Downvoting is a big topic since newsteem.
Some are very opposed to the whole concept, but most understand why it is a necessity on a decentralized platform without another option to regulate rewards.
Taken from reddit, no source found
The original STEEM whitepaper states on page 12:
Through the addition of negative voting it is possible for many smaller stakeholders to nullify
the voting power of collusive groups or large, defecting stakeholders.
[...]
The use of negative voting to keep people from abusing the system leverages the crab mentality that many
people have when it is perceived that one individual is profiting at the expense of everyone else. While crab
mentality normally refers to short-sighted people keeping good people down, it is also what allows good
people to keep bad people down.
Screencap from SouthPark
Unfortunately, most of the smaller crabs leave the responsibility to whale accounts. The notion "but what can I do, I'm just a small fish", which is so common in the politics of the outside world, seems to be very prevalent in this community too.
This thinking is really destructive. Let me give you a perspective: the @curangel project has upvoted nearly 2000 accounts during the last month. Even if each of those had a vote of only 1 cent, that would give them enough power to collectively counter the actions of the (probably) biggest abuser on here - @haejin (who switched from self-upvoting to downvoting people who care and upvoting other shitposts).
Most certainly the average power is higher than that, and you are not alone. Many whales stand by your side, and if the whole community works together the free downvotes alone would be enough to drown abusers.
Of course retaliation is a reality, and many refrain from taking action because of this. But with this attitude, you only push those doing the work in the focus. We at curangel are kind of getting used to all our posts being greyed out because of revenge downvotes by now. There were some attempts by bigger stakeholders to recover them, but they seemingly got tired a lot faster than the retaliators.
But as a community, we have the possibility to stop them from targeting individuals. If hundreds of minnows band together, there is just no way all of them can be targeted for revenge. You may receive a hit once in a while, but keeping out of it completely allows the retaliators to focus on a few good people like @adetorrent. Luckily he and others don't worry about it too much for now, but for how long will they stand when most of their posts get hidden on a constant basis? If everyone keeps out of the fight, and the abusers are successful, you might sooner or later be alone with them on the platform (exaggeration intended).
This is a call to arms. The EIP is based on the assumption that people care about this community, and that we all want rewards going to those who do. Self- or circle voters do nothing but extract value, and it's the job of all engaged stakeholders to stop them. With power comes responsibility - smaller SP may mean less of it, but it's still important to use it!
Let's get together and clean this place up. As it was said before - don't be afraid, they can't downvote everyone!
If you need inspiration, someone created the following infographic after analyzing one of the, or maybe even the biggest circle jerks to date. Our delegators currently focus mostly on the circle using the #steemschools tag, which is connected to this one too (basically consisting of @dobartim shown below and his brother @flysky). Steemworld is a great resource to check the behaviour of individual accounts. If you find someone else constantly rewarding himself or his circle and only marginally spreading the value, add them to the comments or post them with the #antiabuse tag.
For those who are not so active, there's also several (1, 2, 3) automation tools to trail downvotes of other users (for example @curangel ;) ).
// UPDATE: see the latest post on @pharesim's blog for a step-by-step tutorial for the official @curangel trail on steemauto!
creator unknown
I have to admit that I also withdrew from flagging abusive whales due to fear of revenge downvotes until now.
However, I have had this discussion at few times the last days and this post was the last bit of motivation it needed.
Starting in approximately 30 seconds, I will join the flagging against above accounts, even though it probably might mean that i won’t be making much post rewards in the future. Fortunately, I am not dependent on them anyways!
Happy flagging :)
I have been on the @steemflagrewards trail for some time and can not say that since then I have been getting a lot of high flags. And if it happens then at some point, I will not care and I will not change my attitude.
On the flipside, the collective upvote mana of the community is more than enough to rally above retaliatory downvotes when they come. That support has been getting better and better.
