Why free downvotes are a good and necessary part of STEEM

in newsteem •  5 years ago  (edited)

There are so many posts and comments out there complaining about downvotes that I feel it's necessary to put out another perspective, why the free downvotes were introduced, and why they are good.
And before you think "well yeah, he's one of the main downvoters" - I am also one of the main recipients and still wouldn't want to revert them being added to the platform.

Let me explain.


That picture is one for the german users, sorry rest of the world

The reward pool is limited. It fills up with a fixed rate (the inflation) and the STEEM which can be paid out depend on that rate. So if someone gets a high reward, there is less left for everyone else.

For a long time we have helplessly watched people engaging in self rewarding behaviour (self-votes, bidbots, upvote4upvote), which lowered the rewards for all the others. Downvotes are described in the whitepaper as the tool to switch the balance from self rewarding to deciding as a community which is the best content. That's the whole value proposition of STEEM - reward good content!
Having downvotes cost the same as upvotes made them being used very scarcely. We had the choice of getting curation rewards for upvoting content, or clean up and giving up on the rewards as an act of altruism. That's why trending looked the way it did.

Now people accuse those who use the downvotes that cleaning up would drive the price of STEEM down. Which direction did it head the last months and years, while they were able to self reward? Isn't it a lot more probable that outside investors stayed away because they saw that the main value proposition is not working, and an economic system where those who have much can assign even more to themselve can't grow organically?
We need to engage more people, we need more and better content, and the way to do this is by rewarding them for their efforts!

Yes, investors are important. But they should invest into a concept, because they believe that the value of their investment will rise. That doesn't mean that they need to get more STEEM, but that STEEM itself needs to become more valuable. And it can only do that if it finally delivers on its promise to bring the best content to the top.
I personally know of >1M STEEM that has been bought since the EIP exactly for the reason that we now have a chance to getting closer to doing so.

As an additional measure, curation rewards have been raised by 100%. The rewards on a post are now equally shared between the content providers and the investors. So investors claiming they need to reward themselves are actively acting against the fundamentals of the platform. They hurt themselves too, as with the platform constantly shrinking because we can't retain authors, the value falls and with it their investment. They keep piling up STEEM for themselves, while the value drops faster than they can collect them. In the end, everyone loses.

A downvote doesn't take something away, it changes the allocation of the funds to be paid out. What's taken away from a self rewarder goes back to the pool, and can be used to reward good content again.

The upmost hilarious claim is that this would be a communist system. Nobody takes away something from your wallet, and nobody wants to. As long as it's not paid out, it's not yours. Consensus between humans needs time and we have 7 days to determine together which content is able to make the platform grow. Just because someone decided to give you a vote after 5 minutes, that doesn't mean you earned that.

Small downvotes of powerless accounts and retaliation downvotes are a side effect. But those don't matter in the big picture. The small ones don't have an effect bigger than the unavoidable dislikes on youtube anyway. And for the retaliation votes it's the same as for the legitimate ones - they don't take anything away, they just make it available for the pool again.

That got a lot longer than intended - tl;dr: don't frown about downvotes, they're healthy for the platform. Use them, take them, and steem on!

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  ·  5 years ago (edited)

Something just hit me. What is the moronic talk that Steem is going down after #newsteem? Here is a recent daily chart from Bianace. Steem/BTC hit a low of 0.00001549 on Aug 10, 2019. That's the reaction low. Prices have been very stable since then! Every time after that, when prices got to that level it was bought heavily. A picture is worth a lot more than many written words and mis-information.

PS. Up-voted for visibility

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"Isn't it a lot more probable that outside investors stayed away because they saw that the main value proposition is not working, and an economic system where those who have much can assign even more to themselve can't grow organically?"

Definitely...

"The crypto ecosystem owes the Steem blockchain and the STEEM token a nod of appreciation because it built one of blockchain’s first tangible real-world use cases, a decentralized social content platform. The years have not been kind to the platform, however, with clear flaws such as the manipulated upvoting of content and power disparities between users becoming increasingly apparent. As a result, many users have opted to switch to other platforms like Medium."

Source: https://bravenewcoin.com/insights/steem-price-analysis-engine-in-need-of-a-restart

Nice find, they are spot on.

@tipu nominate

Hi @oliverschmid! @bronkong has nominated you to become a @tipU curator! You can now request 3 @tipU upvotes per day on any content you like. The better curation reward you can get, the more upvotes with higher value you can send. You can nominate new curators as well!

To send the upvote, please comment under the post and at the end of the comment, add: @tipu curate. To nominate someone else you think would make a good @tipU curator, reply to one of their posts or comments with: @tipu nominate. All of this is of course free :)
Check out https://tipu.online/curator?oliverschmid for more information and to see your stats :). Have fun!

  ·  5 years ago (edited)

Ok. I don’t like to comment too much. But I will in this case. There is a overwhelming chorus that I am hearing that people will leave after #newsteem. There are actually standard dataset from Pablo’s post that point to that... it’s an endemic trend since Jan 2018. Keyword “Jan 2018”.... #newsteem is barely a month old or little more. Give it some time! Also there are multiple examples of people investing in a big way after HF. The change after HF got me out of my slumber.. I purchased 216K steem in one month. And I don’t think it’s a significant investment. I am not here to make money. I am here to make a successful social network on a blockchain. It is time for this platform to grow up and make a meaningful step.

Welcome to the club! You're now in a position of power, make people's stay a pleasant one and this place will grow. Network, be friendly, and don't get a big ego and you'll be golden. You're in a good spot!

I too had a change of heart. Posted about it here even though it's not as elegantly stated as this post. The downvotes bad, upvotes good mentality must change if Steemit is to survive as the anonymous and decentralized social media platform that it is. It's the necessary balance for any system to survive. Much love to you all for making it a better place.

so just took a look on steemworld, noticed you flagged this for 100% - wondering why?
https://steemit.com/poetry/@dobartim/memoirs-of-love

Disagreement on rewards.

