Proof of no brain
Fact #1
Steem is an amazing technology. It's the biggest decentralized social network ever, and has sprouted a new type of economy that has rewarded at least tens of millions of dollars of pure value to it's organically built community.
Fact #2
We built and released dozens of cooler projects than any eth/eos developer has ever been able to ship, despite the millions in funding around these financially bigger blockchains.
Fact #3
Steem is worth $0.29 right now, still worth about 4 times as much as it's all time low, but 20 times less than it's all time high.
Fact #4
Steemit Inc has firmly communicated their intentions to slowly step back as the arch-leader of this blockchain with their recent announcements and actions.
Fact #5
Most community projects are struggling financially. As a consequence, development and new projects release has clearly gone down. Existing projects update less often, and innovation is basically non-existent. Witnesses are also concerned, as their earnings drastically reduced. Even AskSteem (a search api used by many apps including dtube, steempeak, etc) is shutting down.
So? What's wrong?
I've seen tons of blathering by witnesses or project owners these days... On discord, telegram, slack, or even steemit itself. These people try to identify the current issues, and how to solve the issues. How to re-organize. And how to make steem's future great. They say we need blockchain developers that costs XXK$/year. We need a new landing page. Also we need to implement new solutions for on-boarding users. That's all complete bullshit or ignorance as usual. These people are all either failing to recognize the real issue of STEEM, or intentionally trying to distract the casual users with mindless conversations.
The forsaken feature
What if I told you that there is one very important feature that has been working intermittently through time. Probably because it has been neglected in terms of development. But every time it's been working well, STEEM's value in satoshi and dollars has been growing, alongside many new accounts being created. Everytime I talk about this feature to other Steemians, they call me an idealist, and change conversation...
It's the feature that helped STEEM survive when it was worth $0.07, and the one that convinced 95%+ of my readers to register in the first place. The promise of a network where we would directly reward real humans based on merit instead of computing power. I'm talking about the Proof-of-Brain™ monetary distribution feature. That's the closest thing we can get to the original Satoshi's vision. And many of you were already here when it was working, and you witnessed the power of it with your own eyes, otherwise you wouldn't have stayed.
And the funny part is that nothing broke technically, it's just humans who adapted to the rules, and built truly complex systems in order to cheat the proof of brain and earn from it programmatically or systematically. These programs or systems have different names, such as: bid-bots, curation trails, app delegation, ninja-mining, upvote as a salary, and so on, but are broadly referred to as 'financial tools'. In reality, they are just breaking the rules to their advantage, and still the community has welcomed them with open arms, as if they didn't understand that any penny made by these robots, is a penny less that goes into the reward pool.
What do?
With lack of proof of brain, the incentive for playing the game normally is nulled, and no one feels like engaging or registering anymore, even less powering up. If you want to fix proof of brain, and STEEM as a whole, there are two solutions:
The hard solution would be to refactor the proof of brain algorithm, a critical part of the steem blockchain where inexperienced developers will risk breaking the consensus and forking the chain. And then you'd need to allow SMTs™ to use the feature with changeable configuration through time, so that we could adapt to any type of new abuse, a bit how video game producers update their games to detect cheaters or 'nerf' certain strategies. If SteemIt Inc can't, would you do it?
The easy solution is to make the majority of users change their mindsets. Make them stop thinking of STEEM as a way to make money. Educating them about the original purpose of rewarding the largest number of real humans, and being generous with your own upvotes when you make a real human connection. Of course that means no delegation to your favorite bid bot, nor powering down and selling the stuff on binance. Rebooting your brain to make steem work again. Would you do it?
That's what I thought :)
Amen to that. Selling and buying votes killed the heart of Steem. It's not an honest evaluation of content. And these bidbot coders have risen in witness rankings too. What a joke... Money rules the platform and minds of many. I stopped posting about bidbot issues a while ago. The community at large either doesnt care, or cant do anything because most of the SP holders support the vote selling and buying anyways. Having everyone "get it" is a dream it seems...
What about the endless circle-voting, done even before bid-bots were a thing?
When I joined Steem in August 2017, it was a nightmare getting any kind of visibility. The only reason I created a promotion service is for people to have the chance to have their content seen.