I usually wait for my tiny downvote until some big whales put their weight in:)
I have added myself to your SteemAuto downvote trail. I assume this will result in retaliation against me and will lead to the elimination of my small post rewards. Hopefully you don't get me in too much trouble.
Anyway, there's another 100K SP added to your downvote strength.
I started downvoting @dobartim and @flysky (alt @xboxguru and @hamletnow) for circle voting and for trying to extract the value from other accounts.
Ofc, they started to downvote me just because I started to downvote them. They are trying to scare me lololololo #wontwork
I wish more small accounts would be braver to counter the abuse on the blockchain.
We all want steem and its price to go up. Well, here's a secret nobody told you ever:
Act like it!
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It is sad that some of the big accounts choose to just help themselves when they could do so much good for the Steem platform in general. If smaller accounts are not getting rewards for good content then they will leave and that harms the Steem price so we all lose. With the change in rewards there is more benefit from good curation.
The risk of retaliation will put many off downvoting, but there are plenty of smaller accounts that misuse (better term than abuse?) the platform. I tend to go after those and leave the bigger ones to the whales and orcas. I have been downvoted by Mr H before, but the community helped me out.
Downvoting is not violence or stealing. It is a form of curation as valid as upvoting to balance out the rewards which are supposed to be given by the community, not bots. Big self-votes are also selfish.
It is good to see initiatives like @curangel making things better.
Well I stumbled across this post after just coming from a post from the user you mentioned (@slowwalker).
For me, I didn't know any of the above and I'm not going to get involved with that part of the discussion as I'm most likely throwing my own account under the bus if I did (probably already have due to using the reward distribution tools available to me).
However, I take each post I open on trending as a "case by case" basis without factoring in any history or their affiliation with others and read through each of them using my own internal standards (based on 18 months of creating and curating) of what I think is over (or under) rewarded and use the rewards distribution tool how I believe it should be used.
Now, I've been in a big debate with a user called @xpilar this weekend and other users who have commented on that post about leaving comments on posts that I have downvoted. I used to comment but didn't for the last 4 downvotes I gave for one reason or another so I went back and commented my reasoning and will continue to do so in future but also trying to add constructive feedback on how I'd like to see betterment in that person's post.
I did that for slowwalker this morning because he posts travel posts, something that are close to my heart, and I want travel posts to feature more on trending but I'd like to see more from him and offered my feedback to include a map, directions on getting there, more research about aspects of the post so we can really immerse ourselves as he's frequenting the trending feed and I want to encourage more travelers to the platform as we'd ALL grow.
Long and short of it, don't just downvote and run away, offer constructive advice as to why you downvote and perhaps educate on what the rewards pool is or even have an adult discussion around it because this is definitely not like your conventional social media where the reaction buttons have no financial consequence.
Obviously, plagiarism, spam and other things like that are different matters but I'm talking about genuinely trying to help using the downvote tools but it does feel like maybe I'm an exception to the rule around using the downvotes in this way.
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When you have a look at the infographic at the bottom, or directly at his voting pattern on steemworld or steemreports, you will see the issue, and why "constructive criticism" won't help.
Most of his (daily!) high rewards come from all the same people, who he votes in return. This kind of behaviour is commonly called "circle jerking", or in the whitepaper "collusive groups".
They usually justify how they act with "everything they've done for steem", and that it's their stake so they are entitled to a certain amount of returns over the interest on SP and the curation rewards which are designed to be for them. It completely destroys the Proof of Brain idea this platform is built on, and if everyone behaved the same there would be even less going to small and new content creators. While downvotes probably won't make them stop and change towards a more community oriented approach (it did for some, but a lot are very resilient), at least it returns parts of their self-assigned rewards back to the pool from where they will be distributed to others.
What exactly have they done for Steem anyways? I can't name one thing positive just from looking at the names.
If it's "propping" up prices, well, that's almost nothing. I'd rather them sell off and let other people take the reign of cheap SP to really make this place into something.
Hi @enforcer48
do they really say that?
Sees a name I support here, yes I have been supporting that person for years.