Thank you for writing this way - it's easy to understand!

I've resteemed it in the hope that many others may allow themselves to be open - minded and read on what you wrote and perhaps it would clarify things out for the many of us because the many obviously don't understand why the dern flag is there.

This birthed more questions ha ha!

The reward pool is limited. It fills up with a fixed rate (the inflation) and the STEEM which can be paid out depend on that rate. So if someone gets a high reward, there is less left for everyone else.

Is it almost empty atm so the flag has become a necessity or it's purelybecause of the abuse and the purpose of rewarding great contents more?

We need to engage more people, we need more and better content, and the way to do this is by rewarding them for their efforts!

ditto on that! however, are we trying to be appealing to the masses who are mostly not cambridge/ivy league literate or the later?(this is not an insult am just stating what I think is an obvious fact when we refer to the masses) if we are trying to encourage the masses to join us- would it really make the value of steem rise? if it is the othey way around would it also give the same effect or we don't really know? After 3 years, I thought the value of Steem is somehow dependent on btc.

Nobody takes away something from your wallet, and nobody wants to. As long as it's not paid out, it's not yours. Consensus between humans needs time and we have 7 days to determine together which content is able to make the platform grow. Just because someone decided to give you a vote after 5 minutes, that doesn't mean you earned that.

The last part is a possible vaccine, we do tend to think that we've already earned it the moment the upvote get casted on our posts not realizing that it ain't 7 days yet and it may still change till the last 12 hours - that's one hmmmm.. moment for me! Thanks!

I still am not a fan of the flag but I do understand that there's a cancer that needs to be cured in the system, after several posts have exposed many names - am no longer surprised of the need for it to be implemented, I just wish the ones who decided on flags would not stop to it and think of a better and more amicable way of balancing the rewards and getting every great content producers get to trending plus How do we know that the circle jerks would not just switch to upvoting the trending knowing that they would earn curation rewards on that specially if the trending posts has much or am I seeing this shortsightedly again?

I also want to ask this - say, a certain newbie does create great content, value packed yada, yada, meets all the criteria that author gets support and finally keeps trending - how big is that author allowed to be till the support stops or should it actually continue specially if they continue making considerably great posts? If we think we're going to bigger in the future but we'll only be supporting a certain group of unique authors would we not become unsustainable in the end? Those recipients would eventually grow, too and how do we ensure that if a new set of unique newbie authors exist - we'd still be able to serve this very purpose? How big is big? I thought dolphinhood is already satisfying enough but I've watched the many bulked up to orca and minnows seem to multiply and shit posts continued to grow as I saw so many loo pics get passed on.

Am going out after this so if you reply forgive me if I get to see it on my next visit! TC and enjoy autumn!

  ·  5 years ago (edited)

Is it almost empty atm so the flag has become a necessity or it's purelybecause of the abuse and the purpose of rewarding great contents more?

It can't run empty. What comes in goes out, if someone gets more others get less.

are we trying to be appealing to the masses who are mostly not cambridge/ivy league literate or the later?

All of them - the masses would profit from having a source for ivy league content so to say, but they wouldn't (and shouldn't) make a living with shitposting.
How the value plays out depends on a lot of factors, and I can't honestly forsee that. We have more chances for it to rise if people don't think this platform rewards people for having something in their wallet I assume.

How do we know that the circle jerks would not just switch to upvoting the trending knowing that they would earn curation rewards on that specially if the trending posts has much or am I seeing this shortsightedly again?

Not everyone can get high rewards by upvoting trending. As soon as something is on trending, the curation rewards are bad, as the high rewards go to those who voted on it first. Trying to predict what might become trending is part of the concept, but if everyone jumps on the same authors that becomes highly competitive. It's better for your own rewards to vote on something small that becomes big later, than something that is already big. That also kind of answers your next question, there is no hard limit to adding support, but for yourself it's always better to find the next trending post instead of piling onto one that's already there.

Thanks! I have a few new questions not related to this reply though - just a few thoughts I had earlier.

If a post gets flagged and a certain amount was removed from that post's rewards - does it mean that the person who used the flag on that post somehow gets to decide who the reward goes to? It kind'a make me think that it looks like that. If it has that effect how are we sure that the amount of reward taken out of a flagged post considerably reasonable enough to cast on that post?

Does any huge account holder who'd cast a flag on a post get to earn from downvoting? If so, would that not be considered abused, too, specially if they're capable of giving that as an upvote to more deserving unique post that could possibly get to trending specially if they happen to have casted it with a perfect timing? Wouldn't they be earning much specially if they flag a post heavily?(I have a hunch am seeing this last one wrong.)

Lastly, just how big a group is this circle that it seems to be causing much damage to the point that their actions have summoned the flag back? A lot?

EDIT : I took another peek at the trending and bumped into a mention of community - I've heard this a long time ago, afaik it's not new, how do we know this won't birth to another form of circle jerking? If it would be alright - then what's the point of what's being done now?

Hi @englishtchrivy

I really appreciate you asking all the questions

It will also make me try to understand this when @pharesim answers you

does it mean that the person who used the flag on that post somehow gets to decide who the reward goes to?

No. It's returned to the pool and distributed to everyone else based on the votes they received. All upvotes count a little bit more.

how big a group is this circle

Huge. Everyone got used to the system being broken, and it will take a long time to change the culture, if it's possible at all.

Can't predict how communities will work out, we will see.

Who is to decide what is quality content or not?

I see the same problem developing with the downvotes that was there before. This imbalance between the minnows and the whales. Only now the minnows that have the idea that certain practices are good or bad can now downvote each other. It doesn't matter if you're making good content and contributing to the value of steem in this way - anyone can downvote you for any reason.

The absence of an upvote in the previous system should have been enough to keep things in check. Simply adding a costless downvote does not solve anything. it makes things more complicated. Stupidly complicated.

