Open Letter to @GrumpyCat
Open letter to @grumpycat
Dear @grumpycat
I have noticed your fight in Steemit one week ago.
What you were proposing was :
- There are people who are milking the system by sending their payment close (3,5 days+) posts to upvote bots and get immidiate cash return
- There are bots that are allowing these old posts to be upvoted.
And you started a fight against these bots by flaging the posts that they have upvoted.
Perfect, that is also what I would do if I had your weapons.
- Getting immidiate cash by upvote is abusing the system by taking the money out immidiately which normally should stay inside for a couple of days and be shared.
- The usage aim of these bots should be a promotion system to get your content out of crowd and make people see it.Not earning easy cash by following ROI.
Then I saw people hurt because you have flagged their posts that are just fresh, even less than one day old.
I was still thinking that your intentions are good.
The road so far
So I started developing a tool that you can use to show you the correct target.
This tool is a webpage that analyses the bot voting time and the post time of authors posts.
With this, you would be able to see which post is older than 3,5 days and you would flag just the right person.
The milker...
I started to comment on the victims posts as below example:
Lucky I was, I got your attention.
I was more than happy when you upvoted my post about this webpage.
That was almost the same amount I received from @utopian-io bot.
Additionally you requested me to add another property:
This is two times happiness, using this tool innocent people were saved.
Then, at your post I read these words :
Yesss...@grumpycat will start caring about the innocent people and will give us a supportable fight.
I replied you back :
These are important words :
The main difference between a hero and bully is code of ethics. Be a hero and let us follow you, be a bully and you will find resistance!
I started working and in 3 hours I finished the update on the webpage, now it gives you the links. You are able to reach directly the "milkers" posts with a click.
I was hopeful...
Today
I started to check your activity. You can feel the dissapointment I had, when I saw the results.
My bot analyser can be used to analyse bots but it can also analyse you.
You have downwoted 15 posts that is upvoted by @boomerang bot.
7 of them is absolutely correct according to 3,5 days rule.
8 of them are fresh posts, even there are posts that were couple of hours old.
Innocent people...colletaral damages of your fight...real people that only wanted to get their voice heard.
The result of analysis of @boomerang bot is :
There were more than 30 targets that are not following 3,5 days rule but you have chosen the innocents.
@grumpycat, you are in a position of being a bully with all these 500k+ SP.
You can change the bot system, you can stop people "milking" the system but if you do not stop hurting innocent people you will find a resistance and I will be the first one that will resist.
I supplied you the proper tool for this.
- I may be small in SP but I have courage.
- I am here as I am, no other account, no other voice,no supporting whales...just @firedream
- You have the power to stop my voice but you can not stop a resistance.
- I have never been a victim of you but I have lived enough to distinguish the unfair from fair and I learned to resist.
Once again,
Use your power with justice and let us support you in your fight against MILKERS
Keep on hurting innocent people and let us all think that you are not trying to change the system but trying to supress other bots in favour of your supported bots-just "conflict of interest" war.
The first one makes you a hero, the second one just a low life mob leader!
Show us the real @grumpycat.
FD.
Why the chaos?
Delegators, Bidbots, and Shitposters, have all automated the process. They have accumulated immense amount of profits from services that are being used mostly for abuse. Automation would resist change and accumulated profits would ignore short term losses.
If my policy is sound and reasonable they will get no support from the stake that isn't involved in such irresponsible profiteering.
Those powering the operation will be the only one not benefiting from powering down and selling their STEEM as the price will rise back once the chaos stop.
Good luck explaining that to the first two level involved.
In 7 days the next step is to expand scope to anything being upvoted by the stake of the delegators involved.
As announced here: https://steemit.com/steem/@grumpycat/warning-to-vote-buyer-sellers-introducing-grumpycompliance-mandatory-in-14-days-no-post-promotion-allowed-after-3-5-days
Hey you fucking ass-hat, cut it out!!!
You have 500k sp and are withdrawing cash like an opportunistic fuck!
I work hard at my posts and post good content, and, i never update a post that’s more than 2 days old. With all the money you are making here din’t you have anything better to do than fuck with hard working Steemians who use the very same bots you do?
Get a fucking life you creep!
I'm a little late to this post but want to point out that you left off one more bad actor who has automated the process: Shitcommenters.
You claim that you are doing it because you are helping SBD correction, which is good for Steem. Please explain how that works because it sounds like bullshit based on your actions:
What you don't do:
The results:
* You are raping the reward pool.
* You are rewarding the bidbots you claim to be fighting.
* You are optimizing your personal use of the bidbots you claim to be fighting.