If you want to get rid of bid-bots, please fix the system. (Incentivized downvotes & higher curation rewards) - otherwise, I don't see a reason to talk about the same topic, over and over and over again.
Also, if you really want to solve the problems Steem has, feel free to participate here: https://steem.nolt.io/
Edit: I mean, honestly: do you want to force freedom out of delegating to bid-bots? That's not possible. He has 8.4 Million SP and if he'd believe that Steem would go to shit due to bid-bots, he'd stop it, I'm sure of it.
But other than that, the only way to stop bid-bots, is to make them unattractive to use. That means, either A.) Downvoting the use (incentivized downvotes) - either generally or when abused B.) Give other options for delegators that are far more superior. C.) Create closed communities, where bought votes are prohibited.
Honestly, I really wish there would be a place where promotion wasn't necessary and content would be rewarded fairly, but this dream scenario - it requires work, changes and adaption.
What if promoted content had 0-returns? What if you pay to only advertise and the bot vote rewards get sent to null? Then it would really be about promoting a post, and not getting ROI...
Fixing the system ideally would require no automating or botting behavior, where only people's real actions counted. One way is where only apps were granted access to the chain that upheld the proof-of-brain system, and users had to vote through an app. But that's not going to happen. Then only real mouse clicks would be allowed to vote. A blockchain has many issues where a "fix" is possible, but not desired by many because everyone wants "decentralized" everything to be able to do anything. So there is automated voting, auto this and that, bid bots, etc. But a responsible group could authorize apps, and if they allowed automated actions through an api their access would be revoked.
The top 19 witnesses are a group, so already we don't have everything simply decentralized to make decisions, like approve code changes for the chain. A blind focus on pure decentralization is hampering the resolution of problems. People are required to make things work, not simply "whatever the code allows",a s if the code can account for the complexity of human interactions and behavior. Decentralized code has its limits.
Incentivized downvotes and higher curation rewards won't change anything. All the bidbots need to do is change how much they charge for a % of vote, and everything is more in favor of 0-work automated curation and getting even more returns from curation rewards by selling votes, not going out to manually vote content. Paying people to flag would ruin shit big time, as then any abusive flagging would be promoted because your even being paid to do it, why stop and upvote when you can bully people and get paid to do it.
@edicted also points out some issues with those so-called "solutions".
If no one bought votes, no one would sell votes. And if no one offered vote selling mechanisms, no one could buy votes. There are ways to change things. But, when money is the goal, things won't likely change without code making it restricted. And those restrictive changes aren't desired because there goes the easy money train.
Flagging for rewards and more curation rewards won't solve it, sorry. And they aren't the only solutions, as I've pointed to above. They are just more ways to reward the broken system.
Rewarding content more fairly is possible, and not having bidbots is one way to promote that behavior again. Yes, the changes require work and adapting to them, but they would make Steem a more honest place with better content evaluation. No? Decentralized systems have more issues and less ability to fix things, because anyone can do anything. If that doesn't change, then not much is going to get better unless people want to make it better by not doing the crap that doesn't make it better.
I do want to fix the system, but my solutions aren't well desired by others because "Decentralization is ultimate" or something...
I guess if we stay in the decentralized-only mindset (but we aren't really anyways becuse the top 19 are a group that make decisions for the rest as well), then we're stuck with some crap because decentralized systems depend on people making them work. If money keeps being used as the measure to get people to do things, then there will always be ways devised to ruin shit because "anything goes" that the code allows. If the code changes to disallow things, then things can change when people don't want to. But not likely to happen. So we're stuck with this experiment that will fail because people will just do whatever is allowed to make money. Unless the code prevents them. Anything I've suggested would be to put the bot vote rewards into null, and not go to the voe buyer. Then you'll see how popular buying votes is really. It's not just for visibility.
As for visibility, that depends again on people voting content to make it visible. Are the bidbots that destroy proof of brain and the core of a system that's supposd to bebased on others evaluating content to reward it, really worth it? Just to get visibility? Make the rewards from bidbots go to null, then it's not about making money, and it's only about visibility. The "only reason" (as you say) you created a bidbot service was to help people get content seen? Do you then not take a percentage of the profits? If you do, then it's not "only" to help them get their content seen, is it?
Thanks for the link. How do the suggestions there get implemented?