I've just started releasing some music from a music project called Zen in a Nightclub, it's based on improvisation and involves artists from all around the world. I used a bid bot minnowbooster.net to promote my post.

It's good content, it should be seen, sometimes my content is picked up by curators and sometimes it is not.

I get a comment and a downvote from @acidyo telling me that I have received a downvote for using a bidbot.

I have a steem wallet with less than 150 steem in it, none of it I have put actual cash into, only generated from rewards. If I'm not using steem for promotion, besides steem power, what do I do with that steem?

Not only that, I am not the big whale that is causing the system to crash by using a bid bot. I am a small time user that is creating far greater quality content than many other accounts that have a much higher value.

It shouldn't matter that I use a bid bot.

Instead of @acidyo looking at the content and deciding its value, and giving a productive comment - I am immediately judged on my use of a bid bot and on that alone, without even looking at the content. With free downvotes small users and their spite have the power to pull down even smaller users just because. It's created the domain for virtual bullying.

How is this helping the platform? I'm on the edge about whether to use steem at all or not. It's becoming quite useless and now with free downvotes has given any Joe Blow the power to fuck you for any reason they imagine in their lucid mind.

Let's use our brains on this one.

I don't think steem is the future. Something else will emerge, but for sure steem has paved the way for that new thing.

  ·  5 years ago (edited)

The community should decide together what's quality and what not. You rewarding yourself break that system. Thinking you should be allowed to do that, and then saying that you don't think the system will work at all is very self centered and giving out a bit fuck you to everyone who is trying to make it work.

If it helps you to get over the edge: please don't use steem.

I am not making money off this. I am doing it for the love of it.

I am not loving steem. Goodbye steem.

It used to be acceptable to use minnowbooster. I wasn't aware the rules changed.

Now we have new rules and new upstarts thinking they know everything.

I honestly cannot be bothered.

"If it helps you to get over the edge: please don't use steem."

This was added later in an edit.

I won't use steem. It's ok. I'll use real life. I'll get away from computers and speak with real people.

More than anything this whole exercise has taught me that expression cannot be contained in electronic form and we lose the live aspects of things. We've lost the life trying to put a value on everything.

Steem is full of mediocre content. And that is not improving.

The whales still rule the day and the rewards still end up in the pockets of those that have. It's a general rule of thumb, those that have will be given more and those that don't will have whatever it is they have taken from them.

Free downvotes doesn't change this.

"You rewarding yourself break that system."

I am not rewarding myself. I don't get money from using this bid bot, it's just promotion. It uses the same steem that I put into it, to make my content seem a little more popular. There is no real accumulation of wealth, am not suddenly in charge of the keys to the inflation of steem and giving myself all the wealth.

This is how you make it seem.

I am not the enemy in this equation.

Whales will abuse because that is business.

You do what you can with what you have. If bid bots aren't 'legal' anymore then other means will come to the fore to make something be perceived as popular.

Numerous accounts with networks set up that are not in any way honest about voting of content because it is popular are generated by whales. They get votes on content because that's where they want the votes, not because that's what is what the people want.

It's the nature of 'attracting investors' and putting a value on things. This is business. Art and business traditionally do not mix.

It seems that those that have gone ahead and decided to express themselves on here have done nothing more than become content slaves for the whales.

And if you say it's becoming more equal, well good for you, the whales aren't getting smaller and the need for their money is not going away.

A new platform must be generated in which everyone is equal from the start. No new money can be brought in, it must be open source and volunteer based and yes it will have problems. I see this as the only way.

  ·  5 years ago (edited)

I fully agree that downvotes are needed, that nothing is stolen, and communist seems very overstated... :)

I downvoted before they were free. I selectively read before I upvote and before I downvote. I don't consider who the author is and instead I try to objectively consider the content, relevance and engagement

If 10 people read a post and like it ... they can upvote it.
2 people hate it they can downvote it.
Most simply ignore it.

That is the wisdom of the crowd.

A group of people colluding on who votes too much for what, with complete disregard to the content or quality of the posts and with no communicated standards.

People are getting revenge downvoted, it doesn't take a lot of empathy to understand why this would shake up a small community. Not everyone knows who is on what team. All they see is a bunch of powerful people (stake, not skills or knowledge)

Don't take my word on it, just consider it.

'Wisdom of the crowd' applies when 1 voice is one piece of wisdom.
When 1 voice is wroth 50 xtimes the voice of another, it becomes 'wisdom of the oligarchs'.

A massive difference, and one that can't be changed, here.

The market knows - and see's - the difference, even if the oligarchs here are willfully blind to the flawed structure.
DPOS doesnt have to work like this, btw

Imagine 1 voice 1 vote on content, and 'dividend' payouts, annually, instead - based on the price of steem and the proportion of it that you hold/time over the year... THAT could be steem price rocketing! - (every one's headed in the same direcion then as well....Like we almost have the same vision, or something).
(no pedantic definitions of 'dividends' needed, ty -it was tho most effort I was going to put into painting the picture).

No salt, just sense.

There are self voters with big and with small stake. Your sense doesn't apply here.
1 voice 1 vote isn't possible due to reasons explained hundred of times already - there's no way to limit someone to one account on the Internet. None, whatever idea you might try to come up with, it won't work.

None, whatever idea you might try to come up with, it won't work.

I'm glad you enlightened me. I'll stop thinking now, and join the rest of ya..lol

  ·  5 years ago (edited)

You can of course keep thinking and try to solve a problem as old as p2p networks. Computer scientists all over the world will bow down before you when you do find the solution. One that doesn't require sending our IDs to Steemit Inc and letting them regulate access to the blockchain at least ;)
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sybil_attack

Computer scientists all over the world will bow down before you when you do find the solution.

How cool is that?

I might start thinking again.....

Of course if one person had one vote - on content - and payouts were yearly based purely on stake size -then there would be no financial incentive to use numerous accounts to upvote posts....zero.