And you do all of this anonymously. 🤦🏻♂️
Not sure how my post was profiteering. Do you just down-vote without looking at users wallet? The bots I used was actually ETHER I had just transferred to STEEM, and you took it. A fair warning to users using the bots would be a decent thing to do. Good luck on your crusade and hopefully you find better techniques to regulate Steemit. Cheers!
When he make 18 miserable mistakes to his own rules, you can no longer call them collateral damage to an honest war that you carry with some profiteers of the system.
This in any democracy is called abuse, a dictatorial leader, in no case is justice, just because he have more power than us.
But I'm sorry to see that the steemit.com system is still not ready to close account for people who do justice at their own discretion in violation of their own rules.
What this gentleman named @grumpycat has done is a grave violation of human rights and I'm not joking about saying these things just because he have some money.
Have a good day my friend @yassine and all the best to you and to Canadian people.
Till now i notify your damage is about 1.000.000 $ in steemit.com community so your account will gone.
You act like nazi, and you will be in out of this community in some day with all your money.
You abuse us and you will pay.
My post was in 1-st day of life .I do free resteem and others do with money.I do this for comunity about 3 mounth and new people here and old people here are happy with this service.
Why you with your rules "no-post-promotion-allowed-after-3-5-days" flag my post who have max 20h of life?When i promote my post I lose 3sbd i didn't win so where is the profit from the heaven?
thank you
You should try to post about your self once a week so people on Steemit have a chance to learn about someone with so much power on this platform. Do you Sell your Steem for USD? Do you have a normal job? Is this how you make a living? Thanks
Thank you for your reply and upvote.
This, I personally agree and support to the end :
What i resist is the "method" of you flaging innocent "fresh" posts.
I hope my voice is heard and you will stop this action.
FD.
@grumpycat
This seems like a good place where I can expose that @grumpycat is actually using the reward pool and intentions to fix it as a shield to do mischief with the reward pool.
@Grumpycat Uses 6th Day Voting Bots
Let's analyze @grumpycat History
These are 13 days old, but at the time they were 6th day voting bots and @grumpycat was actively using them.
@grumpycat abuses the award pool with round-robin and self-votes
Many of @grumpycat votes are just voting for @checkthisout useless posts. @checkthisout then votes back. They're all the same person.
This is 2 kinds of abuse on the award pool by the same account and people are in love with this guy. The injustice cannot continue.
Trying to read all said on the subject, @grumpycat has got a point.
Proof of brain is the keyword here.
As I said, I support his cause but I object to the blind bully methods he is using. Just carefully selecting targets would justify his fight and he will find support.
FD.
Agreed. The voting bots are spamming up the system, but blind downvoting doesn't help. Something smarter is needed, especially if the abusers have 20x more SP than those trying to fix the system. People need to get organized, on something like Busy. And deal with the spammy bots, perhaps by organized upvoting, which also redistributes just as well. No?
I think what you propose would lead us to some kind of a moderated system.
We can have and we have in steemit such systems, best example utopian.io.
Personally, I believe in freedom. If a person wants to share just one picture with a word he should be able to do it.
I am also tired of spam, mostly promoted spam but I can not figure out a solution without touching the freedom that makes steemit a great place.
I want to see steemit for everybody, not only for some intellectual elite because everybody has a story to tell and I am happy to read these stories.
If the price of this is some spam, let there be spam...but what must be prevented is abuse and promoted spam.
FD.
Oh, I basically agree, regarding freedom. I, too, like Rothbard.
(I actually think Utopian has too much moderation. Too much in the sense that, paradoxically, using that platform for open ended MIT media lab sort of projects, say to implement a formally specified algorithm with Steemit participants is not currently supported by Utopian, while making a logo or a bot or solving a bug is supported. Due to the specific wording of the moderation rules ... oh, well.)
...
Rather, what I suspect we need is a loose organization involving a threshold couple percent of the user base that stubbornly only upvotes high quality content. And coordinates timing. Merely in addition to Steem as it currently does exist. Basically, it involves using renormalization for something positive for once..
What do you think?
Moderation, which restricts freedom, actually won't even work, and I am not suggesting it. We need organization, which is something more general. They are not binary. (0 1) is neither greater nor less than nor equal to (1 0). There are also the options (0 2), (1 3), etc.
It simply exceeds the budget (including time) for the majority of users of the platform to search the platform for quality content. If a search costs 1000000, to review even 1 percent of the posts, and the user has 100, then even if they use 100% of their budget to search for quality content that is not trending, and a search that finds quality content that is not trending requires 5 percent of the posts searched, then most of the time any investment in search is wasted. Users don't search much. This leads to positioning rather than search. King.com spends 100 million promoting games that costs 150 thousand to make each. If almost all budget goes into promotion, then quality is almost never achieved.
