YOU ALL NEED TO START USING THE FLAGGING THE FEATURE MORE OFTEN! QUIT BEING SCARED!
I've noticed that people seem so fearful to use the flagging feature. This is absolutely detrimental to the platform as a whole. The feature exists for a reason.
There are a few problems here on Steemit that are absolutely plaguing the platform and they are DIRECTLY affecting you, as well as everyone else. YOU can do something about it, but it requires you to quit being a baby and to start responsibly doing your civic duty here of USING THE FLAGGING MECHANISM.
As many of you may have noticed, the payout rewards since HF19 have rapidly decreased. The rewards pool is being ravaged by assholes that are worshiping themselves and stealing from you. How are they doing this? By self upvoting every damn thing that they post and not upvoting anyone else. I've seen countless users here that will drop by posts to give you a comment in the form of "lol," "cool," "nice post," "great content, check out my blog and follow/comment/upvote," "this is so funny," and so on and so forth. This would be fine and dandy, but these people are giving these worthless comments their own personal 100% upvote while typically giving you, the content creator, nothing in return. No small vote, no vote at all.
These people are PARASITES. They steal from the rewards pool and essentially from you. You see, the rewards pool is not some magical spell of infinite money. Steem has an inflation rate, which is essentially the rewards pool and it is very much finite. If parasites like these continue to get away with this kind of behavior, our payouts will be reduced to pure shit.
So why should I be flagging people that are doing this?
Well, because they suck. And in my eyes, they are absolutely detrimental to the entire platform. Not only are they lazy, but they're robbing the rewards pool, the very thing that pays YOU, the legitimate content creators that are making this platform successful, beautiful, and fruitful for all.
What does flagging actually do?
When you flag something, you essentially are saying:
"I do not think that this post is worth what is currently being shown, so I want to remove some of the currently allocated rewards that they are currently being granted from the rewards pool and return them to the rewards pool so that they can be allocated in a more appropriate manner, thus allowing more worthy human beings that are creating great content and helping this platform succeed to get a better, tastier, more delicious piece of the pie as they actually deserve instead of this asshole."
So who needs flagged!?
- Rampant self-upvoters. These are the people who are THE WORST.
- Plagiarizers. These people are stealing content and re-posting it as if it is content that they have created. These people are essentially thieves.
- People being assholes to people for no reason.
- People perpetuating hateful ideologies.
- Fraudsters/scammers/trolls/spammers.
- Whoever you think needs to be rewarded less for their content. That is your right.
BE VIGILANT!!! SPREAD THE WORD!!!
FLAGGING IS YOUR CIVIC DUTY AS A PARTICIPANT ON THE STEEM PLATFORM! FIGHT THE GOOD FIGHT, BE A HERO, AND START FLAGGING THE BAD GUYS! WHEN YOU FLAG PEOPLE WHO DO NOT DESERVE THE REWARD THEY ARE GETTING, YOU ARE RETURNING THAT BACK TO THE REWARDS POOL SO THAT IT CAN BE DISTRIBUTED MORE FAIRLY! SO START DOING IT!
Over and out!!!
PLEASE CONSIDER @AGORIC.SYSTEMS FOR WITNESS
Just remember, every time you flag a post you are taking away one potential up vote you can make for the day.
Is it worth it?
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You can also view it as giving back the rewards to the rest of the posts that did not get flagged.
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I personally used around 20% of my VP today to flag a guy that was on a rampage. Fully worth it! Felt great. Enjoy that few hundred bucks I sent back to the pool!
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thank you for your service!!!!
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My pleasure! If the rewards pool isn't spread around appropriately and people don't fight for its proper use, everything goes to shit.
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If considered, the absolutely yes
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Tragedy of the commons.
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THANK YOU for this post!
I flagged my first post the other day-- someone straight-up ripped off a news article and posted it verbatim here, AND spammed popular tags in the process.
I appreciate your perspective on the process-- I'm still learning the platform, so it helps to hear from someone with more experience like you!
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Stuff like that sucks and ultimately takes away from everyone. I don't enjoy using the feature, but I also feel like it's my duty to use it responsibly, and also explain why I did it. People need to start setting examples. It's like a bunch of people going to a food bank and a few assholes come with bigger bags than the others, filling them to the brim. Should other people responsibly taking enough for themselves say something or should be lay down and just let it happen?
I personally would be saying fuck those guys and making them put some back.
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Good job I like that there are some bots out there that scrape the web and call out people who repost others material.
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I don't agree at all, this would only start a flagging war, and here the most important thing is, how do you discern what deserves a flag? If a buddy of yours copy pastes something, do you flag him? So my post is crappy, do you flag it? Obviously when something comes to a vote it is a subjective matter, what seems insulting to you might seem great to me. Like for example this post, the people who are flagrantly asking for vote will see it as insulting, so should they flag this post? Look at one of the most controversial persons here @berniesanders, many people say he is doing a great service, then he flags them and he becomes an asshole. No I think with flagging all you get is a lot of bad will and nothing positive comes from it. This is supposed to be a free speech platform, if you don't like something ignore the post or mute the person.
