Jerry, I daresay you've stumbled upon a can of worms that was only recently just opened. I noticed about a week ago that Mindhunter started getting flagged by a group of curators. transisto at least, and I think Bernie too. Scroll back in Mindhunter's feed and he posted about it, and you can check the comments of those posts for further info.
I will comment more thoroughly (time-permitting) once I have a chance to finish the other half of your article.
Thank you for this detective work, and your attitude when approaching it from the start to try to learn is top-notch.
Have a great day!
Here is some background from a recent post: https://steemit.com/steemabuse/@mindhunter/a-message-to-newflash-a-sock-puppet-account-of-transisto-stop-downvoting-my-posts-and-acting-like-a-sociopathic-socialist-whale#@mindhunter/re-transisto-re-mindhunter-re-transisto-re-mindhunter-a-message-to-newflash-a-sock-puppet-account-of-transisto-stop-downvoting-my-posts-and-acting-like-a-sociopathic-socialist-whale-20170815t071324046z
THANK YOU for the context of the existing discussion which I added into the original post! For better or worse I enter into this with near complete ignorance of what has already happened!
Thank you for finding the post for us!
I wonder if this is something CommentWealth could help fight? The gears are starting to turn...
Jason I noticed the same which is why the comments are being made now instead of the posts because posts are easier to flag than the comments. At the same time, if the posts are being flagged, does the author have some responsibility to consider why the flags are coming and adjust contributions accordingly?
I think it depends on how much the author in question cares about the social norms of Steemit. They are the main "thing" at odds with maximizing one's investment.
The fact remains that the game-theoretically best way to make money on Steem (for minimal effort, non-authors) remains upvoting your own hidden comments with high stake. Unless something changes in the code, or all abuse spontaneously stops, this is a situation we're going to have to live with. Given the anarchist leanings around here, it may be that these authors are simply (selfishly) making the correct game theory decisions for operating on the platform, as it currently stands.
Interestingly, I noticed some of the accounts in question upvoted your post, like Snowflake.
So, if the formula for authors is Reward = Quality * Reach, and investors want to maximize their profits by placing their votes in ways that increases the value of their investment, but don't have or want to spend the time searching for quality content, then in a nutshell the way to find a win - win solution is to marry the needs of these two groups.
Is that a fair statement?
That sounds very reasonable to me. It could be tough to do.
Traders would hopefully stick to liquid Steem, and therefore never vote. Their stake is simply ignored for rewards-pool calculations.
Investors (people with Steem Power, not liquid Steem) in Steem hopefully have some belief in the fundamentals of the platform.
I think the idea of powering down was partially to help separate "traders" from real investors in the platform. Most real investors in the platform would be either content creators or big users of social media.
The problem I think we've seen is that the amount of gains that can be made voting for yourself, or vote-trading, are large enough to tempt traders (or anyone willing to hold 13 weeks) into maximizing this value. Once other people start doing it, the rest of us are forced to do so or fall further and further behind.
I think people will always act in their own best interests on average, so we need a way to encourage everyone's best interests to align with the group.
Perhaps we can figure out a way to rework curation to be based more on rewards given, than rewards given after you give rewards. Somehow, curation has to be more valuable.
It seems more curation benefits could encourage more readership too, at least a scan.
I keep seeing Steemit needs to do this or that, but no one is able to implement this or that except those at the very top, who don't seem to be interested enough to do this or that. So in light of the issues and lack of response to the issues, how can users marry the two? Could the arrangement @snowflake had with @mindhunter have been seen in a positive light if it somehow benefitted the platform? Not saying how, just asking for clarity to possibly come up with how.
Steemit is overall pretty anarchistic, so they don't like "fixing" stuff with rules. That includes the community as well as the company, from what I can tell.
I think if the situation could be seen as a positive for Steem's overall value long-term, it could be seen as beneficial or at least neutral. Hypothetically speaking.
Interesting, when I think of a fix I was assuming more in functionality than rules. I guess rules are used in code to create functionality though.
I'm not entirely clear on which is the second group. Authors? Curators?
Investors actually. In this case @snowflake is the investor, who did't have time to spend looking for good content to vote on, but wanted to vote and increase his investment. (from my understanding of his comment above)
Many investors are also authors/curators, but some don't want to or can't participate much personally, I guess.
I think authors and curators are aligned in the way they can achieve rewards, but they are not necessarily aligned with investors. As @lexiconical mentioned traders would be included with investors, which I hadn't thought of, but investors who are casual users were more what I was thinking.
So, since the "needs" of these two groups seem to be different, I was questioning how to create a more symbiotic way. Don't know if that really cleared anything up.
Ah, you had mentioned investors, and I understood them to be one group. I did not understand that creators/curators was the other group.
Thanks for clarifying!
Edit: well, now that I understand, I should make an effort to answer =p sorta obligated lol
The white paper intends that investors, those with substantial holdings of SP, are expected to curate, and thus the curation reward is intended to be motivation for that purpose. @andybets recently posted, just as @lexiconical above has, that curation rewards need to be larger.
I argued against it, but perhaps I am better understanding now why that might help.
Clearly, to date, curation rewards have proved insufficient for those with substantial SP to preclude their self-votes, and other rewards mining schema.
Perhaps @andybets and @lexiconical are right. I still reckon that weighting VP by SP is the root cause of the issue, as it delivers more 'freedom of speech' to those with more money, just like the Citizens United vs. FEC decision did - and CU was reckoned the end of free speech in America by some.
I feel that those people interested in dialogue on the platform can be rewarded without encouraging gaming the system by those more interested in money better by equal vote weight, or better yet, by weighting VP with reputation.
This removes most of the incentives to use SP to mine the rewards pool for profits, which in turn degrades the quality of the content and discourse on Steemit. Some have argued that this would remove the incentive to hold SP (just Steem but locked up for 13 weeks), and I am not sure they are wrong.
However, a strong social media platform that rewards it's users in Steem is a GREAT incentive to buy and HODL Steem, as the potential capital gains from such a platform being successful are practially incalculable.
Were Steem to reach $4k, equal to BTC, then at the recent price point of $1 for Steem as an entry point, investors would see 400,000% capital gains (Re-Edit: I suck at math). That is far more than can ever be attained by self-votes or scams, and frankly, Steem is a better crypto, with orders of magnitude better transactions/second, no transaction fees, and no mining and wasting of electricity, amongst other benefits over BTC.
IBM, GM, and other blue chips will never grow and offer investors gains like that. Risk is inherent in investment, even in blue chips. It did not stop the various cryptos from gaining currency (super pun intended).
Thanks for the reply, I didn't understand that investors were supposed to be curators. I think I'm allergic to white paper reading, besides, who reads the directions before they have to? lol
Curious, do you have an opinion as to whether this would be viewed differently if @mindhunter were consistently putting out quality, meaty content?
Were the comments that had been upvoted substantial, no one would ever have found out he was buying the votes.
That would have precluded anyone viewing the issue at all, so yes, very much different.
@mindhunter has produced good content, and I was a follower of his - until @transisto caused this whole kerfluffle to fall into the light. @jerrybanfield has substantially contributed more information, and his personal comparison is quite illuminating.
The white paper has been known to cause those trying to read it to begin yearning for death about half way through (srsly, according to @everittdmickey), although I didn't find it hard to understand. I did just skip the math (it took me three tries and two confirmations to calculate the capital gains percentage I included above in my head. I am not the strongest mathematician you will encounter in your life), but, for the most part it is pretty easy to understand, and very informative.
I have no doubt you will profit thereby.