to put a price on vote buying, higher curation incentives, gets rid of all 'profitable' spamming etc.) at a fraction of the cost (whales less overpowered, minnows less underpowered)
Basically at n^2, someone with 10x your voting power has a vote value that is 100x that of yours. In other words, they get 10x more voting power PER sp.
Under n^1.3 someone with 10x your voting power only has a vote value that's 20x that of yours. So their voting power per sp is only 2x that of someone with 10x fewer sp. It gives minnows a fairer chance and should be significant enough to enjoy most of the benefits of n^2 outlined above, especially paired with higher curation and more downvote incentives.
Basically it all comes down to trying to get profit maximization behavior to shift from what it is now to actually voting for good content (at least subjectively), but at the least cost in terms of trade offs.
So sure, you can do this by making curation 100%, or with a curve that's n^10 (extreme examples to illustrate this point), but the trade offs are too high. The idea is to shift things around just enough to move the economic equilibrium away from brainless vote selling/self voting but leave as much on the table for content creators and minnows' voting power as possible so they have a worthwhile time being here.
Which retard at stinc originally thought to exclude the 50/50 SP/SBD split from the options curators can choose from as rewards? They really shouldn't sit in on any future discussions of economics pertaining to the blockchain.
Personally I think that it only makes sense that curating should give >50% of the rewards. Think of almost every great artist in history. Were the patrons of arts themselves the best artists and content producers? Fuck no. But wealthy people with discriminating tastes were somewhat successful in funding artists who were good at their jobs.
There is obviously no necessity that just being wealthy means someone has good tastes, or that having a lot of steem power from some shitty pre-mine makes you omniscient when it comes to choosing good art. But if we use common sense there's a clear pattern that arises when you look at people who are interested in art and creative pursuits versus those who are interested in wealth accumulation, and the pattern is that there is not much overlap between the two groups.
Wealth-maximizing individuals aren't going to judge their own content harshly, it's a very sordid affair to publish crap to self-vote or circle-vote on steemit. If we want the network to grow we really do need to minimize the incentive for such individuals to produce any content at all of their own.
It's quite likely that this was all designed as a nice get-rich-quick scheme for the founders, and we're all being strung along as a sick joke, but it would be nice if they at least pretended to know how and why other social media platforms are successful if they're going to be in charge of the one we're forced to use.
Ill speak from a minnow point of view since i think even the voice of the small stake holders has some value.
I agree with your sentiments to some degree. What i think we need to take into account outside the 50%, 60%, 70% etc loss in potential profit for large stake holders is the external effect that stems from our actions on blockchain.
Yes... In the short term it might seem you are at a loss of potential profit but as in real life societal growth depends on more then individual maximization of profit in short term.
Acting in a way that Kevin is doing is adding to the value of the platform. Acting in the way those that self upvote, delegate massive amounts of SP to bots, is hurting the growth of steem.
Our collective approach has a direct implication on the $ value.
What Kevin is seeing is lower gains in comparison to those that act in the way that is a detriment to the platform. And yes i completely understand his frustration.
Throughout human history more often then not those that act to detriment of society profit the most. Dan realized this which is why he put in a constitution on EOS. Pure ungoverned model does not work. People are so flawed that they are willing to completely kill any opportunity for long term gains in order to maximize short term ones. And here the few have all the power.
What we are seeing now is what happens when you let people completely govern themselves without any set rules.
They destroy themselves.
This economic model could have worked if human beings werent human beings.
It depends on one's goals. Are they long term goals of growth and expansion in this emerging trends...or...do you want higher short term rewards at the expense of poorer and poorer long term growth?
People have a choice...let's see what happens.
It does, and is a main factor but it isn't quite difficult to solve this.
Can I be so curious why you choose to have 2 accounts? And how do you do that? Do you need to login and logout all the time? And how do you use the upvotes for both accounts? I'm just guessing this takes quite a lot of time?