Moderation involves 100000 users banding together, giving 50 each to moderators in the organization, to search for them while they do other things and give above threshold results.
This however fails, too. Why? Simply because moderators delegated to in any such organization can promote whatever they like, in the end of the day. Which is not necessarily the best, or even good. It's not like users, who delegate to them, can do any better, or even check what is going on for the same reason that most individual searches are below threshold. Such moderation typically opens up users to instability of outcomes and risk. Freedom and decentralization is needed for quality. It's the only system where any possibility of recourse or feedback exists. Agreed.
Users themselves must curate, but a critical number of them must do so with timing organized. Otherwise vote buying will always outbid them. 50 votes in 1 minute are not the same as 50 votes over 2 days, when collusion and vote buying are in the mix, and users cannot search and positioning, not search decides what most users have access to. When amidst the hugger mugger of collusion and vote buying and worse, flagging wars, the same 50 honest votes whose timing is off have no effect, except where they are by sheer coincidence arriving at near the same time. Which is too infrequent.
Curation is currently too weak. Microeconomic in effect without macroeconomic effect. Perhaps we need to improve organization of timing of existing curation, that's all. Not implement moderation or restrict freedom, yes, even to spam, in any way.
As it is, I had trouble finding even that your (200 points) post in all the soup! Two days went by! Out of seven! Do you see what I mean?
Very vice words @tibra.
I would not agree more on your "treshold quantity of users" to trigger improvement of quality content.
Current curation method in steemit is "follow the money" instead of "follow the content" and it is assumed that money should follow the content but it does not thanks to purchased upvotes.
Search of good quality (this is also a relative subject)will always be outnumbered by earning money.
Any attempt of curation will be too weak according to this factor.
There are good curation attempts like @sneakyninja who pays 1 SBD directly to the curator for undervalued posts.link to @sneakyninja
What he is doing is awesome and should be supported.
Guess more curators like him is increased, people search for good undervalued content and get paid for finding them.
( I am not sure I know how the economy works on this...)
This may be a good solution.
It is good that you have found my post...
FD.
It's good that you posted. (And that @grumpycat resteemed and it was read widely enough.) You pointed out the problem and took steps to solve it, by declaring what you consider strictly unacceptable.
As mentioned, a small but unbudging minority of a few percent ends up deciding what the majority does, thanks to asymmetries, costs of nonstandardization, etc.
Many people agree, but until a few reveal clear stances most are is unsure about that. So everybody takes a wait-for-others-to-do-something approach. And the others take a wait-for-others-to-do-something approach. They are unsure whether anybody agrees with them. So nobody does anything. Everybody waits for everybody else. Yeah, they go far like that. All that until a small minority begins to speak, clearly, about their stances. (This is why anybody who wants to prevent change suppresses freedom of speech.)
Furthermore, people are more likely to do what they believe, if they or somebody else says it. People are shy, and afraid of others finding out what they think. Predictable means vulnerable. What they think is revealed both in their communication and behavior. If they or somebody publicly declares a thought, they are more likely to do what they already believe, even though they believe it no more or no less than before. Rather, because everyone already knows what they think, or other people reveal they agree with what they think, they see no additional harm in behaving honestly according to what they think. Which is what is needed!
I will further look into @sneakyninja. Looks good.
Basically, nobody, including the contributers of upvote proposals, can perform an above threshold search. Each one samples more or less randomly for ten or twenty minutes and what they get is as good as anything they find in an hour or two or three. They start looking in different places.
The Daily Sneak seems like a good project.
By having many individuals sample the stream of content and submit individual upvote proposals, the variation in which content is seen and evaluated is much larger. In this case, it's that of the sum of as many random variables as curators, not just of one. And it's multiplied by a constant, which is larger as the diversity of categories and accounts where different contributers start looking is greater. How much that translates to a higher probability of finding quality content, I would have to think about some more. It depends on how quality content is distributed, clumped on Steemit. Which is an unknown factor. The less clumped, the more probable it is for sneakyninja to upvote quality content missed by most users. If he's having some success, it's probably not too clumped at the moment. The fact that voting is then done by a larger account, an all at once bump, is good.
Maybe a hundred Daily Sneaks, operating uncorrelated, then comparing approved proposals, before voting around the same time, is going to be good enough for higher quality to appear to regular users. That will bring more people in, and with more people seeing quality content, more expensive to spam unlimited.
