This is in response to @l0k1's TLDR section of Introducing Smackdown Kitty.
I'll just clearly state my position: Your stake is your stake. You earned it. Use it any way you want.
Is self-voting bad? No. Is it good? No. It's completely neutral.
I know this is just an appeal to authority, but according to @dan:
It is so sad seeing people fight over nothing. The whales who vote and consume rewards from the reward pool only take out of one pocket and put it in another.
You can take the above quote with a grain of salt. But the original context was in response to criticism of how stakeholders were voting with their own stake.
From @l0k1's TLDR:
Self voting provides no information about quality, only peers can be judges, and an individual is not their own peer
False premise. Voting is not about peer review. It is about using your stake as you please.
Self voting resembles arrogance and conceit socially. In Australia we would say 'to put tickets on yourself'
False analogy. It is arrogance to imply that someone cannot use their own stake as they please.
Because self voting diverts rewards from the pool without adding information, these votes are essentially Spam in terms of entropy
False equivalence. All voting allocates rewards. What is the purpose of the "entropy" buzzword here?
Self voting is an incentive to fill up the blockchain with intentionally meaningless posts and comments, and is an ongoing and escalating extra cost for those who run the network (witnesses)
Slippery slope. This would only be a concern if voting was unlimited. It also impies that the platform is unable to scale. Do you have evidence for this? That would be a much bigger piece of news.
To the outside world, it is another thing to point a finger at Steem and declare it is a scam
Post hoc ergo propter hoc. If we cannot use our stake as we please, then it's a scam.
Let's put this in perspective. Somehow, a person with 1,000 SP is going to vote ten times a day and walk off with 2 STEEM every day by self-voting (compounding daily, yes I know).
The really weird thing is, this person isn't going to ever realize that they could make more by voting for other people's good content. You know what? I'm fine with that. Their loss.
@inertia
I believe you are right on in your assertions.
I enjoy seeing so many people spin so much CPU power on this issue; I definitely shows there IS NO ONE RIGHT ANSWER.
I agree with Dan, so sad to see so much time wasted on this stupid fucking argument. But those that persist, I see it as a character defect mostly. Arrogance, and then the list continues on from there...
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I'm selfvoting. But don't like it. It's just economically incentivised in a current system, so me and others just do what they must to get profits. And it is sad, cos longterm it's killing the platform ((
You saying:
I belive you wrong, alas. I made about hundred "smart-votes" for other's posts (voting early, predicting good content) but I got about 25% of my vote, nevertheless. Not even one "jackpot" over 100%, not one over 50% even... So it's useless to vote for others (financially) in a current system (((
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Learn how to front-run.
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Too complicated for me (
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Hopefully someone will run the bot and offer a streemian trail to others so they don't have to run the bot.
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I will create streemian trail by next week!
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come on inertia ive been reading your last posts from lucky luke to the atom look to this...u r so complicated i wanna punch an atom in the proton ..I mean wth is YAML?? please don't hurt me am a minnow lol
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it is just plain economic isnt it?
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true....
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I agree 100%!
The people have to stop crying and work to earn more SP.
This people that cries is the same one that defends the socialism, Fidel Castro, etc.
Upvoted and resteemed!
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This post received a 2.6% upvote from @randowhale thanks to @rtdcs! For more information, click here!
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Hi @inertia, I'm a collaborator with @l0k1 AKA @elfspice on this so I'll join in a little here.
If I number you points of contention, I would say #2 (arrogance) is subjective, #4 (spam scaling prob) needs research and #5 (appearance of scam) is speculative so I won't address them.
The other two though I will:
#1 - self voting is about peer review
While it's true that the bottom line will always be we are free to use our stake as we please (I'm a strong supporter of this), for me this point questions the validity of self voting being allowed as it is post-HF 19. It's clear that self voting is more rewarding since HF 19 so this is a problem, so much so that people are overly incentivized to vote for themselves over others.