This way - everyone would want to be upvoting what they saw as the best quality posts of their genre- to make the site more attractive-to attract more users- to grow the price- to get bigger payouts at the end of the year.

Just sayin'...

...the answers are easy - it's asking the right questions that can be tricky.

I'll stop thinking now, my nose has started to bleed...

If I understand right you suggest to get rid of content rewards? What would be the incentive for authors?

....to build a place that people want to put their eyes on, want to come to.

..thus increasing it's value, and the price goes up -thus higher payouts after the year..
Give each new user 30 steem (or whatever) to be able to post - locked in for the year.
Any increase in price, the money would be deducted from the growth - a net zero cost for steeminc.
For simplicity sake.....the price on joining is 10 cents per steem, the price after the year - and they decide to withdraw - and the price is then 20 cents.
The proportion they are entitled to is, say, $60 - they get $30. (the initial steem given to be able to post, is deducted).
Minus value - under $30 - it stays locked in. It's a win win.

It would give incentive people to put money into steem also, that way - you will be backing your own stables, ( not your own horse).

Then it comes down to all of us pulling in the one direction- to get the price higher, through improving the quality content of the site, and increasing eyes on it.
A common goal for all (one missing entirely at the moment).

Create the demand through increasing quality -It's always been a good strategy.

(My consultation fees are very reasonable, btw).

My nose is really bleeding quite heavily, now...lol

You hit the nail on the head. It's not the "wisdom of the crowd" downvotes that irk me as content creator. In fact, I don't remember ever getting one of those, and very seldom feeling the need to give one. It's the "a group of people colluding" downvotes that bring my blood to boiling point. Not because of the few pennies it might cost me, but on account of the injustice of it.

Pharsim is inspiring.

I just came down off a downvoting binge courtesy of a lovely list.

I also downvoted before it was cool. There were more things to downvote back then, too.

I didn't ask him not to downvote. I downvote also! :) I suggested he consider how it might feel and look to the community. :)

A lot of the community is confused. I don't know very many people getting downvoted for abuse, I know a few getting it for revenge. They generally understand why and maybe just regret following trails, etc.

I think it's those negligible -10% votes from accounts with less than 50sp that are confusing people.

It's confusing me to. What is the point?

As an additional measure, curation rewards have been raised by 100%

Nerdy nitpick: it was an increase of 73.33% for curation, not 100% because the total split by authors and curators dropped from 75% to 65%.

#oldsteem curation = 0.25x0.75 = 18.75% of inflation

#newsteem curation = 0.5x0.65 = 32.5% of inflation

32.5/18.75 = 1.7333333...

  ·  5 years ago (edited)

I am very sorry to say this @pharesim I have always had you as one of the better Steemians in your behavior but I am really finding it sad that all the people who have constantly been cheerleaders for downvotes are now having to be constantly posting articles justifying why they are good. If something is good it doesn't have to be justified its effects speak for themselves.

If something is good it doesn't have to be justified its effects speak for themselves.

That is the best statement I have read about this issue in a long time. Congratulations on hitting the nail on the head.

The effects actually do speak for themselves. But there are myriads of posts and comments spreading FUD from those speaking from entitlement, and I had to repeat all these points so often the last days to make people understand, that I figured writing an explanation post I can link to would save me a lot of time.

The problem is it it nos just you there are dozens of posts justifying downvotes, if downvotes are good they should speak for themselves no need to be writing about how beneficial they are for Steemit every day, several times a day.

And there will probably be more as long as there are users who didn't get the reasoning yet. Explaining things is a tedious task, and FUD needs counterarguments to not grab hold.

Have another 100% for making the effort. I really appreciate it!

Thank you for helping to drain haejin's voting power :D

it's hard to understand for chinese
Do you mind translating into Chinese?

Haha. That would better be done by a native speaker who understands English too, I don't want to rely on Google translate.

Or was that an offer by you to do so? Then please, go ahead, that would be awesome!

I just checked the trending page and unfortunately, I don't see any progress in regards to quality.

I agree. To some extend I understand some investors that vote4vote, if they don’t, who will vote for them? Ideally when you make a quality post, experienced curators curate. (ideally because social media feature is still strong on steem anyway). But are curators really curate according to quality or curate for many other reasons? For example, you see 5/10 posts on trending at the moment is translation post for steemfest, ofc i know some authors sent liquid reward to steemfest fund account. But how many will read and decide to go just because the posts are on trending, is it really necessary? Just one example...

Investors don't even need to write, curation rewards are high enough to beat inflation so they don't even lose proportionally.

Yes, it is an issue too that always the same stuff by the same people gets voted. That could be tackled if we wouldn't be so busy with the self rewarders.

There isn’t many objectively good content around tbh, I guess that’s why investors aren’t happy when they see higher rewarded manually curated posts aren’t better than their shitposts, they feel unfair.

if I were a huge stakeholder, I won’t be happy to see certain “3 truths 1 lie” contest post trending, while anyone can write similar kind of shitposts lol.

Just an example. The current general quality on the site is just not persuading.

  ·  5 years ago (edited)

Have a look at the curangel compilations. Lots of great stuff in there. One just has to look for it, and we desperately need more people doing so to make it more visible for everyone.

I took a look at the curangel posts and appreciate your efforts. Posts they select is good, good in a way they put effort in writing them and they aren’t bad, but also few are that outstanding either.

Nobody should be entitled of any rewards in my opinion, we are all (most here at least) average content creators that have never made viral anywhere else in other social network. Then I don’t see how trending authors at the moment deserve to be there either, as te content isn’t top notch there either.

Can't disagree with that. Unfortunately, lots of great content creators have left again because they weren't appreciated. We either change that as a community, or fail together. Nobody needs a platform full of average or less.

sigh... hope things can turn around eventually but i can’t come up with a good solution at the moment.

Then again social media is full of average content anyway, i don’t like the trendings on instagram either, it’s the same that I don’t like pop culture, but there probably most people like those trendings i guess.