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I think that you are confused to an extent.
Flagging = Free speech. Freedom to disagree with the payout for what you perceive as shitty content. Do you understand that someone paying themselves several hundred dollars a day for saying lol, haha, cool, literally lowers the rewards pool permanently when it pays out?
When I see someone abusing the mechanism, I will in turn disagree with their payout in terms of a flag, relinquishing it to the rewards pool for the greater good of the platform. If everyone bends over and cowers down, this will continue. You're essentially saying what's equal to a citizenry not rising up against their corrupted leader because they're scared. Somebody has to have a spine . . .
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It sucks because you are both right and maybe the system is broken because really there is no "right" or "wrong" but rather just the bigger set of wallets will win. I still love Steemit but now I have to rethink my life.
j/k, not that serious people ;) Great discussions and interpretations of how people are using Steemit itself going on here
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Well in the end I think there will be more "good," people than "bad." And eventually what becomes more fruitful? Flagging or getting along and using the platform correctly? I think the latter would win out in the end. We have to find balance somewhere, and I think that it doesn't reside in being apathetic.
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Again, what you consider shitty content is subjective I might consider it great, as for someone paying themselves hundreds of dollars, yes it sucks, but then what you should be doing, you that have a lot of power is demanding from @ned that he not permit self upvoting, have a new hardfork giving attention to this, that would solve the problem, and I'll tell you something personally self upvoting a post you consider good is not bad I think, now a comment is different, I upvote my own work at a whopping 10 cents a pop each time, so I'm not getting rich, I always comment because I want my comments replied to or upvoted, it doesn't matter how much I get for the upvote but it helps increase my REP, comments I never self upvote. In any case your flag is worth something mine would reduce the rewards of a spammy post by 10 cents, and I think my money is better spent rewarding posters who only get pennies with a couple more pennies for their efforts.
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Sure, "shitty content," is subjective. If I flag something and you don't think it should be flagged, upvote the comment. The system is designed that way. Points can have counterpoints and so on. A flag isn't the end-all be-all.
Just because your vote isn't worth much at the moment doesn't make you worthless. If no one bands together, this all crumbles. It's like saying that voting in an actual fair, transparent election is worthless because you're one person, you know what I'm saying?
Flagging is an option, and I'm not saying EVERYONE go do it, but be more conscious about its existence. Maybe smaller stake holders that want to flag/build themselves could just comment on a shit-post with "someone should flag this for X reason," and some other guy can swoop in and save the day?
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@gduran we are talking about people who make a lot of money by upvoting all of their comments, not some newbies that make 10 cents by upvoting their comment.
Like I said previously, it makes me sad to see so many great posts by new steemians that hardly make a couple dollars while someone writes a couple words like "nice post" or "cool" and makes five bucks.
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I perfectly understand, but my flagging them will not do much, now if a group of whales or dolphins did this then you could have a measurable effect, otherwise the right thing is for Steemit inc to just not permit self upvoting, at least the comments.
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I think it'd be detrimental to disallow self upvoting, it serves a purpose. I'm coming more from the angle of people collectively banding together to "fight for what's right," and let the system balance itself out. Have a war, so to speak haha.
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I agree with you and @gduran. It would be easy to hardfork away the posibility to upvote your own comments. Sadly the real heavy wheight whales just make a dozen of ghost accounts, distribute their vestingpower and then they upvote themself completely invisible for others. Sadly this is also the quite easy workaround of such a hardfork and many big whales just will find undercover ways to give the rewards of their investment to themselfs.
And I didnt even talk about the conspiring whales who just upvote each other on every occasion. What is the difference between having 5 accounts upvoting themself on massive scale and the small fish who wasnt clever enough to make 5 accounts ? the minnows get flagged taking away their few cents because they just have 1 account. From this perpective it is NOT fair to let cluster accounts do what they want (distributing all votingpower to themself) and flag the minor users who where not clever enough yet to make ghost accounts. We should also stop then the fact that some people run voting trails to powerupvote their own stories over and over with the trails.
How can a curator of a trail lets say art-trail or german-traiI upvote their own accounts over and over again???? think this is 10 times more unfair and their are some very well known users with very very high reputation doing one of this hidden tactics this day in day out. And thats not about some 10 cents its about 1000s of $ per week. And don´t even think about to ever flag them, because your done within a week. The ones who have 100 times more steempower will win not the most fair distribution.
Hard to find the ultimate solution. I flagged a couple of fakeID accounts spamming and posting the same content over and over or using introduceyourself tag 39 times.
