"I've never seen a better example of a strawman. Please point to any example of anyone ever demanding equal outcome that has anything to do with Steem."
Well now, isn't that what the #newsteem policy of free votes is trying to do?
"How about you acknowledge the actual problem - Steem has hemorrhaged users, and that has kept a vibrant market for Steem from forming, keeping the price low. This is despite a trickle of rewards going to users, and the immense power of financial incentives. That means that the user's disgust with the flaggotry and profiteering on Steem has exceeded their disgust with Fakebook and Twatter, which should make the devs feel bad, because they are bad."
I do acknowledge the problem of hemorrhaged users, and I think the free flags and everyone running around using them will cause not only a hemorrhage of more users but also a hemorrhaging of stakeholders.
"Playing logical fallacy games isn't going to fix the problem, even if you feel like you won an argument on the internet. Fix user retention. Make users feel rewarded, not scammed, and that will fix user retention. How is self voting gonna do that?"
What fallacy are we talking about? Also, just an FYI self voting was baked into the original design UI. So if you do run across a stakeholder who bought more stake because of that design, then try convincing them what they're doing is wrong.
I say fix steem by correcting trending. Change downvote back to a flag. Call the upvote button a tip jar, and add a Reddit style up and downsort button which only serves to sort content. The upsort downsort buttons will accept all votes as equal, and allow only one vote per post and per IP address. The way it works: You read a post, and if you like it, you tip it and upsort it. If you don't like it, downsort. Upsorts and downsorts should be anonymous. I think something like this would cause people to fix trending on a daily basis. Also, people would have less reward envy with their in their secretly harbored expectations of a more equal outcome.
None of those things will actually better distribute Steem and create a vibrant market that will raise the price and create capital gains.
The ninjaminers are the only ones that have Steem in sufficient supply to do that, and they don't seem to have grasped the concept, or they're doing something else entirely that I am uninformed about. You're tuning a radio in a car about to plunge off a cliff hoping that will change the outcome. Enjoy the outro music.
Self votes are cancer in society. We see it is a terminal diagnosis from extant user retention. Here's how to cure it: make post and comment payouts limited, below the point at which it is worth financially manipulating the rewards mechanism to profiteer from it. While that can be improved by giving 15 Steem to new account holders instead of delegating it, that doesn't even matter either. End profiteering and Steem will grow. As long as profiteering is baked in, no matter what form it's baked in as, Steem is doomed to fail.
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There is no "end to profiteering", the fact you are even trying to shows how little you understand economics and human nature. The system should be designed in a way to encourage people to be as greedy as possible while still benefiting the ecosystem as a whole, which is exactly what the white paper is talking about. They are still doing work, they are still buying and holding steem power, they are not a negative, in fact they are a net positive overall.
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The cost of extracting rewards using stake only has to exceed the rewards of doing so for it to be ended. It's not even hard. The Huey Long algorithm would do that overnight.
I assume when you refer to 'they' you're referring to profiteers? I don't think any substantial stakeholder in Steem other than the original ninjaminers is in a net positive position right now, and they're only positive because they spent nothing on their stake.
I am mystified that you seem to be extolling the virtues of the actors that have squandered the incredible opportunity Steem presented, and turned it into what we have today. User retention is below 10% YOY. It's surprising just how badly Steem is performing on the market given it's use case. It's really some kind of evil genius shit to have kept it to such awful condition.
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It's performing so poorly because it has had an inflation rate north of 10% through much of its existence. You are comparing it to coins with low single digit inflation rates. Of course it is going to perform worse. The reason steem has performed poorly is likely due to a whole host of reasons, but if you need your users to act altruistically for your platform to succeed, you platform is not going to succeed. It needs to be designed in a way for people to act like normal people and it not cannibalize itself. The current incarnation is not that.
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The inflation rate is publicly available to folks interested in Steem without participating first. Tens of thousands of people came to Steem anyway. The profiteering was not, and almost all of those new users left. They did not leave because of the inflation, but because of the profiteering.
Inflation is relative anyway. Demand can easily exceed inflation, particularly a mere 10%. However demand, created by users, is not increasing, so inflation then becomes problematic.
You have previously explained how you expect people to come here and act contrary to their innate behaviours, social expectations, and investing experience to undertake self voting and profiteering, and now you state 'It needs to be designed in a way for people to act like normal people...'
