OCDB and Downvotes | A #NewSteem approach
The mindset and cultural changes the Hardfork brought are many and, in my opinion, all of them are positive.
If you like reading you can check how the flagging behaviour has completely changed for the better, influencing on the Trending page and on what gets rewarded and who's rewards are too much and the staked Steemians decide to return them to the reward pool.
Striving for a fair stake distribution, @ocdb already made some changes and improvements to ensure the best ROI for authors while still taking care of the delegators by keeping our cut to 0%, meaning we are still the ONLY non-profit bot in the market. You can read more about it here
OG Whales are removing their delegations from voting bots to apparently create Curation Projects; Voting bidbot owners are adopting good practices that were originally started by OCDB while some others still need to adjust to the market behaviour; the general bot tracker also made some adjustments and they are encouraging Bot owners to take action; even OG Steemians who used to post a quite frequently are changing their voting/posting behaviour to provide value to the community.
TL:DR - Everyone is doing their part to make Steem a better place, to make #NewSteem the place we always wanted it to be.
Every project and Steemian who cares about having a healthy Steem has to put some effort and commitment into sharing the load that is making Steem a better place. As the Bot with the currently largest delegated stake out there and thus, the biggest downvote in the whole Steem Ecosystem, it's OCDB's responsibility to take action.
We are not going to downvote or even interact with posts on the Trending page even if we disagree with the post's rewards. It would be irresponsible from our side and it would represent a conflict of interest if a stake distribution service downvotes posts that received bidbot votes... and since most of the posts trending are usually there thanks to other voting services, the management of deserves and what doesn't deserve to be on the trending page is up to the community.
After reading a lot of posts, comments and lurking discord servers to get a taste of what the community thinks needs to be done and trying to understand where can we be the most useful without negatively affecting our voting userbase, we decided we are going to start downvoting voting circles farms that do not add any sort of value to the ecosystem.
These voting circles go unnoticed since they are never trending or even in the hot section, but we know that projects like @steemflagrewards are aware of some of these voting farms but they don't have the VP to deal with all of them. @spaminator goes a long way to counter these farms but some of them have found loops to avoid their bot or evade their rules. @steemcleaners doesn't deal with reward disagreement so they can't really deal with the voting farms.
So, instead of criticizing or complaining about how these vote farms are not being dealt with, we have decided to aid these great projects that are doing all they can on their effort to counter abuse and return these post rewards to the reward pool.
So, in addition of helping out fair stake distribution and supporting an only whitelisted authors voting bot and get a very competitive ROI for your delegation, when you delegate to @ocdb your SP will also be helping us counter these voting farms abuse.
If you are aware of any of these farms, please send me or @acidyo a discord message so we can take action. Let's all of us help in any way we can to make this #NewSteem the best version it can be.
Disclaimer: We are not a downvoting project and it won't be our main approach/concern. We won't focus on maximizing our downvotes just for the sake of maximizing them. Our downvotes are not to be taken as retaliation nor will be used for personal vendettas, they should not be taken as something personal. The downvotes OCDB give will have no other purpose other than returning the rewards from posts made by users that bring no value to the ecosystem and just upvote posts from blatant circle voting farms such as the example cited above.
I love it, and the same FUD spreaders that either reason that human nature is not goodness but wickedness or that the major stakeholders are dumb, greedy or both, wasted absolutely no time to give their opinions mere moments after the hf launched to assure everyone what a failure it "is" while everything else points to the contrary.
Let's show these FUDers that there are more good players than wrongdoers 💪
I was thinking of doing a recap of how the Whale Experiment happened, that was so long ago and such a great example that completely defies all "whales are greedy and stoopid" rhetoric that these leeches shit out by the boatload, o you know what, I just remember that was one of the topics I was going to list in a "topics I'll never write a post about", instead of actually writing it lol.
I would disagree with this. It is the responsibility of every stakeholder and by extension those to whom stakeholders have entrusted their voting power in the form of delegation, to see that the reward pool is used in a value-contributing manner and to take action with downvotes when it it is not, at the risk of seeing Steem fail. When large portions of the reward pool are allocated by bots/services, then those become just a subject to scrutiny and downvotes as anything else, in fact more so. It is not a conflict of interest to act against irresponsible usage, it is directly in the core interest of every Steemian to see that the reward pool is used well. And to be clear I believe that bidbots and other voting services are themselves perfectly fine, but like every tool they can be abused, and it is the responsibility of those with downvote power to step up and make sure that does not happen.
That being said, as long as the downvoting power is used for something useful, and voting circles are a perfectly fine case, then I don't see an actual problem. Not everyone can address every bit of abuse with limited downvotes.