I think this issue of excessive vote selling has been in the back of minds of the many regulars on Steem and I wonder what is the consensus between the whales on this? Do the big stake holders even have a place to talk about issues like this?
Great comment @trafalgar ! I am in full agreement, and all ready commented in @kevinwong s latest post! following you now and I really hope these suggestions get noticed, great job!👍👍👍
Yup. Vote buying and self-votes are breaking down the economic engine of Steemit.
They are just rent-seeking behavior that adds no direct value to the platform.
I think some reforms are necessary:
Enforce a cap on how much power you can delegate sounds like communism. It's a not a good idea to move into that direction. That would make people work less. It's clear that automated stuff is here to stay.
Could you elaborate? How would some limit on delegation cause people to work less?
My theory is that if one cannot simply hand away their power to a bot, then they have to work to earn a return on their power. That work would imply curating and engaging in the platform.
Today, you already have people doing no work and adding nothing to the platform aside from just rent-seeking. They simply delegate their power and collect an ROI with no activity whatsoever.
I have saved almost everything I earned into SP to be able to make something here (I have seen how interest in great quality posters have disappeared as soon as they have powered down) - I have been lucky that people from other networks are sending me bitcoin donations that I can live from.
But I am still interested in a Steemit that work instead of this ridiculous mess. Right now I upvote my own posts (never my own comments), but I would be OK with a hardfork that removed selfvoting altogether (or diminished it to two votes a day like @vcelier proposed) and then maybe a bit more reward to the curators.
You do not make people bike by telling them it is healthy and that your government welcomes it. You build bicycle tracks and put taxes on cars.
Crypto has one great thing - it has impartial, transparent rules. Let's change them... or lets vote for the witnesses who supports them.
Yea boy
It’s just hard to get a consensus of things, everything’s lost in the wind 99% of the time. Just hoping to nail a decent enough explanation in this one..
Yes, It sounded smart ass-ish. The democracy aspect of Steemit is not at all obvious to the general user. I think that there is a consensus among many users that a change to the voting system is important, but it is hard to get the discussion centralised enough when you only have posts :) As you can see I am willing to try some drastic measures, but I support of course to make curating more profitable. I could also imagine a scenario where self-voting was not build in at all, but it is hard to change such things when they have been an integrated part of the system.
what we need is a Facebook-like platform, that encourages posting aboutt anything and everything and that way, there are many things to learn about; sometimes people don't have the time to draft a post. they just want to state what's on their mind either for support or to start an interesting topic.
I see nothing that prevent you from doing this on Steemit, but if had 100 points/percent to place on two posts - one is posting a comic page that you know he used the whole week creating (like me) and the other posts fun trivia he finds on the internet, let's say he posts this new This Is America video by Childish Gambino. How would you use your points?
I do not think that you can make a perfect system. Social systems evolve after unexpected criteria, and if you want to turn it in another direction you just have to experiment. Steemit was never Facebook and I doubt that you can make it turn that much around. We somehow connect money with work, talent, effort.
I am on the federation, a free decentralised network that consists of many systems. That is the place I post like I would do on Facebook.
Point taken. I understand that it will be this way, but then the question. what is good content? For instance, when dealing with someone such as myself, you won't find screenshots of that much ... unless I had a sighted individual over my shoulder taking them. are my steem contributions seen as less due to lack of images?
I'll just have to say that my view of Steemit is just my view. I am still very in doubt what direction Steemit will take. That's the exiting and annoying thing about it.
Then you basically ask how to make the perfect post that gets attention... If I knew I would be on the trending page - and I am not. But here are my observations.
I guess an image is good. I place a small image in the top. 1.75:1 format that will look nice in the feed (Example)
It is a good thing to comment a lot. Make it good interesting comments that are about the post like the one you made in this tread. I am aware of you now because you did for example.
