100 DAYS OF STEEM : Day 33 - Tackling Abuse on Steem - Part I - What is Abuse?
There has been an increasing amount of discussion recently about how ‘abuse’ should be tackled on Steem.
It is an issue that we are of well aware of, and keen to resolve.
But, it an issue of much complexity, significant controversy, and less than universal consensus.
There are two main parts to the problem, what is abuse and how should it be dealt with.
What is Abuse?
More or less since Steem began there has been considerable difference of opinion as to what is acceptable and what is not acceptable behavior on the blockchain.
The often cited mantra ‘code is law’ suggests that if some action is permitted by the coding of the blockchain then it should be deemed acceptable.
For example, the code of the blockchain does not prevent anyone from posting 10 times a day, and self-voting on those ten posts.
But does the ‘community’ consider that acceptable?
If posting and self-voting 10 times a day is not considered acceptable, then is doing so five times a day okay? Or three times?
If the Steem code cannot determine what is or isn’t acceptable, then how can what is or what isn’t considered abuse be decided.
Beyond code we must turn to community.
But how can the Community decide on definitions of abuse?
By discussion to reach consensus? What mechanism should we use for that?
Or by voting? Should that be one account, one vote? Or should it be stake-weighted? He or she with the biggest Steem Power makes the rules? Will everyone, or indeed anyone, be happy with that?
To give the discussion more focus we can bring it to our more particular circumstances of where we are now.
Here are some of the categories of behavior put forward as abuse that needs to be ‘dealt with’...
trolling comments by Hive supporters on Steem posts (but what is trolling and what is expressing a different opinion)
posting of (excessive) ‘milking’ posts or comments by Hive supporters on Steem (but where does a ‘proper post’ end and a ‘shit post’ begin, and what is excessive?)
excessive posting and self-voting (but what is excessive - five times a day, ten times a day?)
comment farming
using bid-bots to boost posts and potentially earn excessive rewards
Who should make the determination on which of these are abuse and which are not?
And if a rule-set for each of these can be decided how do we ensure those rules are applied equally to all users - particularly between those that have remained just on Steem, those that have moved to Hive and those that are happy to use both chains?
Who will be the judge and jury?
There have been suggestions that it should be the witnesses.
But they were not ‘elected’ for this purpose, although an argument can be put forward that they are the ‘protectors of the blockchain’ and therefore it is within their remit to deal with abuse.
For this approach to have full credence and acceptability it might be useful for all witnesses to make public statements on what they do and don’t consider to be abuse so the community knows the views of all the witnesses they might vote for.
If the witnesses were to take on this role which witnesses should be included? The top 20, the top 50, the top 100… or all active witnesses? Who would decide on that?
If it is not to be witnesses who take on this role of determining what is abuse would an alternative be some sort of ‘Community Council’? But we are then back to the issues of how would that Council be selected or elected?
For both options of witnesses or community council how is the risk of conflict of interest avoided?
Our Proposed Solution
Unless anyone has any other suggestions, there would appear to be only one other option - Steemit, Inc.
Traditionally, Steemit, Inc. has stayed out of these sort of debates as it was considered a community issue.
Stake would sort it out.
That appears unlikely to be the solution that the community now desires.
Therefore, in the spirit of the 100 Days of Steem project, we are putting forward a solution.
We, Steemit, Inc., can take on the role of judge of abuse cases - in conjunction with you the community as the jury.
Through the use of a Community Abuse Reporting account, cases can be presented and discussed through posts and comments to determine if some form of sanction should be applied to the offending account.
This is far from perfect, and we see it only as temporary until some more consensual solution can be designed and implemented
So our question to the community is whether Steemit, Inc. acting in this way, in consultation with the community, to determine cases of abuse would be acceptable?
Please let us know your views in the comments below.
How Should Abuse be Dealt With?
This is possibly the simpler of the two parts of the abuse issue.
We see three possible options for this but will leave discussion for Part II of this post to avoid the comments becoming too crowded and confused.
First off we are keen to see a substantial debate on ‘What is Abuse’ and our solution proposed above.
We hope you will join in.
Thank you,
The Steemit Team
Notes from the Community...
Play Happy with WhereIN
One of this month’s Community Curators @wherein are using their 500K SP curation account to help run a couple of fun marketing initiatives to encourage newcomers and existing users alike - the WhereIN Checkin Challenge and the WhereIN Nova Project...