Compared to those, trending here isn’t serve either as an example of good piece of content or hot gossip/conttoversial topics/newest news, etc. All this said, I also can’t figure really how steem should be tho.

I’ll take a look. Lots of great stuff there but none made in trending is a problem, considering trending is now manually curated.

Posted using Partiko iOS

I think trending is still mostly a result of autovotes, or "curators" who don't really dig and have list of names or so.
We made some progress, as that small accounts at least can hope for a few dollars with good content. We're far from having fixed trending, it's a long way there if we'll ever be able to reach it.

  ·  5 years ago (edited)

Are free downvotes really good for all of or just for you @pharesim so you can buy it more at lower price.

Check the chart

Screenshot_20191014-220940_Coinbase.jpg
Image source www.coinbase.com
Price of steem is down big time so real investiors here are not happy with all this negativity.
I understand that lobby is big obstacle here but at least we all share same interest-To Make Money for our families.
I think some cool rules of downvotes should be researched sooner than later.
At least you are trying to improve but that is long ways approach.
Would you please stop downvoting my post.
:)

Price has been going down long before free downvotes. Compared to the last year and a half it's pretty stable now.

Price is not going up that is for sure.
Basically you are just running in circle without real solution and you hope people here will get to know your name. We call it professional next level spam and steem platform abuse just.on another way.
However I dont support downvote as only solution for general public knowledge.
There are good and bad sides of that. Mostly bad downvote sides.

Don't worry, people do know my name.

As a blacklisted spammer it's not surprising that you don't like the downvotes.

It even don´t makes a difference if you are a spammer or just not hear to mummys advice in these times on steemit !

Here's the chart after the hardfork. It's more stable than ever. We're on a good way.

I agree! I just used one to downvote this post since you like to flag my hard work and original content videos.

  ·  5 years ago (edited)

Thanks for confirming in writing that you vote for votes, not for the content, and that you're a prime example for why downvotes need to exist! :)

Just a nitpick, but I disagree that the retaliation votes are harmless. I'm fairly certain that the flag wars drive a number of people away from the platform, and they are also used to create FUD that makes it harder to on-board people. IMO, it's an open question as to whether the benefits outweigh the harms. I would guess that HF21/22 switched the effect of downvotes from net-harmful (pre-HF21/22) to net-beneficial (post-HF21/22), but I also suspect that user behavior is continuing to evolve in response to the new incentives, so future results may vary.

SCOT tokens and SMTs add a whole different dynamic to the equation, too. I think it will be immensely useful to be able to observe and compare the results of different incentive mixes.

  ·  5 years ago (edited)

I've seen people getting retaliation votes and stopping to use their downvotes as a result. And I've seen a lot more who got even more dedicated in keeping their efforts up.
I don't know of anyone who left because of retaliation. It's easy to avoid by keeping out.

FUD is always a problem. One more thing a lot of the targeted people don't get. Spreading FUD about the downvotes helps as little as self rewarding. Their greed makes them so focused on themselves, that nothing else matters. It seems they'd rather see everything burn than changing their ways to work together as a community.

It seems they'd rather see everything burn than changing their ways to work together as a community.

The problem is, I for one don't like to be bullied into changing my ways. Convince me if you can, by all means.

they'd rather see everything burn

Yes, I admit freely, I have begun to feel that way and - just in case - reserved the domain http://thetruthaboutsteem.org/ on a server where I can't be downvoted into oblivion. That's how fed up I am with people mingling in my affairs! On the flip side, I have also canceled my power-down, to keep my options open. I'm finding it difficult to decide what the right thing to do might be. As one commenter said earlier, good things don't need reasoning, they stand on their own merits. That really got me thinking...

Done, I used a few DVs here, you were too convincing! I had extra stacking up - enjoy! lol

I've been downvoting for years and had plenty of retaliation for it. Some keep doing that long after I left them alone. I see it as part of my curation duty on Steem. The free downvotes have gone a long way to reducing the abuse/misuse of the platform, but I still think some of the big accounts could reduce their self-voting. Save it for when they need to cancel out flags. Most of them get good votes anyway. It's not like there's a shortage of under-appreciated content making cents.

Small downvotes of powerless accounts and retaliation downvotes are a side effect. But those don't matter in the big picture. The small ones don't have an effect

Are you aware what decentralization really means? In a decentralized network is anyone able to run a node at any time and no one has more power than anyone else. Both is not true for Steem. You are just emotionally involved in this system and therefore praise it and put it like it would be decentralized while it is clearly not. You even state it that "smaller" accounts have nothing to say.

The last hardfork even improved the power in the hands of the whales by giving them higher curation and free downvotes. Now the necessary trust towards them is even higher than ever before. Though there is no room for trust in a decentralized network.

Posts like this work on this platform for praising the platform. But outside this filter bubble you would not get any agreements like here. Make a post inside the ethereum subreddit about decentralization and see what you will get there.

If Steem would be decentralized anyone would be able to run a node and all votes would have exactly the same weight. There were no 21 witnesses and of course there would be a problem with people having several accounts but you can not replace this unsolved technical problem with such weird workarounds.

I personally know of >1M STEEM that has been bought since the EIP exactly for the reason that we now have a chance to getting closer to doing so.

This example does not work. Even if you try to look for indications, the question is, how many NEW people bought Steem to become a whale since the hardfork? Whales buying more does not indicate anything since they decided to go this way of improving their situation.

Any related to your image. Getting a big downvote from one group does not represent any kind of majority. It is just a powerful group deciding independently on their own. You just follow the argumentation of someone powerful instead of having a discussion before where the majority made a decision afterwards. This is no decentralization, this is leading and following.

These are just some reasons proven why DPoS is never going to work on the long distance. What do you think why people decide to post on Medium without getting any reward instead of using Steem? They have bigger trust in the centralized administration than in anonymous private persons here.

