There's a scourge of self-voting and collusive voting.
Yep. This was easily predicted but largely ignored. And the actual voting is now being ignored as well. This one particular user is doing this exact thing that you described - upvoting himself at 100% and occasionally upvoting some other users...at 1%. But worst of all is that his comments that he self-votes are mostly spam comments. I have tried to do what I can downvoting them at 1-2%, but I'm getting practically zero help from other users.
https://steemit.com/@crypto-p/comments
And I'm sure this isn't the only person doing this, but the rate at which it's being done and the amount of rewards he's pulling in by doing it is a little ridiculous. And when others have pointed out that this isn't appreciated, he flags them.
So, if anyone with some extra voting power would like to help kill some of his comment rewards, it would be appreciated.
As far as the actual hard fork changes...I think it will not play out well in the long-run.
Full linear rewards + 4x voting power = Perfect conditions for abuse/exploitation
How this was dismissed/defended by STINC is beyond me. They are turning this place into a mockery of social media and the rewards incentive, in my opinion. And there seems to be very few people who are willing to speak out against or combat the abuses/exploits. As @schattenjaeger asked in his post on the topic:
They are not the only one, I'm sure. This is an extreme case, but there are many, many that are less obvious. Earlier, I have thrown 100% flags the way of abusers like noganoo and matrixdweller, and would have done so here. Sadly, my voting power is so low and limited, I'll save much of it for curation. I've flagged some of their recent comments at 1%, but it barely makes a dent. So, yeah, whichever way you look, the lower vote target is a disaster.
The thing is, I can't even blame them. They are just upvoting themselves, which seems like a perfectly normal thing to do. It's just that the system is broken right now.
Ultimately, it's up to the witnesses to realize this is a problem and push the developers to rush out a solution asap.
I don't think the system is broken, I do blame the people self voting! I can't imagine any developer intervention to solve this. Any restrictions on self voting or repeated voting of same users will all be overcome by a wider circle of puppet accounts.
I've loved the 4x increase as my voting is now all manual and I'm able to meaningfully tailor vote strength. Sure it's made it easier to fully self vote, but if someone is posting 20 spam comments a day as voting targets, they'll still post 80 if it puts a couple thousand dollars in their pocket.
So even in the self voting regard the HF may have been beneficial by cutting spam posting and puppet account registration by 75%!
The solution is flags, and has to be community oriented.
I'd like to see a cheetah type bot that uses analytics like this to follow up posts and comments of those above a certain threshold, say 70% self voting, with a friendly message. "Hello! We've noticed you use 87% of your voting power on your own posts and comments! While we all need to pat ourselves on the back once in a while, it's great to get out in the community and mingle! You can find a regular rundown of engaging new content here.(insert link to good curation project.)"
The community needs to be made more aware. I know I'm not cross checking everyone's voting history, and the real kicker is that some of these 100% self voters are still getting sincere votes from other members. I even saw a post by one person who self upvotes 100% proudly proclaiming he was stopping his power down, and asking everyone to help build his Steem Power up since he's so committed to the platform!
A bot warning could give people the same pause that the duplicate content detection does for plagiarism.
The stigma around flags needs altered too. I could envision a "flag a day" educational campaign. I think everyone can and should throw a flag each day, as an important part of shaping the community.
Alternatively if an account is dedicated to combatting abuse, users should be asked to delegate SP to it and educated on how to do so. I would gladly contribute, and it puts a bit of seperation between a user and direct flagging if they are squeamish about it.
Collusive rings are harder to deal with and will probably always take a manual hand behind the controls, spotting the patterns and taking action.
And for those who equate egregious self voting with dividends and consider it a fair use of stake, you are in a sense right. But please think long term. If you can show me a company where the shareholders voted all profits be paid to them in dividends, putting a freeze on new hiring, employee raises, and all capital expenditures to support and improve operations... and the company flourished... I'll change my opinion!
Nice one,you have itemized and discusssed some of the ways to prevent these fraudulent ways of gathering votes,I hope the authorities will do something drastic.its pathetic the extent some authors will stoop so low