But if and when we come to a time that all voting circles have been broken up and are no longer a problem (and hopefully this happens), yet hypothetically bidbots/services are still paying out large amounts far in access of value (particularly once the current excitement over downvoting bidbot abuse wears off a bit and participation in policing it may wane), then it won't be responsible for anyone with a large voting power to ignore this.
I believe he meant to say we don't want to seem as if we want to damage the business of other bid bots on purpose for our own sake. The way the EIP already has changed the behavior to using bid bots and @ocdb as well in a very short time span is a very good sign for the future use of responsible and thoughtout bids from the services. Dare I say it almost seems difficult to find posts to downvote right now, I'm guessing they are figuring out other ways in smaller scales to abuse them.
At the same time @ocdb is not a "business" per se as it is nonprofit and while we try out best to mitigate abuse which usually does not happen often because users got on there through curation we'd right now at least prefer to find some "easier" posts to identify and downvote than to judge each bid botted trending post individually.
Yeah, you're right about this. There is definitely a lot of value in looking for the more hidden abuses right now. I just don't think we can rule out that complacency sets in and it becomes harder to maintain momentum on healthy downvoting. I hope that doesn't happen but I fear it might.
Sure, but treating that as a blanket reason for all bidbots to never downvote the others even when they are out of line just becomes a damaging cartel. I don't think we want to encourage that. The focus should stay on whether particular cases (payouts) are appropriate to the content or not. You can almost ignore who voted for it entirely. Actually, that's a good way to entirely avoid the issue you stated: Make a policy not to look at all at who voted when deciding to downvote.
Yeah, I'm sure we'll get to a more mature stage where downvotes aren't taken as personal from both customers and bid bot owners over time. Luckily many of them seem to have adapted well to the EIP and are using their downvotes too, wish I could say the same about some others but maybe they'll also get there before they run dry from delegations or start some idiotic retaliations. There are still a lot of these cases like the one we are gonna focus on now, we'll take them one at a time and see how they react and respond and hopefully they'll see it as a positive change and adapt along with the rest of the community.
"...bidbots to never downvote the others even when they are out of line just becomes a damaging cartel."
This is precisely the scenario that I warned about pre-fork. With the curve changes it means that most smaller accounts actually NEED to boost their post to keep pace with previous post values. If we are also enabling a cartel of post boosters then STEEM will have become totally captured.
The former won't work. People keep making this prediction/claim/suggestion but it is really mathematically impossible. If most smaller accounts try to boost their posts they will end up blocking each other and driving the breakeven point higher. The reward pool is fixed size. Everyone can't be an "above average driver", to borrow an absurdity from the famous survey. It will always remain out of reach.
In addition, and by design, by boosting their posts higher in hopes of reaching some elusive break-even point, they make them more visible and attractive to downvotes. So, even if it could work, which it can't, it won't work in practice.
The latter is a bigger concern because it is at least mathematically possible. We will have to see how it works out, but from a starting point we should at least state clearly that it isn't socially desirable for that to happen and try to enlist agreement on that point. Yeah, I know we can't depend on that, but it can't hurt.
Just because it may be mathematically impossible if EVERYONE tries to do it, does not mean that some won't attempt to - even feel further incentivised to do so. It is the sort of situation where perception is reality and this comes down to understanding human psychology. It is game theory, not mathematics.
I know for a fact there are people who haven't used vote-selling services in the past but are now considering doing so to "stay ahead of the curve" (pun intended).
Some sort of consensus amongst whales, witnesses and vote-sellers about incentivising more vote-selling not being a "socially desirable" outcome would be good to see. I won't hold my breath ;)
Sure, and in raising up their posts they will make them more visible to potential downvoters. That's the purpose behind the curve. With some further evidence we might want to refine the parameters a bit but the fundamental idea is sound.
An author with a small payout might, in cases where the post is marginal, actually be better off leaving well enough alone and taking the smaller payout with less visibility.
Anyway, it doesn't really matter what happens in one particular case or another. What matters is that which becomes systemic, and my point about mathematical impossibility is that it isn't impossible for low-payouts to systemically escape the curve by buying votes. Some might, but only by volunteering to stand out from the crowd and be scrutinized.
I'd expect that most half-decent authors would want to stand out from the crowd and be scrutinised.
Hey! Smooth, budy, I understood that I was wrong! My apologies! Let`s be friends! No need to proceed please... Thank you! Regards, Profit Shooter
I totally agree with your first paragraph, it is the responsibility of everyone with stake (or delegated stake) to take action. The conflict of interest for us lies here: If we downvote a user who used any or several bidbot services, it may look as if we are trying to discourage users from using a specific bot instead of OCDB thus wrongly making us look like "unfair players engaging in dirty competition", when in reality we don't want to compete with anyone, just try and distribute stake in a fair way.