Our position on this is supported by the whitepaper and while I am not confident I can say what the "culture" of Steemit is, "peer review" is certainly something which I wish to maintain.
From the whitepaper:
So while we can pressure people socially to follow this, the incentives have to be there, and that's the problem that needs to be addressed. Whether you listen or not to the rationale @l0k1 makes before such a change is your business as your stake is always yours. But we are promoting the idea of a system level correction.
#3 spam adds entropy
I agree the usage of the term "entropy" here is quite opaque. It refers to Shannon's information theory, where entropy is maximum when all outcomes of an information producing machine are equally likely. So I guess he is saying that spam is self similar information, and so adds entropy, because the more of it there is the more probable the next piece of information produced on the blockchain is similar.
But this point needs to be developed and I invite @elfspice to do so.
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I believe peer-review is a fine interpretation, but it's also an indirect, emergent property of the protocol, not the direct intent.
Does this mean you advocate some kind of on-chain policing of self-votes?
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It is the intent, this is clear from the whitepaper. No it's not direct as such, as emergent properties can be planned. Look at any complex system simulation of ants for an example.
I don't know what kind of on chain policing there could be, but I would oppose anything that is not a general rule. Maybe something like @edje 's idea of a committee would be like that. It's not something that I think would work, better to realign the rules to encourage the emergent positivity and mutual benefit.
I'm not sure if you read @rycharde 's post here but I think point 13 is a really interesting idea to reduce the effectiveness of self voting and so-called "circle jerk" behavior, via incentives as opposed to policing.
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As a member of the Steem Coop and Project Smackdown, I agree with a lot of what you're saying here. Us members have slightly different perspectives and ways of expressing our concerns.
I often disagree with the exact terms elfspice uses, but we usually end up agreeing in the end. The problem as I see it is mostly psychological and secondly economical.
1 The user upvoting himself a lot, will often for good reasons make himself look like a douche taking large sums in reward without considering differing opinions. If he gets away with it, that makes the entire system look weak/deceptive.
2 A large stake holder voting for himself is spending a large amount of his votes on himself rather than curating more broadly. This means that he is propelling himself higher in the ecosystem. When this is done in mass, the same starts to apply to the whole system.
I don't see any and all selfvoting as bad either. But it depends on the reasons behind it, which we will have a hard time knowing unless we ourselves are the person upvoting.
You say
and I agree that it's about using your stake as you please, which is what we're currently doing with the bot. However creating a social media platform that will reach wide acceptance is about creating a system that will promote community, which is in fact a matter of reviewing peers.
I don't for one second think that removing the selfvote will bring neither Steem the social network to a halt, nor Steem the 'organically' growing and selfadjusting blockchain which could be used for a number of other things. However the selfvotes themselves work against decentralization and gives bad publicity, especially because of the psychological incentive difference between giving yourself 1 cent versus giving yourself 50 dollars.
As Dan has said, voting both directions and for whoever you want is allowed by the system and expected to be. In this project we're working with the same constraints. We're using our stake and voting the way we want to vote.
In the future, what I personally want to do is get away from bots as much as possible. The bot is merely a way to influence the general outlook of Steem users and to make selfvoting less popular. Ideal would be to make a carefully thought through hardfork change down the road.
The problem with the above argument is that we all know not all good posts ever make neither the user posting nor the user curating that much money. And even if they did, the average social media users would get left way behind the selfupvoting larger stakeholder. The system doesn't selfcorrect quite as well in this sense as many users would like to believe, even if it also isn't as bad as others think.
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Yep, I agree, totally. I just wonder if it passes the self-consistent test?
I think I can agree with this as well.
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The self-consistency-test seems flawed to me.
Each party is, from a technical point of view, entitled to using the blockchain or any part thereof and for purposes he wants to only insofar as the blockchain itself - the total network output, from all it's active users with varying degrees of power - allows this.