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About that, upvoting your own article is something i dont disagree 👎 with, its a show of self love and self esteem but upvoting your own comments is nothing but stealing, then flagging this type of person is the best we can do to help our society, especially the minnows!
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Besides agreeing 👍 with you @gduran, this is a social media, not a grading system. If the owner of this article thinks people should flag any article they dont like because of some reasons it will cause serious flagging wars! The guy you flagged his/her post today will hunt your posts for a flagging revenge! And the whole idea of flagging is just like asking social media like facebook to add 'dislike' button 🔳 to their system! Someone might hate something you love. Productivity won't come out of hate!
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The self voting hate has to stop. I used to do it up until recently, but that was just my choice, I was told from the beginning that is what everyone should do, and I honestly I feel kind of that way, the discriminating of people who do it makes the assumption that they are doing it for a negative reason, when we are all here wanting our posts to be seen, otherwise we would all have accounts on Blogspot.
Again, I personally stopped, but this is only like as of last week, the negativity on the practice should be more personal is all I think, and honestly I might just do it again, I like nearly all my comments, not all of them, but a lot, it feels more fake that I am holding back from upvoting only because there are some users who make it out like an issue.
I agree with 2 through 6, but feel 4 doesn't meld well with 1 (maybe because you just called the practice "THE WORST" but without explanation on why it is such a bad thing, I am curious). Great post, hope it gets discussion out of it, because people are way too fearful of hitting the flag button but I definitely am not none of those people, but it also takes a decent amount until I use it.
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Voting your original posts is perfectly fine. I'm talking about comments. Rampant comments that have no substance or just suck and that are only being posted so that, that user can upvote. That's what I'm talking about. I think that you're taking the content of this post in the wrong way.
Did you read the entire post? #1 is this scenario:
"I've seen countless users here that will drop by posts to give you a comment in the form of "lol," "cool," "nice post," "great content, check out my blog and follow/comment/upvote," "this is so funny," and so on and so forth. This would be fine and dandy, but these people are giving these worthless comments their own personal 100% upvote while typically giving you, the content creator, nothing in return. No small vote, no vote at all."
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I read the whole post, but after re-looking at just the 1 through 6 I guess other peoples posts about the subject is still just resignation with me, because yeah, useless comments are horrible, but the exacting wording of that 1 through 6 is not specifying there is definitely okay times to upvote your comment (but even now, I am just taking a break from it because of odd backlash from various users I follow for the past week, whom are definitely not saying things for the same reasons you are). Your reasoning is sound and I completely agree with that.
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Yeah, I might edit in some reasoning for when/why I think that it's fine to upvote your own stuff.
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Yeah man totally agree. I was telling someone just yesterday that the reason I joined Steemit back in February was because I wanted to engage with a crypto crowd BLOGGING... sharing original content was my goal.
Now, people are advertising Steem as a platform where you "blog and GET PAID." So, of course people are just going to come here to make money. These MONEY FIRST people are the people to aggressively upvote themselves.
I agree that the stigma against flagging has to be broken. However, I don't see this being a long term solution. I think a long term solution is forcing people to really earn their upvote... this used to be a thing and it wasn't an issue before.
But anyway I am just rambling now. Great post! Resteemed.
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Yeah, it's great being paid and it's awesome that we can make this all happen, but it's super shitty when people abuse it. I like the idea of us all collectively, irrespective of our stake, trying to find a balance. People could also just comment in reply to shit-posts with something like "someone should flag this for X reason," and someone else with more stake could swoop in the save the day. I understand some smaller stake holders want to focus on building themselves and spreading rewards around VS flagging.
But yeah fully agreed, the stigma needs to die and people need to quit being babies about it. It's like not voting in an actually FAIR election. Not participating makes you at fault for the detriment of the greater good.
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I do not agree with points 3 and 4. Steem (above all) is a platform for free speech. There is no free speech without the so-called "hate speech".
Also, I'd like to mention that you shouldn't flag all posts that don't share your viewpoint or posts that you simply don't like. Don't overuse the feature, only use it when it is blatant shit.
I would also like to mention that upvoting your own comments isn't a reason to flag. Yes, there is a debate of whether it is correct or not to upvote your own stuff, but while the possibility is present, use it. Just don't spam pointless comments that don't bring any progress to a conversation only to upvote it and earn a miserable 0.01 SBD.
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Point 3 is practically synonymous with 5 I guess you could say. Again, this is just a way to combat bullies, etc. Should bullies be rewarded? No. It isn't censorship, it's just saying that they don't deserve to be paid for sucking.
I'm not saying they shouldn't be able to say it, I'm saying that it's a good idea to remove rewards for hateful things. That's like saying it wouldn't have been cool to tell Hitler to shut up, you know? He can talk about killing Jews all day, but it's up to society to reply to him with "you suck, shut up, dude."
