100 DAYS OF STEEM : Day 33 - Tackling Abuse on Steem - Part I - What is Abuse?

whatsup (75) · 5 years ago

Seems like it plays into the idea of centralized.

And if it is stakebased.. What exactly is abuse (you asked it, but if you are going to judge it, you better define it.)

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9 votes

moeknows (60) · 5 years ago

We, Steemit, Inc., can take on the role of judge of abuse cases - in conjunction with you the community as the jury.

Yeah, I think you're right, @whatsup.

One thing often overlooked with regard to the "code is law" perspective is that downvoting is also part of the code. People seem to be too lazy to want to take part in voicing their opinion or acting on it. If you (generally speaking) think something is wrong, then you have some means of addressing it. Either though downvote or other types of expression. Asking for the "benevolent ruler" to do it for you speaks of laziness and cowardice.

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pfunk (72) · 5 years ago

Oh, you just noticed things were centralized around here? Stop playing naive.

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whatsup (75) · 5 years ago

Yeah.. lol.. Everything seems really decentralized over there... Trending, witnesses and proposals, such amazing diversity.

Way to make it new and fresh!

😂

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nokodemion (59) · 5 years ago

Centralization is good, right?

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katharsisdrill (71) · 5 years ago

Seems like it plays into the idea of centralized.

Certainly does.

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steemchiller (74) · 5 years ago (edited)

As you stated, fighting abuse on Steem is a complex topic. I think it is nearly impossible to let the code of the blockchain alone protect us from abuse. Limiting the number of posts per account will hit very active users and community bots as well. For example, a very active curator who comments on 50 posts a day should not be limited. Limiting only the number of possible root posts per day would not prevent abusers from creating and self-voting comments instead.

One automatic solution that could help for extreme cases of milking would be to add kind of a max_total_pending_payout constant, which defines a maximum total pending payout amount for all active posts per account, but it would not be easy to implement something like this and it might have a slightly negative effect on the nodes performance.

For now I support that Steemit Inc. takes on the role of judge of abuse cases. If something goes wrong, the community can contact the witnesses or leave a comment in your posts to publicly discuss the issue.

For the future I would prefer a solution that enables witnesses to vote on abuse cases. I will have further thoughts on the subject and discuss possible solutions in a future post.

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jaki01 (74) · 5 years ago

Limiting the number of posts per account will hit very active users and community bots as well.

Instead of limiting the number of posts one could introduce 'diminishing returns' which means one still could write as many posts as one wishes, but starting from a certain number of posts upvotes on every further posts would have a weaker effect than upvotes on previous posts. That means a very active author would earn less per post with an increasing number of posts (this effect could for example start after his second post per day) but still could earn anything.

Similarly one could try to prevent the effectivity of upvoting the same users again and again (circle voting). How about if after each vote on a specific account (including one's own account) each further vote on the same account would lead to significantly less curation reward for the voter and less profit for the upvoted account? Thus, when upvoting an account which I had already upvoted before, my voting power would be smaller than in case I upvote an account which I didn't upvote before.
If I upvote for example my wife, my daughter or my cat more than twice per day every following upvote for the same account would get weaker an weaker (like voting power is exhausting anyway already, just faster).

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9 votes

steemchiller (74) · 5 years ago (edited)

Instead of limiting the number of posts one could introduce 'diminishing returns' which means one still could write as many posts as one wishes, but starting from a certain number of posts upvotes on every further posts would have a weaker effect than upvotes on previous posts.

This would work, but it would come with a side effect. If I would create a few shit posts before posting a real masterpiece of a post, the good post might receive less rewards than the bad ones :)

Similarly one could try to prevent the effectivity of upvoting the same users again and again (circle voting). How about if after each vote on a specific account (including one's own account) each further vote on the same account would lead to significantly less curation reward for the voter and less profit for the upvoted account?

As we discussed many times over the years, in my eyes this would be the ultimately perfect solution. Using something similar to the calculated CSI on SteemWorld as a factor, so that the voted rshares would be multiplied by it prior to subtracting them from the pool and adding them to the active votes.

This would not eliminate all cases of abuse (for example, if someone owns many accounts with much SP and votes each day with a different one), but it would work very well for most common cases.

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11 votes

jaki01 (74) · 5 years ago

This would work, but it would come with a side effect. If I would create a few shit posts before posting a real masterpiece of a post, the good post might receive less rewards than the bad ones :)

Then just publish the "shit posts" after the masterpiece? ;-) (Of course also the ability to receive full votes for posts would recover again after some time.)

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metzli (64) · 5 years ago

Or maybe not post any "shit posts" at all? Seriously, if you yourself think a post is a shit post, then, it is a shit post...

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jaki01 (74) · 5 years ago

You won't find any "shit post" from me (but sometimes kinds of humorous meant replies).

udow (61) · 4 years ago

"Using something similar to the calculated CSI on SteemWorld as a factor, so that the voted rshares would be multiplied by it prior to subtracting them from the pool and adding them to the active votes."

Sorry but I think that it's not a good idea to use CSI on SteemWorld as in my opinion CSI isn't a reliable factor.

If I see that an account with 100% self-voting (no vote to anybody else just vote for the own account) has an CSI from 0.0 but other accounts has negative CSI, f.e. my account in the moment, than Steemworld consider it as better to vote 100% only your own account instead of voting for others.

How this can be a reliable factor ?

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udow (61) · 5 years ago

I think as long as you can claim for every approximately 5000 Steempower one account a week I don't think that this solution will work.
If a whale has 500.000 Steempower he can just claim approximately 100 new accounts at once and than post in every account only one post every week.
So in this case he could always get full rewards for selfvoting.

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jaki01 (74) · 5 years ago

He wouldn't be able to handle all these accounts in a way that every of them could create more or less reasonable comments/posts. However, pure automated comments, created for farming puposes only, could easily be detected and flagged by members of an implemented anti abuse committee, which I suggested, as well.

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udow (61) · 5 years ago

OK I wrote about 100 acconts.
You are right this is really hard to handle.
But if you allow one vote in full strengh every day it would be also ok to use only 10 accounts.
Every day one post in every of the 10 accounts and the other 9 vote this post.

I think it's not much difference in time to post 10 times a day in one account or to post in 10 accounts only once a day, isn't it ?

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jaki01 (74) · 5 years ago

It's rather easy to spot (even by automated algorithms) if these ten accounts were only interested in upvoting each other instead of upvoting other users as well ...

For example also Voting CSI in SteemWorld would be very low.

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udow (61) · 4 years ago

haha, so I am the worsest guy at all cause my Voting CSI is negativ (-0,6)

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jaki01 (74) · 4 years ago

Indeed, just another evidence of how well these kinds of algorithms are working. ;-)

udow (61) · 4 years ago

Haha - I even get worse than I was before, now -1,1 :-)
Such I bad boy I am.

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markkujantunen (74) · 5 years ago

Instead of limiting the number of posts one could introduce 'diminishing returns' which means one still could write as many posts as one wishes, but starting from a certain number of posts upvotes on every further posts would have a weaker effect than upvotes on previous posts. That means a very active author would earn less per post with an increasing number of posts (this effect could for example start after his second post per day) but still could earn anything.

Completely useless. Alts can be used to circumvent that and frequently are by abusers.

Nothing wrong with plain old PoB. But it takes an active anti-abuse community to do curb abuse. Not even Steemit, Inc with its mightly voting power can curb anything if there is no anti-abuse community to constantly bring abuse to its attention.

I'm on Hive but I want Steem to succeed also. In fact, forks are good in the world of DPoS because that's how things decentralise . Each project takes a different direction and attracts different people.

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jaki01 (74) · 5 years ago

Completely useless. Alts can be used to circumvent that and frequently are by abusers.

NOT completely useless!

I am pretty sure that most current abusers wouldn't take the effort to create that many alt accounts which are necessary to cirumvent this hurdle.

In addition it would be very easy to spot these accounts it they weren't active themselves and only received upvotes from one single abuser account (or circle upvote each other).

Concerning the committee, that's my idea since a long time.

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markkujantunen (74) · 5 years ago

NOT completely useless!

I am pretty sure that most current abusers wouldn't take the effort to create that many alt accounts which are necessary to cirumvent this hurdle.

It would only take creating one alt to double the number of daily posts one can make from ten to twenty.

In addition it would be very easy to spot these accounts it they weren't active themselves and only received upvotes from one single abuser account (or circle upvote each other).

That can easily be circumvented, too. Add a bit of randomization in the process and the detection becomes much harder. Add a few legit posts in the mix to attract votes from others.

Concerning the committee, that's my idea since a long time.

Nothing wrong with a committee.

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jaki01 (74) · 5 years ago

It would only take creating one alt to double the number of daily posts one can make from ten to twenty.

I also suggested to reduce the number of fully rewarded posts per day. In the early STEEM days this number was actually four per day.
The combination of these two suggestions would be rather effective in my opinion.

That can easily be circumvented, too. Add a bit of randomization in the process and the detection becomes much harder. Add a few legit posts in the mix to attract votes from others.

I disagree. That's all rather effortful and most abusers wouldn't do that. In the past it was very easy to spot the majority of abusers just by checking their 'Voting CSI' in SteemWorld.
For the remaining rest the 'committee' could be responsible.