He has a great blog with good info on his travel letters
and I like to see the pictures and read about them.
He also supports me back and why can't we.
I want to ask myself should I not give support because he earns a lot. That I am in a ring that only supports those who support me. Then you are thoroughly wrong. Then you have to check me well over the last 3 years to see all my upvotes
Regards @xpilar
No idea. Just reading it here. That’s why it rubs me the wrong way.
ok, thanks @enforcer48
What you call support is nothing but a "I vote you, you vote me deal". That's not beneficial to the platform itself, and so me and others use our stake to make it less profitable for you.
Thank's for your feedback @pharesim
And I thank you for the time you supported my posts before
They believe that buying STEEM and supporting their friends who also bought STEEM is what they have done to help. I tried constructive criticism too.. they truly feel entitled to the rewards and there is no changing their mind.
Yeah, just a bunch of bad amateur investors who have no idea how to cut losses.
I almost want STEEM to fail, so they can feel the foolery of their shitty actions.
Its funny with the big bad bidbots out of the way we can see how many of our “investors” have been abusing just as bad. Pretty sad for a dpos platform to have so many large stakeholders who are doing negative things for the ecosystem. Sure does make me question the dpos concept 😄
But things are improving and it takes time to find a balance.. maybe they will see the big picture eventually.
In the past many of these people were pretty involved in user retention efforts. However most have gotten jaded.
The steemreports link doesn't work for me. Is the URL wrong?
Oh yes, thanks for the notice. It's .com - corrected.
The blockchain rewards large stakeholders with the ability to draw extra rewards from the pool because when they bought in it either boosted or secured Steem's overall market value, not only that, by HODLing Steem (or keeping it powered-up) it creates a sort of artificial scarcity and thus prevents steem from easily flowing to the market which keeps prices stable and prevents market manipulation.
Investing in Steem vs. letting the money sit in a bank and collecting and APY is a risk as the market is very volatile. You're not going to get an equivalent APY on Steem. Based on Steem's rate-limited voting, it allows for stakeholders to draw only so much before the rate-limited abuse mechanism prevents overdrawing from the pool.
But, if you're going to disregard the merit of a stakeholder's stake by attacking the way they choose to draw rewards from the pool, your attacking the very foundation of why they may have invested in the first place. This action of downvoting has great potential to cause them to reconsider not only the HODL but also their investment.
You might think what they're doing is greedy, but the blockchain sets the stage for this behavior by giving larger stakeholders bigger votes. Truth is, even the "greedy folks" provided a service when they bought into Steem, and they continue to provide a service by staying powered-up.
Downvote these folks into oblivion, and they may oblige by selling to the market. Other investors looking from the outside in will take notice, and then you'll run into a real problem; Whose left willing to buy, and why? Show me an investor who wants to pay to be a crab in a bucket, and I'll show you 1000 more who want to be the crab who gets out of the bucket. Steem is already very niche as is, and we're lucky we have the investors that we do. Make it less accommodating to stakeholders, and fewer will invest.
P.S. Proof of brain cannot exist in a realm with unequal stake. What you have in reality is proof of wallet.
The blockchain also gives stakeholders the ability to redistribute rewards using downvotes. If someone acts only in their own interest, and not that of the other stakeholders, we can use our stake to redistribute the rewards.
Everything they take out isn't available for others, who could become the hodlers of tomorrow.
What you say is true from a technical perspective. What disturbs me is that STINC added reward disputes to the GUI after they realized they couldn’t do anything about the misuse of the flag tool. It was kind of a catch-all reason which allowed them to wash their hands of abuse of the tool. Then, recently, there is this push to normalize the use of flags by changing the GUI again, calling them downvotes and encouraging a culture of negative curation.
This type of negative curation doesn’t exist anywhere in the real world outside of socialist/communist hellholes, and it’s extremely odd behavior to attach to something financial. The more I think about it, the nebulous language in the whitepaper which encourages crabs in a bucket mentality but also discourages it in the same breath; This entire machination seems like a pretty twisted and sick social psychology experiment, and we’re the rats in the cage or the crabs in a bucket if you will.