No, what he is doing is NOT good for the platform, or good for anyone. How is this
good for anyone other than grumpy cat making out like a bandit? selfvoting to 163 dollars a bullshit comment of "Rubbing it in"? This is more harmful to the platform than any of the spam posts he is downvoting.
We will all keep an eye...
I doubt @grumpycat used randowhale to downvote himself, that doesn't make much sense..
No. That's @randowhale doing the right thing to stop the reward pool abuse. Sure @grumpycat gets downvotes, but it's not enough. The account has just too much STEEM power.
SO shut your mouth power up and do something about it besides whine like a bitch all over steemit about how you can't profit from buying votes.
Sounds like the only one whining is you. I'm just exposing @grumpycat. If I couldn't buy votes tomorrow, I'd be fine with that personally. That's not what this is about though.
You're not exposing anyone. @grumpycat is not hiding. Every flag incoimg or outgoing is a win-win. You don't seem to understand the game is all.
LOL. I think you're not the one getting it. Unless you are @grumpycat and you're actually inside that head, the actions don't line up with what you're saying.
You sure that I'm the one that doesn't understand?
1.) @grumpycat is sucking up the payouts of the vote bots he is using which keeps the shit buying posters at a loss
2.)Every flag @grumpycats gives or receives is a win. He is not flagging anyone not buying a vote
3.) It is not real money until you EARN it after 7 days waiting.
See, you do not understand
NO, you don't see what is going on. grumpycat is hiding behind "good intentions" to blind people like you from the fact that grumpycat, ieatrewards and rewardpoolrape are all circle jerking each other, self voting for ridiculous amounts, and monopolizing a system so that he is the only one that can take advantage of it. How is a comment like this good for the platform???
This is not helpful to anyone but grumpycat getting fat and getting paid for behavior that is far worse than anything he is crying out against. If he actually looked to see if the content he downvoted was spam, that would be one thing, but he isn't. he is blindly downvoting people just because they used a specific bidbot, and then he is using those same bidbots to reward himself, on his posts that have little more "quality" to them than the ones he is flagging. Stop sucking grumpycats dick in the hopes of getting one of those massive upvotes. That's just as trashy as the behavior he is crying out against. Do a little research, instead of just blindly following what this jackass says, just because he has so much steempower.
I never said he was hiding behind good intentions. He is just fucking over the correct users who abuse the up-vote bots and cost every other person trying to get noticed their bids.
And yes he invites anyone and everyone to down-vote his post as well as he rubs it in your face he is scamming the scammers. The only people being affected here are scammers.
Unless you feel hundreds of dollars in up-vote bids isn't a fucking scam.
A heroic post, I will follow you because of it. Hope to see more great works.
Best Regards~*~
Thank you @quinneaker. I can't promise my works will be great but i can promise they will always be me.
FD.
Honesty is the greatest sign of a hero~*~
nice comment
thank you boss
NP
This post has received a 17.48 % upvote from @aksdwi thanks to: @firedream.
@grumpycat, I'm already tired of putting flags on me, I'm suffering big losses, which is not included in my plans. A lot of my posts received flags from him.
That is awesome that you put a tool together to help. I've been following the steemit drama a little and I feel like they are all hypocrites, especially grumpycat. It's refreshing to see someone actually talking action to make it better. Great job @firedream !!!
thank you @justjessica The people hurt here are not just letters on the screen...there are real people behind them. Something must be done...
FD.
You are all heart!
i've also been watching - it's like an interesting social experiment - the mayhem that occurs when a large community, that involves an economy, is mostly unmoderated.
I thought the same thing!! It is like an insane social experiment.
I think you misunderstood this comment:
He was not claiming he would go after abusers using the max age and highest sp, he would target bots with the highest SP and highest max age and flag the most ethical users (i.e users who did nothing wrong, and are using promotion responsibly to do the most damage).
Elaborate a little more on why this does the most damage? (Promise not to debate the point. Just want to know.)
I believe his idea is to harm legitimate users as much as possible to force bot owners to change.
How do you legitimately buy rewards?
We know activity by the largest accounts nullifies most of the smallest accounts.
It's just a fact in the math, when whales vote, everybody at the bottom loses.
Until everybody over 80mvests takes their hooks from the pool we will only see complaints and exits, imo.
I would suggest a sigmoid curve, but I like well behaving whales better than new rules.
That's just me.
Agreed. Btw, is that Emma Goldman in the icon? Followed.
Yes.
Ok. I was hoping it was something less obvious and more complex. Does it work? I mean, I have noticed some bots changed, but I'm assuming it's because it's the right thing to do and not because people have been the victim of a drive by @grumpycat -ing. Is there any data that shows bots have decided to do this for the sake of their users rather than for the sake of the reward pool?