I suggested that bots require rewards be declined and got booted from two discord servers, months ago.
Bring back the n2 and whales willing to flag abuse,...
Shouldn't the visibility of content be determined by the community of voters, and not be bought to achieve? Just like rewards? It's a perversion of the whole point of having a social network of evaluating content. That purpose is bastardized with vote selling/buying.
I Agree. What kind of business model is 75/25 split? It says: If you want to earn STEEM you have to be an author, so that's why people publishing 10 shitposts a day and using bidbots.
I know @krnel is totally against 50/50 split but the heart of the Steem blockchain is STEEM/SBD, not authors. We have to split produced crypto equally between authors and curators.
My proposal to stop own comments upvoting abuse: send 50% from every comment payout to @null (not sure if it's technically possible)
The current business model is:
Amen to that.
I'm really glad to see you, @therealwolf, admitting that the system needs fixing, really - it's about time. When I saw the birth of bid bots I guessed this would happen, the proof of brain was always a big part of why I myself invested in Steem a long time ago. That's where I saw the value and it's been really hard to stay here ever since that promise was killed with selling the votes to anyone with money and now with Ned and Steemit Inc acting the way they do being the last straw for me personally forcing me to think again if my investment here is wise with long term mindset (+5-10 years), I still think this ship can be turned around though but I'm unpowering to have my Steem liquid and ready to abandon the ship just in case I don't see any psotive progress. I do however consider people talking about this issue being one, first we have to admit there are problems rather than cheer we're the best in every case, when Ethereums one project, makerDao is more valuable than our whole blockchain.
I think this is a good start, but I'd also offer SP holders a way of gaining their rewards passively, without selling their votes and meddling with the proof-of-brain system. Some people actually want to make this place work and are willing to curate, even for lesser rewards, some don't. These two groups should be seperated rather than put together.
Implementing these 3 systems would be a strong start in making this place valuable again for both content creators and consumers.
Absolutely spot on wolfman, and its the circle jerkers and auto curators who moan the loudest.
Bid bots get used as scape goats time after time but the op gets it right when he says there has to be a switch in behaviour.
Steem should be for everyone, whatever intelligence level which is why I hate the 'proof of brain' tag. Its elitist. It should be about effort, hard work and sincerity.
The people who game the hardest are the ones who have the most to start with.
However, bidbot owners also have responsibility to help keep bad actors in check too.
Good post, great reply, as usual, it all comes down to personal responsibility from every single one of us but thats easy to say when, unlike many on Steem, Im not struggling to pay for my next meal. Many people are.
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More I think about bid-bots more I dislike and disapprove of them. You make great points though.
You create smart tools and care about Steem. So, I would like to share the following thoughts.
This Ned's video from Steemfest 2016:
He says this at 1:09 minutes into the video:
I might be wrong, but it seems to me, rewarding and incentivizing the content consumption is neglected on the platform. Not everybody can be a great blogger, vlogger, content creator. In my opinion, a majority are content consumers. But since content consumption doesn't get rewarded as much, many focus on becoming content creators.
Since bid-bots serves as providing visibility, promotion, and marketing for its users, maybe bit-bots can fill the gap of rewarding content consumers as a mechanism of incentivizing consumption of bid-bot voted posts.
Can Dtube model of curation reward distribution be implemented in bid-bots? For example, a bid-bot can share 50% percent of its curation rewards with those who voted on the posts, giving them additional curation reward.
Do you think something like this or other innovative methods can attract more people to view and consume promoted posts? Can this even be viable for bid-bots?
I think bid-bots have a potential of fixing they way content is promoted on the platform. But not at their current state. If they can't add value to content consumers, they are no different than traditional advertising. Maybe even worse, since in this case, the community pays the costs of the ads/promoting.
@freedom has a large share in STEEM, and there is no doubt his delegations to bid-bots are hurting his total stake value. Most likely he hasn't realized it, or just doesn't care, or does it on purpose.
the solution is: Dan buys part of Ned's shares of Steemit Corporation (even if he needs to pay a high value for it), he gets the control of Steemit Corporation and, with their SP, starts flagging posts promoted by bid bots.(with prior warning of course)....Steem was well designed, perfectly planned but Ned decided to hear the crowd to do what is popular and not what is right, and screwed the system.