  ·  5 years ago (edited)

Decentralized means there is no single point of authority. This is given. The definition doesn't say anything about everyone having exactly the same say. By your definition Bitcoin isn't decentralized, as the biggest miners could change the protocol and everyone else's more would be running on a fork.

Everyone can run a node, everyone can be a witness. Like with every other coin, getting to produce a big amount of blocks requires a big investment.

And people don't become whales over night, or in a month. How many new whales have been created in the months before? That measure is useless.

And for the last part, there are rewards on medium for successful authors.

Decentralized means there is no single point of authority.

So a company owned by two or more people is decentralized?

By your definition Bitcoin isn't decentralized

If one pool has > 51%, would people still trust Bitcoin? With Steem being in the hands of 21 witnesses, no one complains, weird.

everyone can be a witness

No one is allowed to complain about politics because anyone can be the next president.

And people don't become whales over night

You are going to be a whale within minutens when buying a huge load of Steem.

How many new whales have been created in the months before?

Why are you asking me? You claimed to personally know people buying so many Steem suddenly.

  ·  5 years ago (edited)

So a company owned by two or more people is decentralized?

A company is a single entity of its own. It can be shut down, steem can't.
And there is no way for anyone outside of that entity to have influence on the owners (except for the state). Steem witnesses influence is decided on in a decentralized way, not by appointing themselves.
The only thing you could criticize there is that some shareholders have a bigger saying than others, depending on the size of their stake. But that's 1) unavoidable in a p2p network and 2) understandable, because they have the most to lose when the platform develops in a direction they don't see as desirable.

If one pool has > 51%, would people still trust Bitcoin? With Steem being in the hands of 21 witnesses, no one complains, weird.

Why weird? As you say, it's 21 (actually it's a lot more), not one.

anyone can be the next president.

Anyone, but not everyone. Nothing holds you back from becoming a witness today.

You claimed to personally know people buying so many Steem suddenly.

Yes, people. Not one single person. One of them went from close to 0 to half-whale, but that's the best I can offer so far.
My question was how many did this before the hardfork?

i suggest you, to read something about the "ninja mining" of steem.

https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=1410943.0
https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=1410943.60
https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=1410943.240

if you use the stake as only parameter to measure vote weight, the ("initial") distribution has to be faire

perhaps mind changing for you:

As illustrated by the results, the distribution of weight of votes in witness election is heavily skewed, which
suggests that the election of 21 witnesses may be significantly impacted by a few big shareholders, This phenomenon may not be a
good indication for a decentralized social media platform.

source: https://arxiv.org/pdf/1904.07310.pdf

for me this was kind of mind changing. i dont like dpos anymore

  ·  5 years ago Reveal Comment

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We seem to miss that the goal of Steem is to tokenize the internet. It is NOT meant to be a blogging platform, that was just its first use case.

While I will agree that tending was trash before, even now that it’s “cleaned up” I still don’t care about it...mostly just whales upvoting whales. I’d prefer to use my upvote to support the people who support me rather than glom on like the rest to get rewards for clicking a button.

I also think that the flippant attitude of users toward the countless downvote trolls is shameful...sure, they don’t do much damage, but they certainly hurt people’s feelings, especially noobs and small accounts who don’t understand why they’ve been downvoted (no reason anyway, just because it’s fun and free).

I, for one, am trying to combat them instead of brushing them off as an unfortunate consequence of “making Steem better.”

The belief that downvoting someone upvotes everyone else is just a rationalization to let trolls live with themselves.

  ·  5 years ago (edited)

Who will want to tokenize their platform when they see that the first proof of concept leads to self rewarding of big holders instead of engaging new participants?

There are many more people to support than yourself and your friends or the whales in trending. Both actions don't help with growing steem.

Your comment seems to be the rationalization here.

Not sure, precisely, what you think I'm rationalizing, but I guess we can agree to disagree.

I’d prefer to use my upvote to support the people who support me rather than [something else that doesn't help with retention of new users]

Yes i just noticed about downvoting authors content,i was wondering are they on downvote wars or personal reason,but now it's clearly for me why others did that. we need to take care the platform so that inestors will get their benefits they wanted and thats the only way to bring more investors to the platform..

Thanks for the clarifications sir!

  ·  5 years ago 

@tipu curate

The upmost hilarious claim is that this would be a communist system.

You mean socialist.
Communists share.
They cooperate, not feast from the misery of others.
Historical documentation.

It wasn't my claim ;)

Ok, they mean socialust.
Intentionally miseducated 'muricans are annoying, to me.

I agree with you man on this stuff. Good to see your post pop up on my news feed. <3

Great work ♥️

Good day, @pharesim. I'm not sure you remember me - we interacted, here, not too long ago, but I've been away for a bit. (I'm the Egyptian poet :)

Anyhow, wanted to pop in and say Hi; good to see you still here _/|\_

I had the doubt, since several small users leave negative votes on my publications, now I understand why, thanks for writing this informative post, greetings!

  ·  5 years ago (edited)

I do not know what to say. I come here as I can manage but always return to a lovely community. I got a huge whale flag just because I had been resteemed by someone else. Honestly it feels unsafe and discouraging. Downvotes should be a serious thing for copyright infringements, inappropiate content, and not personal vendettas and disagreements that end up shooting people not involved in those wars. I was backed by the community but others were not that lucky.

They shouldn't be used for revenge, that's true. And especially not shooting bystanders. Unfortunately there will always be immature people. Good to hear that the community was there for you!

  ·  5 years ago (edited)

Yes, It felt really warm that candidly people supported and even counteracted it. Still as I say the only reason I found is that I had been resteemed and all the posts in the feed had been flagged. My post was already doing well but there was another user that had just returned to steemit after almost a year, just saying hi back so it felt so unfair. So yes, it's such a delicate thing. Not being around as much as I'd like to I often miss the gist of these feuds. I think there should be a way that if clearly a downvoteis obviously in bad faith, would be able to counteract it like if too many says a downvote is not valid it should stop taking effect, but yet again that would be some kind of filtering which is not the spirit of this place either, guess it's complicated hmm dunno it's kind of weird but some people in these flag wars have significant sp and can wreck your ship not being a creator's fault.