If you want real proof of brain, you’re going to have to equalize everyone’s vote by socializing the voting power, and I don’t think you’d want that because then you’d be screwed out of the value of your fairly large stake. I mean, you can’t have it both ways; you can’t have proof of brain and wallet disparity at the same time. Let’s say, for example, you hadn’t delegated most of your stake, and you have a 100% VP at 7.71. As far as I’m concerned, this is fine. I don’t know how you came about your SP, and to be quite frank, its none of my business. I have to respect your large stake and what you do with it, but when you do something harmful to me or someone else, that’s where things start to get murky.
The machine of the blockchain is amoral, and it pits people against each other. It didn’t start that way on the GUI level, and I think when investors realize what it’s become, they’re not going to want to invest anymore. There’s a reason why socialism and communism fail every time, and it’s because people start cannibalizing each other, this is both figurative and literal in the real world. How this is represented on the blockchain is with downvoting.
I like how Steem draws creativity out of people, this aspect is very cool. The NewSteem Culture, however, is drawing negativity and envy out of people. The shift which is promoted and pushed from the top down is disgusting. It doesn’t work in the real world, and it will not work in the cyber world. People should have the opportunity to be generous with their stake, but it shouldn’t be some kind of mandate. When you try to coerce investors to behave in a certain way, nobody will want to invest. Then, all you have left is a worthless token that fails to re-launch.
I think what you'll end up learning is that the blockchain is a safe place to prove yet again that socialism fails every single time. Imagine if we had these nebulous rules which seemingly contradict each other in real life. Sure, you can go out to start a business and do business things, become successful, yadda, yadda, yadda. But if somebody doesn't like what you're doing or becomes envious of you, they can steal your shit.
The reason this doesn't work in the real world is that people end up killing each other. Fortunately, none of this will happen in the blockchain world, but I think you will see this business model fail, and how much proof do people need that this communist utopia can and will never exist. Encouraging a culture of sharing, value exchange, content curation, and appreciation is one thing. But this klepto culture of downvoting and the like, that'll be the end of Steem.
Content curators and investors alike will read the writing on the wall, and they'll get out while the getting is good. Then all you'll have left is a bunch of ne'er-do-well reward poolice officers/witnesses that'll continue to run the blockchain at a net loss as they bicker endlessly about the inflation pool as they fight over Steem that's only worth a fraction of a cent. That's your HF21 future in a nutshell.
Negative curation is part of the whitepaper, and it's even quoted in this post. Steemit didn't have to add anything later, and it surely doesn't need to be justified.
Downvotes were called downvotes before they were flags, that was renamed because they were used for disagreement with opinions. Turned out flags was a bit too harsh, thus it was reverted again. If you tell history, make sure you know all of it.
Constant self upvoting is harmful to everyone else, as the pool is shared between all users. Downvotes are not harmful, as they don't take anything away, they just give it back to the pool to be distributed differently.
By what you write, you seem to be in favour of a pure PoS model. Why would we need content then? There's hundreds of coins where you get your share of the inflation based on your stake.
Proof of brain can work to a certain degree. If the community makes it so. If not, we can save a lot of overhead and just ditch the content and rewards.
That'd surely help with attracting more people, look how all the PoS coins are thriving, especially those with a high inflation! /s
(ps screw autocorrect)
Yes, you are correct, this is why I said:
Page 14 of 32 starting at the VOTING ABUSE header directly contradicts page 15 of 32 which in summary says:
Pages 14 through 15 and the beginning of page 16 are written in such a way where the language can be interpreted in two different ways. One which highlights negative curation and the other which says; Eliminating "abuse" is not possible. So what you end up with is almost a psychological optical illusion where you see either a young woman or an old witch, and so you're given a choice. You can do normal human behavior, live and let live and accept the fact that eliminating abuse is not possible and shouldn't be the goal. Or you can act like a crustation whose about to be boiled alive and try and make sure that everyone goes down with you.
