Hi Steemit,
I am Steemwatcher, Not a real person but a symbolic character,
My purpose here is to spread awareness about the issues that steemit is currently going through, issues which are so serious that they can kill our beloved community.
Steemit was touted as decentralized answer to facebook and other popular social media communities and it somewhat moved towards being that but soon it all went south, Now we have long forgotten that dream and steemit is not even moving in that direction anymore.
I learned a lot about the problems on steemit specially reading posts and comments of many users over a long period, where they have given their suggestions regarding tackling the issues in different possible ways.
i decided to write this post in order to convey my beliefs and principals of operation in advance.
first of all Why i chose anonymity?
I chose annonymity because i believe that is how Whistleblowers should operate. you will get to know my reasons of being anonymous much better when you Read about what I intend to do here.
what i Believe to be the root cause of all this spam that everybody seems to hate or at least talk about hating?
According to my understanding of the platform, i believe that voting bots are the one of the root causes of all this spam in the first place. i believe they motivate users to create shitposts and spam on the platform, whether knowingly or unknowingly. people create spam and get them upvoted from powerful bots to reap rewards,
i know the bots have some good uses as well, specially as a tool to promote posts in hot section in order to increase visibility. but getting a 50$ vote from an upvote bot does not qualify as promotion in my view.
The thinking out of which bots were created is that "My upvotes are my money and why would i give it for free". this thinking is root of all problems, more and more users are now delegating their voting power to some bid bot and every week or so a new bot is appearing and pushing steemit from being a social network toward being a steem generating machine fed by SBD.
these bots are no different from banks in real world which we all blockchain adopters hate so much but it seems they have followed us here as well at the very least on steemit.
Bots need to seriously revise their bid cap in order to appear like a promotion service until then they are doing no good to the platform and only promoting spam, it does not matter whether they vote on good or bad content since they have not read it. Sorry A blind $100 vote is not a service to platform even if done on a good post. Posts were supposed to be created for being read not getting rewarded in the first place.
There are some initiatives which do not operate on principles of this thinking, most notable service of this kind is Curie which was supported initially by @berniesanders or @nextgencrypto whatever you call him. that is the reason i am now a fan of his, not for his flagging activity although i must admit i like that as well.
There is a saying in Art of War by Sun Tzu that "reward and punishment should be equal" and i support his flagging activity because he follows this principle whether knowingly or unknowingly by supporting communities such as curie and providing free upvotes to minnows on their quality content, Many of the powerful User have followed his flagging activity but they are yet to do something toward balancing their acts and earning my respect. even @steemcleaners are not good with that part.
Another issue which Bugs me is the Communism Here, some users who have the High voting power only vote specific authors and in return that author votes him back. these kind of groups mostly contain high SP holders who only vote on their peers neglecting new users and their posts all together. and what is more hilarious that they also write posts about competing with facebook and twitter.
What i will do differently?
Since i do not have the capacity to Reward anybody, i will not be flagging any post, what i will do instead that i will reward users with badges in shitposting like the steemboard for the viewers to see.
How am i different from cheetah?
since cheetah is already doing great with busting plagiarized content, i am not going to do that.
instead i will be issuing badges to posts which have at least $20 in rewards pending and the info inside that article is a waste, whether written well or not. i will be stating my reason in the comments, if some one does not agree he can write me back, if their reason seems satisfactory the badge will be removed.
I get really frustrated with shit articles in trending section, sometimes those articles were already published by another user on steemit generating no revenue whatsoever, but a famous user posts it and their peers vote that to $100 or even $1000 whatsoever they want. i don't think they realize the utility of this platform in reading content of others or reading at all, they seem to be only for posting and upvoting their mates without even looking at their content.
My target will be specially those authors who get a staggering upvote from bots and Guys operating in groups to increase their post payouts. specially i will concentrate on high net individuals and their behavior on the platform.
So in short i will only be messing only with big guys who have the power to crush me easily, that is why i chose anonymity in the first place and called myself a whistleblower.
Now i think that this article is going too long so i will stop for the time being with the FAQ here in this post, i will write a part 2 of it later, but meanwhile you can ask any questions you want in comments to help make this FAQ much better. And please do not forget to leave your suggestions since i was born out of them only.