I fully understand, someone I resteemed has been targeted too. So I won't resteem any more. I don't care for my own posts, so that's fine, but that was below anything I would have expected before.
It's sad. And complicated :)

I'm actually grateful to have been resteemed :) meant only someone liked it enough to share so still take that as a compliment. Who could have guessed? sigh, yes, complicated. But yes, it makes you feel a bit uncovered and in the need of treading lightly, should not be that way.

Here we can appreciate the great weakness in the downvotes system.
It has great weakness, it is undeniable.

This weak point is causing great damage and must be corrected immediately. I do not say that the entire system is wrong, but it has a crack and there is leaking everything good.

Harmful people have already found this crack and are using it to harm. But this damage affects STEEM and STEEMIT even more than the victims of downvotes.

Sorry @theguruasia, you're not allowed to summon the bot on the non-listed tags!


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So much negativity and one sided logic.
No depth at all.
You promote one sided view and promote idiotic market strategy without professional observation of the Coin market trends. Steem price is going down.
Let’s all work on positive solutions.

You misunderstood this post, it's absolutely positive :) Not for the people like you who don't get it, but it wasn't directed towards you anyway, so that doesn't matter.

I feel like the same people complaining about downvotes, especially on bid botted for profit cases are the same who complained that the EIP would only hurt Steem. Well, needless to say just after one month it is already having a much better effect on genuine curation of content and it's only gonna get better from here on out. They just gotta leave that oldsteem mentality behind and get with the curve. :P

just after one month it is already having a much better effect

Yeah, because your bullying them with massive downvotes. And apparently you're proud of it. Sad!

You see, you could show some patience and take it slow. If I was in your shoes, I would leave tiny upvotes and a comment, like so:

"I really liked your post and would have given you an X% upvote instead of the 1% token. I was even considering following you, but I noticed you have bought votes for your post. So I guess you don't need my support."

That's how you teach an old dog new tricks. Use a stick, and it might get you bit instead.

  ·  5 years ago (edited)

We actually do these comments with curangel - if we would have upvoted it. Would be somewhat dishonest to tell every vote buyer that he would have received an upvote if he didn't do that, no?

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Investors are limited. They put money in to take money out, and this gives Steem value. So if an investor gets a high reward, they are doing it with their own money. See rate-limited voting in the whitepaper (15/32). If you and I go in 20%/80% on a pizza, and I paid 80%, I will get 8 slices. If something happens which prevents that, you’ll never share a pizza with me again. Don’t expect three slices of my pizza without my permission and then expect me to not call you a communist. This is simple math, don't give me that common core B.S. The sense of entitlement that communists and socialists have is ultimately their own undoing, this has been proven time and time again. Don't shit on me and tell me it's chocolate rain.

  ·  5 years ago (edited)

What a silly example once again. The pizza and the money are gone after eating it, Steem stays around. Your stake doesn't go down, not even percentage wise, curation rewards are enough to beat inflation. You are the one who wants a free pizza, by increasing the percentage and the value of your initial investment on the backs of those doing the work of creating attractive content. Guess what, free pizza doesn't exist.

I will not call you a feudalist now, but I can do silly examples too! Do you expect free flights when you invest into an airline? Is it communism or socialism that the pilots and all the other personnel get paid?
The sense of entitlement here is all on the side of the investors. Something not completely unique to steem I have to admit.
https://twitter.com/JackSmithIV/status/857804261509517312

People invested a bunch of money into a system that creates virtual tokens. These virtual tokens are generated at a certain percentage depending on the year and based on the total supply. It's 2019, which means that the percentage is 8.24. In two and a half months the percentage goes down to 7.82. Long story short, there is enough pizza to get us to 2035. But yes, the pie gets smaller and smaller every year, and that's by design. And if Steem survives the mass culling of investors, this means the coin will gain more and more value, and this is because of the planned scarcity. Also, if I pay for or enroll in a program that offers frequent flier miles, you bet your ass I'll expect some free flights. If not, I'll take my business elsewhere.

  ·  5 years ago (edited)

As said in a previous discussion, we wouldn't need any content for that system you have in mind. Unnecessary overhead, and there's plenty of PoS coins that offer exactly that.
Steem never offered guaranteed rewards for posting, who thinks that made a bad investment because they didn't research properly. Your stake gives you a right to curation rewards (getting under 8% means you do something extremely wrong), and the interest on SP (2%). That's it, more than the inflation, everything you want more is free pizza.
If you expect frequent flyer miles for buying the stock, you set yourself up for disappointment. That's not the companies fault then. You invested in something which has a chance to raise in value, you didn't spend money for something in return.

That's the thing though; Not everyone comes here to do PoS, some do, and it can look nasty on trending. This is why trending needs to get fixed. However, if we don't respect the upvote autonomy of self voters, and or bid bot users, then we'll lose stakeholders. As people sell, it will drive the value of the token down. You know what I think, we should add a voting system (Reddit style,) that only works to sort content. It doesn't allocate value, it just sorts. One sort vote per IP address and all votes are equal. A system like this would encourage me to go to trending every day, just to down sort undesirable content, and to be able to do so with a clean conscience knowing that I'm not disregarding the merit of someone's stake or for that matter, stealing from a bid bot user. Change downvote back to flag and call the upvote button a Tip Jar. Maybe I just need to learn to code, it could be so easy to make Steem good. The fact it hasn't gotten there yet is a colossal failure of imagination.

Well, that's a whole other system, where content isn't connected with the coin at all. If someone comes here not believing in the idea to reward the best content they're simply in the wrong place and would be better off to browse Reddit or create their own subreddit and invest in a PoS coin.