I see upvoting your own comments as fine, but is moderation and with respect. For example if you have a point you think that is well laid out/said, and you want exposure in a long line of comments, sure upvote yourself a bit to bring your comment up in the ranks. I also think it's a-ok to 100% upvote your original posts. I also think it's cool to use comment upvoting in the event that you have been wrongly flagged.
Thanks for the input!
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Firstly, #HitlerDidNothingWrong. Secondly, no. Even if you think someone is "bullying" (there's no such thing as cyber-bullying), that doesn't mean that person shouldn't be rewarded for his/her thoughts. The last thing we want to see is Anti-Fascist bots flagging posts of people who have a slightly right-leaning view.
Also, I do agree that any death threats or any speech that falls under international law should be flagged, but minor things such as "You never had a giveaway, you're a fucking Jew" shouldn't be flagged as it is just a comical comment that shouldn't be taken seriously, and yes, the person deserves payment as he/she criticized someone's behaviour. Criticizing is free speech, doesn't matter if someone thinks you're a filthy Jew. Maybe you are. How should we know?
Point of interest: I'm not a fascist, that hashtag is just a 4chan joke. Free speech though, so bite it!
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You really believe that, though? Picking at people for no reason and attacking their character from an unprovoked position repeatedly isn't bullying? Bullying is defined by "prone to or characterized by overbearing mistreatment and domination of others." I see what I've described to as bullying. Do I think that people need to toughen up and just deal with people like that by not giving them attention? Yes, I do. But do I think that people taking that approach to interactions with other human beings? Definitely not.
So if you have a nice quality post, for example, giving someone a lesson in coding and I just drop by to say "fuck you lol you are a dumb piece of shit," and I upvote myself, I shouldn't flag you? That is my freedom to do so. Flagging is a mechanism to agree with rewards. I will flag anyone that is detrimental to a community.
I fully get what you're saying about using race and so on in a friendly, harmless manner as humor is fine as well. I'm talking legitimate call for violence or something, true hate speech. Or for example if someone was like "Kill all gay people, here's why, etc etc etc," to me that's hate speech and fuck rewarding that, you know?
I feel ya! I have a dark sense of humor a lot of times that I think that people would probably hate, but to me, satire is golden and a fantastic way to laugh at stupid ideologies.
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You are free to believe whatever you want to believe. I am free to believe whatever I want to believe.
The "Kill all gay people" one is fine in my opinion. The person is showing his/her perspective, we should listen to it, even if we largely disagree with it.
Here's my scenario for flagging a user:
Let's imagine a post titled "My Grandmother Died, Here's Her Story".
There's nothing gay about the post.
@skankhunt comments "Ur gay"
That's completely unrelated to the post, it is getting flagged.
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This is an example of my point #3.
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Dude, I couldn't agree more. I'm putting together something for tonight that I witnessed last night. This person commented literally a hundred times and sent .01 SBD to the @minnowbooster bot for self-votes. The votes got him 20 cents a pop. Do that a couple hundred times and . . . well, you get the idea.
It is our civic duty. I have only recently begun to flag these people. And seriously, I feel good about doing it. Many of us work our butts off to get a 10 dollar post, a 5 dollar post, etc . . . I understand using the bots to get more exposure, but some of the ways they are being used now is malicious to the platform.
Like you said, "Rampant self-upvoters. These are the people who are THE WORST.
Plagiarizers. These people are stealing content and re-posting it as if it is content that they have created. These people are essentially thieves."
Yep . .
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Fuck yeah let's get this poison out now so it doesn't turn into a plague in the future i will start to be more mindfull of this, Thanks Matt !!
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Thank you so much for this post .....
I learn so much from you @intrepidthinker and @robrigo , I never used the flag before but now it only makes sense to , you guys are the best and because of guys like you steemit will only get better and reach its greatest potential.
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You're welcome, thanks for the nice words! We do our best.
Flagging isn't something that should be thrown out all the time, or even daily/weekly. You gotta use it responsibly and for the right reasons, no one likes to have stuff taken away! haha
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Damm i didnt flag so far , or very rare due plagiarisum only . I mute all follow for fallow spam on my post . The problem is when you disagree with some of the big namse here . People are just scared to say any word .....
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That's what needs to change, people being scared. If I see another large holder flag for no reason, I'll start talking to them about it. And if they are just being mean for no reason, there are MANY more large stake holders who are actually good people and that would be willing to step in and negate the asshole-whale's flag. I think it will balance out in the end and people will see that it pays to be good and doesn't pay to be bad.
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Same old war ... Game of Trones ....... Whale vs whale .... If you ask me steemit had to have a people fo this ... Some sort of people to deside its feair or unfair flag . ... Sadly we dont have right now . Plus when you flag a future about explayn the reason about , like reports in other media will be nice !
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I think it won't do much for the reward pool. But it would maybe weed out the abusers and make room for decent folks. Upvoted and resteemed.