Find some profiles with people who do what you like to do, writing many small posts. I can mention @steevc for example. (he is also the master commenter)
Remember that it takes time to build the network. I write for the people who likes my comic, illustrations and art, who are interested in my texts on music and other art, and who comments on my posts. Often I even get ideas from posts because some of them wrote something in a posts or comment. (example)
Last: Steemit is not fair. If you have the connections you will get upvoted. There can be so many reasons for this. Alliances, gaming of the system, political strategy, friendship (I have made some very good friends here that I never have meet (except @vcelier - who actually visited me), and last - sheer luck.
I know it's not fair. I learned that real quick. I'm up here for the community anyways, but the rewards are nice. of greater concern, though, is my open source project account. that's the one I want getting all the votes. I'm pretty sure that will happen soon. It's just however long it takes me to become an efficient programmer all by myself, I think. That account is @stormlighttech, which I update weekly, for the moment, at least.
Your last sentence seems to indicate that witnesses could change the way this blockchain works. But so far it looks like they don't have this much influence. Do you really think they can?
The witnesses have to agree (or a percentage of them at least) for a hardfork to be a reality - they are the miners of Steem and they participate in discussions with Steemit inc. about what to do. You can vote for them in the right menu.
Right now this representative democracy is not that well working - many people doesn't know how the system works.
See this post: https://steemit.com/witness-category/@someguy123/seriously-what-is-a-witness-why-should-i-care-how-do-i-become-one-answer
This only means that witnesses can block change, not that witnesses can actually implement change. In practical terms today, witnesses can't. Over time it is possible that development could evolve toward a more decentralized approach but there is at best only slow progress in that direction.
True. I just have to admit that. A veto is of course not representative democracy... That was just plain wrong - wishful thinking from my side.
I think we're on the same line. The chances are small the witnesses will some this. Looks like they didn't do anything as of I started with Steemit in January....
In my conversation with smooth the issue was apparent, most open-sourced projects field ideas and contributions from lots of people, but here steemit inc is the one that pushes ideas and code and it's a mostly closed process.
Steemit inc can't force a hardfork without the witnesses agreeing. I found this old post by @someguy123 - it seems to sum up the basics.
https://steemit.com/witness-category/@someguy123/seriously-what-is-a-witness-why-should-i-care-how-do-i-become-one-answer
Not forcing a hardfork and open dynamic collaboration are very different things.
True again...
Well, this is very, very old in steemit terms, and some of the numbers referenced are outdated.
It is, but it does explain the concept of witnesses. For a more precise idea of the latest hardfork you should consult the white paper.
Kevin, you're spot on brother!
SMTs are exciting, but let's not expect them to solve this puzzle.
Your decision to upvote quality content other than your own is a wise move, and here's why:
You are doing your part to encourage mass adoption of the Steemit platform by rewarding others who are new to Steemit.
My Steempower is 6500, and I do the same;
By supporting others with our votes and not solely self-voting, we end up getting a smaller piece of a (hopefully) much larger pie (by Steem rising in value) that our efforts and generosity helped to build.
That's how I 'frame it' to support the actions that both you, I, and so many others engage in and encourage.
It was fantastic having dinner with you, @sjennon, @firepower, and @anyx at the celebration dinner on Sunday night, in Amsterdam, at Steemfest 1 🙂
I have all of you to thank for inspiring my belief and passion for Steemit:
Always powering up, never cashed out! 🤜🤛
Have a great summer man!
So if i understand everything correctly, you want to make curating more profitable than self voting. How much percent would one have to get back of the voting amount to do that?
Im very happy you are pushing this issue because what will be the point in the end if we all self upvote and we focus on our self 100 percent, that is not very social.. But unfortunately that is mostly the case right now.
It's already more profitable to curate since you build up good relationships with other humans. This is clearly the best in the long run. Since it's something real. You are buying more time by investing in humans. And time is limited.
Good argument - I agree
Thanks!
Oh doesn't have to be completely more profitable than self voting, just need to close in on the wide gap..
