I am noticing a lot of posts about @bellyrub today. I haven't bothered to read any of them with a genuine level of attention, but from what I have scanned through, it would seem that the owner of the @bellyrub account has been ripping people off or some shit.
I have a very easy solution to this problem.
Stop paying for votes.
The whales had an incentive to vote on good content. Curation rewards.
When the community made the decision to start paying for votes, that incentive was negated.
Now, instead of having an incentive to vote fairly, they now have a deterrent to doing so. The more votes they dispense organically, the less voting power they have to auction off.
Thus, it should be very simple to understand that paying for votes reverses the distribution of STEEM by redirecting the wealth of the platform back to its original sources.
For as long as the community continues to pay for the votes that were coming to them anyway, the whales will get even more powerful, and have even less reason to vote organically because everyone will be coming to them to pay for votes once no one else has the power to reward the community.
So, to get to the point... My thoughts on this @bellyrub problem are;
The poor and/or malicious management of a pay-for-votes service is an insignificant problem. The real problem is the fact that such services exist, and are getting used by far too many people who fail to understand that their actions are directly contributing to the problem that caused them to pay for votes in the first place.
Stop buying votes, you idiots.
Wait a second...you mean that the minute I start trying to influence an organic system, I insert a bias in my direction??? What a concept!!
Resteemed and upvoted...very well put!
Downvoting a post can decrease pending rewards and make it less visible. Common reasons:
Submit
Wait, we're not supposed to bribe whales and laud them with praises in hopes they may leave a tip tantamount to that of a barista. (Sips espresso in corner) if I handed you four cents on the street, you'd think me crazy, but if I went out and bought you a bigger vote to show my appreciation, like was possible with randowhale, may he rest in peace, why you might think me a chap of outstanding repute.
Downvoting a post can decrease pending rewards and make it less visible. Common reasons:
Submit
Lol. Fair point. But, I never meant to imply that anyone's motives aren't pure. Only that they're not thinking about the damage their actions are causing. So if I went and bought you a bigger vote, that would seem great. Only, if the whale I bought the vote from wasn't selling their voting power, you might have ended up with the vote anyway. So really all I did was give money away to a whale and make them more powerful for no reason at all. And if they are selling voting power that that they are supposed to dispensing fairly based on content quality anyway, then you ought to think of me as an idiot rather than a reputable gentleman for feeding their omnipotence and perpetuating the problem of undervalued posts.
Downvoting a post can decrease pending rewards and make it less visible. Common reasons:
Submit
Ah but perpetuating rather then falling victim to the perpetuity of whales stuck on bots they haven't updated since March. It seems the opportunity outweighed the chances of 'rando'mly being knighted a whale vote. They go to the people whom they have gone to since long before many of us joined, and many use the excuse that it gets them into the trending page rather then being buried. So many whale votes are predelegated that the chance of catching one are along the lines of a white whale me and my buddy Queequay were hunting for. Whilst ever tragic the rich get richer off the greed of the poor, our microchasm of culture is no different, flying to Lisbon to rub shoulders with Bitcoin billionaires on hopes, feeding the machine our coal work, that the fires and the value of their steem stock ride higher. And many have impure motive, many just want to loot the place and watch it burn sadly, but again, such is society, and no culture is free from these.
Downvoting a post can decrease pending rewards and make it less visible. Common reasons:
Submit
I can't disagree. I fooled myself into believing that things would be different here. But, it is really just the history of the world playing out on a smaller scale. I still think the potential is there though, and I am going to reserve a tad of optimism that it might one day be realised.
Your words are worthy of your screenname, by the way.
Downvoting a post can decrease pending rewards and make it less visible. Common reasons:
Submit
Potential is in each of us, unfortunately many people willingly fall short of potential for easy short term gains. I like optimism,more than I practice it.
And thank you, I've read a lot of your funnier stuff, your title is well earned and swell.
Just downloading the Whales-in-waiting app now. Why rub belly when you can lick blowholes amiright?😂
Downvoting a post can decrease pending rewards and make it less visible. Common reasons:
Submit
This is funny in that I created a post to warn people of the dangers of Bellyrub when the account was created. I didn't mention the name in the post because I feared backlash at the time but I was specifically referring to Bellyrub. That was months ago now, so I'm sure hundreds of people have been ripped off since. Unfortunate.
I've attached the link to the post only as proof to what I am saying not get get votes or anything like that. I'm merely trying to validate my "sky is falling" claim with backup evidence hahaha
https://steemit.com/investing/@leaky20/warning-steemit-banks
Downvoting a post can decrease pending rewards and make it less visible. Common reasons:
Submit
It's a shame your post didn't get more views. I also posted about this four or five months ago, though I wonder if I should have made it as cryptic as I did. I just reposted it because this situation has shown me how relevant it still is.
Here's a link to the original post if you are interested; https://steemit.com/allegory/@son-of-satire/why-penguin-planet-has-gone-to-shit
Downvoting a post can decrease pending rewards and make it less visible. Common reasons:
Submit
That's the way it goes I suppose. Just read your old post. I like it. Very good analogy. I doubt that I would have understood it back when you posted it. I was new to steemit at the time. I saw that from the comments other people understood what you were saying though.
Downvoting a post can decrease pending rewards and make it less visible. Common reasons:
Submit
What? Don't Sell Votes? But then how will I be able to Buy Votes and Popularity on my blog!?
I am Outraged! ...
... I am Outraged?
Ok, I am not outraged. It was only a matter of time before someone was scammed. It's highly unfortunate that it happened at such a massive scale, but I'm nowhere near surprised.
There once was a time where I started compiling a list of all of the bots on Steemit who were collecting large amounts of SBD/Steem from various other accounts. Then it got to the point where I was spending all of my time trying to figure out who the stupid bots were.. so I stopped analyzing all of the accounts.
The Community allowed the vote selling bots to thrive, and the Community was burned by a vote selling bot. Maybe we will now be able to move forward with the human community taking human actions, and leaving the bots to take care of the less-human actions (like fighting against other bots).
Downvoting a post can decrease pending rewards and make it less visible. Common reasons:
Submit