Welcome to Steemit Land! Great to see you continuing to post more often now!
Welcome to Steemit @steemwatcher!
I wish you much success and hope you find Steemit to be as rewarding and informative as I have.
Yes, I love Crpto too! Lots of detailed analysis on my blog along with some predictions
Here are some links you might find useful.
Your stats on SteemNow
Your stats on SteemWorld
Your stats on SteemD
How to use Minnow Booster
How does Steemit actually work?
Introbot is hosted and managed with donations from @byColeman to help make your journey on Steemit truly rewarding. Your feedback is always welcome so that we may improve this welcome message.
Oh yea, I have upvoted you and followed you. Many blessings from @introbot & @bycoleman
Welcome to Steemit! Glad to see some new faces!
Hello Cheetah 2.0, hehe, I'm Oatmeal Joey Arnold, and I agree that communism sucks, but what does that mean? I love capitalism, but what does that mean? What does freedom mean? Freedom means the freedom to do what one wants.
If I want to post something stupid, please give me the freedom to do so. And likewise, if people want to reward me with more than $20 for it, that is their freedom or problem or whatever they want to call it. Your decision to declare a post as too sucky may be too subjective perhaps. It is true that what you are doing and trying to do can be more good than bad. Maybe.
Likewise, bots can be more good than bad. Can we get away from artificial intelligence (AI)? We may not be against centralized banking being of the banking aspect of it but because, moreover, because of the centralized focus which stems from Rothschild, Rockefeller, Soros, Bill Gates, China, the NWO, and more. Blockchain people are trying to take over AI in the same way we took over the Internet these past 2 decades which was not supposed to happen. Cable and the Internet and specifically Facebook was designed partly through the CIA and others as a way to control people and more. So, we are seeking to take control of technology, tools, to get on top of it, to turn bad things into good things.
So, at least blockchain networks has maybe more transparency in the algorithms and in the rules and systems as opposed to Facebook, YouTube, Twitter, etc. And maybe we can at least try our best to use bots like we use lights at a party. For example, if my party has a bunch of cool lights, will you complain if you only have one light? Say for pretend that I was the DJ at my party and I spent money to buy disco lights and everything. And people come and we dance all night. Is that fair or not fair? Good question. It all comes down to your definitions of capitalism and communism, socialism, corporatism, monopolism, plutocracy, oligarchy control, technocracy, etc. I say, the bots are like the lights. They are tools and we can at least be in control of the bots unlike before when the world banks were maybe more in control of the Federal Reserve and everything as they still are. I do like your name, Steem Watcher. I think it is ok if people, even whales, sharks, etc, vote each other up. That is capitalism. I spend my money and vote how I want to and that may not be fair but freedom is not able what is fair. Socialism allegedly seeks to make things fair to redistribute wealth as Obama would say like what the South African President recently said concerning farms. I love freedom. I love Braveheart.
Thanks for reading through the post and giving your detailed insight,the first two comments were already spam, the guys did not even read what i was saying in the first place. they just upvoted and left an automated comment.
Now coming to the discussion i would like to state that i am an objectivist and reason is my guiding light. i have no problem if someone posts stupid things, i have problem when those stupid things are rewarded with a shitload of money and that stupid work gets advertised in trending section.
Communism is the kind of system where people compete for being lousy. i used communism word because similarly in our case, if people are earning thousands of dollars for posting shit then why the new users on steemit or even the existing one will want to create anything apart from shitposts like that.
Coming to your next point, i think conspiracy theories that you pointed as well as the control thing is merely an illusion whether on our part or government's part. governments and centralization have not fallen from sky, it is us who brought them upon ourselves, democracy was also thought of as giving power to the people but see for yourself how we did with that. you complaining about centralization in democracy already says a lot how well that system has worked.
so nothing is good or bad, good or bad is something we decide to make of it. i do not agree with perceiving AI or any new technology as threat and that blockchain people are trying to overtake AI, on the contrary i think a collaboration between both these two is imminent in future, that will be good or bad based how we decide to use it.
I agree with having lights does no harm and you can even add some fireworks, but if you decide to add a real bomb in your celebration after getting really high, then that might be too much, and i think i deserve to complain before dying from the bomb.
