Eliminating “abuse” is not possible and shouldn’t be the goal. Even those who are attempting to “abuse” the system are still doing work. Any compensation they get for their successful attempts at abuse or collusion is at least as valuable for the purpose of distributing the currency as the make-work system employed by traditional Bitcoin mining or the collusive mining done via mining pools. All that is necessary is to ensure that abuse isn’t so rampant that it undermines the incentive to do real work in support of the community and its currency.
The goal of building a community currency is to get more “crabs in the bucket”. Going to extreme measures to eliminate all abuse is like attempting to put a lid on the bucket to prevent a few crabs from escaping and comes at the expense of making it harder to add new crabs to the bucket. It is sufficient to make the walls slippery and give the other crabs sufficient power to prevent others from escaping.
Many, many people buy more Steem with cash every day (that is, they "climb into the bucket") not because this gives them more power to award other people Steem but because doing so gives them the ability to gain more exposure for their own posts (via self-voting). To deny everyone, even posters of quality content, the ability to self-vote because a few abuse the system is to "put a lid on the bucket". Yes, it prevents a few bad crabs from escaping, but it also prevents far, far more from wanting to enter (buy more Steem).
There are other less draconian ways of dealing with self-voting abuse, such as flagging: "It is sufficient to make the walls slippery and give the other crabs sufficient power to prevent others from escaping."
Quite simply, self-voting is not a rampant problem. Steem is doing better than ever--high price, more posts, more comments, more new users, etc. It's growing exponentially. As we say in the South, "don't try to fix something that ain't broke." We can't let our resentment for a few abusers cause us to make short-sighted decisions that undermine one of the key value propositions of Steem--that you can gain more exposure for your own content by purchasing more Steem and responsibly self-voting.
Nice, man. Nothing to add!
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When it comes to the value of Steem, it's pretty simple. We need 1) more people on Steem and 2) we need to find ways to curb the Withdrawal:Deposit ratio. The scarcest thing that Steem has is people buying Steem with Bitcoin, USD, Ethereum or whatever. This is the chart:
https://plot.ly/~lukestokes/96/withdrawal-to-deposit-ratio-by-user-count-over-time/
I encourage people to read @lukestokes weekly exchange transfer reports and see the relationship between people cashing out and buying in. I have no good solutions for this as everything is a trade-off.
The community can upvote less often people like TDV who sell off every cent they earn .
They can shade their voting to people who have a track record of not selling Steem.
We can reinstate bigger gates on SP so it takes longer to withdraw.
We can tweak it so that just powering down removes the voting power of your SP and tweak it that way.
????
We're not there yet in any way but so long as people keep their heads up, use Steem, experiment with its incentives, and work together, Steem will keep improving and maybe we'll find an equilibrium of sorts that works.
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I so agree...As of the moment there are still so many out there who wants to be in. Maybe soon and hopefully so we will reach a certain equilibrium...because of this, I finally have decided to buy Steem.
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Well said @eeks!
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That's the great thing about Steem power, it really helps out the Steemit economy. It was so wise for the Devs to make half your earnings go to Steem power ;)
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This is a great post and nips the self voting BS right in the rear. Anybody that buys steempower is a share holder to this company, and may do what they wish regarding that power. That is the beauty about this platform and the reason why I have been spreading the word about Steemit. It is the reason why myself, and many other investors are pumping capital into Steem....We should we focusing our effort on growing the brand larger, instead of focusing on self-voting lol. Especially with SOO many other coins that these investors could be putting their money in. Lets grow the brand family.
Don't be a Penny Wise, but a Dollar Foolish Steemians
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Really like that you pointed this out. The topic has been coming up in the chats a lot lately and this puts a clear perspective on it. Resteemed (and I don't resteem a lot) Thanks!
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This is true. Steem value is decreasing eveyday. I think because more and more people are joining and since most of them don't buy Steem or SBD, the value is decreasing. We have to use self voting to get a proper exposure since more and more are joining and the result is more posts and less exposure.
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My problem is that I can't AFFORD to invest in STEEM right now, I'm trying to make it work for me. And yes, that means I leave default upvote ON, because even the 3¢ are rented delegation. I preach the Good Word of STEEM in the other social media platforms and do the minnow self-help gaming to build some kind of a reputation.
That being said, I am indeed skewing that deposit/withdrawal ratio until I'm not. I have diapers to buy and lights to keep on. This article made me feel like I'm not an asshole, so thank you, for what it's worth.