Build the Earth on Steem
@cmp2020 has started the Build the Earth Community on Steem for anyone interested in the Minecraft Build the Earth project begun by Minecraft YouTuber Pippen...
As a first contribution to this community @cmp2020 has built his local Westminster Presbyterian Church in Minecraft...
Seems like it plays into the idea of centralized.
And if it is stakebased.. What exactly is abuse (you asked it, but if you are going to judge it, you better define it.)
Yeah, I think you're right, @whatsup.
One thing often overlooked with regard to the "code is law" perspective is that downvoting is also part of the code. People seem to be too lazy to want to take part in voicing their opinion or acting on it. If you (generally speaking) think something is wrong, then you have some means of addressing it. Either though downvote or other types of expression. Asking for the "benevolent ruler" to do it for you speaks of laziness and cowardice.
Centralization is good, right?
Certainly does.
As you stated, fighting abuse on Steem is a complex topic. I think it is nearly impossible to let the code of the blockchain alone protect us from abuse. Limiting the number of posts per account will hit very active users and community bots as well. For example, a very active curator who comments on 50 posts a day should not be limited. Limiting only the number of possible root posts per day would not prevent abusers from creating and self-voting comments instead.
One automatic solution that could help for extreme cases of milking would be to add kind of a
max_total_pending_payoutconstant, which defines a maximum total pending payout amount for all active posts per account, but it would not be easy to implement something like this and it might have a slightly negative effect on the nodes performance.For now I support that Steemit Inc. takes on the role of judge of abuse cases. If something goes wrong, the community can contact the witnesses or leave a comment in your posts to publicly discuss the issue.
For the future I would prefer a solution that enables witnesses to vote on abuse cases. I will have further thoughts on the subject and discuss possible solutions in a future post.
Instead of limiting the number of posts one could introduce 'diminishing returns' which means one still could write as many posts as one wishes, but starting from a certain number of posts upvotes on every further posts would have a weaker effect than upvotes on previous posts. That means a very active author would earn less per post with an increasing number of posts (this effect could for example start after his second post per day) but still could earn anything.
Similarly one could try to prevent the effectivity of upvoting the same users again and again (circle voting). How about if after each vote on a specific account (including one's own account) each further vote on the same account would lead to significantly less curation reward for the voter and less profit for the upvoted account? Thus, when upvoting an account which I had already upvoted before, my voting power would be smaller than in case I upvote an account which I didn't upvote before.
If I upvote for example my wife, my daughter or my cat more than twice per day every following upvote for the same account would get weaker an weaker (like voting power is exhausting anyway already, just faster).
This would work, but it would come with a side effect. If I would create a few shit posts before posting a real masterpiece of a post, the good post might receive less rewards than the bad ones :)
As we discussed many times over the years, in my eyes this would be the ultimately perfect solution. Using something similar to the calculated CSI on SteemWorld as a factor, so that the voted
rshareswould be multiplied by it prior to subtracting them from the pool and adding them to the active votes.This would not eliminate all cases of abuse (for example, if someone owns many accounts with much SP and votes each day with a different one), but it would work very well for most common cases.
Then just publish the "shit posts" after the masterpiece? ;-) (Of course also the ability to receive full votes for posts would recover again after some time.)
Or maybe not post any "shit posts" at all? Seriously, if you yourself think a post is a shit post, then, it is a shit post...
You won't find any "shit post" from me (but sometimes kinds of humorous meant replies).
"Using something similar to the calculated CSI on SteemWorld as a factor, so that the voted rshares would be multiplied by it prior to subtracting them from the pool and adding them to the active votes."
Sorry but I think that it's not a good idea to use CSI on SteemWorld as in my opinion CSI isn't a reliable factor.
If I see that an account with 100% self-voting (no vote to anybody else just vote for the own account) has an CSI from 0.0 but other accounts has negative CSI, f.e. my account in the moment, than Steemworld consider it as better to vote 100% only your own account instead of voting for others.
How this can be a reliable factor ?
I think as long as you can claim for every approximately 5000 Steempower one account a week I don't think that this solution will work.
If a whale has 500.000 Steempower he can just claim approximately 100 new accounts at once and than post in every account only one post every week.
So in this case he could always get full rewards for selfvoting.
He wouldn't be able to handle all these accounts in a way that every of them could create more or less reasonable comments/posts. However, pure automated comments, created for farming puposes only, could easily be detected and flagged by members of an implemented anti abuse committee, which I suggested, as well.
OK I wrote about 100 acconts.
You are right this is really hard to handle.