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markkujantunen (74) · 5 years ago

Sure it can be tried. Time will tell if it works.

Another interesting related idea is a tax on too many rshares spent on the same accounts within a time period. That would force users to either create a lot of alts, which would cost them money in the form of account creation, or actually motivate them to look for more users to curate, which would be an excellent thing for user retention.

mehta (80) · 5 years ago

@steemitblog
I think that their is nothing like abuse on steem. We don't need to talk over it.

The post and comments can be different from user to user. How can we decide this is abuse. Every user can have different thoughts. They can write/read anything they like. The one thing can be right for one user but same thing can be wrong for other user. Their is no way.
For post payout, Milking : For one user it may 1$, for other 10$, for third 50$, for fifth 500$, for sixth 5000$, can be anything or me it is XXXXXXXXX $. That's not the criteria to decide the abuse. They have invested so much money here to work and support others. That's not abuse.
I don't find anyone who is abusing the system till date (from 2 and half years). So, I never downvote anyone. Their may conflict of interest/thoughts like @themarkymark and me always have different thoughts, we didn't agree on any single point. But i many times agree with @steemchiller thoughts. For abuse point i didn't agree with statement that, their is abuse on steem. Here is the power of feedom. Do whatever you like:

Post as many post as you can in one day OR don't post.
Comment as much as you can in day OR don't comment anything.
Upvote as much as you can in day OR don't upvote anyone including self. Like i upvoting about 40-100 upvote daily and some steemians even don't upvote anyone.
Downvote as much as you can in day OR don't downvote anyone.
Earn how much you can earn OR don't earn. (All author, curator, witness, interest, SPS etc.)
Earn many SP by become a top 20 Witness OR wait for top 20 and satisfied with low SP. Is top 20 witness abuse the system by earning too much SP? The answer may be YES OR NO. Both are correct. So i think their is no abuse.
Are earning by SPS proposals is abusing the steem plateform? The answer may be YES OR NO. Both are correct.
Are getting SP interest on steem powerup is abuse the system? Max. steemians say NO. Because they powered up steem. But let ask those users, they not powered up steem and having much more liquid steem. They will tell you this is abuse or Not.
SO FINALLY MY THOUGHTS, THEIR IS NO ABUSE ON STEEM. THINK IT DIFFERENTLY, YOU WILL FIND ALL IS RIGHT. ELSE YOU WILL FIND ALL THINGS WRONG, BECAUSE THOSE POSITIVE THINGS NOT HAPPENS TO YOU IS LOOKS LIKE ABUSE.

ALL IS WELL.

MY APPEAL TO ALL STEEMIANS : PLEASE DON'T SPREAD NEGATIVITY ON STEEM PLATFORM, MOST OF THE NEGATIVE PEOPLES ALREADY GONE TO HIVE. LET THEM SPREAD NEGATIVITY AT HIVE, NOT HERE. WE ARE STEEM WITH POSITIVE PEOPLE WITH UNITY.

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stef1 (81) · 5 years ago

Sorry @mehta, when I see that it looks like abuse for me do not you think so:

Unbenannt.1.JPG

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jaki01 (74) · 5 years ago

Already in the past all kinds of farming (for example the self-votes executed by @haejin / @ranchorelaxo), circle voting, use of bid bots ... prevented me from investing more money into STEEM!
STEEM was always described as a community blockchain where quality content gets rewarded. Such a social media site with really great posts on trendig should attract more and more investors. However, if these potential investors get aware of the fact that STEEM is only a place for people who try to get as rich as possible as fast as possible, without to care at all about STEEM price, reputation of the platform and future development, they will look for other opportunities and invest their money.

For example when using bid bots there is never a chance that posts are selected according to their quality but only according to the money anybody is ready to pay.

If a user like @haejin would upvote many small accounts instead of upvoting himself only, he could contribute enormously to the user retention rate of the platfom. And as we all know, the value of a (social) network is measured among others by the number of its users. That means @haejin would increase the value of his own investment. But he (like many others) is completely focused on his short term profit.

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mehta (80) · 5 years ago

If a user like @haejin would upvote many small accounts instead of upvoting himself only, he could contribute enormously to the user retention rate of the platfom. And as we all know, the value of a (social) network is measured among others by the number of its users. That means @haejin would increase the value of his own investment. But he (like many others) is completely focused on his short term profit.

Very turely said but it doesn't means this is a abuse. This require a different kind of thinking. If we grow all people together, I will grow automatically. This things has to be understand by all. But i am sorry to say that most of the user not doing so. It is not only @haejin. But again it is not an abuse.

Can You provide your reply on my comment no 1 to 9 on above? This clear me how you think an abuse.

We already talked on downvoting too much, so i didn't favor free downvoting OR say different voting power. What you say about system providing abuse facilities for top 20 witness earning others very less?

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steemchiller (74) · 5 years ago

If we grow all people together, I will grow automatically.

This is not entirely true, because we all share one reward pool, @mehta. If one user would reward himself so much that there are no more rewards for other people in the pool, do you think it would be a fair practise?

On top of that, there are users who create many posts automatically with a bot, upvote them and sell the weekly rewards to buy Hive tokens. This does not benefit Steem at all. It puts pressure on the price and shows to external investors that we are not able to create a fairly rewarding environment.

The rewards for all Steemians (also yours) will increase, if we get rid of those pool abusers.

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10 votes

jaki01 (74) · 5 years ago (edited)

Right, and for sure we won't grow if too many new users, who barely earn anything, at the same time are getting discouraged by observing this shameless kind of self-enrichment.

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juanmolina (68) · 5 years ago

Brother, how you doing?

Sorry for using this off-topic comment to contact you.
I want to make a suggestion for steemworld: could you include in the visualization of rewards to come, the payments that we will get for having been added as beneficiaries in some publication of another user?

Only that. Thanks for your attention.

steemchiller (74) · 5 years ago

Thanks for your idea! It is currently not possible to retrieve those rewards directly from the blockchain via regular RPC nodes, but they should be displayed in the Coming Rewards indeed (maybe in an extra tab).

I'm currently very busy with other things, therefore it may take a while, but I will put this on my list ;)

mehta (80) · 5 years ago

I think that you don't understand my point. This is not an abuse. It looks like abuse to you but not me. They have the power to upvote and they use it and this permission is given by steem blockchain code. How this can be a abuse. That is not abuse to me.
Most of the people uses power they have. Why we have given power to them? Take power from them. The power is given by system, if system is wrong then modify/change the system.
Are you want to give power in reverse order? Those have more SP having less vote value and those have Less SP get more power. Or any new concept.

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symbionts (66) · 5 years ago (edited)

We invite you to read [The Steem White paper, page .14 for referance].

Abuse is defined by the opinions of stakeholders. You may consider something as not an abuse but other people might think otherwise. It is a democratic-like system that is based on stake. If the majority of the stake considers that doing X should be considered as abuse, then no one can do anything about it since this is also code. The only way to influence such a decision is by buying more stake and invest to influence the consensus.

They have the power to upvote and they use it and this permission is given by steem blockchain code.

The code of the blockchain also allows them to downvote. It does not matter if you do not consider X as abuse, such a definition can only be defined by a decision that will be based on consensus.

mehta (80) · 5 years ago

Thanks @symbionts for information.

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pfunk (72) · 5 years ago

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mehta (80) · 5 years ago

Thanks for your consideration and suggestions. What you looks now is replica of 2 and half years my experience. I have very different thoughts from general people.

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ciska (60) · 5 years ago

Thanks for giving your thoughts on this matter.
That being said, there absolutely is abuse on the chain. It is just how you look at it and IF you want to see it.

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mehta (80) · 5 years ago

I never see an abuse. If i see abuse then whole things going on steem is abuse including all as i mention in my first comment.

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jaki01 (74) · 5 years ago

One automatic solution that could help for extreme cases of milking would be to add kind of a max_total_pending_payout constant, which defines a maximum total pending payout amount for all active posts per account ...

Interesting idea, but many users own multiple accounts which mutually upvote each other ...

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udow (61) · 5 years ago

What is with the idea to take out the worth from selfvoting ?
If a vote was only a worth if you vote somebody else post or command - would this be a solution ?

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steemchiller (74) · 5 years ago

Please see my reply here.

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10 votes

udow (61) · 5 years ago

OK it's a good reason.

But: Correct me if I am wrong ... if users have multiple accounts they claimed this accounts with ressource credits from the main account. So in the end their will be one "mother-account" and as the blockchain save all I think you can also sort this out.

So what about the possibility to group the "mother-account" and all "child-accounts" together and take away worth from voting between all this accounts ?

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steemchiller (74) · 5 years ago (edited)

There are ways to create accounts completely anonymously and I think in future there will be more account creation services, which offer to directly create an account via BTC or LTC payment for a small fee.

In this case the service's account would be the 'mother-account', so it's not really possible to solve it by watching the connection between creator and created account.

And of course, the account 'steem' is the 'mother-account' of all via Steemit created ones. Even there it would be possible to create multiple accounts.