We are already seeing bots taking back their vote on abusive posts (including ocdb, we already took back some votes) and hopefully every bot will begin doing this so if/ when the scenario you mention in the third paragraph comes into play, we are not forced to take action. If it does happen, as you say, it will be on everyone's interest, including us, to dive into downvoting those posts.
Thanks for your input and as a major OCDB delegator backing the decision of downvoting circle voting farms.
Yeah I understand what you are saying about downvotes being used as a malicious competitive tool and I'm certainly not in favor of that. Anyway thanks for taking the initiative on this now as you have and I'm sure we will learn more going forward.
I would disagree too and I think that as the prominent issues are dealt with, it will need to be revisited. As you know, there is a fair way to go before that, though this has moved relatively fast considering the fork was only 4 or so days ago.
For now, I like that there is the focal point as having the scope makes it easier to target, and what they are targeting many others might avoid.
Yup. What really matters is how this all plays out over the next several months. The early changes are exciting but that's also a bit of a trap because once the excitement wears off then the real work begins.
It is a long-haul move and I am hoping that there is enough momentum that some decent active trails are set up for those who are uncertain about what they should do. People usually act on default and the default plays need to be in the best interest of the ecosystem.
It seems the vote sellers are a bit conflicted now as they can be considered part of the problem by indiscriminately selling votes. Of course they cannot judge every post. I know OCDB operates a whitelist and others use various blacklists. Some do not do this and have been voting up some real crap as they have refused to pass any judgement. That may be good for business, but it is bad for Steem. There was an interesting discussion between some of them on Discord today. I did not hear all of it, but some posts may emerge.
Vote sellers have to accept that things will change. Users have more power to reduce rewards. I think those on this post are probably high enough and will not vote on it. I am low on voting power anyway.
The whitelist tends to be higher rated when they are handpicked on quality. Of course, once on things can change. The blacklist invites all and then removes for abuse after the fact, but as we have seen, abuse can go on a very long time.
Things are now changing for the better, I think.
This is perfect. It is like the last hardfork(s) have bought steemit back from a brink that we all knew we were standing on but only as we are pulled back from it we realise how things could be.
Damn, I have had too many beers and not sure that reads right but what I mean is, I approve!
This is what I wanted to read from somewhere this week. Many have waited close to 2 years for an account with the resources to take action, and the EIP has made this a reality.
Cool, cheers!
Thanks for the heads-up Eric and I look forward to seeing how this plays out. I think there is going to be a lot of interest in how this side-project impacts the voting circles and behavior of abuse in general.
Good work from @ocd again.
Hopefully the downvoting culture spreads everywhere (as it is already happening) and some of the other bots join in the initiative. Thank you for your feedback mate.
Oh, this was some really exciting news. Not that unexpected coming from you guys, but I wasn't expecting this so soon.
Will be cool to see who you'll target next, even though I have a good idea already. I wonder how that will go this time.
overall change is happening much faster since the EIP and I fucking love it.
First I want to say that #newsteem is exciting. I already see some people voting like crazy and trying out how new steem works. After all the panic, it seems like people might realize that giving more to ecosystem builds up their account faster. Curation is cool and we should embrace it!
I am glad to see that OCD will fight against this type of abuse. It is totally unfair to farm steem like this and cash out like there is no tomorrow.
Thanks for being the force and motivation on our blockchain.
Peace yo!
This may be a stupid question but I am probably not the only one looking for an answer. Would it be possible to delegate just downvotes to OCBD, or a similar service?
There are no Stupid questions regarding Steem. It is a complex ecosystem where we can always learn something new.
At the moment there's no way to delegate only downvote vests but my best guess is that this is something the Steemit inc team might want to look into in the future.
Thanks for the interest though, have a great weekend!
Thank you for your reply. I really like curating but think that others would do much better work with more downvote power.
All of them are positive..?
So when i did my first downvote after hf21, because of the disagreement on the rewards..
https://steemit.com/steempress/@slowwalker/unidentifiedsculpturesofstonepagodainmireuksatempleplace-cdeaq4nd2q#@luca1777/pwyck4
...i and people on my side got flagged for "constructive criticism" and
later my new post got dv & flagged, too...by a witness.
Some of these people seem to be in your circle, too.
That's a bit hypocritical to me.
God forbid, we say anything negative about Steemit, even if
it is constructive and true.
Professional is something else...
Just noticed this comment now, that's a bummer he acted this way. I'm sure someone will agree with you and start adjusting his rewards without him being able to retaliate.
Thanks for your answer and overstanding ;)