But if you allow one vote in full strengh every day it would be also ok to use only 10 accounts.
Every day one post in every of the 10 accounts and the other 9 vote this post.
I think it's not much difference in time to post 10 times a day in one account or to post in 10 accounts only once a day, isn't it ?
It's rather easy to spot (even by automated algorithms) if these ten accounts were only interested in upvoting each other instead of upvoting other users as well ...
For example also Voting CSI in SteemWorld would be very low.
haha, so I am the worsest guy at all cause my Voting CSI is negativ (-0,6)
Indeed, just another evidence of how well these kinds of algorithms are working. ;-)
Haha - I even get worse than I was before, now -1,1 :-)
Such I bad boy I am.
Completely useless. Alts can be used to circumvent that and frequently are by abusers.
Nothing wrong with plain old PoB. But it takes an active anti-abuse community to do curb abuse. Not even Steemit, Inc with its mightly voting power can curb anything if there is no anti-abuse community to constantly bring abuse to its attention.
I'm on Hive but I want Steem to succeed also. In fact, forks are good in the world of DPoS because that's how things decentralise . Each project takes a different direction and attracts different people.
NOT completely useless!
I am pretty sure that most current abusers wouldn't take the effort to create that many alt accounts which are necessary to cirumvent this hurdle.
In addition it would be very easy to spot these accounts it they weren't active themselves and only received upvotes from one single abuser account (or circle upvote each other).
Concerning the committee, that's my idea since a long time.
It would only take creating one alt to double the number of daily posts one can make from ten to twenty.
That can easily be circumvented, too. Add a bit of randomization in the process and the detection becomes much harder. Add a few legit posts in the mix to attract votes from others.
Nothing wrong with a committee.
I also suggested to reduce the number of fully rewarded posts per day. In the early STEEM days this number was actually four per day.
The combination of these two suggestions would be rather effective in my opinion.
I disagree. That's all rather effortful and most abusers wouldn't do that. In the past it was very easy to spot the majority of abusers just by checking their 'Voting CSI' in SteemWorld.
For the remaining rest the 'committee' could be responsible.
Sure it can be tried. Time will tell if it works.
Another interesting related idea is a tax on too many rshares spent on the same accounts within a time period. That would force users to either create a lot of alts, which would cost them money in the form of account creation, or actually motivate them to look for more users to curate, which would be an excellent thing for user retention.
@steemitblog
I think that their is nothing like abuse on steem. We don't need to talk over it.
The post and comments can be different from user to user. How can we decide this is abuse. Every user can have different thoughts. They can write/read anything they like. The one thing can be right for one user but same thing can be wrong for other user. Their is no way.
For post payout, Milking : For one user it may 1$, for other 10$, for third 50$, for fifth 500$, for sixth 5000$, can be anything or me it is XXXXXXXXX $. That's not the criteria to decide the abuse. They have invested so much money here to work and support others. That's not abuse.
I don't find anyone who is abusing the system till date (from 2 and half years). So, I never downvote anyone. Their may conflict of interest/thoughts like @themarkymark and me always have different thoughts, we didn't agree on any single point. But i many times agree with @steemchiller thoughts. For abuse point i didn't agree with statement that, their is abuse on steem. Here is the power of feedom. Do whatever you like:
ALL IS WELL.
MY APPEAL TO ALL STEEMIANS : PLEASE DON'T SPREAD NEGATIVITY ON STEEM PLATFORM, MOST OF THE NEGATIVE PEOPLES ALREADY GONE TO HIVE. LET THEM SPREAD NEGATIVITY AT HIVE, NOT HERE. WE ARE STEEM WITH POSITIVE PEOPLE WITH UNITY.
Sorry @mehta, when I see that it looks like abuse for me do not you think so:
Already in the past all kinds of farming (for example the self-votes executed by @haejin / @ranchorelaxo), circle voting, use of bid bots ... prevented me from investing more money into STEEM!
STEEM was always described as a community blockchain where quality content gets rewarded. Such a social media site with really great posts on trendig should attract more and more investors. However, if these potential investors get aware of the fact that STEEM is only a place for people who try to get as rich as possible as fast as possible, without to care at all about STEEM price, reputation of the platform and future development, they will look for other opportunities and invest their money.
For example when using bid bots there is never a chance that posts are selected according to their quality but only according to the money anybody is ready to pay.