Got it - thanks !
My point is to have those with good amounts of SP spend more time curating than creating posts to vote themselves
This is a great point Kevin. Users on Steem are all doing a little bit of everything right now. With stronger incentives it seems way better for whales to have the incentive of truly good curation, which simply doesnt exist now outside of the truest believers.
I refuse to buy votes and I know that I'm in the minority by doing so. I even left Sndbox because I felt like their votes were making up too high a percentage of my earnings. As a small fish who posts 3-4 times per day I'm giving up at least 50% of potential earnings, "against my own interest," kinda like what you describe.
Something has to change because I know most people will simply buy votes if they can do so.
You have my support on this, I will resteem to spread awareness.
I don’t think vote trading markets are anything wrong, and it’s impossible for it to go away. It’s just that by acknowledging and removing the trolley problem in voting, things may hopefully get better. I think it’s a very real problem, and those with a good amount of skin in the game know it, instead of brushing it aside. The Vsauce video is quite revealing about what people aspire to be and what they actually do in the end. The problem shouldn’t even be there to begin with, and it’s avoidable in designing Steem.
I think we agree.
To be clear any form of vote "trading" where people can directly purchase votes which give them more money than they spend, seems indisinguishable from a scam to me. Perhaps my economics are not strong enough to see how it isn't a scam, but, then again, when it smells like a duck... IDK how steem can survive if people can "buy money" in such a direct way.
If you mean that there are other forms of vote trading / organization, which are inevitable and ok, and may generate substantial profits for some, I agree that would be fine and good.
You and me both, brother! It is tempting and I believe I do feel the same tension as does @kevinwong to not be the "sucker".
Our type sacrifices to make this platform better yet we are the ones whose relative voting influence will dimish to the likes of rampant self-voters or vote sellers.
It seems a bit hopeless at times which is why my optimism for Steem's sustainability has been on a downward trend. Let's get some Elliot waves on that. I know a guy. ;)
But in all seriousness...
I hope something drastic changes so hope in this platform is rekindled and economic incentives are modified where being the biggest asshole doesn't equal the biggest payout.
Vote selling is fine as long as the votes goes towards quality content.
That, my friend, is the problem. It very often doesn't and a lot of bot owners are either too greedy or lazy to unvote. Prime example. Guy earned 57 posting single screenshots from coinmarketcap.
https://steemit.com/bitcoin/@jrbuenavista/bitcoin-btc-usd8-144-98-usd#@postpromoter/re-jrbuenavista-bitcoin-btc-usd8-144-98-usd-20180518t094900696z
The above is one I coordinated to get zeroed.
But for every one I am successful in flagging away rewards, there are scores that make it through to payout.
Their payouts have been going to the exchange too. They don't care about Steem. They care about making an easy lick and bot owners hook it up.
I can run a script against this guy's blog and tell you exactly what the ROI was before we shut em down. We've managed this for a few.
Vote selling is too easy to abuse; therefore, I will not participate as a matter of principle.
The way I see it. If the author or contributor is adding value to Steem, we ought to upvote them based on that merit not because they paid us Steem/SBD.
Good curation requires effort but has so much potential. If it is possible, that is where I believe the economic incentive should be aligned.
Vote selling can be abused for sure. But it won't if you develop good role models of many selfless people. Advertising is not going away. Since there are many that wants to get in front of peoples eyes so they will find a way to do it. It's great that people take action when something seem unfair. We will be seeing a lot of that in the future since everything is now more transparent and we can see what is going on.
@phoninf
If vote selling were simply advertising, I would have no problem with it but it's a bit more nuanced than that.
I like @freebornangel's idea for people declining rewards if it is just promotion or advertising (it was on Discord). He also mentioned a burn bot which I think would be an interesting idea.
We know it won't happen though. People aren't merely interested in advertising but also maximizing SP accumulation as stated in the OP.
