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.
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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