If a user like @haejin would upvote many small accounts instead of upvoting himself only, he could contribute enormously to the user retention rate of the platfom. And as we all know, the value of a (social) network is measured among others by the number of its users. That means @haejin would increase the value of his own investment. But he (like many others) is completely focused on his short term profit.
Very turely said but it doesn't means this is a abuse. This require a different kind of thinking. If we grow all people together, I will grow automatically. This things has to be understand by all. But i am sorry to say that most of the user not doing so. It is not only @haejin. But again it is not an abuse.
Can You provide your reply on my comment no 1 to 9 on above? This clear me how you think an abuse.
We already talked on downvoting too much, so i didn't favor free downvoting OR say different voting power. What you say about system providing abuse facilities for top 20 witness earning others very less?
This is not entirely true, because we all share one reward pool, @mehta. If one user would reward himself so much that there are no more rewards for other people in the pool, do you think it would be a fair practise?
On top of that, there are users who create many posts automatically with a bot, upvote them and sell the weekly rewards to buy Hive tokens. This does not benefit Steem at all. It puts pressure on the price and shows to external investors that we are not able to create a fairly rewarding environment.
The rewards for all Steemians (also yours) will increase, if we get rid of those pool abusers.
Right, and for sure we won't grow if too many new users, who barely earn anything, at the same time are getting discouraged by observing this shameless kind of self-enrichment.
Brother, how you doing?
Sorry for using this off-topic comment to contact you.
I want to make a suggestion for steemworld: could you include in the visualization of rewards to come, the payments that we will get for having been added as beneficiaries in some publication of another user?
Only that. Thanks for your attention.
Thanks for your idea! It is currently not possible to retrieve those rewards directly from the blockchain via regular RPC nodes, but they should be displayed in the Coming Rewards indeed (maybe in an extra tab).
I'm currently very busy with other things, therefore it may take a while, but I will put this on my list ;)
I think that you don't understand my point. This is not an abuse. It looks like abuse to you but not me. They have the power to upvote and they use it and this permission is given by steem blockchain code. How this can be a abuse. That is not abuse to me.
Most of the people uses power they have. Why we have given power to them? Take power from them. The power is given by system, if system is wrong then modify/change the system.
Are you want to give power in reverse order? Those have more SP having less vote value and those have Less SP get more power. Or any new concept.
We invite you to read [The Steem White paper, page .14 for referance].
Abuse is defined by the opinions of stakeholders. You may consider something as
not an abusebut other people might think otherwise. It is a democratic-like system that is based on stake. If the majority of the stake considers that doing X should be considered as abuse, then no one can do anything about it since this is also code. The only way to influence such a decision is by buying more stake and invest to influence the consensus.The code of the blockchain also allows them to downvote. It does not matter if you do not consider X as abuse, such a definition can only be defined by a decision that will be based on consensus.
Thanks @symbionts for information.
Thanks for giving your thoughts on this matter.
That being said, there absolutely is abuse on the chain. It is just how you look at it and IF you want to see it.
I never see an abuse. If i see abuse then whole things going on steem is abuse including all as i mention in my first comment.
Interesting idea, but many users own multiple accounts which mutually upvote each other ...
SteemIt was down for 20+ hours over a simple bug. Yeah I am going to say SteemIt wont add shit. Lol
What is with the idea to take out the worth from selfvoting ?
If a vote was only a worth if you vote somebody else post or command - would this be a solution ?
Please see my reply here.
OK it's a good reason.
But: Correct me if I am wrong ... if users have multiple accounts they claimed this accounts with ressource credits from the main account. So in the end their will be one "mother-account" and as the blockchain save all I think you can also sort this out.
So what about the possibility to group the "mother-account" and all "child-accounts" together and take away worth from voting between all this accounts ?
There are ways to create accounts completely anonymously and I think in future there will be more account creation services, which offer to directly create an account via BTC or LTC payment for a small fee.
In this case the service's account would be the 'mother-account', so it's not really possible to solve it by watching the connection between creator and created account.
And of course, the account 'steem' is the 'mother-account' of all via Steemit created ones. Even there it would be possible to create multiple accounts.
"And of course, the account 'steem' is the 'mother-account' of all via Steemit created ones. Even there it would be possible to create multiple accounts."
I thought that you are allowed to open only one account the "free way" over steemit ... but probably they are not really able to check this.
I think allowing or supporting Steemit to be the judge is a big mistake. You know that they have proven themselves to be incapable of impartiality. You experienced that first-hand. For you to support such a thing is irresponsible in my opinion.