7 votes

udow (61) · 5 years ago

"And of course, the account 'steem' is the 'mother-account' of all via Steemit created ones. Even there it would be possible to create multiple accounts."

I thought that you are allowed to open only one account the "free way" over steemit ... but probably they are not really able to check this.

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moeknows (60) · 5 years ago

I think allowing or supporting Steemit to be the judge is a big mistake. You know that they have proven themselves to be incapable of impartiality. You experienced that first-hand. For you to support such a thing is irresponsible in my opinion.

They have also shown blatant disregard for the will of the community, unless you would allow them to redefine who the community actually is. In that case, they would again be unfit to be judge.

This is a big mistake.

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crypto.piotr (70) · 5 years ago

Dear @steemchiller

For now I support that Steemit Inc. takes on the role of judge of abuse cases. If something goes wrong, the community can contact the witnesses or leave a comment in your posts to publicly discuss the issue.

We're clearly on the same page here. STEEM won't survive if STINC wouldn't get involved. That's my strong belief.

Yours,
Piotr

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pfunk (72) · 5 years ago

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katharsisdrill (71) · 5 years ago

One of the most fascinating things I have experienced on free networks, especially here on Steemit is how the community takes responsibility for fighting abuse. In the end it has to be done by real people... I have had a lot of fun being digital art sleuth...

Now there's a new law in Megacity 1.

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ciska (60) · 5 years ago

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stef1 (81) · 5 years ago

Hi all, I actually was waiting for this post for a long time and it is good to have a chance to read what people think and to share my own opinion. Abuse was always existing on Steem blockchain and also it is existing in HIve now too. The same problem you see everywhere where it is possible to individuals to get benefits and profit there where they can. It is simply very human feature. So long we do not have a power and opportunity we are fair and stick to the rules but once we get the chance there is so much temptation and it is sometimes difficult to resist. That is also we see in the real world around us.

I can give you an example, working in hospital we have seen when Corona chaos started that patients and their visitors started to steal disinfectants and gloves that normally kept in patients rooms and from the storage the masks were stolen in packages where you can have access only with swipe card, unfortunately there is no individual ID coded. People express their support and clap the hands but the same time one of two cases of such behavior spoil the whole mood of hospital employees.

Abuse on Steem/Steemit should be fought no matter if some people do not like it, if we all want this blockchain exist and prosper then there should be some rules if common sense does not work.

I hear that some people say that those with big SP who powering down and moved to Hive, one day completely disappear, I do not think they will because they like to spoil around here and they will definitely stay for milking and abusing Steem.

Going back to real world example there is Law and Police who keep an eye on community abusers, can you imagine a safe environment without them, me not.

I think the same should happen on Steemit, if we try to set up a group of people who should make a decision if to take Witnesses but once again we do not know how busy they are and how engaged they are too. Many not active as they have busy real life and probably no mood to be involved in. But if yes, then in my opinion it should be at least 50 active Witnesses.

I am pro Steemit, Inc., to take on the role of judge of abuse cases - in conjunction with the community active representatives.

Also absolutely agree with eh opinion of @steemchiller.

Thank you or this opportunity of discussion...

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7 votes

denmarkguy (76) · 5 years ago

I'm in agreement with @stef1 in the sense that there have to be some controls in place to limit certain behaviors.

In the idealized view of the world many self-professed "freedomists" like to espouse people behave appropriately, but the reality of our world is that places without rules turn into brawling mobs. I mean that figuratively, but base it on 20+ years experience in creating on "User-Generated Content Sites with Rewards."

As a bit of a reality check, Steem is only "revolutionary" in the sense that it's on the blockchain... this kind of venue started with a place called "Epinions" in 1999 (It has a Wikipedia entry, look it up) and the path since then is littered with the failures of communities who subscribed to the idea that self-policing would eliminate/limit abuse.

No. No it doesn't. Because many humans are greedy, exploitative, short-sighted and self-serving. And the BIGGEST problem? That group is inevitably drawn to venues that have no/few rules and descend on them like a swarm of locusts, ruining everything the "law abiding" members enjoy.

And there's an interesting "social commentary" to be found there: Remarkably many people who are opposed to rules also have the (even if subconscious) intent to dabble in sketchy activities. Hence truly "free" places like Slab City, California end up not monuments to freedom, but sad congregations of criminals, mentally ill and lawless squatters.

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ciska (60) · 5 years ago

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stef1 (81) · 5 years ago

In my opinion 5 is not enough although it is easy to come to some decision, the next question who will choose who will be a judge. They should be appointed and please do not let the people vote, as that reminds me British Referendum we have seen how easy to trick out people, publically blame EU for everything and influence people's opinion that brought negative impact to the whole economy and plunge of GBP from being 1 GBP=3Euro now almost GBP=1Euro.

Steemcleaner system definitely should be there, I had couple of times cases when my posts with content and my paintings were cloned and presented by one of the user. I did not know who should I refer too as there is no Steemcleaners anymore. Such abuses also will be happening more often if there is no regulations.

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ciska (60) · 5 years ago

Yeah, I picked 5 Judges because it's uneven and then we can act quickly. I don't like to wait or need 20 people to find consensus. I feel that the ones who give the SP to deal with the abuse can pick the 5. It is the same as a steemcurator account, so you just need to apply.
Definitely plagiarism, extreme milking and inhumane messages should be handled first. People with more than 1 brain cell can see the difference between normal usage and abuse.
Therefore I am open to coordinate the abuse problem and manage a discord or/account.
Thank you!!

katharsisdrill (71) · 5 years ago

I used to help out in the different community driven anti-abuse groups. Things were discussed thoroughly and fairly in my opinion, seldomly communicated properly. To be part of a community driven effort has been onbe of the greatest experiences here. I think it has been interesting to see people filling the gabs that a completely anarchist system left.

Having a centralised power is something completely different and less interesting. Right now it seems to be directed against people speaking against the same system which I like even less. But I guess something has to be done.

(I am not sure I will use Steem much more. I am powering down and my posts get no comments. The same posts on Hive has a lot of activity, so... )

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stef1 (81) · 5 years ago

I can imagine what you mean, it was with me when I posted in Hive I have no comments at all and all my friends were on Steem. People will stay there where they have support and it does not mean just financial but with comments and nice words, exchanging opinions and ideas.

I think people will settle on one of the platforms, create their circles of friends and be happy. I hope that both of them will leave the others in peace and let people choose what they want and where they go.

katharsisdrill (71) · 5 years ago

Sure, I have people in both camps, but the other campers still comment on Hive. Not sure why?

But apart from that how do you think about the other things I wrote? I left all centralised networks seven years ago and my main network is a non-commercial federated network (which means a free network run by tech hippies). I always saw Steem as a flawed experiment, but at least an interesting one. Posts like this one goes very much against my conviction. I admit that it depends on how the community is involved, but the sheer fact that none of that is mentioned in even sketchy details makes me very sceptical. I have been posting quality art on this network for more than three years and I feel pretty much fucked over.

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stef1 (81) · 5 years ago

I think on such blockchains it is easy to have anarchy and this is what they are popular, people feel free, do what they want and happy, but Steem the same like Hive is different from other blockchains using the system we get rewards and that is what makes the whole thing happen like multiple accounts, unlimited selfupvotes, milking Steem or Hive. But it is not unlimited Steem and Hive, people say let them do what they do because they have invested but on one stage when there is no reward pool people may loose the interest to be here. I think that is behind of all the thought to have at least some control and not to let abuse the system.

There surely should be some mechanism of keeping an eye how people behave and I agree abuse cases need to be discuss in a community and the decision should be made what to do all together. It is something new for Steemit and I believe this is a kind of brainstorming to see what people think to let them express and to make a decision what to do. The majority of simple users anyway have no idea what is happening they are here to posts, comment and be rewarded, especially the people from developing countries, I believe for such users there will be not much change at all.

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katharsisdrill (71) · 5 years ago

The problem with private company justice is to be seen on a network like Facebook. That is why I don't like this post and what it suggests. That things look normal does not mean that they are. Some sort of democracy should have been built into this so also people from poor countries who take out more Steem than others should have a voice. Good quality content should award you some kind of reputation that counted for something in this democracy while abuse like identity theft and plagiarism should count against your reputation harshly.

Just letting some new Zuckerberg clone sovereign take over is not a good idea.

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joshman (70) · 5 years ago

So let me get this straight. The community fractured in part because of a dislike for downvotes and a difference of opinion on how activity is rewarded. Many of the people now commenting here were anti-downvote while there was an active anti-abuse community on steem. Now that the anti-abuse community is gone, your idea is to centralize the anti-abuse efforts? So the promise of removing downvotes made to the Korean community has now been abandoned, and instead the call is to abandon community governance, and place the decision in the hands of just a few voters. What could possibly go wrong?

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9 votes

crypto.piotr (70) · 5 years ago

Dear @steemitblog

Source of the problem for most abuses which are happening on Steemit is the fact, that having opportunity to upvote / claim rewards is a RIGHT for everyone who sign up.

It should be a privillage.

Rights cannot be limited without huge back-clash. Privillages can be cancelled.

What I mean is quite simple:

users should not have a right to enjoy curation rewards as a default. every user should apply to become part of "curator program". And only those approved would be receiving curation rewards.

