Since joining Steem, I've always held the viewpoint that quality posts bring value to the platform, and garbage posts or abuse can degrade the platform.
Why would that be?
When I look at other social media platforms, there is an abundance of garbage posting and spam, yet it is not considered an issue because of advertising. It stands to reason that as long as a post or comment is not in violation of a platform's Terms of Service, your views are all that matters and hence quantity is more important; more views, more clicks, more page refreshes = more advertising revenue. The concept is genius both in theory and in practice.
For a platform like Facebook, this eliminates a problem that Steem developers are constantly working to improve upon, but it is still a massive long term dilemma (in my mind at least). I'm referring to Storage costs of course. Facebook can afford the exponentially growing costs of storage because advertisers are paying for it, and because each node for Facebook does not have to hold the complete and original database of Facebook transactions.
Steem on the other hand pays miners (witnesses) a fraction of each block reward as compensation, but witnesses all have to hold the entire Steem blockchain in storage, and also have a very large amount of RAM to handle the 3 second block times. So is it actually profitable to be a Steem Witness in the long run, especially if you are not in the top 20 witnesses and finding a new block every minute?
This limitation is a big underlying reason why there should be so much ire coming from the top down against Steem abuse. On the other end of the spectrum are the legitimate Steem authors who are watching the circulating supply of Steem's Debt (aka Steem Dollars) Skyrocket, and a large amount of the reward pool being unfairly allocated through the use abuse of upvote bots, as well as self-indulgent whales.
In the short term, Upvote bots shouldn't be inflating the supply of SBD by that much because the returning Steem Dollar reward is usually 70-80% of the original bid, but the SBD supply is growing by half a million tokens per week (for months now) because authors are getting that SBD reward a week later and buying upvotes again. After just 4 weeks, a single Steem Dollar being recycled over and over to buy upvotes has generated roughly 3 SBD for the upvote bot owner.
After thinking this through, my opinion of @grumpycat has changed dramatically. I still don't like his methods because they are anti-social and self-serving, but upvote bots are definitely going to cause issues long-term.
I've made a post in the past about the Snowballing effect of upvote bots (link is down at the end of this post). At this point in time, upvote bots are a bad investment for authors because the Steem Power reward is too low to ever be worth while (because as Steem price goes up, the Steem Power Reward for authors goes down). My guess is that hasn't stopped a lot of Steemians from continuing to buy upvotes, despite the horrific losses.
this poses a lot of problems that will not be solved in Steem's present state. Incoming changes like Steem Hivemind (a second layer solution) and Steem Media Tokens should help solve problems related to the user experience and smooth operation of sites like Steemit or Busy, but it still won't reduced the costs of being a Steem Witness.
Full disclosure, I'm not a Steem Witness, nor do I have the inclination, money or the time.
My question to the witnesses would be just how much Steem Backed Debt they are willing to keep printing, because as the saying goes, "nature abhors a vacuum." In my mind, growing the supply of SBD at this rate is like a snake eating it's own tail. At some point vital organs are going to be digested.
I believe services like SmartSteem and Minnowbooster are fine because the SBD is being put back into the hands of the users, but in the end the same problem is still occurring; SBD is being multiplied exponentially. If the goal is to bring SBD down to $1.00 USD in value, it's not going to work (in my opinion). Instead, a vacuum is going to need filling, and someone is going to pay the price... maybe all of us.
So yes, in my opinion quantity is not good for Steem's future. Not for the witnesses, not for authors, and not even for the whales. I always fall back to Hanlon's Razer that says "don't attribute malice to that which can be explained by stupidity."
After all this writing and thinking, I believe I can safely say there's a lot of stupidity going on with Steem right now.
I've just been typing without editing anything, and I'm going to stop now. Hopefully some of what I wrote makes some sense, and hopefully it's not too negative.
Have a great weekend everyone! Thanks for Reading!
Steem Guides (in reading order):
For Dummies: How Steem Post Payouts Work
Upvote Buying & the Steem Power Snowball Effect
How to Help Clean Up (and Profit From) Steem Abuse
Want to make money while helping to clean the garbage up on Steem? Report plagiarism, theft, tag abuse, comment spam, post spam, and other Steem abuse that degrades the Steem Platform to @steemcleaners with their reporting tool. If you provide good evidence, they will investigate and deal with the abuser. A week or two later they usually reward you in Steem Power. It's a win-win for everyone, just don't abuse the abuse reporting tool itself.
Want to grow your steem power faster?
try smartsteem
and steemfollower
Tip Jar:
Dogecoin DDizpbLrYzFNEZtEVvUXo8kKBKu3K7yLry
As always; good luck, good wealth and good health to everyone on Steemit. Stay positive towards others and help the community grow.
Fantastic overview of this issue and I agree. Bid bots are like going to a casino....I do think people get addicted to them!
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Wow nice caption brother
Downvoting a post can decrease pending rewards and make it less visible. Common reasons:
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