How to Stop Down Vote Abuse - Upvoting Downvotes
So I wrote a post that made it to the top of Steemit. Then it got downvoted by trolls. That sucked and here's how to stop it.
My game face.
Downvoting is a necessary evil that a social media economy cannot function without. There must be a means to police behavior that is backed with a direct and meaningful penalty.
There's this guy named Plato who wrote a fun story called the Ring of Gyges. The ring made the wearer turn into Kevin Bacon and do naughty things. Social media is the Ring of Gyges, minus the Bacon but with the naughty. People are gonna hate cause they've got nothing better to do. Using your manners and asking them politely to stop trolling is like trying to put out a blowtorch by peeing on it. So you need a big stick with a few well placed nails to keep the trolls in line.
Or this guy. I'll bet he could keep the trolls in line using the tattoo on his left pec.
The problem with using downvotes to police trolls is that trolls are jerks and will use downvotes to police the police.
There's a reason you need a driver's license to operate a motor vehicle. For the same reason, trolls shouldn't get licenses to operate social media accounts. Unfortunately, unless we want to hand our freedom to a "government" and let them decide who gets to say what to who "for our safety" we cannot rely on any centralized authority to decide who gets to downvote who under what circumstance while wearing what color of underwear. So we're stuck. We need downvotes to keep things civil, but if everyone gets a license to down vote because we're decentralized, trolls can down vote nice people and be jerks for no other reason than that's what makes them feel good on Saturday mornings. What to do?
I think she/he is confused. Or maybe I'm projecting.
Lay it on me.
It's like this: if you want to downvote someone you'd better have a damn good reason for doing so. And because we're all decentralized, you don't get to be the US Government of your downvote and ram it down the throats of the world just because you're Big, Mean and have Bad Breath. You have to make a case and have your case ratified by fellow citizens. If the courts decide your case is just, the downvote stands. If not, you go back to your cave to grow some more back hair.
How do we give the decentralized citizenry the opportunity to ratify a downvote? It's easy (said the guy that types with two fingers): downvotes don't count unless they are accompanied by a comment explaining the downvote and that comment has been upvoted by someone that is not the down voter. See?
Mind... blown?
Downvotes don't count unless they are accompanied by a comment explaining the downvote and that comment has been upvoted by someone that is not the downvoter.
So simple, so direct and so effective. Yes, I know trolls have friends. Yes, I know trolls are probably smart enough to have more than one account and could upvote their downvote. But! Trolls don't have many friends and trolls are lazy. Plus it's pretty easy for the community to pick up on this behavior and police it. I am convinced that this mechanism would greatly, massively reduce the amount of downvote trolling and other bullying that is currently underway.
Edit - for extra points, the weight of the downvote could be correlated to the number of upvotes the downvote comment receives. 10 upvotes = 100%, 5 upvotes = 50% etc.
That's it. I'm spent. Thank you.
I'll probably never down vote anyone unless it's very harmful or something serious 😀
Yes, I've never downvoted either. Nice to know you can, keeps people in line. :)
That's true... but most people are abusing it 😂
You're cool...
Id downvote you as well!
If I could downvote this comment, I would, you sunofabitch!
Yeah, many accounts are abusing it... I got downvoted once from a whale because I had a referral code/discount code in my post (which I explicitly explained in the post), bringing my post rewards from ~$5 to $0.00 and decreasing my reputation as well. Good post!
Well, here is most of it back! Yea, I got downvoted to oblivion a few times, not fun...
Thank you so much! Yeah, the whales need to be mature and use their downvoting power to reduce serious violations and spam, not downvote anything that displeases them. I think you are an example of a great whale, as you bring lots of contribution to the Steemit community and help out all the little guys as well :) Keep up the great work (following you!)
I am in quite a dilemma right now.. I went ahead and decided that enough was enough with plagiarising posts, so I took the liberty to downvote/report/flag two posts that were legit copy/paste. Minutes later I find myself being downvoted on all my posts.. Which are not only original, but also very time consuming to write since I'm writing educational posts about artificial intelligence for the most part. Any idea how I can stop the person who got mad from ruining my account?
Sounds like a great idea!
as of the time of my commenting... no flags yet!
Lets hope it stays that way? please
I agree, good article up-voted. However, I wrote a blog on here explaining why we need a "down vote" button and not just a "flag" button. The flag should be used for stuff like spam, and plagiarized material and should be reviewed because the flags can censor images and content. The non existent "down vote button" could allow someone to be voted down without censoring the content. The problem is a "whale" could flag and censor a bunch of minnows just because they disagree philosophically on some issue. I explain this idea in my full article: https://steemit.com/steemit/@titusfrost/false-flagging-need-a-down-vote-button-stop-censorship
This exact scenario happened to me a little while back. It's very disheartening to write a reply to someone after they ask for it, then downvote/flag the content cause it doesn't "fit" their narrative.
Nice post! But what if someone said something controversial and there was a mob outrage (happens alot) and hundeds of people report you on simply because the disagree. I caught myself disliking because I disagreed on youtube so whats to stop others doing it here - in masses?
I've recently encountered a sociopath on Steemit who has only earned maybe 1% of his power, and bought the rest. He seems to have some kind of anti-social behavioral disorder and we got in a disagreement about precision of language, and unfortunately he managed to get under my skin. In the end, he down-voted, and buried, every single response removing my ability to have a say. My reputation is higher, but his capital is higher, he wins. Considering the majority of billionaires are verifiable sociopaths, when a network is controlled by money, then the network has a high probability of being controlled by sociopaths
This is interesting and kinda scary. I may have ran into one.
Well, I haven't seen a downvote yet. I guess I'll have to go looking so I can see the whole 'comment to approve the downvote' thing.
@johnsmith, great appreciation, like always.
I think than also may be a good idea, some button like "report", after you press it, the system will froze the payment for the revisation in the content... I´m no sure if this may be anothe solution, but I think that it may work.
Nice to post you again bro!
Thank you for your comment and your kind words! A reporting mechanism has been suggested as well but comes with some tough questions: To whom are we reporting? And how do we vest them with what level of authority to dole out what type of punishment? This would be a model similar to Reddit moderators, which can be great or terrible depending on the mod.
Have been having so much fun commenting and curating that I've not had time to post... Steemit does strange things!
You´re right! is great can follow you, your posts are simples but really completes.
I hope that some whale find this problem, they have to fix it asap.
Regards.
Yes, the following feature is fantastic! For example... I just followed you!
Yes, I saw it!!! thanks for that!!! I´m felling great for that!