To make process faster, everyone without any sort of history of previous reported abuse would be approved instantly. However if being reported and manually verified - such a user can lose his privillages to enjoy curation rewards.

In current form, cheasing after abusers will be never-ending struggle.

Downvoting is not good long term solution. Abusers most of the time will end up being more patient and persistant than those flagging them and seeking "justice".

Those are my 2 cents
Piotr

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6 votes

paragism (60) · 5 years ago (edited)

Those, who want to leave steemit, will leave steemit after 13 weeks power down. Unnecessary centralised intervention will make steem non decentralised. A quick power down can solve all problems. In Schelling point of game theory, avoiding collision becomes primary decentralized objective. A war cry will make the situation worse.

foxon (53) · 5 years ago

Steemit is an incorporated entity owned by Justin Sun. Has promoted decentralization in the past, but otherwise has nothing to do with it

Steem used to be a decentralized blockchain. After the successful 51% attack and evacuation of previous developers and witnesses, consensus is now controlled completely by a single actor - Justin Sun via the dev365 account. That's not speculation, anyone looking at the blockchain can see it

Essentially, steem is a social network with a token reward. That can still be a successful system, but it already has nothing to do with decentralization

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ritxi (66) · 5 years ago

I think the downvoting system is not bad, I would stick with it. Not over-complicate things so new users will not be too confused I would say.

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crypto.piotr (70) · 5 years ago

hi @ritxi

Downvoting system has been proved not to work well - even at times when we had many large accounts trying to fight abuse.

Right now there is very few "defenders" with some solid SP left. At the same time many of those who used to protect us - are not milking steem and abusing it to the limits.

Downvoting system is not going to stop them now. We're outnumbered.

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xpilar (83) · 5 years ago

Downvoting system is not going to stop them now. We're outnumbered.

I agree with you

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ritxi (66) · 5 years ago

But you know, some abusers will be out in 13 weeks, does it really make sense to mobilize for next couple weeks? Because of a few Steem milked? It might, but it is just a point of view.

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crypto.piotr (70) · 5 years ago

Dear @ritxi

Finally I managed to catch up with old comments.

Thanks for being always so reponsive. Have a great sunday ahead,
Yours, Piotr

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gandhibaba (72) · 5 years ago

users should not have a right to enjoy curation rewards as a default. every user should apply to become part of "curator program". And only those approved would be receiving curation rewards.

Tell me you don't mean it. I don't think it is a good decision to centralize curation in the hands of a few people. That will greatly undermine the essence of holding Steem Power. What's the essence of holding SP when you can't vote with it and earn some rewards from the reward pool?

And I think that curation rewards have nothing to do with fighting abuse. Instead, we could code the acceptable number of daily posts into the blockchain. Then, downvotes are needed to check ourselves, provided it is not used maliciously and there is a central authority to remedy any form of victimization.

Also, I think that @Steemitblog and Steemit Inc should empower an account to hunt for abusers and flag them appropriately. Cheers!

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crypto.piotr (70) · 5 years ago

Hi @gandhibaba

I don't think it is a good decision to centralize curation in the hands of a few people.

What I mean is that every user should have a chance to apply to become part of "curation program" and as a default every user would be accepted.

However it would be a privillage. Not a right, which everyone would have (the way it is now).

It's easy to remove such a provillage from abusers, comparing to removing someones right to carry on with abuse.

What's the essence of holding SP when you can't vote with it and earn some rewards from the reward pool?

I agree. Perhaps you didn't fully understand my idea. Majority SP holders would still have an opportunity to upvote others. As long as they are part of curation program. If they would be reported as abusers and verified by central authority to indeed be abusing this platform - then this privillage would be removed.

And I think that curation rewards have nothing to do with fighting abuse.

Curation rewards are the way people are milking steem and hive. And if both chains will not find way to do something about it - then both chains will face extreme challenges in the future.

Steemit Inc should empower an account to hunt for abusers and flag them appropriately. Cheers!

Currently it seem that STINC is VERY against downvoting.

Yours, Piotr

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crypto.piotr (70) · 5 years ago

Few more words @steemitblog

Unless anyone has any other suggestions, there would appear to be only one other option - Steemit, Inc.
Traditionally, Steemit, Inc. has stayed out of these sort of debates as it was considered a community issue.

I fully agree, that remaining of the community cannot stop abuse without STINC being involved one way or another.

If we would let things continue, then we will all sink with this ship. In the name of great ideas.

So our question to the community is whether Steemit, Inc. acting in this way, in consultation with the community, to determine cases of abuse would be acceptable?

There is this saying, about LESSER EVIL. And many people out here will be against this proposal, however I strongly believe that Steem blockchain cannot survive without central power stepping in.

Yours, Piotr

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samminator (75) · 5 years ago

I quite agree with the suggestions you raised here buddy. They are some righteous suggestions.
I also do believe that having a Community Abuse Reporting account may help too but the selection process should be a crucial part to be looked into, so that the solution will not bring about more problems.
Cheers buddy

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luckyali (65) · 5 years ago

There is this saying, about LESSER EVIL. And many people out here will be against this proposal, however I strongly believe that Steem blockchain cannot survive without central power stepping in.

Actually this is true STINC must be involve in this issue because without them it is difficult to handle this issue.

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ritxi (66) · 5 years ago

You got a good point here @crypto.piotr, I agree that if someone could be responsible to solve it, it should be STINC.

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marcosdk (70) · 5 years ago

Voting based on Steem accumulation is not democracy. The HF21 gave us the negative vote to express ourselves as users, but it is not used correctly. In this situation I trust more the criteria of a company that looks for the good of the whole business, than in a whale that only looks at theirs. But with open communication channels with Witness and communities. I am an entrepreneur and I know that the decisions of the company are not always well received, but they are made for the good of all. I support the idea provisionally. In 2-3 months HIVE fans will finish their power down and we will face a new stage.

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ciska (60) · 5 years ago

Correct, as a business you can't please everyone and sometimes tough decisions need to be made. I would also support Steemits judgment, although I feel there is a better solution that would not feed the haters with more bullets.
Abuse is a constant threat, and we only need some dedicated people with common sense and an account with enough SP to fight it. Thanks for joining the discussion

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arkmy (60) · 5 years ago (edited)

Totally agree!

In 2-3 months HIVE fans will finish their power down and we will face a new stage.

I can´t wait to see that.

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roadofrich (78) · 5 years ago (edited)

In the past, Steemitinc delegated 4.3 million Steem Power to projects that fought against abuse. Spaminator and steemcleaners.

I think it should never be given power to the individual. Like the past.
The reason I like this Steemit curator system is that Steemit.inc manages the curator account, not delegates to STEEM Power.
If Steemit.inc delegates STEEM Power to someone to empower like before, it is very likely that they will abuse it. Eventually, it works for profit.

If a Downvote is required, the account must be managed by Steemit.inc the same as Curator account.

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ciska (60) · 5 years ago

I feel you, and the ideal scenario is probably that they own the account so there is a minimum risk of abuse.

We can´t expect Stinc to go after every type of abuse, I hope they are going to use the precious time to work on improvements.

Therefore a small team of the community should be given the role and keys to an account. We can tackle the abusers ourselves, we only need the tools (read SP)

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roadofrich (78) · 5 years ago

The small abusing that occurs in some communities can respond to the community as you say.
If steemi.inc allows downvoting to a curator account, i think this can be easily solved.

We believe that the abusing problem we need to solve now is large, so we need more than 3 million SP.
I'm negative about someone managing an account with such a big SP.

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denmarkguy (76) · 5 years ago

What is abuse, and what is NOT abuse, @steemitblog? Indeed, what is merely differences of opinion, and what is actually abusive practice?

1. Code vs Community: In the 3+ years I have been here, this has often been discussed. What is avoided is the discussion of what the end result of a venue guided entirely by code would look like? And what what one guided primarily by community would look like? More specifically, we need to ask the question "what best serves the long-term objective of Steem THRIVING as a venue/blockchain?"

2. Using CODE to remove ambiguity: A seemingly unpopular choice to address the BidBot/purchased vote question is very simple: Call things what they are. Make it perfectly acceptable for people to "buy" as many votes as they wish, and to use bid bots to their hearts' content... and simply do what pretty much every other social venue does: If you artificially boost your content LABEL IT "PROMOTED CONTENT." You'll see this on twitter, Facebook, YouTube and most social sites. It's NOT rocket science.

Of course, critics fear that then they'll come off as "greedy" rather than "popular." Is that important? That's opinion, not reality.

3. Abuse takes many forms! I have to respectfully disagree with @mehta that there's no such thing as abuse. Whereas your points are good and reasonable, you are entirely looking at abuse from the perspective of "people being unhappy that others make too many rewards."

But what about stealing other people's content — or even identities — to to profit from their work?

What about things like what I call "The Downvote Mosquitoes" which is that swarm of thousands of tiny accounts who use ONLY the initial 15SP delegation from Steemit, Inc. to cast millions of tiny downvotes, with the express purpose of discouraging new/smaller account from posting, because the "organizer" is angry AND SPECIFICALLY WANTS STEEM TO FAIL?