They have also shown blatant disregard for the will of the community, unless you would allow them to redefine who the community actually is. In that case, they would again be unfit to be judge.
This is a big mistake.
Dear @steemchiller
We're clearly on the same page here. STEEM won't survive if STINC wouldn't get involved. That's my strong belief.
Yours,
Piotr
I agree it will be impossible to design a code that will make it abuse-impossible. Humans are designed to find loopholes in the system. This problem just needs common sense.
Steemit would also get my support if decides they are going to take up this role and task. I am just afraid this will only give fuel to the haters and could give Steemit a bad name. A delegation or a community account, just like the Steemcurator02-07 would solve the problem without Steemit being put in the spotlight.
Such account, or delegation is something we know for years and is completely accepted by the community. It worked in the past. The ones running those accounts left, so its time for new community members to step up and continue.
If you have time, I made a comment on this topic in here, and would love your thoughts on that.
KR Ciska
Hi all, I actually was waiting for this post for a long time and it is good to have a chance to read what people think and to share my own opinion. Abuse was always existing on Steem blockchain and also it is existing in HIve now too. The same problem you see everywhere where it is possible to individuals to get benefits and profit there where they can. It is simply very human feature. So long we do not have a power and opportunity we are fair and stick to the rules but once we get the chance there is so much temptation and it is sometimes difficult to resist. That is also we see in the real world around us.
I can give you an example, working in hospital we have seen when Corona chaos started that patients and their visitors started to steal disinfectants and gloves that normally kept in patients rooms and from the storage the masks were stolen in packages where you can have access only with swipe card, unfortunately there is no individual ID coded. People express their support and clap the hands but the same time one of two cases of such behavior spoil the whole mood of hospital employees.
Abuse on Steem/Steemit should be fought no matter if some people do not like it, if we all want this blockchain exist and prosper then there should be some rules if common sense does not work.
I hear that some people say that those with big SP who powering down and moved to Hive, one day completely disappear, I do not think they will because they like to spoil around here and they will definitely stay for milking and abusing Steem.
Going back to real world example there is Law and Police who keep an eye on community abusers, can you imagine a safe environment without them, me not.
I think the same should happen on Steemit, if we try to set up a group of people who should make a decision if to take Witnesses but once again we do not know how busy they are and how engaged they are too. Many not active as they have busy real life and probably no mood to be involved in. But if yes, then in my opinion it should be at least 50 active Witnesses.
I am pro Steemit, Inc., to take on the role of judge of abuse cases - in conjunction with the community active representatives.
Also absolutely agree with eh opinion of @steemchiller.
Thank you or this opportunity of discussion...
I'm in agreement with @stef1 in the sense that there have to be some controls in place to limit certain behaviors.
In the idealized view of the world many self-professed "freedomists" like to espouse people behave appropriately, but the reality of our world is that places without rules turn into brawling mobs. I mean that figuratively, but base it on 20+ years experience in creating on "User-Generated Content Sites with Rewards."
As a bit of a reality check, Steem is only "revolutionary" in the sense that it's on the blockchain... this kind of venue started with a place called "Epinions" in 1999 (It has a Wikipedia entry, look it up) and the path since then is littered with the failures of communities who subscribed to the idea that self-policing would eliminate/limit abuse.
No. No it doesn't. Because many humans are greedy, exploitative, short-sighted and self-serving. And the BIGGEST problem? That group is inevitably drawn to venues that have no/few rules and descend on them like a swarm of locusts, ruining everything the "law abiding" members enjoy.
And there's an interesting "social commentary" to be found there: Remarkably many people who are opposed to rules also have the (even if subconscious) intent to dabble in sketchy activities. Hence truly "free" places like Slab City, California end up not monuments to freedom, but sad congregations of criminals, mentally ill and lawless squatters.
Hi Stef Nice to see you joined the discussion!
What do you think about Steemit selecting 5 community Judges who will decide if its abuse or not? A new Steemcleaners2.0?
I think you would make an awesome judge if you have the time to do it. And I feel you when you say it will not be over when their powerdown is finished. Hoping abuse will end then is utopia. It will be a constant thing and dedicated people who are willing to go against the abusers.
I hope the solution will be put in effect asap. No need for more drama > Full speed forward! #STEEM!
In my opinion 5 is not enough although it is easy to come to some decision, the next question who will choose who will be a judge. They should be appointed and please do not let the people vote, as that reminds me British Referendum we have seen how easy to trick out people, publically blame EU for everything and influence people's opinion that brought negative impact to the whole economy and plunge of GBP from being 1 GBP=3Euro now almost GBP=1Euro.