Further i would like to point that votes are not like disco lights at all, they were not meant to be sold and should never be. the vote value is counted as personal that is my issue.
only the curation money that a voter or SP Holder receives is his right and nothing more according to the design of steemit. thinking that having larger vote value entitles you a payout for voting is similar to a politician asking for bribe every time he decides to do some public service, and he will vote on any proposal in parliament provided he has been paid for voting.
The more you treat votes as disco lights, more you are going to project steemit as a system which has already been gamed by its users and days will be near when the dollars being showed up on posts mean no value, no matter how many digits get printed there.
finally i will say that you are free to swing you stick on the road with all your freedom but only to the point where someones nose starts.
People are always going to make money off stupid stuff. You can try your best to try to stop them from making money for stuff that you may disagree with or things that may or may not be worth any or some or a lot of money. But how do you even determine what is more valuable and what is less valuable? That debate can take us down the path of subjectivity, relativity, progressive liberal democratic leftism and so on and so forth. Like I said before, you can try to minimize the alleged spam and crap. But is that the kind of life you want to have? Do you want to focus on being a Steem cop so to speak or would it be better to focus on the posts you do like? You can and I do not totally disagree because I kind of want to do what you do here.
I agree and I may not like some or most of what trends.
The trending posts may or may not encourage newbies to shit out junk as well, to some extent, but that is life is it not and that is what freedoms and choices is all about? How many are encouraged to play basketball all day each day for years and years and maybe too often and too much on the hope they can be in the NBA someday? That is one example. There are many examples.
Your Worst Post Badge can be rewarded to Nothing Burger Trending Posts and people may be encouraged to see that they shouldn't upvote those posts perhaps and some people will agree with you with the badges you give them or whatever you want to call them or whatever you may do and do do perhaps. So, I am not totally against what you do and try to do. I am just questioning the foundation to it and it can work maybe to some extent. It can be tough to do it depending on how you do it but it could catch on and go more viral as more people follow you to create Nothing Burger Badges or Shift Holes.
Where and how do you draw the line between what is personal or not? In capitalism, in business, you make money and you do whatever you can maybe to make money at work through services and through goods, products, etc, and that may or may not include bots it seems. Bots are part of that economical system, right? If bots are part of that, then does that make it personal or too personal? And does it matter if it is personal or not? The voting is a money thing. And money may or may not be personal but does that matter? We find ways to make money. Does that mean we deserve the money? Who decides who deserves how much money? Do I decide how much you deserve? Do you decide how much money I can get or cannot get? All of this can and might become too subjective and relative through opinions and perspectives of our views on values and principles. People believe and value things differently and therefore see some things as more valuable and other things as less valuable. Look at the auctions. Look at the antique Road Shows. People can spend thousands of dollars on paintings and old spoons and old coins and all kinds of things. If I had an original Star Wars item from 1977 or around that time and somebody buys that item for $8,000 USD, you might want to give me a Stupid Badge maybe and you could say I do not serve thousands of dollars for one small item. Like maybe a metal Star Wars lunch box from the 1970's or something assuming there were some. And assuming you are not a big fan of Star Wars. But this is just an example of how something could be considered maybe priceless as a masterpiece or maybe not as art and beauty is in the eye of the beholder.
I believe in making a lot of money even on the top of other people. And that can appear to be scary and ugly and not fair. There might be a difference between taking bribes and asking for bribes. And it also may depend on how you define the word "Bribe" as well. I say, let it be. Each person is responsible for who they may or may not vote for. And if a thousand people vote for a Nothing Burger Post to make the payout $800 USD for example, then maybe it is the fault of each voter, each upvoter, rather than the fault of the Original Poster (OP), the poster, the author, the writer, the content creator. Yeah, maybe the creator sucks too but each user has some voting power and has the right to waste and to even vote up themselves as well. And yeah, people can vote up crap. That is what people do. They have the right to do that but can be wrong in it. I agree that they might be wrong in doing so but it is part of life and the pursuit of happiness and humans are lost in depravity as well. And George Soros is a scary man.
http://DrudgeReport.com
thanks joe for engaging with me, i gave a lot of thought to your points.
And To some extant i agree with what you are saying about judging people, that is the point that ii did not consider. thanks for helping me sort out a few things.
awesome
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