4. What's the OBJECTIVE? It's nice that there's a discussion on "abuse," but in order to decide, don't we first need to decide what the GREATER OBJECTIVE of Steem is? We deal with two (often opposing) forces here. On one side, we can say the objective is Increasing the value of the Steem token. That's a long term proposition. On the other side, many only care about How many rewards will I get from my next post? because their intention is to constantly power down and cash out once a week to buy pizza. That's a short term perspective... it may offer the illusion of value right now, but the constant selling works against long term appreciation.

How can we truly address "abuse," till we have established what the greater objective is?

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stef1 (81) · 5 years ago

Really like your opinion and thank you for clearly putting this in words. It is sometimes difficult to express everything especially there are many things that people behind Steemt Inc. have to think about hope that they thoroughly read all the comments and choose the key points.

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afrog (70) · 5 years ago (edited)

Selfvotes

If posting and self-voting 10 times a day is not considered acceptable, then is doing so five times a day okay? Or three times?

The problem is super easy to solve. Until 2018, there used to be no selfvotes, and that's where we should finally go back to. It*s just one parameter in the Blockchain settings. Switch selfvotes to "false".

With that specific "true" @Ned had opened the can of Pandora. This was a dramatic slap in the faces of all the busy bloggers.

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cmp2020 (72) · 5 years ago

This is incorrect. I have been here since 2016, and self-voting has always existed.

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afrog (70) · 5 years ago

Nope. Selfvoting came with HF 19 (I guess). You remember the April we starved without any reward.
Please @jaki01, do you know, when self-voting came up?

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jaki01 (74) · 5 years ago

At least since I am here (end of 2016) self-votes are possible (and as far as I know they were from the beginning).
Of course there were also always attempts to punish it.

Anyway, preventing them wouldn't solve the problem, as - for example - the 'dream couple' @haejin / @ranchorelaxo demonstrates us on a daily base ...

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cmp2020 (72) · 5 years ago (edited)

If that is the case, how did I vote for this article four years ago?
self voting.PNG

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afrog (70) · 5 years ago

So serious bloggers never used them by personal policy. Much more better way! Until the mentioned hardfork I was not aware selfvotes exist at all. You are right, @cmp2020. Thank you for the lesson. Thank you for the answer @jaki01.

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afrog (70) · 5 years ago

Excessive posting and self-voting

excessive posting and self-voting (but what is excessive - five times a day, ten times a day?)

You cannot limit the amount of postings. Imagine that the blogger is a professional content producer. A restriction or even punishment would be counterproductive.

And just switch off the self-vote function. That's very easy.

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arcange (73) · 5 years ago (edited)

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roadofrich (78) · 5 years ago (edited)

Everyone understands that this is what Steemit has been discussing for a long time and cannot be completely resolved.

We should consider STEEM's POB (Proof of Brain).
So I think consensus between users is very important.

Currently, all Witnesses, community members, and project managers are all decentralized and claim different opinions.
There are about 30 active Witnesses now, and even 30 people don't have a channel to communicate smoothly.
Channels with multiple witnesses exist, some are public and some are private.
A situation where the consensus does not progress even with 30 witnesses means Steemit is very anxious
I want Steemit.INC to manage a channel through which all Witnesses can communicate.
Discord Channel can be a good example.
Provide a place for all Witnesses and users to discuss and share content. Steemit users need to watch what Witnesses are doing.

This is a short-term solution, not a fundamental solution.
We need to improve Witness voting, Downvote issues, etc. through next HF.

My argument for solving abusing is added to the post below.
https://steemit.com/hive-103219/@roadofrich/witness-and-steemit-must-solve-the-problem-of-abusing

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nyarlathotep (62) · 5 years ago (edited)

Suppose we decide that witnesses should deal with abuse. Recent events have shown that witnesses can easily be drawn to either side and cannot be objective. They have their own agendas and can be swayed.

Suppose steemit.inc or any other high stakeholder decides to become a judge and fight abuse. The amount of research needed for each case in order to justify actions would be overwhelming. It cannot be done automatically, so there must be active human users doing the research. For how long and with what return?

Suppose we finally agree on defining what is abuse and we use downvotes to reduce the rewards of such posts & comments. The abusers also have downvotes and might as well use their own downvotes as retaliation.

Suppose we decide to block users that are considered abusers. For how long? Do they have a chance to make amends? What about their stake? They might have bought it, and it has a financial value anyway, right? Can their stake be frozen? Are there any applicable legal rights? Can they withdraw their stake and sell it? Can they transfer it to other accounts?

Maybe it is time to realize that the so-called "decentralized" chains cannot really work? At lest with the current implementation?

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katharsisdrill (71) · 5 years ago

In Copenhagen in 1971 a free hippie city was made on an old military base in the middle of the city. After a short while a part of the population was criminal biker gangs. The place is still there (Christiania) and it has had its ups and downs, but it is a place that has value for the city of Copenhagen. I think what has happened there is what happens everywhere in all society. I have taken part in some of the community driven anti-abuse here on Steemit and I think it works except that it does not have much power. Centralising without true democracy is not my cup of tea. Having stake holders deciding is not really my cup of tea either. I think that communities can work, because they have done so since the Sumerians, but in the end it is about power and how it is distributed. Democracy is still the best thing, even though it is not perfect...

Until of course when reality breaks and the old Gods take charge...

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nyarlathotep (62) · 5 years ago (edited)

Exactly, it's the distribution of power that matters; and in our case, this power means financial gains too. It's the devil's work, I tell you! Seriously, money & power can corrupt anyone & anything. Hypocricy & double standards are all over the place lately (here & on the other chain, too). I have lost faith in the good will of individuals, I think that anyone that speaks about idealism and integrity will do the exact opposite when it seems that there is an opportunity to gain more power/money.

Yes, it's a mirror of most real societies ... but a virtual society built from scratch, should be able to expell the bad things of reality and build on things that are beneficial to everyone, right? So, what are we building with STEEM or HIVE? Thousands of small minnows going in circles around a bunch of powerful whales, waiting for the left-overs of their party? How is that freedom, liberation, a new opportunity, a chance for greatness, revolutionary, etc,etc? It's just reality with all its problems, copy/pasted.

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katharsisdrill (71) · 5 years ago (edited)

Yes, no disagreement there. I must admit that I saw corruption here from the very start, but I also saw some rather good (and at the time reasonably wealthy user because they had been here from the start) citizens, especially while I helped out finding plagiarism.

But just seeing how Dan and Ned was treated by many as if they were Marx and Lenin at a Red Square parade showed what money and power does to the majority of people. These guys had their buts licked red and sore.

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d0zer (59) · 5 years ago

Steemit Inc as judge means even more centralization.

It’s like making Haejin judge to fight against abuse which is absurd!

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6 votes

nathen007 (68) · 5 years ago

Not to mention @dlike who is a witness now and set up 100s of accounts to farm their own rewards!! lol....

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ybanezkim26 (68) · 5 years ago

Everything went well until the proposed solution. For the first time since this 100 Days of chuchu, I would have commented something positive. I would have said that it you could answer those questions you brought up, there might be some chance.

But when you brought Steemit, Inc. to the equation as the sole judge, jury, and executioner of this whole dilemma, you're not really presenting a solution. You're rubbing more salt to the wound. You're making this whole shit show "shittier" than it already is. Good luck with your new role.

Seig hiel oh great fuhrer!

5 votes

fingolfin (61) · 5 years ago (edited)

The priorities seem a little... misplaced? Hive supporters trolling, hive supporters this, etc.. I don't think Hive supporters are the main form of abuse that needs to dealt with on Steemit.

What about plagiarism? What about identity theft? Do you not consider those forms of abuse worthy of fighting? It takes a ton of work to find those types of abuse and who is going to put in the time to do it if you want Steemit inc to just be the judge and not actively seek out and combat it?

You'll have to incentivize users with some form of compensation if you want people to be interested. Steemcleaners and Spaminator had delegations so that they could use their downvote power to clean up a lot of things. Regular users could submit any abuse they found and at least be nominally rewarded for it. Running something like those takes a lot of time and effort and hopefully you have some idea in place to replace the bulk of what they did.

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crypto.piotr (70) · 5 years ago

Dear @fingolfin

I believe that it's a step in right direction. Obviously there is huge number of issues that need to be addressed and right now it seem to be important to decide, is such a powerful stakeholder as STINC should get involved or should not.

Can we protect ourselfs without pretty much anyone protecting us any more? I hardly doubt so.

You'll have to incentivize users with some form of compensation if you want people to be interested.

I believe that there is enough people out there, who will be interested in supporting that idea. Many people will see it as an opportunity to combat abuse. Which otherwise we cannot stand against. That's not an even match.

I wish to see better option. However, I dont :(

Yours,
Piotr

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katharsisdrill (71) · 5 years ago

@fingolfin - Exactly!

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skepticology (57) · 5 years ago

These are questions about both unique short-term circumstances and long-term solutions. I don't think anyone's stake should be restricted, meaning Steemit should vote however it wants, but user accounts should not be frozen or censored on the blockchain level. Obviously there is some community incentive to prevent certain bad actors from accomplishing their stated purpose of milking STEEM to lower the price in an effort to support HIVE. I think it is reasonable to prevent that with downvotes.