You appear to be confused, and I think you are. Try to stick with one theory at a time, and at least you won't be confused, even if you are wrong. Now you're wrong and confused, and it's difficult to suss out what you even mean.
Also you malign people. People generally are very altruistic. Charities take in tens of billions of dollars every year from relatively poor people. Parents raise ungrateful and narcissistic children. Ordinary people desire deeply to be good, to leave a legacy of doing good, and believe that others do too. That's why fraud is so often successful.
Psychopaths, sociopaths, and narcissists behave as you believe people do. I note that projection is a common human trait, and reckon you're projecting your own values when you disparage 'people'. Give that some thought.
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You turned things personal very quickly, a sure fire tell of what someone does when realizing they are wrong in the debate.
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You mistake observing phenomena with ad homina.
At least you're consistent.
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As far as voting for new authors and new smaller users, the current setup actually discourages that as you need to get your vote over $4 or so to even reach a linear vote. It actually disincentivizes voting small users. A prime example of how worrying about abuse is hurting growth.
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Exactly, but it's not worrying about abuse that impelled HF21. It's encouraging profiteering, and pleb newbs have no stake to plunder, so are excluded from benefitting from curation post HF21. It's not an example of any consideration of increasing user onboarding and retention. It's simply pretending Steem has any value without a market to create that value. Profiteers are extracting more and more Steem by stake weighting as it becomes worth less and less as the market for it contracts.
It is so obvious to me that I am half convinced it's deliberate. Exchanges are dropping Steem. How long can this go on before Steem and Golos are entombed side by side in the dustbin of history, has beens in the contest for market share?
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If new users want to earn more rewards, they simply buy more stake, simple as that. Otherwise others on the site can feel free to tip them for their work if they feel it is worthy of such.
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Try to advertise Steem to potential markets with such a recommendation, and watch zero people sign up. It's ridiculous, and Steem will fail if that's the best you've got. It was the opposite offer, that people could sign up for free and gain Steem through upvotes of their content, that drew folks here.
When it was proved to be inaccurate, and that whales got most of the rewards, they left. For most people the necessary funds to buy enough Steem to become a whale are completely out of reach. How much more rewards could they expect with what they can pry from their paychecks, already overspent by most people today?
They didn't come here to spend their money. They came to earn it. It's bizarre to pretend this isn't the case, and hallucinatory to actually believe what you are saying. As to the rewards that actually exist on Steem, they are negligible because of profiteering, and worse after HF21 due to the quasi-exponential curve that makes smaller votes insignificant.
If those rewards weren't being extracted by whales stake weighting, were profiteering not reducing all content creators to ~10% of rewards PRIOR to HF21, some folks would stay and market Steem to others with their posts. This happened back in the day. As increasing profiteering has continued to reduce the rewards of such content creators, that useful marketing work, and the market they constituted, has increasingly shrunk and contracted.
You don't want to acknowedge these facts, so you do not. It doesn't matter that they're demonstrable and real. You just don't want it to be that way, so you'll keep pretending it's not.
Until you acknowledge that, we're done talking.
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Please tell me how a model where people show up to get paid is sustainable? People who invest nothing, net earn rewards are the first in line to sell, that's not a sustainable model.
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It is demonstrable that it is the ninjaminers that sell, that profiteers sell, and that new users with growing accounts do not. Why do you state the opposite? Provide evidence of your claim, because I know it to be false and believe you do too, confirming my belief you are simply trolling.
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I disagree, self voting can be an indication
that you appreciate your own content.
It was openly on the UI as an option to
tick prior to publishing the post.
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Vanity is not a socially commendable trait, and only bootlickers admire the vain. Humility is admirable, and generates organic support. The two are of opposite affect on society, and the latter is beneficial, which is why it generates organic support, while self voting provably draws ire and disapproval.
You're fooling yourself if you think your opinion of your work isn't biased. Remember who the devs are working for when you consider code and tick boxes: ninjaminers.
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I don't pretend that people are not bias. If a self-voter creates a quality post and self votes it, it's not necessarily vanity. If a self-voter creates a shit post and self votes it they may feel entitled because their stake allows them. Fix the rate limited voting, and that should solve it.