Steemcleaner system definitely should be there, I had couple of times cases when my posts with content and my paintings were cloned and presented by one of the user. I did not know who should I refer too as there is no Steemcleaners anymore. Such abuses also will be happening more often if there is no regulations.
Yeah, I picked 5 Judges because it's uneven and then we can act quickly. I don't like to wait or need 20 people to find consensus. I feel that the ones who give the SP to deal with the abuse can pick the 5. It is the same as a steemcurator account, so you just need to apply.
Definitely plagiarism, extreme milking and inhumane messages should be handled first. People with more than 1 brain cell can see the difference between normal usage and abuse.
Therefore I am open to coordinate the abuse problem and manage a discord or/account.
Thank you!!
I used to help out in the different community driven anti-abuse groups. Things were discussed thoroughly and fairly in my opinion, seldomly communicated properly. To be part of a community driven effort has been onbe of the greatest experiences here. I think it has been interesting to see people filling the gabs that a completely anarchist system left.
Having a centralised power is something completely different and less interesting. Right now it seems to be directed against people speaking against the same system which I like even less. But I guess something has to be done.
(I am not sure I will use Steem much more. I am powering down and my posts get no comments. The same posts on Hive has a lot of activity, so... )
I can imagine what you mean, it was with me when I posted in Hive I have no comments at all and all my friends were on Steem. People will stay there where they have support and it does not mean just financial but with comments and nice words, exchanging opinions and ideas.
I think people will settle on one of the platforms, create their circles of friends and be happy. I hope that both of them will leave the others in peace and let people choose what they want and where they go.
Sure, I have people in both camps, but the other campers still comment on Hive. Not sure why?
But apart from that how do you think about the other things I wrote? I left all centralised networks seven years ago and my main network is a non-commercial federated network (which means a free network run by tech hippies). I always saw Steem as a flawed experiment, but at least an interesting one. Posts like this one goes very much against my conviction. I admit that it depends on how the community is involved, but the sheer fact that none of that is mentioned in even sketchy details makes me very sceptical. I have been posting quality art on this network for more than three years and I feel pretty much fucked over.
I think on such blockchains it is easy to have anarchy and this is what they are popular, people feel free, do what they want and happy, but Steem the same like Hive is different from other blockchains using the system we get rewards and that is what makes the whole thing happen like multiple accounts, unlimited selfupvotes, milking Steem or Hive. But it is not unlimited Steem and Hive, people say let them do what they do because they have invested but on one stage when there is no reward pool people may loose the interest to be here. I think that is behind of all the thought to have at least some control and not to let abuse the system.
There surely should be some mechanism of keeping an eye how people behave and I agree abuse cases need to be discuss in a community and the decision should be made what to do all together. It is something new for Steemit and I believe this is a kind of brainstorming to see what people think to let them express and to make a decision what to do. The majority of simple users anyway have no idea what is happening they are here to posts, comment and be rewarded, especially the people from developing countries, I believe for such users there will be not much change at all.
The problem with private company justice is to be seen on a network like Facebook. That is why I don't like this post and what it suggests. That things look normal does not mean that they are. Some sort of democracy should have been built into this so also people from poor countries who take out more Steem than others should have a voice. Good quality content should award you some kind of reputation that counted for something in this democracy while abuse like identity theft and plagiarism should count against your reputation harshly.
Just letting some new Zuckerberg clone sovereign take over is not a good idea.
So let me get this straight. The community fractured in part because of a dislike for downvotes and a difference of opinion on how activity is rewarded. Many of the people now commenting here were anti-downvote while there was an active anti-abuse community on steem. Now that the anti-abuse community is gone, your idea is to centralize the anti-abuse efforts? So the promise of removing downvotes made to the Korean community has now been abandoned, and instead the call is to abandon community governance, and place the decision in the hands of just a few voters. What could possibly go wrong?
Dear @steemitblog
Source of the problem for most abuses which are happening on Steemit is the fact, that having opportunity to upvote / claim rewards is a RIGHT for everyone who sign up.
It should be a privillage.
Rights cannot be limited without huge back-clash. Privillages can be cancelled.
What I mean is quite simple:
To make process faster, everyone without any sort of history of previous reported abuse would be approved instantly. However if being reported and manually verified - such a user can lose his privillages to enjoy curation rewards.