That you suggest one vote per IP address shows that you would need to learn a lot more than coding. The stake weighted voting is done for a reason, imagination isn't a positive when it leads to unrealistic ideas.

"If someone comes here not believing in the idea to reward the best content they're simply in the wrong place and would be better off to browse Reddit or create their own subreddit and invest in a PoS coin."

I agree in part, but also disagree and let me explain why. Regardless of the reason they came to the platform. They provided a service in purchasing the token and continue to provide a service in the HODL if they are powered up.

The goal should be to keep them powered up. If this means they are dead set on on extracting the maximum value that the rate limited voting allows, then so be it.

If it's really a problem, fix the rate limited voting. Anything is better than a bunch of reward poolice running rampant around the blockchain looking down their nose at content creators and doing the civil asset forfeiture thing.

"That you suggest one vote per IP address shows that you would need to learn a lot more than coding. The stake weighted voting is done for a reason, imagination isn't a positive when it leads to unrealistic ideas."

I think you misunderstand, the upsort downsort would be condenser only, it would have no effect on the blockchain or the rewards.

Nobody forfeits any assets. It's not theirs as long as it's not paid out.

I misunderstood the sorting, but I still don't get his that would incentivize professional content creators to spend their time here. They need to get paid, not rewarded by a ranking.

This is very good. I like it. It will be a constant battle fighting self voters and potentially will end up doing more harm than good. Potentially much more.

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Only one common sense-downvoting
Mostly no common sense in your steem market logic

External analysts agree, their word counts a lot more for me than yours.
https://steemit.com/newsteem/@oliverschmid/pzcgor

How is that a disagreement? Did you get until the conclusion?

The crypto ecosystem owes the Steem blockchain and the STEEM token a nod of appreciation because it built one of blockchain’s first tangible real-world use cases, a decentralized social content platform. The years have not been kind to the platform, however, with clear flaws such as the manipulated upvoting of content and power disparities between users becoming increasingly apparent. As a result, many users have opted to switch to other platforms like Medium.

  ·  5 years ago (edited)

Overall yes, but specific statement of few abusing wealthy accounts to bully smaller members, read small print
That gives ugly picture for steemit

Nobody is bullied, there's only rewards being distributed which have been gained by collusion. They go back to all the small users not having big friends, and this has a positive effect. The people crying may give a bad impression to outsiders seeing it, but that's only the fault of them, we don't talk about war and stuff, that's not our intention at all.
If they would simply accept that other stakeholders are not agreeing with them being given rewards by their "friends", everything would be awesome.

@pharesim What you are doing is abuse of downvote steem power and curation based on your personal translation and rules of steemit downvote. It is also one version of blog spam with input of non foundational downvote on independent non related party based on your own statistics and formula.
Downvote is tool for your team and lobby to benefit in policy shifting and bending the rules in your lobby favour. This will damage quality work of many neutral parties in this downvote trend.
There are many better solutions than just this one.
Lets work on them together.

Please explain me the real definition of colluding groups and defective voters, you wise blacklisted spammer!
Make me see the benefits I have from engaging in this too, if you have time for it. So far it feels like I only lose money and nerves. But I'm sure you can enlighten me!

Maybe downvotes were good if the came from the community. But they come from a few guys with the most power.
Maybe steem was supposed to work like this. But it is not like a lot of people want it to work. This is not social-media but antisocial-media.
If there is one guy able to decide about all other peoples revenues there are much better options than steemit.
I also do not like that damn voting-bots but maybe it needs fundamental technical solution for optimization not a few guys playing sheriff.

A lot of people think about technical solutions, the options for that are limited.
I agree, overly big stakes deciding on rewards are an issue. That goes in both directions though. The bid bots wouldn't be possible without being delegated big stakes (or centralizing a lot of small ones under their roof) or having them themselves.

We are a difference in reward distributions now that the few people who want it to work can act accordingly. The hope is that the overall culture will change. That'll take a lot of time though, after years of fostering the culture that dominates.

unfortunately, its a popularity contest.
guaranteed if i had written this EXACT SAME ARTICLE, word for word, it'd be a 30c post and not a $33 one.

and if id used a bidbot to make it more visible, someone would get upset with that and flag it
shrug

True, and unfortunately not avoidable to a certain extent. Steem related content by witnesses and developers is hugely overvalued in relation to everything else, as is a lot of stuff by popular users.
Networking and being active to develop for/market/explain steem are still keys to high payouts for now.
Good thing I get so many retaliation downvotes, or it'd be $60+ ;)

I almost never use downvotes, maybe only twice since having an account at Steemit, and even then with reasons that can be accounted for because of the proven content of plagiarism.

Instead of thinking about a down vote where I also became a victim because my daughter's account value of reputation dropped dramatically, I would rather read an article about the value of votes that is more valuable than now. I am waiting for articles like that. Thanks so much @pharesim.

@pharesim

Thank you for your post. I haven't blogged anywhere else and this is my first venture into blogging and crypto.

I've looked into writing on other sites for a while now and Steemit seemed like the most interesting attempt at a first start. So far, I'm glad about the choice I made.

I don't have sufficient experience to argue for, or against, the downvoting scheme. I have to say, though, that I appreciate the conversation because there doesn't seem to be enough of its kind in the introduction portions of Steem. Specifically, while arguments against downvoting exist, I don't where I can find an official position on it.

I think it would be extremely helpful to new users like myself for a clear discussion on how up or down voting affects the system and why proper curation is necessary.

Have a great day.

@scholaris

  ·  5 years ago Reveal Comment

@pharesim

No need to apologize. I appreciate the response. Thanks for directing me at the article.

I’m going on my second month now since I became active and started blogging. I’m just trying to get a good grip on everything.

I understand the perspective on voting in terms of content and curation now. You must be able to upvote for good and popular content while also being able to downvote for the opposite quality. Downvoting for abuse is also important.

These practices are akin to what I see IRL in Quality Assurance.

Thanks again for your response.

@scholaris