Steem's a pretty impressive weird fucking thing, whatever it is. But I'll be damned if I'm going to adjust my behavior to act accordingly to an analogy that is historically used to illustrate one of the most negative traits in human psychology, and crustaceans alike, that being crab mentality. Just imagine, this weird and strange new invention which combines social media with blockchain tech has convinced you that for the greater good of itself, you should act like a desperate creature whose about to be boiled alive and ensure that harm comes to others. That is some trick, and it's probably on a par with what cordyceps fungi does to ants, or what the ministry of love did to Winston Smith.
If steem is the bucket and we are the crabs, and people are trying to recoup what they lost in what may arguably be at this point considered a shit coin. Why not just let them do what they need to do? Not everyone is going to come here for the same reasons. Maybe I do lean a little towards proof of stake, but steem allocates power based on stake, but I can't imagine that anyone bought in just for the power to hold others down. Can you? So there is a proof of stake element baked into this, let's call it power of stake. You can be a Mother Teresa or a Hitler with your stake power, or a schizophrenic cross between the two. One thing is for certain.
You seem to be doing this because people aren't subscribing to proof of brain "as they should be," but we've just determined that proof of brain is impossible. In a world of sock puppets and stake disparity, proof of wallet remains king. I think they need to rewrite the whole whitepaper, or possibly rewrite the code into something that's a little bit more harmonious.
Ah an upvote ring full of whales...? Well I'm fucked for getting involved then 🤣🤣🤣
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You're fucked if you don't too... maybe we all are. :)
Haha either way, fucked 😂
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Building connections with existing users doesn't make the platform thrive. For me the key is to look out for new or unrecognized talents.
Hehe, happy to hear that. I agree, of course engagement is an important factor for retention too!
For (semi-)professional creators, a better distribution of rewards is more important though.
And I partly agree with your previous comment too. Simply dropping by to give a flag isn't productive in most cases. Those who self-reward all the time know what they're doing though, there's not much to be done in a productive way. Writing a comment to explain, or at least being willing to discuss later, is always nice either way.
Yes that's what I was trying to say but it took me a million more words 🤣
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I was wondering.. is buying steembasicincome shares..one day can be considered as buying votes to avoid self-vote?
Same old downvoters still doing that on my post, and I just ignored them because it's their habit and Im on their list 😂 but I don't think I will downvote those circle of jerks too... I wish the orcas or whales would do that for me
It requires a combined effort of all the community members. You are a shareholder too, don't give all the responsibility to others. That's exactly what this post was about.
The retaliate attitude really scarry for minnows like me, but I don't mind to join any efforts to downvote posts for the reasons that shows up anytime I will raisr my flag, thank you for your encouraging words.
It's only scary as long as all minnows try to hide :) When you show up together, there's nothing they can do!
And now you make me wonder @pharesim.. do you know trusted downvote curation trail that I can follow? Darn it.. I just checked on @curangel.. the downvotes were crazy!
We attract a lot of heat, yes. I wouldn't recommend small users to join our trail for now, as it's only a few users on there and we target a lot of people who retaliate, and they might go after you to scare you off.
Have a look at @howo maybe, he's involved with older trails that have quite a few followers already. You want to find something where you practically disappear in the group.
Dissapear in a group 😃😂 that's really my style. But I will wait for a little longer to grow up better and became a quite tough minnow to join forces😊 for now, I'd better join a curation trail to counter the dowmvotes first.
First of all, thanks for the love and counter upvotes from everyone that came over from this article.
Secondly, yeah, Haejin/Ranchorelaxo has decided to be a bit of a toddler with his very large Steem Power. He could be spending the same amount of effort (or even less) to actually improve the platform for himself and everyone. Obviously he can do whatever he wants with his SP, it's his, but I believe we all have something to lose if the Steem fails.