The situation begs for a long-term solution and I think there is wisdom in seeking it through logical, mathematical, and computational principles rather than relying on personal values or opinions. There are no clear rules or agreement about self-voting, bid-botting, or even what is abuse, and the blockchain allows it without any warning, so users are essentially invited to violate undocumented and vague community standards resulting in downvotes, hurt feelings, and an overall bad user experience. If we reward authorities to fight abuse then they are encouraged to create anonymous accounts that spam to collect more rewards and power. We are spending plenty of time and energy everyday fighting abuse, but at what cost, and is it really necessary?

We already have many mechanisms in place to limit the effects of abuse. RC costs limit some denial of service attacks. Front ends like Steemit and Steempeak can censor negative users, spam, or other undesirable content. Stake-powered voting allows investors to choose which content they want to reward. So what is the problem? I think a lot of the concern is about users self-voting 10 spam posts a day. Why do they do that? Because they are forced to vote 10 times to maximize rewards.

A solution for spam is to allow users up to 1000% of current voting power so they can vote once per day for full rewards instead of having to vote 10 times per day. This would reduce spam and the need to downvote posts. Also, change rewards to pure linear, remove dust vote threshold, remove timing aspect on curation algorithm, and make a simple checkbox on each front-end for automatically voting favorite authors once per day, so every STEEMpower holder gets a fair return on their investment for a minimum amount of participation.

To succeed, STEEM should be simple, intuitive, easy, fair, and fun. Right now we have primitive content discovery tools, a reward curve and dust threshold that punish small wallets, a curation timing algorithm that favors automated robot voters, and unclear community standards that depend on personal opinions and moods, which can leave users empty handed and discouraged.

arcange (73) · 5 years ago (edited)

leprechaun (56) · 5 years ago

Once decided, please give us a clear policy of what things are not acceptable.

Years ago, users were posting a "voting-declaration". Basically, it outlined a policy for what they are voting for. Everyone had different policies.

It must really suck when someone is MarkyMarked for life and they can never get any votes for any kind of post because there is a bot that down-votes anything they post.

What is "comment farming?"

Is posting about patterns about patterns in a graph and using it to predict future prices "abuse"? Can we use tea leaves instead?
Is a post about a product or service "abuse"?

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xplosive (62) · 5 years ago

What is Abuse?

What most Steem blockchain and Hive blockchain users do. Focusing only on their own posts, but they do not care about other people's posts, because most of the Steem blockchain and Hive blockchain users are selfish and greedy. The real human comments are rare both on the Steem blockchain and on the Hive blockchain. There are a lot of content creators, but only a few content consumers. Most of the Steem blockchain and Hive blockchain posts are ignored/overlooked. This leads to many disappointed users, who eventually leave the platform. This is why the user retention is so bad both on the Steem blockchain and on the Hive blockchain. This is in the statistics, so you cannot deny this. Most of the people are ruining both of the blockchains by their bad behavior. Most of the people are not grown up to this technology.

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mickvir (63) · 5 years ago

Abuse has been an issue since before I started on Steemit two years ago. I have seen this question asked so many times and yet still no solution or clear picture.
I feel a voting system would work best.
But who should Responsible for this?
As Steemit is a company I feel that makes most sense. But others may not fell the same way. It would be nice to be able to vote on this.
Voting gives us our voice and if steemit would be the leader with vision, then we will have structure and direction.
I know decentralisation is something we have been striving for , but you need some enforceable rules or people will just take the easy way out and game the system.
Just my opinion.
I hope we can move forward and build the Steem blockchain up.
Have an awesome day.

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squirrelbait (60) · 5 years ago

People should not be allowed to create an enormous number of accounts that vote farm as well as use them to vote themselves in as a witness. This should be considered a type of fraud. Just my opinion as it is people like this that have harassed users in the past, filled the blockchain with spam, and the reason why people like me do not recommend this platform to other people. Too much drama on here.

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achim03 (63) · 5 years ago

Since I've joined steemit about two years ago, the very concept of abuse has changed a lot. I believe that it is very difficult to define what abuse is and I believe also that what is considered abuse today, might not be considered abuse tomorrow. I believe that with the tools at hand, every user has something to fight abuse if he wants to. It's possible to mute people and it's possible to downvote people.

If people want to write 10 posts a day and upvote them themselves, they should just do it. They won't get many followers and because of the reward curve, their posts won't get much value.

In my opinion it should be left at: "the code decides it all" and if it is not performant enough, then we should simply adapt the code.

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gduran (69) · 5 years ago

Except if its a big old whale who has a ten dollar vote.

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katharsisdrill (71) · 5 years ago

Plagiarism is not hard to define. Identity theft is not hard to define. Just to name two of the worst.

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reinaldoverdu (66) · 5 years ago

I believe that a common point must be sought with all community and I agree with a comment that does @crypto.piotr when it is necessary to have privileges to receive healing, that proposal stops me interesting and I think it needs to be discussed and improved This is my contribution to this complex topic.

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xpilar (83) · 5 years ago

It is very difficult to be able to give a facet of the problem that is illustrated here.

Self-voting is not necessarily an abuse.

Many people have invested their money in Steem and write good posts and posts a few times a week. But several of them do not get as good upvote back on their posts and then use their self-vote to earn some profit on the post. They vote for many little steemians to support them. When the small accounts give upvote back then it won't be much even though there may be several 100 votes left on a post.

Many people lease STEEMPOWER to give them more power to vote for others and they also vote for themselves. It is not an abuse for them to continue renting steempower based on the profits they can make

Circle voting is it an abuse?
Whether the 10 or 20 who just vote for each other and almost never outside their own ring is also not an abuse. It is their own small group and they choose this themselves. But if there are only dirt posts from everyone there will be milking and then there will be an abuse.

Circle voting, I myself have been accused of being part of such a group when downvotes got started in full. I still have many favorite authors that I vote for and they vote for me.
No one is going to tell me who to vote for or not, it's my own choice. When the downvote war went too full and I was close to zero for many of my posts I felt that I was no longer welcome and several with me were on their way to the end of the Steem community
But I have been here since July 2016 and fought for the small accounts in the community and it made me start fighting for them
My Voting CSI 21.6 (0.05% self, 626 upvotes, 182 accounts, last 7d) Most are upvote manually.
So I ask you to be careful when it comes to self-voting and Circle voting.

We are now seeing several of the old witnesses and some larger accounts are making nausea with self-indulgence on their own comments.
They are angry and will do anything to destroy as long as they have money for it here at Steem. I wish they got their money out and that we were then given an opportunity to see them end here for good.

To me, abuse is the one who steals other people's work, pictures, video and content and pretends to be their own. There are also some that use spinning from articles, that is, they change a bit in the way content is written. Should we hit it hard? yes we should, but first we have to give a warning and explain why. Because there are many who come here and go in that trap. I have many who have received a warning from me during my 4 years at Steem and at the same time I have given them a guide. Some of them are my friends on Steemit now.
The learning curve is long and everyone deserves a second chance before we cut off their heads.

One thing that is clear is that we do not have to issue massive red flags again, it will kill the platform. We lost many good writers when the war went on last time.

But we need Steemit, Inc. to take responsibility now until we have better solutions in place and society says yes to this as a temporary solution

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inertia (73) · 5 years ago

The current strategy is fairly effective.

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vagabondspirit (52) · 5 years ago

I believe that a sizable portion of the SteemCleaners group left the platform. I was really sad when I saw a post from @cheetah that appeared to be anti-steemit SPAM; so they are forced to rebuild, and lost trust with some of the most active cleaners.

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inertia (73) · 5 years ago

Actually, I wrote my comment during the 14 hour span when no new content was showing, which also included this post.

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vagabondspirit (52) · 5 years ago

The 14 hour block was quite annoying. Thanks for reporting it. I had to use inventive methods to read the blockchain while SteemIt was down.

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scottcbusiness (72) · 5 years ago

The whole point of steem being decentralized was ad hoc rules

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pfunk (72) · 5 years ago

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adityajainxds (73) · 5 years ago

Steem is decentralised as I know and everyone who has account in steemit has right to do whatever he want to do with his account. We cannot force them to , do this , do that. In that case it will create more negative in the active user minds.

And for this abuse related things from starting of the steemit , this is going on and in future also it will be their we cannot prevent that it's a practical reality. Inspite we should focus on how to improve and bring more active user to steemit this will bring more content and rewards will be distributed properly.

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msg768 (65) · 5 years ago (edited)

I think abuse should be defined in the code. If the code allows something, it's no longer abuse imo. If we don't want people to self-upvote for example, we should stop that from being allowed in the code. Or if we don't want people to post more than once a day, let's limit that in the code. The alternative is mob rule.

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steemchiller (74) · 5 years ago

If we don't want people to self-upvote for example, we should stop that from being allowed in the code.

It's not that easy. What is a self-vote? A vote from Account-A to Account-A? People will just use a different account then ;)

msg768 (65) · 5 years ago (edited)

That's right so as long as the code allows it, imo it should not be considered abuse.