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Rate limiting voting won't work because of socks. Rate limiting posts however will. It's why I proposed the Huey Long algorithm, to eliminate profiteering by making rewards too expensive to mine by stake weighting.
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I'll have to look into that algo.
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The free downvotes and encouraging that they are used liberally is the cancer. It's creating an undesirable atmosphere. I agree with what planter said tbh.
^ This is how the markets evolve. You can think about Steem only withen the realm of the box. Outside of the box there is the token itself and it's value in the larger market. Appealing to people's self interested by allowing larger votes to bigger investors is what grows the value of the coin. Trending can be fixed to show more valuable content without free downvotes.
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I am vehemently against free downvotes without free upvotes to counter them. The reason no one wants the Huey Long algorithm is the lure of whale votes, despite that certainty of profiteering that comes with them. Gamblers gamble. It's what they do.
Investors don't gamble. If allowing larger votes to more substantial stakeholders drew investors they would be here by now. It's not factually correct. What draws investors is an opportunity to participate in equity that will increase in value, capital gains. As long as profiteering compromises Steem's ability to increase in value, investors are not drawn in.
Trending doesn't confront investors. Capital loss or gain does.
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If a sorting system is implemented like the one I suggested. One equal vote per IP address (and per post) up or down to sort content only, that will result in a trending fix. It will highlight only the cream of the crop as far as posts are concerned. Nobody will be able to overpower it with their stake, and upsorting or downsorting won't effect rewards.
This is my suggestion because eliminating shit posts isn't possible, but what is possible is presenting a higher quality trending with a more intelligent sorting function. This will create a valuable product, similar to how a website is valuable based on the content it shows.
For example, if the Drudge Report only linked to shitty stuff people wouldn't care to visit the Drudge Report. As far as voting rewards are concerned self vote was an option baked right into the GUI. I don't see anything wrong with it, and if there is, we can fix it at the rate limited voting level.
But bear in mind, if you limit it there, you also limit all the altruistic people from distributing that much in rewards. This way people who care about Steemd's value can work to upvote articles that have made it to trending more meritoriously. I still think it serves to keep the self serving self voters because they invest in Steem and this combined with their HODL causes the token to have value. Last thing we need right now is more selling.
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VPNs are trivially easy to use to bypass anything based on IP addy's. Rate limiting VP just won't work, because there are thousands of socks owned by some users. Even if you limit upvotes to .01 Steem one user could upvote it over 20 Steem by using 2000 socks. Rate limiting posts will work, because it doesn't matter how many socks you have, or how much stake you have, you can't push a post over the chosen limit, say 300% of the median post payout. Since the median post payout is about .05 SBD, there's no reason for greedy bastards to plunder rewards. They'd have to have thousands of socks posting to generate what they can today from one post, and that is easy to counter with hordes of free flags burning in the pockets of outraged Steemers looking to curb bots. Hell, it's right up their ally.
Even shit posts are something, and their posters tend to be actual people, however bad at writing and making posts they are. There's a lot that recommends having hordes of dummies comprising the market for your products. Just ask PT Barnum. If we want 2 billion users, like Fakebook, we need to accept that we're not going to see 2 billion 'Moby Dick' quality posts. All those users, and their posts, do add value to the Steem ecosystem though, and even pics of their stomach contents after being pumped full of narcan contribute something to those that want to see those pics.
By rate limiting posts, instead of VP, it would be easy to detect botnets seeking to profiteer from rewards, because the same thousands of bots would be upboating given posts, allowing them to be identified with profiteering users and those users to suffer the wrath of rampaging peasants armed with free flags.
Even shitposters are part of society and deserve some reward, which is why no organic post deserves less than 3% of the median post reward. Between 3% and 300% is three orders of magnitude, and this allows more than enough room to preferentially reward content of good quality, and it's 3x the rewards most people get on their posts. Since the median post reward serves to attract content creators, 3x that is good enough to keep good content creators around, and as the rapine abuse of stake ends overinflating circle jerk and self voted posts, the median will rise up to 15x, towards the average post payout that is currently that much higher than the median, as profiteers are prevented from overpricing posts to suck rewards from. Then factor in Steem price rising orders of magnitude, and even rate limited rewards might well exceed what was possible during Steem's early days of $1000 payouts.