In current form, cheasing after abusers will be never-ending struggle.
Downvoting is not good long term solution. Abusers most of the time will end up being more patient and persistant than those flagging them and seeking "justice".
Those are my 2 cents
Piotr
Those, who want to leave steemit, will leave steemit after 13 weeks power down. Unnecessary centralised intervention will make steem non decentralised. A quick power down can solve all problems. In Schelling point of game theory, avoiding collision becomes primary decentralized objective. A war cry will make the situation worse.
Steemit is an incorporated entity owned by Justin Sun. Has promoted decentralization in the past, but otherwise has nothing to do with it
Steem used to be a decentralized blockchain. After the successful 51% attack and evacuation of previous developers and witnesses, consensus is now controlled completely by a single actor - Justin Sun via the dev365 account. That's not speculation, anyone looking at the blockchain can see it
Essentially, steem is a social network with a token reward. That can still be a successful system, but it already has nothing to do with decentralization
I think the downvoting system is not bad, I would stick with it. Not over-complicate things so new users will not be too confused I would say.
hi @ritxi
Downvoting system has been proved not to work well - even at times when we had many large accounts trying to fight abuse.
Right now there is very few "defenders" with some solid SP left. At the same time many of those who used to protect us - are not milking steem and abusing it to the limits.
Downvoting system is not going to stop them now. We're outnumbered.
I agree with you
But you know, some abusers will be out in 13 weeks, does it really make sense to mobilize for next couple weeks? Because of a few Steem milked? It might, but it is just a point of view.
Dear @ritxi
Finally I managed to catch up with old comments.
Thanks for being always so reponsive. Have a great sunday ahead,
Yours, Piotr
Tell me you don't mean it. I don't think it is a good decision to centralize curation in the hands of a few people. That will greatly undermine the essence of holding Steem Power. What's the essence of holding SP when you can't vote with it and earn some rewards from the reward pool?
And I think that curation rewards have nothing to do with fighting abuse. Instead, we could code the acceptable number of daily posts into the blockchain. Then, downvotes are needed to check ourselves, provided it is not used maliciously and there is a central authority to remedy any form of victimization.
Also, I think that @Steemitblog and Steemit Inc should empower an account to hunt for abusers and flag them appropriately. Cheers!
Hi @gandhibaba
What I mean is that every user should have a chance to apply to become part of "curation program" and as a default every user would be accepted.
However it would be a privillage. Not a right, which everyone would have (the way it is now).
It's easy to remove such a provillage from abusers, comparing to removing someones right to carry on with abuse.
I agree. Perhaps you didn't fully understand my idea. Majority SP holders would still have an opportunity to upvote others. As long as they are part of curation program. If they would be reported as abusers and verified by central authority to indeed be abusing this platform - then this privillage would be removed.
Curation rewards are the way people are milking steem and hive. And if both chains will not find way to do something about it - then both chains will face extreme challenges in the future.
Currently it seem that STINC is VERY against downvoting.
Yours, Piotr
Few more words @steemitblog
I fully agree, that remaining of the community cannot stop abuse without STINC being involved one way or another.
If we would let things continue, then we will all sink with this ship. In the name of great ideas.
There is this saying, about LESSER EVIL. And many people out here will be against this proposal, however I strongly believe that Steem blockchain cannot survive without central power stepping in.
Yours, Piotr
I quite agree with the suggestions you raised here buddy. They are some righteous suggestions.
I also do believe that having a Community Abuse Reporting account may help too but the selection process should be a crucial part to be looked into, so that the solution will not bring about more problems.
Cheers buddy
Actually this is true STINC must be involve in this issue because without them it is difficult to handle this issue.
You got a good point here @crypto.piotr, I agree that if someone could be responsible to solve it, it should be STINC.
Voting based on Steem accumulation is not democracy. The HF21 gave us the negative vote to express ourselves as users, but it is not used correctly. In this situation I trust more the criteria of a company that looks for the good of the whole business, than in a whale that only looks at theirs. But with open communication channels with Witness and communities. I am an entrepreneur and I know that the decisions of the company are not always well received, but they are made for the good of all. I support the idea provisionally. In 2-3 months HIVE fans will finish their power down and we will face a new stage.
Correct, as a business you can't please everyone and sometimes tough decisions need to be made. I would also support Steemits judgment, although I feel there is a better solution that would not feed the haters with more bullets.
Abuse is a constant threat, and we only need some dedicated people with common sense and an account with enough SP to fight it. Thanks for joining the discussion
Totally agree!
