I’m glad to see this post starts with all caps and immediate claims of abuse, even before any verification of such. The beatbox the Internet gave everyone. ;)
Obviously, as a Steemhunt mod, I’m biased.
I hope you understand that this system was in place since the moderators started and not only began after the misterdelegation delegation.
As a mod myself I can confirm that most mods spend at least 5-6 hrs/day reviewing and also answering multiple questions in our Discord community.
I do understand that STU 1.2 seems steep but it’s also a flexible number as every day we have more hunts submitted (265 in the last window ~ 44 reviews/mod). But the feel around 1.2 is also biased because of the broken peg.
Lastly, I would like to ask what you want Steem to be for hard working Steemians? Do you want Steem to be a place like Mechanical Turk or oDesk, a race to the bottom or would you like Steem to become an empowering place which can impact vertical social mobility?
Facebook moderators are based in the Philippines and earn on average $600/month (all incl) and perform sweatshop work with actual quotas how long a review can take. That is public knowledge, Facebook outsourced via Accenture and reviews can be found on Glassdoor.
We have a unique opportunity on steem to be different. Everybody lives where they live and if you hang out some hours in our discord and have a stroll in the different channels you will notice Steemhunt is as transparent as possible. We fight gamification by use of bidbots (each approved hunt is checked multiple times each day against the wallets of “split votes bots”, we are actively engaging and designing a system to minimize abuse, and we constantly try to empower new members. Some reviews take few minutes, others take several hours and follow on comments as we give people chances to improve their hunt and guide them to do so, which means we have to verify multiple times.
The 1.2 isn’t set in stone and is highly likely bound to change with time as the team grows. Especially if 1/n based. And obviously, if the peg is ever achieved it will also change its true worth.
Thanks to the generous temporary delegations, many of which also benefit a sponsor return and Airdrop rewards, Steemhunt currently is in the position of being able to make a difference to the lives of many. Rest assured we will not abuse that support and we will work hard every day to earn those delegations to be continued. Many more things will be released over the next few weeks and months. Stay tuned, but we can only manage as much as we can in any given set of time.
Thank you for making this a point and giving everyone the opportunity to respond. Hope you soon hop over to our discord and have a browse/chat with the Steemhunt community. Looking forward to see you there! 🤘
PS: the Utopian pay account is used for different purposes. Mods get a weekly upvote from the main account, based on work (reviews) performed the week before.