As for self voting, it's not a good idea to create a market for your account, because you only get 10 100% votes to attract gratitude to your account with, and newbs with low stake are a lot better off using those votes on the content of other folks rather then giving themselves tiny upvotes. Substantially staked users that self vote are just not well socialized people, and it's just as bad an idea for them to self vote, even it it's worth more than a tenth of a pfennig, because it just rankles folks. Society is built on mutual support, and greedy bastards tend to be universally reviled, the more so the more greedy they are.
As to Steem price, frankly the lower it goes the better for Steem, as profiteers aren't here for any good reasons involving the metaphysical improvement of society, but only for their own enrichment. A stupid low price will drive them off, but won't bother me one bit. Once they're gone we can institute the Huey Long algorithm, and keep them away, while investors will observe the extremely cheap Steem, the new direction that encourages capital gains, and allow the content creators to ride that moon shot they fund.
I'd love to see Bernie, CHBartist, all the ninjaminers, and the rest of the folks whose only reason to be here is to suck all value out of the system sell off all their stake and go fuck with EOS. I'd love to see them buying back in a year from now, chastened by the humongous loss they suffered and eager to ride that moon rocket THEIR profiteering has heretofore prevented. We'd be front row audience to the earnest speeches regarding how much better capital gains are for Steem than rapine profiteering, like ex prostitutes that become nuns, or ex smokers, or any reformed degenerates. I would beam with glee at their conversions, my enjoyment epic.
For a taste just observe how former bidbots are proselytizing for manual curation today. Clearly they have felt the Hand of God, and now are the most faithful of curators, having been before suffering from devilish lust for ROI, they now see the light of honest valuing of quality content.
At least until they start to get caught for selling votes off chain to manually curate here. It is with great anticipation I await the serial Tammy Faye moments as they repeatedly avow their honest conversions, this time, for sure, and promises to never, ever stray from the light again.
I'm not selling my stake, and don't care what the tokens sell for. When they're properly valued due to their technical superiority to BTC, and the premium use case of social media (once cured of the disease of profiteering), Steem can reasonably be priced back amongst the top 5 cryptos again. Maybe then I'll spend 5 Steem on a new car.
Probably not though. I don't want a new car. I'd prefer using that stake to fund voluntarist government through upvotes. I reckon that is an actual useful thing to get from my VP.
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Damn, you seem pretty certain moon in a year or so. Does this have to do with BTC, and the rumors it will? Also, post cap seems more desirable at first glance than free flags and forever flag wars. However, I just don't know how that would effect large stakeholders and people who rely on large upvotes for their development efforts. Granted, that type of person is a minority. However, they're important for development of things and stuff on the blockchain. Also, I'm not sure that someone with 2000 socks would be able to emulate 2000 different IP addressed could they? Thanks for the interesting reply!
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Substantial stakeholders have more to gain from rising Steem price than anyone, and capital gains is their best hope. Developers can turn to SPS for funding. That's what it is designed for. As for moons, I don't predict one absent adoption of the Huey Long algorithm, which I detailed here in our conversation, but have posted and commented regarding elsewhere previously. I don't expect adoption of the Huey Long algorithm, due to the gambler problem, and that the majority of stake is in the wallets of the ninjaminers still, and they don't want it. No profiteers want it, despite that capital gains is a better route to riches on Steem.
Were it to be undertaken I would expect several months to pass before Steem price rose to significant levels, as the turmoil resulting would take time to sort out. I am not predicting Steem to moon in a year. I'd like to see that happen, and my previous comment was not a schedule, but a description of how I'd like to see things happen, and the sooner the better.
VPNs are able to provide IPs in most countries in the world, and you can actually roll your own VPN, which I have posted regarding previously also. I can't say how many IPs a VPN can provide, but will point out that in the above comment from which you get the 2000 IPs number, I set an arbitrary cap of .01 Steem for an upvote (which I am sure is not the VP cap you propose adopting, as anyone with an upvote worth more, or those seeking larger upvotes on their posts, would scream bloody murder) and simply used 20 Steem and 2000 socks to represent the calculation.
There are folks like Bernie with more than 2000 socks, I am sure. I am not even dead set on the 3% - 300% algo. Those are the figures proposed by Huey Long in the 1930s, but any similar caps would work, as long as the max is too low to make profiteering pay, and the minimum still avails even the worst writer something.
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