That doesn't mean that any mechanism or action recorded on it is the most ethical one or that we all have to approve all actions taking place within the network. In fact the system was built so that users could disagree within it and also actively petition to change it, precisely because there was an understanding that individuals had to make the moral decissions and that the economics of the individuals making them would have to drive the developement of the network.
The blockchain itself is not private property of any one person, but merely influenced by many members of the social network surrounding it. This should be understood by all participators. So in order to work against the parts we disagree with, we use all means at our disposal that don't include physically harming the property of others while attempting to explain our reasoning.
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@banjo what do you think about self voting?
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I don't know hannah.
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Nice post! Lots of logical fallacies concerning self voting.
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For me, it's basically like @master-set is saying:
In my ideal Steemit world, upvotes go to good quality content. In our current Steemit world, this is far from the case and it is basically just about who you know (or better yet: who knows you) and how rich you are in your Steem Power.
I wrote about it yesterday. I feel the older minnows are being left out in the cold in favor of upvoting newbies for being now. This frustrates me, because I see the amount of upvotes declining. This has led me to upvote some of my own, longer comments, to make sure I atleast earn just a little bit still. I don't particularly like it, but Steemit isn't fair anyway, so sometimes I just can't care too much anymore...
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I read your post, very candid take on things.
My own opinion is that outgoing votes (i.e. for others) are going down as self votes increase. I need to make sure the data supports this but it seems to be what's happening.
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That could very well be possible. Thinking about this, I auto upvote my post when publishing. This automatically happens at 100%, while I have adjusted my votes on other people's posts, to make sure I can upvote as many as I did before.
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The ability to self-vote is a powerful incentive to buy and stake STEEM. I rarely hear this mentioned. Where do people think the token gets its value from?
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Totally agree. If yoi couldnt self vote then the platform will lose interest as it takes people a long time to get stabalized on Steem. In my view its a posative
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The genius thing about it is that if you want to influence the direction of the platform, you can buy a bigger stake than the people whose behavior you find offensive. They've basically figured out how to financially incentivize being pissed off on the internet.
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Voting for yourself can make sense in some situations, most importantly as a way for you to promote your content. Could this be achieved in another better way?, the answer is yes.
Why don't we start this discussion.
In the meantime the economics of a whale upvoting their own post is a no brainer. It's a terrible way to manage an investment. You will get a much better return by promoting other content and strengthening the platform.
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I have started flagging some spam comments (e.g. follow me!) and tag abuse with a small vote. Some of them may complain, but I'm trying to influence them to make Steem better for everyone. It's my choice. I did vote up my own stuff before, but have stopped now to benefit others more. I'm more concerned with building something better than making a few extra bucks
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please don't hurt minnows...we need anything...a monkey a crocodile...something!! lol
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I'll support minnows, but not if they spam the system.
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am safe :) thank you, there are a lot of serious minnows that love to learn and grow because they love this steemit idea, yes ofcourse money are involved but is such a perfect combination between money and socializing that at the end of the day socializing wins...for me!! the others that don't value it simply dont understand it...am trying to educate minnows as I learn more...like in life education starts at home...in this case at #steemit thank you again..
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Great article. I couldn't agree more. Upvoted with 100% & following.
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Great post and I agree. I do my best to use my votes on quality content from others. I pride myself on also putting out quality content as well so I'm okay with a self vote.
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@inertia. I agree on selfvoting for minnows but the end of the day it is nuetral
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self voting is safe way to earn
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What can I say other than yes it's your vote and your power, Just like the real world. I don't self-vote, but that might be different if it was a significantly powerful vote. I might set a limit on the payout, say $50 a post, and if others didn't vote it to that level by day7, I might top it up? hard to say till i reach that stage of the game. But still my choice.
After my limit is reached would I slap someone who regularly gets $100's for every post but still claims to need their self-vote too? I just might. But would rather use my power for positive things. But still my choice.
Lining your own pockets or sacrificing coin to spread it more thinly around the platform. The big dilemma for some, easy choice for others - It's all public here and the people as a whole will decide what they do with their power in the end. Just like we decide which stores to shop at based on the same principals.