I can´t wait to see that.
I think it should never be given power to the individual. Like the past.
The reason I like this Steemit curator system is that Steemit.inc manages the curator account, not delegates to STEEM Power.
If Steemit.inc delegates STEEM Power to someone to empower like before, it is very likely that they will abuse it. Eventually, it works for profit.
If a Downvote is required, the account must be managed by Steemit.inc the same as Curator account.
I feel you, and the ideal scenario is probably that they own the account so there is a minimum risk of abuse.
We can´t expect Stinc to go after every type of abuse, I hope they are going to use the precious time to work on improvements.
Therefore a small team of the community should be given the role and keys to an account. We can tackle the abusers ourselves, we only need the tools (read SP)
The small abusing that occurs in some communities can respond to the community as you say.
If steemi.inc allows downvoting to a curator account, i think this can be easily solved.
We believe that the abusing problem we need to solve now is large, so we need more than 3 million SP.
I'm negative about someone managing an account with such a big SP.
What is abuse, and what is NOT abuse, @steemitblog? Indeed, what is merely differences of opinion, and what is actually abusive practice?
1. Code vs Community: In the 3+ years I have been here, this has often been discussed. What is avoided is the discussion of what the end result of a venue guided entirely by code would look like? And what what one guided primarily by community would look like? More specifically, we need to ask the question "what best serves the long-term objective of Steem THRIVING as a venue/blockchain?"
2. Using CODE to remove ambiguity: A seemingly unpopular choice to address the BidBot/purchased vote question is very simple: Call things what they are. Make it perfectly acceptable for people to "buy" as many votes as they wish, and to use bid bots to their hearts' content... and simply do what pretty much every other social venue does: If you artificially boost your content LABEL IT "PROMOTED CONTENT." You'll see this on twitter, Facebook, YouTube and most social sites. It's NOT rocket science.
Of course, critics fear that then they'll come off as "greedy" rather than "popular." Is that important? That's opinion, not reality.
3. Abuse takes many forms! I have to respectfully disagree with @mehta that there's no such thing as abuse. Whereas your points are good and reasonable, you are entirely looking at abuse from the perspective of "people being unhappy that others make too many rewards."
But what about stealing other people's content — or even identities — to to profit from their work?
What about things like what I call "The Downvote Mosquitoes" which is that swarm of thousands of tiny accounts who use ONLY the initial 15SP delegation from Steemit, Inc. to cast millions of tiny downvotes, with the express purpose of discouraging new/smaller account from posting, because the "organizer" is angry AND SPECIFICALLY WANTS STEEM TO FAIL?
4. What's the OBJECTIVE? It's nice that there's a discussion on "abuse," but in order to decide, don't we first need to decide what the GREATER OBJECTIVE of Steem is? We deal with two (often opposing) forces here. On one side, we can say the objective is Increasing the value of the Steem token. That's a long term proposition. On the other side, many only care about How many rewards will I get from my next post? because their intention is to constantly power down and cash out once a week to buy pizza. That's a short term perspective... it may offer the illusion of value right now, but the constant selling works against long term appreciation.
How can we truly address "abuse," till we have established what the greater objective is?
Really like your opinion and thank you for clearly putting this in words. It is sometimes difficult to express everything especially there are many things that people behind Steemt Inc. have to think about hope that they thoroughly read all the comments and choose the key points.
Selfvotes
The problem is super easy to solve. Until 2018, there used to be no selfvotes, and that's where we should finally go back to. It*s just one parameter in the Blockchain settings. Switch selfvotes to "false".
With that specific "true" @Ned had opened the can of Pandora. This was a dramatic slap in the faces of all the busy bloggers.
This is incorrect. I have been here since 2016, and self-voting has always existed.
Nope. Selfvoting came with HF 19 (I guess). You remember the April we starved without any reward.
Please @jaki01, do you know, when self-voting came up?
At least since I am here (end of 2016) self-votes are possible (and as far as I know they were from the beginning).
Of course there were also always attempts to punish it.
Anyway, preventing them wouldn't solve the problem, as - for example - the 'dream couple' @haejin / @ranchorelaxo demonstrates us on a daily base ...
If that is the case, how did I vote for this article four years ago?
So serious bloggers never used them by personal policy. Much more better way! Until the mentioned hardfork I was not aware selfvotes exist at all. You are right, @cmp2020. Thank you for the lesson. Thank you for the answer @jaki01.