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Once you have high reputation, you gain lots of steem power from your posts. It's like the gap between small fish and big fish will be widened in time.
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I agree with you that everyone should have the ability to upvote their own 'posts' but does this also extend to comments?
Would you agree with these self upvotes on unremarkable comments were justified from a user who hasn't made a single post just because he das invested in steem?
I would be interested to know your thoughts @sean-king.
Hope your day is going well!
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Personally, I flag the comment spam self-voting whenever I see it.
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Cheers mate. Don't know much about the way things work here really. I have my own initial views but want to know what others think so that I can make some kind of informed opinion on the matter.
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I see people doing that all the time so I sometimes do it too)) But the rules should definitely change since this self voting thing doesn't make any sense...
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self voting on silly comments like the example I gave is definitely not cool in my book.
Look forward to entering your next 'Worst Steemit Contest!' Looks like fun! :)
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Exactly, we cannot expect or even demand "social" behaviour - the algorithm itself must encourage it to the detriment of "antisocial" acts. Then the effects of such acts can be reduced - tho not totally eliminated.
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On my personal account I approach things in the way that I feel is logical to my investment. I self vote on my posts and not on my comments. If someone wants to vote on my comments, that's fine by me, but I don't reward my own engagement. I reward other users engagement by voting on their comments. That being said, I invested heavily into steemit a long time ago and I have been investing more lately, so voting for my own post makes sense to me because I deserve to use my share of rewards however I see fit. Personally I get a little annoyed by people commenting on a post and voting for their comment and not the post, but I can't convince anyone that there is a right or wrong way to do things. Thanks for sharing this!
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THANK YOU!
This self voting thing is freaking me out to be honest. We have a flag button for a reason. But the thought of not being able to upvote my own blog posts that I worked hard on, BOTHERS ME. Especially when instead of "Cashing out" my account, I've slowly built it up over the course of a year. When Steemit first started we had whales who would upvote themselves even with their 100-300 dollar votes.
Was that fair?
Probably not.
But I didn't complain.
It seems like we dont' get any interest on our STeem power, Which used to be a thing. And now we can't upvote ourselves? For people who are purely investors. Where is their gain?
I'm not even against people upvoting their own comments as long as they are delivering value. If they are just posting crappy ones, I may consider flagging to remove the reward.
But I love this post, Because self voting really isn't a serious problem. And like you said, High price, Etc. People just seem to be looking for something to be mad about.
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I like this quote because it encourages a realistic understanding of abuse prevention, that you cannot and should not expect it to be total. This is not a highly moderated social media with professional moderators, no chain of command.
But I will point out again to you that self voting has only very recently become so good, and voting for others less appealing. This quotation amounts to cherry picking because you side step the stated goal of the network. Let me help by adding some context for the other people who have not read the whitepaper:
Self voting is rampant and a large problem. Another poster once said to me that arguing about what constitutes "rampant" abuse is the argument of the beard (I think it was @baah ). I think he had a point and I won't argue too much with it. But it is a problem, it is being discussed like crazy and it does require a solution. Paying ourselves is not the goal here.
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Interesting how deeply the folks that built the system thought about outcomes in advance. And made plans to deal or not deal with predictable outcomes, depending if they thought it was a real issue of just noise and a nuisance.
The white paper does suggest that for case of rampant abuse of self-voting, the community of crabs needs to band together and use flags to pull the violating crabs back into the bucket
STEEM On!!
Dave
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Crabs?
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Read the steemit whitepaper. Or read the original post above. It uses a crab analogy for the steemit community
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I think that all this flagging and witch-hunting is actually a kind of "negative work" (for the lack of a better term) in the simple mathematical sense that "negative earnings" are being produced. I still think the algo needs changing so that we can let such sub-communities enact their strategy but at much reduced returns.
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Good idea we have to find some way to do that
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Rightly so we need a plan to sort out this issue.
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Amen
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"Don't try to fix something that ain't broke" :)))
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Got crabs? That is a great analogy. I love seeing a little bit of humor injected into something as serious as a white paper. Kindof like finding an easter egg. Good catch. #followupvote
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Well said. Thank you for sharing.
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Good post thank you for sharing.
Greez bluchr
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Is it even possible to end self voting?
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From a technical standpoint, a few lines of code is all that is needed. From a socioeconomic standpoint it is next to impossible.
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Yes I think so. I'm talking about it and trying to come up with a solution to it.