Ok, but in any case, do you really think, you can persuade someone like this author (https://steemit.com/steem/@ammar0344/why-steem-is-lossing-its-ranking) to stop using bid-bots?
Nobody in their right mind would probably read his posts and he knows it, so he would continue to buy votes.
The only way I see, is to change the system in that way, where human curators would have a far superior reward than those buying votes, selling votes or self-voting.
What if I couldn't vote on my own post or any account I delegate to or receive a delegation from? What if the rules for bid bots were the same?
I really like your idea of the 50% curation rule. I'd like for it to work for bidbots in favour of the bidder too. Like if I upvote this other user's post, I'd receive close to a half of what I spent. That could happen if there is only one bidbot and Steem manages it.
The People of Steem needs to become more generous.
everything here is built on generosity, having a singular bot's a bad idea, but you wouldn't understand, having more rules doesn't make things better or simpler, it complicates and destroys free enterprise.
The people are quite generous, they run servers, make apps, produce content, vote, distribute content, make bots that do all of that, ... it seems like you aren't appreciating the good work, want more and therefore we keep having problems.
My point is that if you create just to get monetary value, you are missing the point, @valued-customer said it best
Ahem, can you be more condescending?
I am appreciating "good work" but "good work" doesn't directly correlates to "good for the platform".
But I wouldn't understand. /s
Keep wearing your pink glasses.
fair point, I'm sorry, with some hindsight and without the same emotional state I was in last week, I can say it would foster some generosity, if you were getting back 50% of what you gave, you might be more willing to give rather than keep and "reinvest" because you have to pay for your delegation.
I just don't like bidbots in general, in technical terms there can't be a single bid-bot unless we vote for that and make a fork which has never happened. I think it over-complicates the platform if money is just going left and right, that's what curation is supposed to be, but people are lazy to do it by hand, technically curation projects are a better way to reward content than direct payments for votes, that just brings a chasm between the people that don't want to use them and the people that want the benefits, mainly inflated numbers...
I'm sure I can be more condescending, so thanks for pointing it out. I'm not trying it's just me lacking experience in communicating properly.
We'll just keep flagging him...
for fun. lolAs it stands, the lack of flagging makes the entire platform look scammy. It makes everything looks like "give me a dollar, get two back".
Agree that we need more flags in here.
of course individual shareholders will do what is better for them individually......we can only hope for good actions for players that, with their actions, can change the game and that cannot put their steem power easily in the market without screwing the price of it(Steemit Corporation)
It's been free money for Freedom, I'm sure he's gotten more out of here than he ever dreamed.
There are other tweaks with equal potential to affect these issues, such as zero curation rewards, 1a1v, and many more. While I am not accusing you of some disingenuity, I don't agree with your assessment and proposed solutions.
Promotion isn't necessary to succeed on Steem social media. I have never done it, and reckon I have achieved considerable success, but I don't measure success financially. Society is vastly more - and more important - than money, and simply considering monetary aspects of society limits society to it's economy.
SOC (SMTs, Oracles, and Communities) has the potential to solve the problems for all concerned by enabling the full panoply of potential platforms and the code they are driven by to eventuate, and allowing the market to sort them out. Those which aren't actually social media, being limited to actual people (society) have a place, but social media does too.
We can hope good code and a diversity of options will enable real social media to form out of the extant chaos, and I do.
Do you think bidbots helped more people get "any kind of visibility" now that most of the high visiblity things are bought for? Do you think bidbots are a solution to not getting the visibility you deserve and yu don't think that the visibility you think you deserve is a problem itself, the only problem being that you didn't receive the visibility you think you deserve, to you and the rest of the entitled ones?
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So you are not making a profit? Breaking even? Running at a loss? 😅
the problem is not votes, but ranking system of content in website, right now its who got more money got better visibility. But overall because of this rule, without bots there is almost no visibility of posts.
I'm not sure old-school witnesses care too much about it either, they are the ones who let this happen. You warned people, I warned people, we did our duty.
How about system neglect the user's post who used bid bots from going to trending/hot tab. I mean most of bid-bots are known so shouldn't be a hard task, so put them in ignore list. When people won't get visibility using those boys , they will eventually stop using it.
But yeah, this can't stop minnowbooster, smart steem where votes are directly sold between users.
