RE: Examining Honey from a Different Perspective - Steemit Sock Puppetry Continues
Wow I don't know how you have time for this but thanks.
This is the problem with whales voting for content they think others will like.
If they vote for what they like or don't vote the community will get the posters it deserves. If whales vote for a predictable formula fake accounts will rise up to supply it.
I don't care about a posters identity. If someone is paying writers to write post that's fine, it just means Steem is paying too much for particular type of content. Eventually the market will normalize but maybe the whales who set market prices should know they are duped. Maybe they should let vote because of he number of votes or because another user voted for something. Vote for what you like or don't vote!
Still I am curious what percent of users are the same user.
Pretty much this. The solution is more competition among content. If you think what is being posted is garbage, and doesn't deserve its rewards, then post something better. The entire pool is going to be paid out regardless. Without bringing new content, this is just a food fight between bloggers over who can get the most (or a smear campaign).
@smooth, with all due respect, there is as you said a voting pool. If the whales are creating sock-puppet accounts and setting up accounts to get votes, and setting those accounts to vote for each other, making comments on each other and pretending to have conversations with themselves. That hurts creditability and it hurts what is really left in the pool, for the end users. So, writing better content becomes kind of meaningless if the vast majority of the pool is just being spread around by a few people managing many accounts.
I agree with others who have said, it will work it's self out. It will because the whales will be sitting around posting and voting on accounts that no longer have any outside value, due to the price of SteemIt. I understand it can't be controlled. It shouldn't be justified either. My opinion.
Yeah, if this sort of thing continues, eventually steem will be worthless.
Again, is the content good or bad? If bad, don't vote for it or down vote. The pool is thus protected from bad content. Simple as that.
the greatest challenge remains a way for good content to leap forward...it's still very difficult even with many initiatives. once that will happen we won't need investigation because writing good stuff is hard and time consuming a.k.a costly!
Agree. Give it time (and continue working to make things better by helping to identify the best content and promote it; but recognize, and try to accept, that not everyone will agree on what "best content" means). Cream rises to the top, but it is cream in the eye of the SP holder.
Liar! The solution is to stop pretending you like the content when you admitted it was bad!
You admitted @armen gave bad advice in his poker posts but the next day you continued to partake in your whale game of pile on! "Who's turn is it to be on top?"
You lost faith in the system smooth. Why should any of us believe in it if you don't!
This accusation is unfair and ridicuous. @smooth upvoted several comments which were critical of @armen and had been censored by flags (either by steemd or kushed). Although he has voted for @armen once besides this one that he took back, its completely absurd to try to label him as part of the "conspiracy" (assuming such a conspiracy exists and is something we should be concerned about)
I never voted for @armen's posts. That said, I do think poker content that isn't high level strategy based on game theory has value. I'd like to see someone better content in that genre than what armen is providing, in which I would vote for it. That is the solution IMO.
EDIT: I was mistaken. I thought I had blacklisted armen from my votes after evaluating the quality but that fell through the cracks. That was an error which has now been corrected.
I agree. I don't think good poker content has to be strategy (or advanced strategy if it is), but I do think if it purports to be strategy, it shouldn't have basic, egregious, absurd errors (for example, saying "this hand should be played this way regardless of stack sizes, game, table image, etc." Or "I'm right becuase (insert famous pro here) did this in a video ten years ago.
I've flagged @armens posts because I think they are overvalued, and will make steemit look ridiculous to literally every single member of the very wealthy and very active internet poker community.
Also, there are whales clearly flagging any reply to his posts that is critical or expresses disagreement, even if it is expressed respectufully.
Its one thing, IMO, to get paid too much to give crappy poker advice and make steem look foolish to every single serious poker player in christendom. Its a much worse thing to get paid too much to give crappy poker advice and make steemit look foolish and have pulpit where your benefactors are flagging anyone who presumes to express criticism or disagreement.
I'm not really into telling others how to vote, but IMO @armen's posts are far more deserving of a flag than this post. though i do not agree with the premise of this post, at least here I am free to express that disagreement in a respectful way.
I hope the whales will take a good hard think about flagging them.
Voting for perceived overvalue is absolutely valid, but I'd say writing or recruiting writers to do better content is even better, and by better content I don't necessarily mean more strategically accurate. It may be simply avoiding the most egregious errors, as you put it, and still addressing a mass audience of more casual players (of course having more of the accurate more-strategic content is great too, and we have @daut44 doing a good job with that).
There is no one other than @armen targeting the casual player as far as I know right now, so heavy flagging of his posts without there being anything better is essentially killing the category. It is your prerogative, but I would personally rather see them earn a moderate amount (at some extreme point I would flag too though) and serve to attract others looking to do the same thing (better).
Your voting power is being used to do so - as it is also being used by steemed on many of these sock accounts. This is from @armen's latest post:
steemed 1,483,805,015 B 9.61% 17,846,341,587,042 100% 2016-09-22T08:42:18
itsascam 540,444,093 B 3.50% 16,596,368,090,896 100% 2016-09-22T08:42:21
smooth 0 B 0.00% 31,353,015,240,496 100% 2016-09-22T08:42:21
steemroller 43,412,005 B 0.28% 1,950,949,980,987 100% 2016-09-22T08:42:24
smooth.witness 0 B 0.00% 6,032,823,564,732 100% 2016-09-22T08:42:24
dashpaymag 3,425,422 B 0.02% 159,678,290,532 100% 2016-09-22T08:42:27
donaldtrump 1,567,240 B 0.01% 73,348,600,117 100% 2016-09-22T08:42:30
lovelace 1,256,025 B 0.01% 58,915,785,446 100% 2016-09-22T08:42:33
This as an error and has been corrected. See above.
I find this a really poor argument. We're witnessing behavior which is basically a cartel. It's anti-competitive by nature. Unless you are implying that these practices need to be discontinued in favor of competition, it is a completely incoherent statement.
You unfortunately (for someone who has been here a while) do not understand how the Steem system operates. Voting for your own content is allowed. Voting for your friends' content is allowed. That does not constitute a cartel.
Better content will outcompete worse content because better content can still be voted by the author, and the authors' friends, but will also be voted by others who subjectively recognize its value, generating far higher rewards (due to non-linearity).
Bingo. It IS anti-competitive by nature. And if EVERY user were to operate this way, it would eat itself up. There would be nothing to compete over.
Gee, do you think there just might be something in the design to prevent that obvious failure mode? I do.
I agree. It's also a simple bug report and the directors are always aware of (and broadcasting) game changers. But ultimately people are people and there is a strategic need for KYC, on every account.
That's why we all need to only upvote content that WE like no matter how much SP we have. If we start voting for what we think others will like then it causes problems. I think that curation rewards in part tend to encourage this sort of thing.