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I get what you're saying, but any progress is better than regression, you know? Gotta fight the good fight :-).
Thanks a lot, man! Much appreciated!
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Yeah, it is noticeable with the new kids. It is ok to be unfamiliar with the etiquette and how things work. And maybe the flag is just the right way to learn. I get pissed easily when they can't even focus on the topic.
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good post Matt- i had an issue with a steem whale, and couldn't bring myself to flag him, cause i was fearful that he could downvote me and drop me down a lot. I want to be a positive influence here and decided to put it behind me, but i believe your right and we should take them on even if they can hurt our slow growth. I notice your upvote on one of my blogs and decided to come and see what your write about. Hopefully i will write some decent content this week, keep rockin -David
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Hey! Interesting post!
Can i check something!
Are you saying that by upvoting your own comment you take money from the authors main post?
I wasnt aware of this!
Thanks!
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Nope, you take away from the rewards pool as a whole, not the author you are posting on. The rewards pool is where your Steem/SBD come from. It's the inflation rate of the chain that allow for distribution of rewards.
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ahhh i see..
so just to be sure i understand. there is no REAL difference if i upvote myself OR someone else then to the total rewards pool.. Only that i would be keeping money instead of sharing it around, right?
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Yep, but this platform doesn't work if you just feed yourself when you can feed your family. When you upvote someone, you actually get a chunk of that in the form of "curation rewards."
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yup, i understand.. just making sure i get it..
Thanks for clarifying!
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Question and it may be a stupid one but I am still a newbie on this platform haha, anyway...what about people commenting and then leaving photos or a introduction to their blog under your post?? I can understand when someone leaves a link when it's a post similar to yours around the same topic, that's interesting because you then you have something in common with another Steamian, but I have had a few people commenting which looks like the sole purpose was to hijack attention from your content to their own blogs
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Someone did it on my post i just did the same back Haha :D
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I 100% agree with you @matt-a... however, some of us are a little scared to use the flag after seeing massive flag wars that have ensued.
I shouldn't be scared to do my "civic duty", but that is the reality. Losing hard-earned reputation, etc... for flagging someone's post is a distinct possibility.
Maybe I should toughen up.
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Yeah, that's the big issue. People are scared to do it due to the fear of being flagged back for no reason. That's also why I think that it's important to give a reason as to why you flag someone when you do it. That's what I do at least. That way if someone flags you for an unjustified reason, larger stake holders could see that and step in for the defense. I mean, I've done that many times. Gotta fight the good fight!
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That makes sense. Hopefully I won't have to use it, but I'm starting to feel confident enough to do it if need be.
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I flagged someone for the first time yesterday, a person who commented on my post saying literally just 3 words and giving themselves $5 while not giving my post any upvote at all, which I would be cool with if they didn't vote for themselves.
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That feels like a quick reaction and flag abuse, but as this post is making out, the only "Abuse" of the flag system is, well non really, people can just keep tagging back and forth really as they please, but I am curious what message that left others who may not follow that person you flagged, may have had a comment for your post, but just because you didn't upvote your post they should not possibly fear getting flagged if they only have commentary? I understand we all desire to get paid from Steemit, but is that the only reason for being here? I still use Reddit, Instagram, hell even tumblr, and get free comments all day long on those places and never have a chance of getting paid directly from those sources, I thought what made Steemit different is at least we have that opportunity, should we fear getting flagged for having a thought and that is it?
I know I am taking your situation to the extreme, no doubt the person is abusing the system, I am giving the hypothetical for your viewers who are not following abusers or even care about them but just like your blog.
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@cryplectibles
It wasn't a quick reaction as I flagged their comment hours later, it was a decision I thought about.
I mentioned that I'm cool with people posting comments all day long without upvoting my posts, as long as they don't pay themselves decent amounts of money for writing a couple words, some new people I follow create beautiful content and they don't even get a couple bucks for their posts while someone types "they look good" and makes $5. I disagree with that.
Every one has a brain and can make up their own mind, if anyone wants to join sides with the abuser - please do. Everyone can reward whatever they feel deserves it and I have the option to disagree with that.
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This particular individual was making tons and tons of posts all across the platform, all one to two word comments, all 100% upvoted, and hadn't upvoted anyone else's content. This was discovered prior to flagging him. I don't think that it's flag abuse at all, I think that it was the ideal way to use the mechanism.
We essentially reallocated inappropriate allocation of funds back to the rewards pool for more people to enjoy.
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The point I am making is regarding the bigger message of a person who do not follow @kotturinn or the person that was flagged, but just see a valid comment got flagged, I am giving the alternative view that non-Steemit users matter too lol, ALL LIVES MATTER! ;p
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I'm not smashing comments out of existence, I'm simply saying to myself "Ahh, I don't think "lol," deserves $5, I think it deserves $0.00 or $0.01." My qualm is disproportionately self-rewarding zero effort posting. If it's quality and has substance, sure, give 'er a little reward! haha
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I get your qualm, which by the way, as a longer time Steemit user, my personal qualm too. Taking ourselves out of this situation and placing instead a newbie on Steemit, and a person who has not joined Steemit yet.