Whales here have been colluding and upvoting each other, taking most of the rewards but when the upvote buying program through bidbots was introduced they mercilessly cracked it down by free downvotes. This type of behavior only drives people away from the platform. But if everyone simply goes by the code and stops the mob rule behavior, we will all be much better off down the road. Otherwise, it will be a platform for self-upvoting whales. In other words, as long as whales do it through proxies, it's all good. But God forbid if average people PAY and BUY some upvote.

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rmach (68) · 5 years ago

My guess it that most hive folks are still around while they wait for the power down and will leave after. It is clear they are one of your major concerns. The idea of a 3-day power down period was strongly supported by many of the witnesses. Implementing that or something similar would certainly make them leave sooner.

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fingolfin (61) · 5 years ago

The 3 day doesn't make sense though... the payout window is 7 days. So I can vote with my full voting power, powerdown, powerup another account and vote on the same post again for double the value?

rmach (68) · 5 years ago

I agree.

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katharsisdrill (71) · 5 years ago

The problem with solving abuse on the platform is not really about Hive at all is it. Using other platforms is not abuse and there was plenty of abuse before Steem forked.

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rmach (68) · 5 years ago

It's not about Hive at all. There are bigger problems around here but 2 out of 5 types of abuse suggested by steemit inc were about hive users. That's why I mentioned that.

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katharsisdrill (71) · 5 years ago (edited)

Pretty crazy that they mention Hive when talking about abuse.

sm-silva (54) · 5 years ago (edited)

Downvotes can discourage the use of the social network... And more users should be our goal.

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jadams2k18 (64) · 5 years ago

I really like the solution that @ciska offers.

A discord channel where actions against abuse will be coordinated.

I think the best way to solve this problem is using human support and not leaving it in the hands of robots or AI (I guess they are not yet aware enough to be excellent judges). And the best way is to present the cases live on a discord channel. It is important to use the support of many people to do this and the flag can be a way to warn where the problems are.

Thanks for reading

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lanzjoseg (74) · 5 years ago

Hi @steemitblog

Definitely the only way to combat abuse is for the rules to be clear and there must always be a way for those rules to always be visible.

The human is definitely a behavioral human, so starting from that if the conduct is wrong because it will always follow the same behavior, the abuse can continue if it does not meet some minimum rules.

But there is also a dilemma that arises and we all think we have it.

Definitely what abuse is for some. It is not for others.

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the.journal (69) · 5 years ago

fix the network instead of point yourself as judge

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pfunk (72) · 5 years ago

You're assuming a capability of self-reflection with this bunch. A poor assumption.

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https://steemit.com/witness-category/@symbionts/symbiont-s-or-discussing-the-abuse-dilemma

dr-frankenstein (67) · 4 years ago

Hi, @steemitblog,

We have summarized here some reflections on the fight against abuse:

Thank you,

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100 दिन STEEM : दिन 33 - Tackling Abuse on Steem - Part I - What is Abuse?

sumit10698 (65) · 5 years ago

Abuse is really big problem after the hive fork in my opinion as you can see we are continuously seeing downvoted on @steemitblog posts. This should be tackled. My opinion on this will be written in a post I will share soon.

Until that,
Hey @steemcurator01 ,
Hindi translation is ready for Indian community which is now supported by resteem of @alokkumar121 to reach more Indian more people will join the list soon

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fbslo (70) · 5 years ago

In 2 months, all hive users will be done powering down and will leave.

paragism (60) · 5 years ago

I think so

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vagabondspirit (52) · 5 years ago

So, people are using the downvote to abuse others. Who would have guessed?

One of the really strange aspects of human life is that the tools that people create to stop abuse are often abused.

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awah (63) · 5 years ago

The problem, as you have identified, is that just relying on SP to elect someone gets back to the same problem we have had. Whales jump in, throw their weight about, and the minnows get squashed out.

The concept of SP in itself is good though as it rewards those who build up SP and keep supporting the platform.

What I believe we need, is a Community Council, that is elected, Not by steam power or by a popular vote. Rather, we need to look more at recent activate positive participation. If someone is actively blogging or curating, and is receiving positive upvotes then they should be given a stronger vote. Rather than someone who just created a new account to be included in a popular vote.

It should be factored to give preference to the recent activity rather than historical activity. I think then the coders can find an algorithm to write it into the code for generating such a metric. It could be used as a voting power to vote periodically for a new council to sit. Voting therefore takes place for community members who make a good pitch.

Steeminc would need to facilitate the council and perhaps have the casting vote where consensus cannot be reached.

SP means too many whales that can be disruptive. Popular vote by itself, likely means KYC that would put too many people off the platform. So I only see an elected council as the way forward but with a different algorithm implemented.

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bluengel (76) · 5 years ago

Maintenance !

Stay STABLE !

STEEM ♨♨♨ On !

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allmonitors (74) · 5 years ago

Perhaps reconsider some delegations because it is used to farm votes. Old posts are also recycled and getting lots of value.

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danmaruschak (72) · 5 years ago

I think we should probably eliminate self-votes. It's usually considered somewhat rude to "like" your own posts on other platforms, and the fact that money is involved with it here makes it seem especially weird. I think that the fuzzy rules around when it is or isn't appropriate are a turn-off to a lot of people. (It's true that people could get around this by creating alternate accounts, but the existence of a counter-strategy doesn't mean we should avoid picking the low-hanging fruit).

I don't have any solid definitions of abuse off the top of my head, but I think one thing that could potentially be a factor is scale. In the offline world most people think it's fine when the owner of a small company gives a family member a job there, but it's a much trickier question if the CEO of a fortune 500 company does it. So giving your friend a max-strength upvote on everything they post regardless of quality may be no big deal if the average user does it, but might not be cool if you're powerful enough to direct a substantial fraction of the reward pool with this kind of behavior.

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danmaruschak (72) · 5 years ago

Some more points I thought of: One of the "milking" methods appears to be focused on upvoting comments rather than main posts to be more "under the radar". It might be worthwhile in the long term to change the reward algorithm so that rewards on comments are capped to a reward that's some fraction of the rewards going to the main post they're attached to, to limit this sort of behavior. In the short or medium term a downvoting bot might be able to enforce a policy like this.

And I don't think this is really an urgent matter, but something to think about long term is how voting can potentially be used as a tool of harassment. Right now we have some persistent downvoters that seem focused on arguments or differences that have happened on-chain, but if we think about mass adoption then we're likely going to need a story for how to deal with situations like people angrily downvoting their exes after a bad breakup, for political reasons, for group-based hatred, etc. Harassment is generally "persistent unwanted contact", so people could argue that having a downvote bot sicced on them is a form of harassment, but putting a limit on who you can up- or downvote would cut against the philosophy behind the steem economy. So there are some philosophical issues that may need to be worked out there.

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Anti-Abuse Initiative | Steem Sentinels

symbionts (66) · 5 years ago

Hi, @steemitblog,

We invite you to read the anti-abuse initiative that we launched a few weeks ago. We are also pleased to finally see the discussion starting about this issue.

Steem Sentinels | Update [26-04-2020]

We will certainly share more thoughts on what you suggested above in a future post. Community comments will also be taken into consideration.

Thank you,

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jonsnow1983 (67) · 5 years ago

We do not kneel!

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mariita52 (71) · 5 years ago

Here I leave my opinion on the subject, includes a Spanish translation. Thank you @steemitblog for the opportunity to learn about this topic and to all who have enriched the post with your comments.

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luckyali (65) · 5 years ago

I think changing the code is not a solution because steemit user free but also abuse must not be accepted. Make the team who will monitor the situation every time such as plagiarism, comment farming and all types of voting, commenting and posting abuses .

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block.token (61) · 5 years ago

If the witnesses were to take on this role which witnesses should be included? The top 20, the top 50, the top 100… or all active witnesses? Who would decide on that?

It's good that this was decided by 100 active witnesses ...

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dickturpin (59) · 5 years ago

You're talking about two types of abuse.

A. Abuse of the systems.

B. Abuse of the individual.

I can't see Abuse of the system ever being solved, in my personal opinion I think the whole platform is riddled with hustlers from things like cliques only voting for their mates, upvoting groups, games and voting bots designed to reward the developer, sock puppets and a whole raft of practices designed to squeeze as much as possible from the blockchain. I suspect any attempt at managing this problem will be like playing Whack-A-Mole, why? Because there's crypto to be earned and so it's worth the effort to get around any obstacles steemit inc try and put in place.

Abuse of the individual should be easier to achieve although again if someone is determined to make a users life hell they'll just keep making new accounts.

I never was that keen on the old idea of running to Discord with your problems, I do kinda like the idea of some sort of official body you can contact although I'm not sure "Witnesses" are the best choice for this, look what happened last time they didn't like a decision. The problem, of course, is you can't promote something as "Free Speech" or "Uphold the values of Freedom" and then with the next breath argue "So long as it's our view of Freedom."
and as for enforcing some rules: Quis custodiet ipsos custodes?

"If you don't have enough power or Crypto to upvote me; reshare me instead. Reshares are worth their weight in gold!"

Don't forget, you can upvote peoples comments too!