I want to believe that I did not misunderstand...Time will show.
@grumpycat flagged my 22 hours post, i don't understand what he meant by a winner and still. have the fucken gods to upvote his comment on a flag post he did,
my post was only 22hours,or not even up to, can you beat that? , i want my voice to be heard cause the post that he flagged was the promotional song i did for steemit i want it to trend that was the very reason i boasted it and i got flag for promoting steemit with a song the next morning i posted it. @steemcleaners should kindly look into this, and give us the innocent ones justice,
i will resteem this post.
thanks for helping us fight for justice @firedream THE MAN ABOVE IS YOUR GUILD, YOUR POWERS ARE STRONG 💪 💪
Report him at @steemcleaners for abusive flag I'm in the same situation and we ask to pay us all 100.000$ for abuse us.
I did speak with @steemcleaners , they said that they dont even know who owns that @grumpycat so they cant help right now.. IDK what to do next
this is so bad and Hurt, how can't you keep the rules you make, you said post that stays 3.5 days get flags when get upvoted by paying for upvote. how the hell can you explain flaging a post that was posted on its 13hours or below @grumpycat or you are doing this for cheap popularity cause its all unfair and you still went ahead and hit on a picture saying CONGRATULATIONS, ARE YOU THE LUCIPHER OR WE SHOULD WAIT FOR ANOTHER.
cause your good deeds are hypocritical.
Correct
Hello @firedream,
I see that you want to protect the writers that work hard on Steemit to put their articles out there, but I can also see where @grumpycat is coming from. Personally I feel that Steemit would be a better place, if users weren't under the idea that buying large votes is a great idea.
@grumpycat does make a sound point. I understand that Steemians want their voices heard. To be perfectly honest, I feel that the owners of the shady voting services are using genuine authors as a way to cover their deviant activities.
If someone does pay for a big vote and becomes upset afterwards, it will discourage buying the large upvotes in the future. It will help users say okay...
Also the shady services will lose traction and customers. This is a good thing c:
With love,
@shello
Hi @shello, I am totally not against the use of upvote bots. This is normally a promotion service, a paid advertisement.
The only way for a new steemian to get his/her post to be seen is by promoting it.
Also it is a tool to attract new people to steemit and keeping them posting.
What is milking ?
For me, if a person wants his/her post to be seen the good time of using bots should be not more than 3,5 days.
Anytime after that is not aimed to promote the post but to take easy cash early, knowing that even if seen the post will not take more upvotes.
Some may say, "what if the author do not have SBD before 3,5 days?"
For me this is not fair, the author can delay posting instead of buying upvotes at a time close to payment.
Ads is a part of life and it is good to have some kind of promotion services in steemit.
Only misusage must be prevented.
FD.
I agree that curation needs to step up, especially towards new users. I would love to see a new user tab, instead of trending tbh.
New users should be spending their time reading, commenting, and interacting with others instead of pumping out articles and buying votes. It defeats the purpose of learning good behavior on Steemit.
I used to buy upvotes a lot, and I'm lucky that I didn't get punished for using them. However, I feel like if I did- maybe my writing would have improved earlier on.
For me it's most important to learn first, instead of running around trying to make some quick money. Steemit curation has quite a ways to go, and habits need to be instilled earlier on.
You are so right shello! Comments are the key to this platform. Maybe 80% comments and 20% blog posts. That is what creates real connections with other humans. Many are trying to run around make some quick money or be ungrateful already after 1 month. We humans always crave more speed while we would be much better off to slow things down and really take our time to produce real value to others!
Well said. Impatience shall be the end of us. More time should be used on comments especially starting out. IMO, if the site is being used as intended, there shouldn't really be any "bandwidth issues."
Well done for trying to bring some sense to this pointless war of the whales.
It’s no real surprise that your hard work didn’t make a positive change. All of these whales involved in this petty war are abusing the system in one way or another. It’s just frustrating that innocent people are getting hit with flags without reason.
A solution has to be created soon, it’s a bad look for Steemit to have accounts like this going about, attempting to enforce laws that they have created themselves.
Telling people to follow rules that you make up yourself sounds strangely similar to a dictatorship doesn’t it? Is that what we want Steemit to be?
Absolutely NOT! I hope that @grumpycat will return me my money..
I wouldn't hold your breath.
I am not sure if I brought a sense...I am just a minnow seeing innocent people hurt, tried to do something.
I am not in a position to blame whales.
500k+SP is an investment of apporximately 2.5mUSD. It is a bold decision and trust to keep it in the system.
I really don't know how I would behave if i had that much investment.
I have seen people killing each other for much less of it.
FD.