PROBLEM
Steem has a distribution issue. A few people are going to tell me that other projects also have distribution problems and they will be right. It matters more on Steem because we are trying to create a "Wisdom of the Crowd" situation when it comes to Content and our voting system on what is valuable content.
Markets Solve Problems
A natural solution grew out of Supply and Demand.
Some people had more voting power than they want to allocate using their votes. They do not want to curate content, but they do want to get value for their Voting Power. (Voting Power is a bi-product of owning Steem Power)
Some people did not have enough Voting Power and they wanted to have more.
So a natural market developed in Delegation and later the bidbots. This allowed end-users, Developers and even people outside of our economy to purchase a vote and promote their posts. It is a natural business case born and sustained by meeting an actual market need.
This model which grew naturally to meet a real need is really one of the only economies on Steem which grew out of a natural supply and demand situation.
While I realize some dislike this market it also simulates other social media and content site which to me is just more proof it is beneficial and shouldn't be messed with.
Pretty much every Social Media and Content platform has a Pay for Visibility aspect to it and some people who don't understand supply and demand who rail against it.
While I watch the community fight over Curation Rewards and how to allocate the inflation pool and so many who complain about the value of Steem, who do not realize if you go to trending you will find a list of people who have purchased Steem and bought a vote from someone who had a vote to sell and did it by choice.
The problem isn't that you can buy votes, the problem is the lack of curation by the community and the bidbot owners alike.
If we had more people and more competition for those bidbot votes they would not be profitable and people would use them to promote material that they really thought was worth promoting.
We are not going to attract new users by playing with our own chain. The next few hardforks:
Let's drop a UNFUNDED worker proposal system.
Then let's play with our own math.
Based on the speed of our development cycle that should push us into the next bear market! Yes, I'm being a little bit snarky
FOCUS people we need new users and investors not to fight about our own math and jealousy over content.
Hi @whatsup,
great article once again.
But I certainly disagree with the bid bots.
Only because it happens "naturally" this doesn't mean it is good, beneficial or useful.
There is no economic sense behind someone writing a post, paying bots for upvoting and commenting it and actually nobody reading the posts.
The content here is only useful if an actual human being reads it, consumes it and gives feedback.
You have to come down to the basics and the basics of steem are based on pure capitalism. So whatever is most profitable for stakeholders will be seen as most attractive in the economic view... everything else would be altruistic behavior.
So you can let bots create content and other bots voting and commenting it but ultimately once the machines have taken over the collapse will be inevitable. Who will insert fiat money or crypto into such a system? Only communicating with people is worth money and effort.
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While I appreciate your view and even agree with much of it.
Fighting something natural is a never-ending story. People have stake they don't want to use and other people want voting power. before delegations and bidbots all the same things happened they just happened behind the scenes in voting swap deals.
I make no judgement on it being good or bad, it just is...
There is no market value in finding and upvoting the best content. It's such an interesting dynamic isn't it? We want different people to win money, but don't want to acknowledge the money matters. :)
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yes.. true!
But then at least it would be obvious who is voting for what. Then you could confront stakeholders with their poor actions. ATM it is as the votes are washed clean by delegating to a voting bot. So even when people would go back to vote in circles.. at least it would be visible... the current system is IMHO the worst possible in regards of miss-use of voting power.
And yes.. it developed "naturally" but someone at steem inc made the strange decision that voting power should be transferable... so the basis of this all is not "natural"... what is "natural" however are fed up people leaving this platform because of this system...
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Don't worry, they are going to tweak the math and it will all be okay after that. :)
I have no idea anymore if it is better or worse. I do know the bidding bots leveled the playing field for some including me.
Right or wrong or indifferent the same ten people were on the trending page and there just wasn't ANYTHING you could do about it.
Some of those people are still just voting for each other and calling it curation. You can find them just off the top of trending.
We called them out. No one cared. :)
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yes.. its nearly impossible to change or fight it...
and I also do believe a revolution like taking away some of the big holders voting power would be wrong (yes this would be possible.. by a hardfork) as this would destroy the important trust into the blockchain...
.. so the only thing is to talk to the big steem holders and ask for their support and cooperation for useful projects and by the time more and more steem will be redistributed and everyone will profit... or this does not happen and nobody will profit...
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Agreed with the bidbots. Whatever you think of them, they are meeting a demand... I hadn't thought about the influx of new users diluting their power though... But it does make sense... As the return on the vote gets lower.
The thing that I'm struggling with still is why anyone would buy Steem. I know it increases your power over the rewards pool and curation rewards. But if you don't self vote and you have little interest in maximising your curation rewards (I just vote when I see an article that I like (like this post at around 3 minutes) , or I follow trails that I think are doing a good job of supporting things that I like) then there is no clear benefit to buying over natural accumulation? Unless you think it will moon.. But that is speculation and not real use.
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We should self upvote and also influence is part of it.
Our own users have made up a bunch of arbitrary rules about not self upvoting, don't use the bidbots, etc. They cannot be enforced and they damage the economy.