I am saying the value of getting a new users on Steemit is higher of that than possibly taking away $5 from someone I cannot 100% say for certain is abusing the system. I will take the bad users of Steem with their temporary ways they try and make money here, which I know will not last long, rather than chance I would lose a new user on Steemit who might be a great contributer but would see a post they liked, a comment they thought was okay, and see that comment flagged. Without being on Steemit themselves, it's not like they can ask what occurred or why this person was flagged. If people really are making money on poop comments, it isn't long term or sustainable, and if it is, we would all be able to see these accounts from the beginning, of high value, and this Steemit experiment would not even have lasted this long. I have no numbers to back up some of these statements, I do love this discussion though, seriously. I feel I agree with you but I just feel I am thinking in a longer term way is all which would make me act differently in the $5 wasteful comment example.
As a side, maybe when flagging a persons comment, everyone should get in the habit of making sure to post why the flag is being used. Not even for the person, but more so for other viewers.
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@cryplectibles
There was an explanation why the commentor got flagged included.
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When I flag, I always reply as to why. That's something that I fully encourage doing, otherwise, you're just being passive and not setting a good example of using the feature. It opens up a dialogue to ask "why?" And if the flagger is wrong, if they don't suck, can remove it. Or someone else can step in and counteract the flag with a proportionate upvote.
I think people are scared of chaos. Personally, I'm not. I think it's crucial for this platform to have a healthy future.
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man. OK if you say so.. I have been scared to flag because I don't want to get in a flagging war. Or to have some whale take notice of me in the bad way.. but I do see the reward pool becoming fuxxored. And your my boy blue. So if you say flagging is the good fight we should be fighting.. I'm with you..
PS: Dope agoric gif too! How is agoric.systems going?! Whatcha guys building?!
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It's a tough thing to get on-board with, I fully feel ya. Yeah, the rewards pool has been super rapidly depleted due to so much of this self-feeding low content posting. If you flag these users, you essentially take their reward away and send it back to the pool for distribution. I'm just calling for people to not be afraid to use it sometimes. But if you use it, give reasoning as to why you chose to use the flag.
Thanks, man! Our designers are legit. We've been scheming up some stuff to get rolling for Steem (can't unveil yet!) and we've been tackling another DPOS/Graphene chain, Decent. We actually just got voted into an active witness position there. We've been trying to help people with technical stuff in that community as well. It's paying off :-). Hope all's well, man!
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might I suggest following personz and his smackdown.kitty. They list and flag the most self upvoting users.. dang007 appears to be the biggest self upvoter. but he waits until day 6 to upvote most of his things it seems.. I flagged him once today. but his 157k SP is better than my 3k haha! But I will keep doing my part and trying. and as you suggest. I will leave a comment clearly stating why, and what he could do for me to remove it..
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I deff agree matt, but I would be scared of getting flagged back out of revenge.
I worked really hard to get my 49 Rep and my 250 followers during my last two months here and I just want to post quality content, curate interesting posts, and make meaningful friendships.
I think that it's important to flag, but I think the responsibility should lie with those with high rep and VP. From what I read, if the flagger has a lower Rep then the user they are flagging then it won't affect the pay out at all.
What do you think, should the role of flagging be distributed to those with a lot of influence or should everyone flag, even the less established accounts?
Also, do you think we should all develop a method of signaling the whales and dolphins of potential flag worthy material so minnows can still participate in maintaining the quality of acceptable content, while still staying low key?
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I completely understand where you're coming from and understand your concerns, so I really don't blame you at all.
I personally don't think that anyone should be scared to flag if they truly believe that what they're flagging deserves it. I also think that it's important to explain why you flagged, you know?
I think that in the future, flagging may become more automated, but as it stands at the moment, it's kind of our duty as citizens of the Steem planet haha. But yeah, I feel ya on wanting to hold off on the flagging.
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I fully agree with your comment and there are still those who do replay and do not do the upvote.
Great post
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I agree we need to counter those who only take and never give. I see there are some bots out there to do this now. It's up to the users to moderate steemit
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Flag for plagiat posting, or other bad posts. I si aggre with you
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Behs cmmint, upvotd
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Hey @matt-a
I think flagging someone for no reason or flagging someone for upvoting himself is not that bad
but if someone who make comments like nice and beautiful without reading the post is a crime
Yeah I'm too scared of flagging someone or being flagged by someone because I'm in a stage when I can loose my reputation and this stituation comes in every steermes life.
but I do flag who spam or copy paste shit on theid blog or someone who writes dirty on my or others post
We should participate now
thank you man
STEEM ON
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Do you propose to flag EVERY thank you, nice post and other similar comments, or do you propose to flag only comments with self upvotes?