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ritxi (66) · 5 years ago

So many question marks and most of them are not easy to solve. Surely, the abuse from users like haejin who are milking the Steem blockchain is not what everyone wants. But I would keep the downvoting system for those, while it shows that it works. Let the community solve this problem itself. As steemchiller wrote, if some users (witnesses?) will search for the max payout comments (not posts, just comments) and check if they are not milking, I would leave it the way it is at present moment. You know...in 13 weeks from the fork the situation will be different, I would at least wait until that date and not pushing any solution at this moment.

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hardaeborla (68) · 5 years ago

Firstly, I think most users are really more self centered and this is why they actually don't consider the effect of their actions towards the community. How could someone be so greedy to make close to 10 spammy posts per day and self upvote all the whole posts just for the sake of earning more money without even considering Upvoting other's people quality contents? Mhen! That's really too bad. This is actually one of the advantages of great communities on the steem blockchain like @project.hope which will always reward users for their activities on the platform. Instead of you engaging in consistent self Upvoting, why not delegate some SP to great communities which reward users for their great content or better still try to upvote quality content that comes your way as a means of support.

I'm afraid if abusive activities like this continue on the steem blockchain, it may actually lead to a lot of spamming and limited circulation of Steemit tokens to users since everyone is trying to be greedy.

I'll suggest Steemit Inc should take the judge for abuse cases since the team won't want to make judgements that will jeopardize the steem blockchain. I'll just advice that there shouldn't be any form of hypocrisy while giving judgements by Steemit Inc.

Thanks for sharing this great post with love from @hardaeborla and I hope you have a great day ahead 💕❤️💕❤️💕❤️💕

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rmach (68) · 5 years ago

Only now you're starting to think about abuse?
I thought you guys had that figured out when decided that down votes were useless, harmful and proposed to remove them...

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vipnata (74) · 5 years ago

@steemblog, thanks for your post. What is written in the white paper of Steemit? in my opinion, the law and rules of Steemit are written there.

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gduran (69) · 5 years ago

I posted this, I have some ideas, perhaps good perhaps bad, but perhaps interesting enough to think about?
https://steemit.com/abuse/@gduran/what-is-abuse-to-me

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cryptokannon (74) · 5 years ago

So our question to the community is whether Steemit, Inc. acting in this way, in consultation with the community, to determine cases of abuse would be acceptable?

Yes acceptable. Steemit Inc is the largest stakeholder in steem blockchain and it is in their best interest to see the abuse of reward pool being protected.

We, Steemit, Inc., can take on the role of judge of abuse cases - in conjunction with you the community as the jury.

Acceptable, because of my above reason, and considerate too because you still taking community voice into consideration.
I suggest that steemit inc as a judge with at least 5 juries consist of elected witnesses from top21, elected community members from all 4 major continents.

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for91days (71) · 5 years ago

I think communities can be a big role in fighting abuse - communities care about their reputation and many of them already have postings rule and a team of people to make sure that these rules are being followed.

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vishalhkothari (57) · 5 years ago

Mahatma Gandhi says that

"Nobody can hurt me without my permission"

I also see no one can abuse anyone abuser is the weakest person. And I don't fight with weaks.

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https://steemit.com/the100daysofsteem/@steemitblog/100-days-of-steem-day-17-communities-brainstorm

sm-silva (54) · 5 years ago

Let i give you a better idea:
Create Account and delegate 5M Steem Power
Create Tasks to develop the condenser(Steemit FrontEnd) and pay with Upvote

Look at some ideas that need to be implemented

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canna-curate (64) · 5 years ago (edited)

Flags from large accounts will be the best way to go. There are a lot of people milking Steem for every last drop until there power down. Now the big question lies should we flag everything from these milk maids? I would say no, but to a certain extent. Code will not be the answer. We all know who these people are. If there writing good content and upvoting that, I see no issue. But when it is excessive, someone needs to step in. I get it, people are upset, but two wrongs don’t make a right. We have every right to tackle this via flagging if we disagree with the rewards.

But another thing is the freezing of users funds. Maybe we can come to the table and have The hive people stop spamming in order to milk, and have them remove there votes for the old witnesses, and then we can get rid of 22.888. It is time we move forward.

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famigliacurione (70) · 5 years ago

This is such a massive topic, that I would highly encourage that the subject be addressed one issue at a time; one form of abuse at a time.

Here are my contributions:
The Tino Take - Take 15

Italian
Curione Live - Puntata 4

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akdx (66) · 5 years ago

First of all we need to understand the way people are abusing the reward system. Everyone is here because Steem as a social media platform provide an opportunity to earn something. As money brings corruption, it becomes very difficult to tackle the issue of abuse. Self voting, circle jerking, bid bots use etc. are the traditional issues here. One is earning too much while others are getting almost nothing. This is the issue. I think first of all a system should be developed in which everyone (who is not a spammer, plagiarist etc.) may get a minimum amount for his/her post. Secondly, the amount of maximum earning should be fixed per day so that only quality not the quantity may become fruitful.
Also, we need to define quality content and rank posts according to some algorithm. @crypto.piotr what do you think over it?

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https://steempeak.com/hive-182202/@sajannair/how-to-define-and-curb-abuse-on-steem

sajannair (67) · 5 years ago (edited)

Hi @steemcurator01 & @steemitblog,

Find below the post with my humble submission. Hope you find some value in it.

Regards

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huaren.news (78) · 5 years ago

全文翻译(Full post translation)：
【买赞贴/buy vote】steem社区大讨论：什么是滥用？What is Abuse?

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machnbirdsparo (65) · 5 years ago

I believe comment farming can be both a good or bad thing. While I often lean toward heartfelt replies, there is the need for calculated action. We mustn't fall prey to emotions that hinder, at least not too often.

I do realize that comment farmers will seek to use emotional manipulation. That said, I believe we should take the example of Minecraft building to our crypto-based social media.. certainly a concept programmer have been playing with for some time now.

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infidel1258 (67) · 5 years ago

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steevc (73) · 5 years ago (edited)

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okean123 (65) · 5 years ago

The Hive users are losing influence as they power down. You cannot blame them forever.

Exactly. Of course they listed the abuse by Hive users at the top of their list, even though it's barely existing. They're just so childish, it's unbelievably.

steevc (73) · 5 years ago

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udow (61) · 5 years ago

" they can use their free downvotes to reduce the rewards. "

Yes they can do this.
But what is with an retaliate-action ?
I think most others (me including) with not so much Steempower fear that if they do so they will get massive downvotes on all their posts as retaliate-action ... and what is than ?

As long as it's the rule that the Steempower decide about the worth of an vote and everybody can see who gave the downvote their won't be much user who risk this.

steevc (73) · 5 years ago

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udow (61) · 5 years ago

OK that's really interesting.
How you done this - you contacted steemit with this issue ?

steevc (73) · 5 years ago

No, Steemit were not getting involved back then. I built a following and connections with the Steem community. As they seem to want to be the police now they should support users who deal with abuse. You will have to talk to them about it as they have taken against me.

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steevc (73) · 5 years ago

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ericwilson (67) · 5 years ago (edited)

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ausbitbank (73) · 5 years ago (edited)

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preparedwombat (70) · 5 years ago

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preparedwombat (70) · 5 years ago

Thanks for the TWO votes @steemcurator01!

First a -5% vote and then, after it had been countered, you came back and re-voted at -100% showing your greatness. Go Team Memory Hole!

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preparedwombat (70) · 5 years ago

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katharsisdrill (71) · 5 years ago

Yes, that was pretty ugly.

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freebornangel (73) · 5 years ago (edited)

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pfunk (72) · 5 years ago

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freebornangel (73) · 5 years ago

Not helping them, helping me.
I need to get paid for the for years of being ignored because I was too far from the class.

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gduran (69) · 5 years ago

I disagree, the community never had a chance to solve its problems, all we had were hard fork after hard fork based solely on the idea of how the big guys could milk the system. That was the one big problem with Steemit.

katharsisdrill (71) · 5 years ago

But the community did a good job trying to solve the problem. When Steem is forgotten maybe some other system can use that fact.

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gduran (69) · 5 years ago

Ok, that is your opinion of it, it certainly isn't mine. And I have been here slightly more than you have so I guess both our opinions should be taken into account.

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katharsisdrill (71) · 5 years ago

I didn't mean that the community efforts solved the problems of the platform. Most of them didn't have enough power to do that, but the actual work and the spirit in which it was done was good. Did you ever participate in any of it?

I will always listen to other people's opinion, but arguments and experience is more important to me than how long you have been on the network.

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gduran (69) · 5 years ago

Yes I did, but I never went on Discord. To me this is like any country, you can discuss things, come up with ideas, shout, threaten, strike or whatever and in the end what is done is what the rich and powerful want. The community is worth zero.

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Show 5 more replies

freebornangel (73) · 5 years ago

Well, to be fair to stinc, they did deliver a working platform.
It isn't unreasonable for them to expect to get paid.
How they went about it was inept, but spoiled kids gonna spoil what they touch.
Ned had little chance of an alternative, and without the wisdom of age, none at all, imo.

So far, stunc hasn't made many noticeable changes in relation to normie users, so my jury is still out on that.

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