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THANK YOU! Finally someone who said what I've been thinking all along! I got scorned by other users for upvoting some of my stuff early on. And while it was admittedly a waste of voting power as I didn't enough Steem for it to matter, it does matter now. Granted, I namely did it so any comments on my own posts would show up higher, but that didn't matter to the "No Self-Vote Crowd!"
Also, used bidbots early on. Honestly, a waste of money as it cost more than I earned. But users should be free to use them if they wish, without the collective coming to scorn them about it...
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I have no argument about self upvoting! I just don't as at my size it makes little sense to do so... I have more benefit from not self upvoting when I don't land in the top 10 in @abh12345 engagement league. We all do what makes best sense for us. If my self vote was worth more, then the balance would naturally shift.
However, at the moment... That is the only viable use that I see for buying Steem...
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No, also reread this post and go look at the trending page.
People are creating a natural marketing economy. People are spending their steem on games and rewarding each other. Some people are beginning to buy and sell things.
It is a slow growing naturally developing social economic system, being distroyed by jealous bloggers and snobs... over a false premice of Quality Content Discovery.
And the unwillingness to fight abuse.
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Actually, I haven't looked at the trending page since early last, so it looks much better today than I remember!
Anyway, yes... I think that if Steem flourishes as an economy (games, vote sellers, real life markets and other non blogging stuff) then there is a real viable use case which would have a reason for buying Steem. I guess we aren't there yet... But it is going in the right direction... Now that I think of it, I have won silver raffles with Steem! I guess this is where you were going with your post, that bidbots are also part of the natural economy and that new users would create the demand for Steem usage for things other than blogging purposes.
Anyway, when you talk abuse... Do you mean large account abuse? Or plagiarism and that sort of thing?
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Both, Investors should use some portion of their stake to take action against something that would hurt the value of their investment.
I know it is arbitrary again, but personally, I try to use about 10 percent of my stake to fight "bad behavior". :)
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Ah... I try to do the clean ups via reporting.. For an account my size, I too terrified of potential retribution... Most of the plagiarists are small... But you never know what is lurking behind.
Anyway, I was thinking about this recently... Most of the large curation accounts (both auto and human managed) are often too happy to give out upvotes... But when reporting is done, they just blacklist or remove the vote (if they do anything at all!). This creates a no loss incentive for scammers... I really wish that those big accounts would do something similar and save a flag of two for punishing verifiable bad behaviour that is exploiting their curation...
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I wish everyone would take the risk to do a little clean up, just avoid the big scary accounts! :)
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Would you pick a self-vote limit (%) or go full retard? :)
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To be honest, I'm probably too lazy to do it... I think the only thing I would change would be the active removal of trail inflicted self votes! That is such a pain to keep finding and reversing! I can't remember, but I don't think my self voting behaviour changed too much after joining the engagement league (I think... Maybe I'm rose tinted...)... That said, I'm not all saintly either, I have a tiny alt account (less than 100 SP) that auto votes on me... But you probably already knew that!
There was definitely a time that I played with self voting (don't we all?) but the return was just tiny it just isn't worth it! ... But I think it wouldn't be worth self voting unless my 100% vote exceeded $10...but I don't see that happening anytime soon!
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No i didn't but thank you for your confession son :)
Almost all of us have self-voted at various points - the code allows it, and if it didn't the alts would.
In the past there was a reasonable balance between 'good and bad' whales, so accounts going full retard were suitably reprimanded. The good have since given up / gone passive / turned to the darker side and it's now a competition to see who can earn the most by doing the least.
Personally, I think if you had 2 mill SP you would take a vote on your post each day and distribute the rest :)
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Damn it! I outed myself! It is my @msearles account that I use for actifit and game streaming... So that it doesn't annoy people on my main account! Here I thought you were the all seeing eye!,
Anyway, thanks for the faith in my hypothetical self... I wouldn't be so sure, money and power do weird things to all of us!
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Yeah as Bengy says, I have an arbitrary rule about self-votes for the league. It's geared towards folks that are engaging and score well enough to collect 1 STEEM - the equivalent of 50 100% votes to self each week.
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That is different, it is perfectly fine to set up groups of volunteers who gain something by participating in a certain type of behavior.
It is a choice whether or not to participate. So, I have no problem with this as long as the behaviors are not demonized.
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Cool yeah, not demonized at all, I think there is even a 'sorry' where it's mentioned in the post :)
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If Steem is successful it could skyrocket in value. I don't think it will happen soon but do think it could work in the long run.
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Yes, the potential is there... Hoeve, many things in this space have potential!
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We need apps running on Steem that people want to use regardless of rewards. Communities running on those apps because they can do whatever they want on there without being censored for example. Or without fearing for being deplatformed or ghosted.
As long as people are here making content while feeling conscious about rewards and constant talk about economics we won't get far and especially not get in new users. If we attract new users on Steem with the promise of moneyzzz and they don't get them (or see others getting HEAPS of them just for posting a selfie) they will leave feeling disappointed. If we attract them on here with the promise of fun and anti-centralization we might get somewhere.