Like you mentioned, I'm not too bothered by the downvotes - I expected them. Luckily I still do quite well with curation rewards, which haejin can't really do much about at the moment, unless he tries to flag everyone to zero, which is technically impossible. The hope is that one day he will just get bored and go away. Or better still, grow up and be the adult he pretends to be on his website haejin.com. He's supposed to be some kind of financial coach. Who will take advise from someone like this?
I love Steem and I'm here for the super long run! Steem on!
SFR has you covered from time to time.
It is about time this circle starts being pushed a little.
Those retaliatory downvotes are very childish and I'm now getting my own share of them from dobartim and cryptopassion. Have been through a lot worse though with haejin, so this has little effect on me.
This type of behavior is unfortunate, but it reveals a lot about the type of characters that engage in such actions, and it's only going to be harmful for themselves in the long run. They are stuck in #oldsteem. Evolve or die.
This post has the blessing of the #steempope.
On an unrelated note, that crab tank photo looks like an idea I need to steal for Warhammer 40K.
Blessings to you.
One of these days, we need to negotiate you selling that copycat account to me.
Possibly. Would require me to power down all my LEO there before that happens.
We both know who else is big-time into LEO, I think. Offer to sell for teh lulz.
If you are serious about it, hit me up on Discord.
I’ll need about one month to power down those LEO. Lol
If it's your sock puppet, I am only marginally serious. I don't even use my @goodguygreg alt account for anything at the moment. Maybe I should revive it and do something cool in line with #newsteem.
As nice as it all sounds, this banding together system, I feel it doesn't work out mathematically effective at all.
If 500 users can counter the effects of one big user, then we need 5,000 users to counter merely 10.
50,000 users all consistently banding together and dedicating themselves to a cause against merely 100 bad apples.
A real-world example would be like expecting a country's people to overturn its evil government, but it turns out there's actually a line of 50 evil governments in cahoots with each other, each as powerful as the last. There's only so much the population can, and is willing to, do.
If 'The EIP is based on the assumption that people care about this community ', then I fear it was a terrible assumption to assume, and makes an ass out of u and me.
As for alternatives... I dunno
It's like the lemmings misconception. lol
I agree with you on this one
Seems you can never get a away from people who "game the system". Greed, that's all it is. I agree, the minnows need to stick together.
Keeping my eye on those you listed. Thanks for the info.
Крутой пост. Сразу видно автор постарался) кросс давай еще больше крутых постов
Do they get any downvotes?
No one wants to cast the first stone there:)
They just did :)
Many have been downvoting these groups for months, as well as countering the accounts mentioned that have been getting heat from haejin. So this is definitely something many have been trying to combat for a bit.
In order to beat the biggest abusers the community has to negate what they do.. once powerless there will be nothing to entertain them.
@nikv, thank you for bringing my attention to this.
👌
Why are you down voting my posts? Please tell me so I understand. I don't see any reason why you would do this?
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The downvoted post is a 100% copy and paste of another post of yours from a bit more than a year ago.
https://steemit.com/food/@michaeljn/bokkeveld-rooibos-tea-a-uniquely-south-african-tea
https://steemit.com/food/@michaeljn/bokkeveld-rooibos-tea-healthy-option
I know that. There is no rule against reposting your own post. This a a refresh as our business needed some more exposure so I reposted my own original post. As far as I know the rules state that you can repost?
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There are no official "rules" at all.
Reposting old content is frowned upon by many, and can be considered as spam. If someone decides that you shouldn't be rewarded for the exact same content multiple times there's also no rule that forbids a downvote ;-)
No problem. I understand it is a matter of opinion. I hardly ever do that and usually add updates if I do. But i guess it is everyone's prerogative to decide. Thanks for response.
Besides it being a matter of opinion, duplicate content is also not treated well by search engines. For your own sake (and for the ranking of steem as well) it would be better to come up with something new when you decide it's time to promote your business the next time.