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I will answer shortly but can develop if need.
We are definitely struggling financially, but that doesnt mean that we are not improving and updating our projects.
The real problem is most of devs are just sitting on a Steemit delegation and that comfort give them no more will to improve their existent project... So I definitely prefer my position... I'm having hard time (and my team too) to get my head off the sea, but that force me to work harder each day to find some ways to keep to do better day by day.
Innovation was never existent on Steem (at least to my eyes), most of apps are only some copies of existent mainstream apps (with 50x less features), while we have the power to make some real innovation, people prefer to assure their gain with some basic app...
For asksteem, I couldnt get my datas indexed on it, and today you have esteemsearch/surfer which is based on hivemind/elasticdb and free to use so it's not a waste at all.
I agree with some people who try to find solution to some issues, like the governance part, but I also agree with you about the "no sens" to trying to onboard users... While I say that, I don't blame them for what they do, and I just think that we are missing communication between the community (people with the will to improve the steem state) and some people with clear mind and who understand that blockchain.
I never trusted the Proof Of Brain, or not as a standalone. And in that way even before thinking about to build an app we have built the Proof of Merit which is a complementary overlay to PoB. Free to each team to dev their own layer, or to talk with us to implement the PoM. A simple thing about it, we dont try to abuse of the pool by anyway (like voting at 30minutes) or putting an alarm when we are at 100% to spend our votingpower, but mostly calculating each upvotes and trying to give only upvotes that will serve the whole community. How many team and apps can say that?
In my mind there is no difference between a bid bot and the system of dtube, which buy votes from users. You are talking about something but before that you should look at your home. And don't tell me that incentive have any proof of brain in it...
So I definitely trust that we can improve the mind of people if we give them better tools and if we educate them. And why not also improving the blockchain curation process. I don't see only one solution, but rather multiple ways to achieve that and make Steem the dream that we want to be true.
I worked with you for few months and I know how much you care about steem, as I do. So why not being an example for steem and starting to make something with dtube in that way? You have the potential to change things with your position as one of the most used dApps over whole blockchains.
But would you do it? :)
We don't have to hard fork to fix this problem. We need to come to consensus. There is a huge community and consensus here that believes in the merit of Proof-of-Brain.
So where is the proof-of-brain political party on Steem? It doesn't exist. How hard would it be for such a group to make these "financial tools" unprofitable? It wouldn't be hard at all. It would be stupidly easy.
All of the greedy leeches of this platform are lone wolves. They aren't working together to exploit this platform. It's everyone-for-themselves capitalism. A group of people working together to fix it can outgun these lone wolves by 1000 fold, bring them on to team proof-of-brain, and then move on to the next lone wolf exploiting the platform.
With a little bit of communication we can pit the wolves against each other and bring this platform back into balance.
I like the concept but how do you propose this be done?
If I had the capital, I would stand up a bot that would indiscrimately downvote vote buyers.
I don't care if the vote buyer's content is ok. All I know is they are feeding into a system that empowers our enemies.
I don't care if the bid bot owners cooperate with us to blacklist a few here and there. A blacklist is not enough by a longshot.
We recently uncovered a meme ripoff abuse network usng bid bots. That's the sort of thing that makes me want to rage quit and I have to search deep to find a reason to stay.
The blockchain does not forget and I hope it's users will not either. The ones that offer you votes for $$$ are not doing you a service. They are doing to blockchain a disservice.
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I actually just posted my solution.
Making the POB pipe dream a reality.
A proof-of-brain DAO needs to be created.
Twas a fantastic read!
Perhaps we are fully aware of that, but when some of us spoke loudly about the issue, those in position to support where nowhere to be found. Now it's too late to be vocal about it, the system has been this way for too long. I adapted and found some positiveness out of them. Do I love them? No. Do I hate them? Not anymore. Did we adapt? Yes, we had to.
What you're saying here is absolutely right.
It is the systems/businesses that are a product of human greed (bidbots are the main perpetrators) that have ruined steem. I suggested exactly what you are saying in this post (about bidbots removing value from steem without providing any positive service) in a conversation where 3 witnesses were present at steemfest, only to be talked over by a certain individual who has an inflated sence of his own intelligence/importance.