There is a deal, the platform has a lot of not English users, which post their "Thank you" and "Nice post" just because they don't know English and would like to get some attention from others. It's not their fault that Steemit doesn't have a translation feature and they cannot comment with their native language. Flagging these guys would just kill their accounts and Steemit as an idea.
On the other side of that coin - if i would downvote any big guy, as a reply from his side i would expect that he just downvote all my posts and kill my reputation and my account
Steemit, as a platform should be more smart and just deduct all selfvotes from paychecks.
Proposing to perform our "civil duty" would only implement "hate each other" policy and would lead to creating Steemit police and Steemit government with taxes and others required attributes
just my 5 cents
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No, no, no! Not at all. It's cool to post with the shortest comment in the world, I think that it becomes problematic when you're just writing nice, cool, etc, etc, etc and upvoting it yourself 100%. That's the issue.
Thanks for the input!
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⬆️ 💯
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Way big excellent point. I use Google translate often just to enjoy as many posts on Steemit as I can, and I imagine others do the same. I am sure this is not the majority at all, but if someone is just wanting to leave basic comment of "Nice post", and I look at their profile and they leave this comment a lot on almost all posts, is it still not possible this is a real human who enjoys the posts they are calling out nice? I don't have to upvote them, but it feels really really odd to take that initiative to flag them as though I know 100% who or what is behind that user name as well as their motivations. It is just too much to think about rather than muddy up the system by doing false flags and scaring users away.
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Good point about non English speakers @allfabeta! Although I feel like if someone can't speak English and doesn't use the Google Translate or whatever they shouldn't be just saying nice post if they don't understand what is being said just to get some attention, not all attention is good and perhaps it wouldn't hurt to auto translate some posts they are interested in instead of throwing random words out there. That's just my opinion.
However whenever I do get comments like that and/or people asking me to check their posts out, I always do and make sure I find something I like and upvote it just to be nice and spread the wealth as far as I can.
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I always check out blogs of all strangers who dropped Thank you and Nices under my posts.
Why? Because I afraid to miss something interesting. Who knows what might be hidden behind "Thank you" or "Welcome" comment.
I'd rather flag bots with their "welcome-read_my_post" and Follow_4_follow from people with 40+ reputation
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For sure, automated content kills me too . . .
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I think we all should have learned a huge lesson from Abit and his flagging experiment. The reward pool was allowed to grow because there was a check on abuse. Since that stopped, there has been rampant cash grabs.
I'm with you on this one man. Flagging is necessary as long as it is used responsibly.
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Yep. The key is responsibility. I think when it's used, people should also explain why they flagged. It sets a good example and may allow someone to learn.
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I also believe many situations can be resolved with communication.
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Rewards pool has been shrinking every day, its so ridiculous that some people are draining it that fast
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Yep, that's what inspired me to make this post. Seeing how rapidly it has been drained is absolutely insane. So it's up to us to take stake back from shit posts and send them to their rightful home, the rewards pool!
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This is a really good post and topic that should be talked about more.
I don't pay much attention to the self-voting anymore. I just stopped thinking about it because as a minnow i feel that it is not in my power to step into this ... All i can do with it is step on someone's nerve and wait for him to release his anger on me. So it's just not worth it ... Imagine you are trying to get your posts some quality upvotes for a few bucks reward that can be taken away with a single downvote from a person you step on their nerve.
Self voting comments should be disabled, but this won't stop those who want to continue with up votes. They can create a new account and upvote their posts from that account :) So if the developers want to stop this (if) than they will have to come up with a good strategy!
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Do you think that is the sole reason behind the drop? What other factors do you think have been at play?
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Hi all! @matt-a is correct. you can use this cool link to see if someone is stealing from the rewards pool. http://www.steemreports.com/votes-info/?account=matt-a As you can see, @matt-a barely ever self-votes. I actually came here @matt-a to thank you for recently supporting my last post with an upvote, so it's ironic that your last post I find is this.
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You're welcome! If we aren't spreading the rewards pool around, it's like punching holes in the walls of your own home instead of building onto it.
I didn't know about that site! Cool, thanks for pointing it out!
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thanks for this @matt-a. i think that it is the right thing to do. because if we allow this, especially the Rampant self-upvoters, it is to the detriment of the community. thanks for this post
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Nice post. Haha, seriously I agree with everything you say. The big problem for a newbie like myself, is that I don't have all that much steam power. So when these dicks comment on my post and self upvote their stupid comment, my flag won't really affect their reward. I'd also be worried that they would retaliate by flagging any of my posts that get a decent amount of upvotes.