Agreed. Have added a paragraph at the top to change it a bit. Appreciate your feedback.
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For reposting older posts you could use the #showcase-sunday tag - that's made for such cases. Everyone will know it's not a new post but one the author thinks is still important and of use to the community.
Thank you. Will definately bare that in mind if I ever do repost something. Appreciate your advice.
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@curangel it is fine. No problem for downvote I understand it is your prerogative and accept your opinion. I did add a preamble update to the post so it is not exactly the same. All good. I do intend posting some more about Bokkeveld Tea soon and will make sure it is totally different to anything previously posted.
Have a good Sunday.
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#abuse @steemflagrewards
Hmm, seems like a good idea. But how do we deal with the few users I've seen that seem to have a low value account used only for down voting others? They don't have any other posts or valid participation, just a lot of downvoting of others, including what I would normally consider to be good quality posts. Is there any one monitoring for this or kicking those abusers out of the system? Even as an experienced user, I find this disturbing. I can imagine many new minnows being very discouraged by these people.
Due to the low value of those there's no need to do anything. It would be nice if @steemit removed their delegations at least, but they don't do any significant damage. New users will have to learn that downvotes are part of the system, and they don't matter when it's only single ones with no SP behind them.
When one of the largest stake holders, @steem begins to care about the negative effects of individual using the 15 delegated steem to do nothing but down vote then perhaps people in the smaller ranks will take notice and join the effort to try and negate some of the bad behavior on the Steem block Chain. Right now why should any small account that can be sent to a zero reputation participate in trying to clean the Steem Block Chain when the largest delegate refuses to take action against any of these what larger accounts call ankle biters accounts?
The EIP was a valuable piece of work, unfortunately @steem account does not (apparently) believe in the process, if so they would remove the delegations from all the accounts that have a history of doing nothing on the steem block chain other than their initial post and then 10 days later starting to do random down votes primarily to smaller accounts. That is why I will not be doing any down voting. When the situation changes, then maybe my attitude will change with the situation.
Those 15 STEEM accounts are the worst excuse I've seen so far to not go after the big bad actors. They practically don't hurt anyone, except maybe a small sting to the ego. Their downvote has a value of ~0.0001$, that's not noticeable even if you get multiple downvotes from accounts like that.
I agree that steemit should undelegate them, but using that as a reason to let large scale abuse happen doesn't have any logic.
I understand the illogical side of it, but the reality side is they do have an impact on the receiver, you can see this by looking at the replies tab of any of those 15 Delegated SP accounts, and see the anger, frustration, and in-comprehension of the WHY.
If the EIP HF included a requirement for a comment, even an automated one attributed to the down voting account, then the logic would be, Okay I can down vote the idiot accounts, so I can now down vote the abusive accounts.
With the delegations removed, and then people being able to down vote those accounts should they continue, their RC's would end up so low that they would only be able to down vote 3 times, the two free down votes, and then the one down vote they have RC's for.
How many of those Bad Actors you mentioned have a lot of other accounts that can down vote in retaliation? I know for a fact that
@berniesanders has at minimum 52 other accounts he can send after anyone he so chooses. I am sure he is not the only one with a lot of multiple accounts. I have Multiple accounts, well two any ways.I have been retaliated by an account not because of a down vote but because of a comment made, and those retaliatory down votes did have an impact on the rewards of some of my few post. I did not resort to down voting in kind to him, and until the down vote system is fixed, (Comment Required in my opinion), the bad actors will only receive down votes from me for blatant plagiarism, that is the only reason I have down voted any account and will continue to be the only reason.
Bid-bots were allowed despite the white paper, laziness was allowed to run rampant, and two months is not going to resolve it. I have already seen several post that are talking about curtailing the down vote of bid botted post, so logic would deem that to begin down the chosen path of the current flag activity is committing steemicide.
Get over it. Flags are not a big deal. You aren't losing anything. Especially from these little annoyance accounts. Hell their voting mana is all at like 8% so their votes do even less than the nothing they could at full power.