The fact is that a huge amount of value has been taken out of the system by bidbots/vote buying as these people who run them are only in it for profit. They aren't building anything positive, there service simply promotes the dumbing down of our trending as shit reaches a place that should be highlighting steem's best and brightest... and to add insult to injury, some of these people who run bidbots, are involved in a high position in some of the better discord communities. Honestly, they should be held accountable for the damage they have done! It is not all about steem price. A huge amount of talent left steem within months of joining because they saw what was going on with vote buying. But also, a huge amount of value has left steem as these vote buying services sell there profits to fiat.
There is a concerted message being pushed across steem right now, mainly by whales, about minnows & dolphins building a successful blockchain. These same people are talking about too many minnows didn't power up & took there steem out to fiat etc. But, these are the same people who delegate to vote selling services because they are too lazy to curate. They throw some autovotes to people who are agreeing with them or getting involved in thier projects but they do not curate content based on quality. Some do delegate to @curie or @ocd but even OCD have started there own vote selling now.
Basically, we have a situation here where responsibility for the mess the steem blockchain is in, is not being taken by the people who contributed most to what we're left with now. And they are certainly not changing their behaviour because they want that easy money Politics and crowd manipulation might be as old as the Bible, but that doesn't mean we should accept it or perpetuate it. Unfortunately, people are pretty much set up to be followers. Add the financial dynamics of Steem' into the mix and it is easy for people to be incentivized to say 'yes sir, I'll put in a tone of work for you' without questioning who or what they're really working for. It is also easy for bad actors in this space to suppress facts they would rather not be held accountable for through the fear of down votes.
Anyway, that's my 10 cents.
P.s. I have powered up nearly 100% of my earnings, both from posts & curie curating.
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You are right, brains are not rewarded. Brains are eaten by money.
As long as Steem is marketed as a place to “get paid for your content” and as long as the incentives are set up to push rewards to those most likely to sell the tokens, this blockchain will not see any real growth and prices will not hold any meaningful gains.
What would be the necessary change in your opinion? Removing author rewards?
That seems like a very interesting idea
I don't like that idea. People should be making good content rather than playing the system, but one of the things that attracted me to Steemit was the fact that I made more here than I ever managed to make on YouTube. If there's no author rewards, we might as well be on Reddit. And a (admittedly variable for many) income source is cut off from people. That's not a good thing. Choosing to have only one income source when you are in the position to have multiple diverse income sources is idiotic and taking away author rewards would be detrimental to everyone except for people who only curate - and curators shouldn't be getting paid and creators not - that seems really backwards given how much work goes into creating things. Curation isn't more deserving than creation.
Rewards attracted most of users here, you are telling to remove them!?
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He said : As long as Steem is marketed as a place to “get paid for your content”.
It's not about removing the rewards, but giving some different offers and possibilities to users than only getting paid for sharing a content.
If 'getting paid for your content' was bringing some value on Steem many steemians would be rich now no??
So I definitely agree that people shouldnt see it like a finality or as the main purpose for their apps, (even if they use it for marketing) but rather like a little bonus to attract people, which is cool in my opinion.
It has been more than two years now and the most common questions from steem users and for most of communities is : Why I didnt get upvoted? What I have to do to obtain an upvote?
In fact only a small bunch of apps really care about this. I can count them on my hand's fingers ;) In that way, nobody is perfect of course, but everyone can still try/tend to be better.
For the rest they keep to ruin this ecosystem while making hypocritical post where they tell you that they care about steem and they make tons of tools and apps without any value for the blockchain.
It's easy to QQ about steemit inc, steem, whales, and the current situation for avoiding the real problems.
I maybe wrong too, those people can be stupid as hell and not hypocritical... but I have some doubt :)
That sickness make me mad lol, I go back to my bed.
I agree with your assessment that the distribution mechanism is broken. When it comes down to changing user behavior or refactoring algorithms, it's clear to me that user behavior won't change. Nobody really flags. They complain that there isn't an incentive to doing so, but if you look at it long enough there is, but that if you can get beyond ROI-centric views. Most folks wont.
Which leaves us with refactoring the algorithm. In my opinion, we are suffering from a nothing-at-stake problem where users can behave in undesirable ways because they have little to lose. If we increase the downside (beyond flags) so that risk comes into play, then low effort milking becomes harder to do, because something is at stake. But of course such an idea would be massively unpopular because freeloaders gotta freeload.