Maybe.
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Some excellent points here. I personally don't like bid bots but I can't argue that they don't work, as you stated, like many other services on other platforms.
I think they have a right to exist, but with the current UI I can understand why many are angry at their existence. In general, I think the Steemit UI could solve a few big issues with some changes. The Promoted category exists for a reason, but there's no reason to promote a post.
The encouragement of curation is atrocious, though. It's a fundamental part of the network and you rarely hear of its importance.
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It has also led to a "natural" economy where existing participants leave in droves and only a few percent remain active, investors just chortle at the state things are in, and the one and only unique selling point Steemit had has been butchered beyond recognition.
Your analysis may well be wrong again.
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Agreed many have left. Also in my opinion a lack of curation.
And yes, I could be wrong. There is no question about that. Only idiots insist they are right.
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Good to know you're not stuck in doctrine after all! (Assuming you're not calling yourself an "idiot" here).
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Spot on whatsup!
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It sure was nice seeing my ~1000sp giving out dimes while the price was <.25usd.
All it took was responsible whales controlling the abusive whales.
My latest idea is to code the steem and Steemit account's sp to downvote votes in excess of whatever limit we want and bring back the nsomething.
I know there are at least 35 accounts that will vote against it, but I think 1000 accounts giving out significant rewards will draw more users than 10 accounts giving out 30% of daily rewards to ten authors, as it is now.
~60% of rewards go to those ten votes and bid bots.
Smdh.
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Interesting thoughts and I heard today it is only 2 weeks to code the new changes, so... that makes me feel better we can yank our own chain for another couple of weeks.
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I would think reverting back to code we already used would be minimally taxing on resources.
Coding in an influence cap and locking the sp to enforce it might take awhile.
But, you heard them, rewards changes are behind communities and smteees!.
Neither of which are likely anytime soon, if ever.
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I'm not for or against bidbots, but I think they emerged as a response to broken incentives. If the incentives were right, I suspect that there would be much less demand for bidbots.
I think that we're not going to attract and retain users and investors for a "social" media platform if the incentives favor anti-social behavior. According to a 2018 paper, that may be the case - A game-theoretic model of Steem's curation algorithm. So, I still think that fixing the incentives should be a priority. But, maybe someone should take a more methodological approach to fixing them. "Let's try these new untested rules and see what happens" might not be an ideal methodology. While, personally, I'd guess that 50/50 rewards & n2/(n+1) would be better than the current solution, I don't think there's any evidence other than speculation that it would be any better or worse. To make a change like that, I suppose we should have some level of evidence that it will make things better.
We have a lot of smart people here. So, I'd like to see a collaborative working group form to do research into curation, and an analysis of alternatives in order to find the best set of trade-offs. Ideally, we would find a scoring method where voters are incentivized to vote "correctly". Coincidentally, along those lines, I posted Simulating a Steem curation rewards distribution that is modeled after a 2nd price auction, yesterday.
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Other projects also have distribution problems!11!..
"Pretty much every Social Media and Content platform has a Pay for Visibility aspect", yet when you publish an ad on Facebook for example. You pay for it, facebook earns from it. Facebook's worth increases. In Steem when you share an "ad" you pay to a 3rd party instead of burning it (which should increase the value of Steem/SBD). In the meantime buyer and seller of this "ad" also gets a share from Steem (daily pool). And people still think that bidbots are harmless.
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No one said harmless.
I don't know an adult who thinks there are many silver bullets or any harmless solutions.
It is a matter of picking the least worst solution.
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Oh, I was talking in general. Most people says ". I don't like or hate them", simply hate them, there is nothing lovely about them. They did nothing good for the ecosystem. It was an alternative when some early-birds dominating trending and since then bid-bots dominating it.
Probably about a year ago, again I'm not sure but probably heimindanger decided to "clean" trending.found the article :)
https://steemit.com/steem/@heimindanger/operation-clean-trending
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And we could have fixed the issue when they were not so many and not so strong by just downvoting a bit
But you all wanted your curation rewards and self-voting possibilities
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Actually, that is my point as well, a bit of downvoting would have gone a long way!
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STEEM WILL SURVIVE!
Posted using Partiko iOS
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There are just still so much problems on steemit still yet to be solved or resolve. Maybe as time goes on
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As my account is being flagged by the ugly cheetah I will not be shy at all in writing here what I feel about steem.
Go and learn from GOLOS.io
I have joined that small community since few months ... my reputation increased with my income ...at the end of the day ...we all here to gain from our posts... and please do not lie onto your selves... good post or bad post at the end you need to see some income.
In GOLOS.io the community harmony is great even the GOLOS is less than steem value but it works well ( 0.007 $/golos)
And everyone is happy
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Can you make a post that details the differences between our rewards and their rewards?
I bought enough to be a dolphin there, but when they went linear and started charging 10% to post I left.
I hope some things have changed.
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Hi, @whatsup!
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