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No, because anybody can set up another account and cross-vote essentially for themselves. In my most recent article I treat voting-for-same-user as one algorithm, whether for self or a sock-puppet of self.
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I don't give the argument of "they're shareholders so therefore they can do as they wish" any weight. I should, as it has its fair point, but I don't.
But that doesn't matter very much because I still reach relatively the same conclusion on self-voting; and that is that everyone has absolute freedom of choice and responsibility. I can't personally advocate putting a rule on self-voting because that would mean it's fair to put in more arbitrary rules. And one of my favorite things about Steemit is the freedom and self-governance.
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A rule on it would not necessarily be arbitrary. I think the lack of appetite to improve the system here is a big problem and I'm trying to understand it more. There are many many rules in Steemit and how the blockchain works because code is basically a set of rules, and literally makes what is or isn't possible.
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Great post.
I fully agree with your opinion.
I like that you added!
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Good points. I am trying to make the same ones in my blog as well. Glad to see this going out to larger audiences than I can reach.
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Yes. I am starting to consider buying some Steem myself... But, honestly, what I am feeling more and more is that it is about finding ways to drive votes to your posts, regardless of their content. I does not seem to matter a tiny bit if your post is high quality, if you worked hard on it, or about what it is. Strange world, Steemit. But definitely very exciting.
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I personally don't see the problem with upvoting one's self, and I wonder how many people that make pronouncements about how it's "against what Steemit stands for" have actually even read that whitepaper, to have any actual idea of what this project's stated goals even were in the first place. People have simply projected their own interpretations and goals onto its own.
But bottom line, Steemit is about making bank without a bank. Period. No matter how altruistic others may claim to be, it does ultimately fall back onto that for the overwhelming majority of its users.
Outside of outright funds theft (i.e. scamming) and plaigiarism, I'm pretty much down with whatever though, so I'm a bad person to be making moral judgements here.
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I would use steemit with or without self voting, but I think if it's here, most will use it, so it's gonna balance out.
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Hey, nice post... Thanks for sharing.
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I see self voting as a relatively small "nothing-burger". I don't think there are enough people with enough Steem to do any real damage.
It's the collusion of circle-jerking that irritates me the most and I'm not in any way shape or form calling for banning it.
I'd just like to see the people engaged in it brought out into the sunlight for everyone else to see so the community can decide whether or not they want to reward it.
You can let the system work itself out because sooner or later the new people who follow-beg and "great post" comment will eventually tire of getting nothing for it and move on.
The problem lies in Steemit wanting to keep adding new users who are nothing more than an endless supply of new follow-beggars for the circle-jerkers.
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Well quoted "don't try to fix something that ain't broke."
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Great post man! The most important thing is to ensure that there is a "right" environment to make steemit grow and find it's own place. There should be few limitations on users so that they can experiment and see what works for them.
In the end, bad behaviour will be frowned upon and you'd probably not become very successful on steemit. As we can already witness, the community does take action against abuse and others forms of malicious intent.
People being able to wield their own shares/stake in the platform to give themselves more exposure is great, it makes people inclined to invest both time AND money. People who invest both og these will also naturally be inclined to work in a way that benefits both the individual and the platform :)
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I read that in the white paper. It is what I wrote about in this recent article. Restated in jargon, self-interest results in an equilibrium point that is not optimal - such behaviour cannot be eradicated but it can be reduced to make optimal behaviour more likely. But that also means encoding such an algorithm.
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I don't know about anyone else, but when I first joined 3 weeks ago I was treating the upvote similar to a FB like. Trouble is very often the fb like simply says yeah I read it, not going to respond. And I've never liked my own comment, only someone else's. So this whole concept requires a bit of change in thinking. Maybe that carried to the upvoted comments. IDK
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My dad has said this my whole life!
We went to Disney World again after seven years. We rode one of our favorite rides that gets you soaked, but when we got on, they no longer had the protective plastic bin in the middle to put your belongings that can't get wet. When we asked them what happened to it, they basically replied, "somebody ruined it for everyone else."
There is no reason to let a few people that are "abusing" self-votes to ruin it for the rest of us.
Also, inhibiting self-votes would take away from the freedom of this platform.
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Totally agree!
Isn't Steemit supposed to be about NO CENCORSHIP? I sure hope thats still the case because thats one of the most important things about it.
Come on, if you don't like someone up voting them selfs then DONT vote for them. If thats the way everyone feels then they can decide if they prefer their own up vote or the vote of others.
It all works it self out!
Good post!
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