Never understood the point with decline rewards. An ecosystem need people both being able to give and receive. Vote selling is clearly advertising. What else would it be? I like to hear nuanced ideas more in depth.
Good call!
Hi Kevinwong, I'm so glad that you raised up this concern,
In my ideal Steemit world, upvotes go to good quality content. In our current Steemit world, this is far from the case and it is basically just about who you know (or better yet: who knows you) and how rich you are in your Steem Power.
I wrote about it few months ego . I feel the older minnows are being left out in the cold in favor of upvoting newbies for being now. This frustrates me, because I see the amount of upvotes declining. This has led me to upvote some of my own, longer comments, to make sure I atleast earn just a little bit still. I don't particularly like it, but Steemit isn't fair anyway, so sometimes I just can't care too much anymore...
Exactly. It's about building up quality relationships and grow other peoples accounts until you have created a self-supporting community! That will say it's about who you know and how good community you create and how good value and morals you can create by being a good role model for others.
Is self-voting really the big issue of the time? What is your take on bidbots and buying votes? Many whales aren't working to curate and earn rewards, they get suckers to buy votes and they get curation rewards on top of selling their votes. It's a double income for them. Most don't post so self-voting at that level isn't a problem. I used to not self-vote, before HF19. When I came back to Steemit 2 months ago, I saw how things had changed, and I took back my delegated power and started self-voting again. I also don't make more than 4x posts each day. I also see you self-vote... so that's a bit confusing that you're arguing for a position you don't do yourself personally :/
Bid bots and buying votes are effectively self-voting, just different manifestations under this economic equilibrium. Buyers end up self-voting, which meant the sellers too because they got paid for that to happen..
Our proposal seeks to make the best out of voting behaviour by solving that trolley problem, at least in spirit. The effect of doing so could destabilise the vote trading market and make it a less predictable game. Vote trading markets are still going to exist regardless. It’s not a bad thing, just that it’s highly favoured under the current scheme.
Bid bots are self-voting by the sellers (i.e. sellers earn about what they would earn if they posted a comment and voted for it with their own stake). The buyers mostly break even. It games the placement Trending algorithm, which is supposed to ranks highly rewarded content. However, with paid votes being close to break even, it doesn't really do that, it ranks content with a high placement spend. It is actually debatable whether this is bad though. Being willing to spend money for placement is a perfectly valid economic activity (advertising).
Taken to its extreme (all stake delegated to bid bots), it replaces the idea of a reward pool with a paid-placement blogging site. The native token is used for payment, bandwidth, and some staking purposes. I don't know if that is actually 'bad', just different. It could probably be implemented more efficiently (for example by getting rid of the largely-neutered reward pool concept).
I agree on that perspective. I think like all discussions, there really needs to be an anchor so we know we're talking about more or less the same thing, which is in this case, to improve Steem via its social media front. It seems like you've given up on the idea..
'Social media' doesn't inherently mean rewarding with money. The most successful sites reward virtually none of their users, although a small portion of superstars do earn money. Furthermore most of them, if not all, do have paid placement of some kind.
So, no, I wouldn't say I have given up on the premise of Steem having a social media front that adds value. But I'm largely unconvinced there is a viable model for voting to give away money in a manner that actually helps make it more social or compelling. Apart from the voting dynamics problem, it isn't even clear that the money helps on 'social' aspect as opposed to hurting. Mostly it seems to make people behave more obnoxiously and less genuinely social in order to try to get more money. I could be wrong, but that's how I see it so far.
Great idea sir,
Quadratic rewards, 50/50 author/curator splits, 2 year power downs; all very deliberately chosen to avoid exactly the kind of behaviour we're seeing now that they're gone.
No so sure about the 2 year period and hyperinflation, Dan certainly got some good ideas right and some terrible. Quadratic is a great consideration, although I’d say that it shouldn’t be as strong as pure n^2..
Two year (or whatever longer period) still makes perfect sense without hyperinflation. The two are mostly unrelated.