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There's a lot of controversy over it. I've read articles saying we shouldn't have the option to flag or down vote at all (which is ridiculous) I agree that some people need to be penalized. It's how we keep the positive vibes in the community and keep out those who would only hurt the community as a whole
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Really glad to hear you speak up about this, totally agree, be ye not afraid 😄
Well @matt-a we may have found an ally in you! This is exactly what #project-smackdown is about, check posts on the tag 😼
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This post received a 4.5% upvote from @randowhale thanks to @cryplectibles! For more information, click here!
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I hear you. I must confess to never flagging. I can appreciate why one should flag for plagiarism. I suppose its much like the argument about spanking your child. It does tend to get the message across. I guess its a question of them being a repeat offender, and a large one too. Thanks for the posts. It has awakened me to my responsibility.
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If people self upvoting comments with just a word or two is not enough. I started to notice some are also using the many pay for votes services increasing their reward even further.
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I thought most people was self voting, most posts I look at, have the authors vote on it as well ?
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When it comes to money, people are unfortunately greedy. I've never used the flag myself, but your contribution encourages me to do it in the future. It is terrifying to see how some (as described by you) with their own votes suck the pool empty. With others that deliver good content almost empty. We will observe how the whole situation develops and where this kind of birding takes place. I thank you for your suggestions and for sharing this contribution. Steem on.
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I had a recent experience where i was flagged but imo it wasnt justified this "person" totally misunderstood the situation and flagging is a perspective based something.
Flagging creates more flagging, so when looking at the option to flagg someone's post/comment, the problem with that is, someone that gets flagged. Could become so angry that he or she will make multiple accounts and totally destroy someone's reputation and that person would have worked on for his/her profile for many many months and it could all be gone in a week.
Revenge is sweet they say but it really isn't.
The Flagging system would be good if the amount of accounts allowed to be made per IP would be (1). But right now with a system that allows multiple accounts and even Anon accounts it can create a absolute bloodbath.
So i understand why Steemians don't do it they understand the non productivity of the flagging system at this time.
It can work and it should work but it needs some adjusting.
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I have no power, my vote is worthless. PLEASE note this is what steemit is becoming, if this stuff doesn't stop then steemit will be just a memory. I'm just trying to get started and learn my way around, to post good content with thought behind it, and this crap is everywhere. how do you even compete with this as a new Steemer?
This is the post. And make sure to read the Comments.
https://steemit.com/introduceyourself/@steamworld/hallo-my-name-is-mimi-i-want-to-join-in-this-steemit-steemit
Steemit is turning into a joke.
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But.. but.. I am just 2 months in. I just feel like I have not grown up enough to police other Steemit Users. I might start at least saying to those people "please do not comment without reading"/"Please do not commetnt just to upvote your comment".
Downvotes are not the only weapon we have, there is still this thing called reasoning and communication. If that approach fails I am all on board with using flags.
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Did my first flag yesterday 😬 Some guy posting a get rick quick scheme with links - very spammy...
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nice post i like
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https://steemit.com/@isaacvargas/comments
I'm voting no flag for the above comment, but also not upvoting obviously. That also is a form of voting that has some form of a value to it too, right?
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well iv seen a guy posting shit upvoting his self , holding half million of steem power, clearly i don't wanna start a flag war with this guy...!
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Sorry to pop in here, but I'm really wondering now. Did you stop the vote bot or just removed me from it?
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My old bot of custom curated accounts is off at the moment. It lacked several features that I needed to properly manage my account while I'm out of my office (I'm currently on vacation right now in a place with nearly zero internet access). I'm currently using the Lucky Luke vote bot by @Inertia while I'm gone since it's more automated and configurable. It's a "front-runner," bot that allows you to set many criteria while the bot monitors other people's use of vote bots in order to optimize curation as well as vote on content that people are investing in by spending over a certain threshold.
Using Lucky Luke, I don't have to worry about my VP depleting over a certain threshold, so I can preserve the efficacy of my account without having to touch it while out of town.
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Aite, well, take care. I'll still be here when you get back.
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Haha, I'm sure you will be!
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I seem to have missed this great post of yours @matt-a! but luckily enough, my "Past Payout Monetizer" script found this active comment to upvote instead! :D
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What's up, Alex! Hmm, thanks for bringing some of your work to my attention, gonna check it out! Always like seeing what you're up to, dude.
I'm in the mountains right now, tethered to a laptop. I'm supposed to be taking a tech-break, but yeah, I guess I'm an addict. I should probably go to rehab haha. CAN'T STOP COMPUTERING.
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yeah, tell me about it, hard to get away from it all! Sounds like at least you're relaxing a bit, taking in a bit of nature. Hope you find yourself refreshed and reinvigorated after a few nice nature walks and a bit of down time in the mountains! :)
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I haven't done it yet
But if I will see anyone abusing anything or anyone then I will definitely do it
Have a lovely time
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