I agree nothing at stake is an issue. Maybe making people pay with a % of their voting power like for upvotes would reduce the spam level.
Agree as well and we've been working to increase those stakes using off-chain tools. For example, running flag campaigns against a bid bot abuse 4chan ripoff network on my @smartmeme alt and using the SFR bot to claim upvotes for flags w/ explanatory comments (including a valid SFR abuse category and mention as well). Some resistance is better than no resistance.
If you are interesting in being part of turning up the heat on users following abusive patters, feel free to join us at @steemflagrewards. We're a flag happy bunch but we do strive to be reasonable.
SFR Discord
When I first found Steem 'Proof of brain' was what most attracted me and helped me attract others to this place. In my year and a half here I have tried to be true to the vision of how I thought the system should work as advertised, creating what i think is good content and upvoting others who I think also produce work that is of value.
I have never used a bid bot or set autovotes to other people. I want my success or failure to be based on merit, being a real human and manually curating. All of this is recorded on the blockchain for all to see. There are many users here doing the same and they are the ones I try and support.
I agree with what you say, that the system is broken the way it is and the automation of voting is, for me the biggest culprit. It has taken the 'social' out of the 'social media'. Making the place pay to play and scaring off many amazing creators.
Even though it has been pretty hard going I am in for the long hall. The lack of readers on my posts doesn't make me want to leave but it does make me check out other platforms like Whaleshares , a platform that seems to care about content and it is there that I will be sending other content creators to in the future. Sorry Steem
I do see @therealwolf 's side of the argument but in the long term it is creating a centralised power on how the rewards are getting distributed that will slowly but surely reduce to nothing for all involved.
It might have worked at the early beginning, as the circle of Steem users and those having stake was fairly small - but over time more and more people come together; and expecting everyone to act in the best interest of the platform, won't work. That's wishful thinking and won't happen.
There need to be rules, implemented on the blockchain level and the incentives have to be correct.
And I'm not sure how often I've said, but I gladly say it again: I don't have any problems with Smartsteem.com as promotion-service becoming redundant. But only if the system is fixed and self-voting, circle-voting is less effective than voting on good content. If that happens, people will automatically start to do the correct thing.
@therealwolf, everybody should act in the best way for her/himself. That's is what the concept of the free market says.
So, noone has the right to blame the individuals/the Steemians. It simply means that the ecosystem is economically not viable. So, it is the problem of the Steem Blockchain, not of the individuals.
But, what I have noticed recently is that many witnesses and dApps developers has started to panic. So, it means the ecosystem is quite shaky. And from a point of view of a small investor it is not the best stuff to see/observe. But, anyway! Let's wait and see what will happen.
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What will happen is that those that can make happen will. If you can make happen what you want, it is certainly better to act and make it happen.
Still, I am waiting for them as can to do, as I reckon most of us are, since I am incompetent to do.
Thanks!
That's the vision of @steemflagrewards and @flagawhale, to go after circlejerkers in the low and the high places and thus nerf the reward capability.
We simply do not have the stake to downvote all the abuse out there. We have plenty of people but we have to wait for our bots voting Mana to recharge at a measly 14k SP.
You've assisted us in blacklisting abusers from your bot and making @smartsteem better. I hope this becomes a two way street as I would hope to reward SFR flaggers more appropriately especially since many are likely taking flags from your former customers.
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Implement whitelist with users who are only posting good quality content. That would be a step forward. Simple but effective, something that @ocdb does.
I know that a lot of us can see the bigger picture, that helping everyone keeps it healthy for the majority, but I agree, there are always going to be some who abuse the system and leave a desolate landscape behind, like any exploitative-extractive industry does.
I don't have an ultimate solution, but what if flags were changed so they they were decoupled from SP? Everyone's flag is equal in weight. Then the damage is decided by HOW MANY people flag instead of one whale being able to decimate someone they don't like, minnows being afraid of retaliation, true abusers being taken down by a concensus? I suppose big whales could make a bunch of alts. But if little fish were unafraid to use them, I'd think you'd get a lot more participating in downvoting spam which might balance it out.
It was just an idea that came to me, and I'm not a techie, so there might be something that would make this not work that I don't know.