Well there is my 2, no 3 cents worth LOL
Cheers
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Fucking genius.
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Sorry, had to cut the above post short as my wife needed my attention.
The logic placed upon the self up-voting belief is spot on.
Those who do not believe in self voting seek to destroy the ability of the agent to determine the outcome of the vote.
I am sure, in democratic societies, the candidate can choose ones-self.
We seek to use our ability as we see fit.
Voting for oneself is as reckless as masturbation. Doesn't hurt you, and I receive a small fraction of satisfaction in the process.
The true haters of self up-voting practice are those who have not participated in purchasing Steem on an exchange (buying in), and as such think it is unjust.
You know what I think???
Check the vote below.
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It is only right that if you make the investment then you should be able to reap the rewards. It is not just about time, it is money also!
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I think it is OK. I don't vote my own post/comment usually, but that doesn't mean that everyone else will have to comply with my own personal preferences. If it is not OK then change the rule lol. Followed n upvoted
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Thank you. This topic is everywhere in my feed, and I'm in the minority of folks who realize that people can do what they want with their assets, and that self-voting holds less value than actually engaging for most users.
I've found a touch of humor in the fact that some of the people complaining about the self-upvoting used a vote-buying bot to self-upvote their article about self -upvoting by proxy.
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Love it! You get my 2 cents for that comment (100% upvote). I won't use a bot to upvote myself despite I could make more by doing so.
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I'll give you my 3 cents for managing to have a sense of humor on the internet!
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Thank-you! Every cent counts.
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I love the time then the upvote had 100% power now it's just only 0.5/1% what's happened
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Steem ned move daily active user i'm referring steem to my frends and followers to sing up but the sing up its taking mor than 1 week to verify new user
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if there was a way to check self-voting and encourage communal rewards distribution, more people will register for steemit and before you know it, everybody will be happy. i know of someone who is giving up on steemit because she feels she is not be encouraged in this community. we neeed to look for a way to stop, or minimize self-voting.
thanks for this great work @inertia
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Another lesson learned, But anyway It's like so many fish in the sea and so many content being thrown in the feeds every single minutes and it's kinda hard to catch up. I've come across a lot of underrated post with a very little up vote and instead of doing self voting, why don't we appreciate people for the time they've spent on creating it? I agree with @authori5ed that there has to be a way to minimize self voting so everything can be distributed fairly. For me, I've still got a lot to learn and this post caught my attention.
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I agree with you fully. People can self vote if they want. It balances out
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I like your opinion on this issue.)
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Catch-22?
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Somehow the vows of bots, it encourages creators of content, and I believe in free choice, nothing against. There is a greater division of votes, that contributes.
Already the self-vote, I have been in favor since the person invested, maybe someone who got votes to get where it arrived would be a little unfair to vote for himself, because here one depends on the other. But I do not condemn this act. The choice of what to do is for every Steemians. Every thought is different from the other, no one is the same, and nobody thinks the same to anyone. People are free to do what they want, but that platform's actions have downvote-type consequences.
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Great post, I totally agree and have been saying these same things. Its really not a problem and if it were we can fix it by simply not interacting with, sharing or voting for these accounts who don't care about anyone but them self. They won't ever achieve much anyways.
We can create the kind of economy and community that we want with our attention. Getting all angry doesn't help anyone.
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There is a LOT to digest and understand here, saved for further review.
upvote & resteem
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I came to Steemit for the freedom it offered. Now all of a sudden people want to tell certain individuals what they should or shouldn't do with thier votes.
If people are abusing the system then fine it should be addressed however if they are within the rules no one has the right to interfere.
Freedom guys! Isn't that why we're here?
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Yes, much ado about nothing
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Thanks for your clear presentation of the subject - looks like the system can't be beat by self voting - good news.
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I had to laugh in disbelief when a comment I made received a compliment in reply, and the person complimenting me upvoted himself, but for me nothing. It was like he awarded himself for thanking me. Lol.
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