I get flagged by the nothing accounts all the time. They are able to take 0 rewards away.
I myself have nothing to "Get Over". If you read my comment you would understand that. I only down vote Blatant Plagiarism. I do not give a shit about how people vote with their stake. *Please note the words their stake. delegated stake is not theirs. It belongs to the person that delegated the Steem Power to them. So you see I understand the system and the down vote. You have a reputation of 71 and a lot of steem power more than half of which you invested.
No where in my comments have I complained about receiving down votes. I stated that they do no significant damage to me. Pharesim did not see my logic in not getting involved in the issue of the day about down voting.
So you see I have nothing to Get over. Resource Credits came into being to prevent Spam, Free down votes came into being to stop bad actors on Steem Block Chain, there is no method to stop the bad actors that make no comments, have no post and that action can not be taken against.
Do you tell people that have been down voted by @haejin and @ranchorelaxo to "Just get over it" flags are not a big deal after all. I am sure some of those small new Reputation accounts that make their first post and are immediately down voted by two or three of those other 25-30 REP accounts have an entirely different opinion about @steem aiding and abetting trollish activity accounts.
@pharesim: "Here are no rules" as you stated in an above comment.
So if there are no rules, there is no need to use the term "no excuse to not go after bad actors".
Nobody here needs either an excuse or argument for this or that behavior. It's just tastes and whims and everyone can act as they wish. That's what you are basically saying - So I see your fight as a random preference. Not being supported by facts. Your rule is that your rule counts. Your targeted bad guys see that in the same crooked logic.
If you had read the whitepaper, which is even linked in the post, or simply understood the quote from it which is also up there, you would know what it's about. Not about rules, but making the system work as it was intended to.
I don't share this human image, which gives them a crab mentality. As far as you want to fit into this image of man and place yourself under it, you are at liberty to do so. The White Paper is just a collection of assumptions about people, which you can of course confirm if you want. I don't.
No need to confirm again that you didn't understand :D
Ever heard of fables?
"a succinct fictional story, in prose or verse, that features animals, legendary creatures, plants, inanimate objects, or forces of nature that are anthropomorphized, and that illustrates or leads to a particular moral lesson."
The crab is used as an example how many can keep something in order...ah, forget it, it's not worth trying to explain to you.
What is it with you that you cannot accept a different view on things?
You have the very annoying attitude telling me that I don't understand instead of asking me how I have understood or read your post. Assumption, no question. I have read the post and also saw the quote. I just don't share the same perspective on it. You don't have to "make me understand".
You addressed your post to small accounts. I am a small account.
You refer to the guidelines or whatever you prefer to call it but then you say "there are no rules". I see a contradiction and that is what I did, to point it out to you. No rules, no excuses needed on action or inaction.
Fables leave room for reflection and DIFFERENT interpretations as an outcome or consequence.
Besides, the same white paper also says:
10.88$ has been spent to promote this content using Steemium thanks to @transisto
Learn more here!
I really wish I could use my downvote power for the greater good but having to curate downvotes as well as upvotes manually can be very time consuming. I will happily hand the authority of casting my downvotes to those who are more knowledgeable about at this than I but will need to do some research first. I know the abusers wont give a crap about my tiny downvote but I agree with you fully. Death by a thousands cuts has the same effect as one swoop of a sword.
Well sheesh! how do I find out why I'm targeted by downvote bots and how do I get off of their radar? My last two posts before today were downvoted heavily by bots for no apparent reason to me. I invest in the platform and I invest in my work but now I don't want to invest any further money into the platform if downvote bots are just going to swarm my posts and downvote my hard work. WTF!?.
https://steemit.com/downvotes/@acidyo/why-you-may-be-getting-downvoted
WTH has happened to steemit?! This shit is becoming Lord of the Flies! Being on here for years off and on and this entire platform has become a warzone. So much for mass adoption, this place has become a massive circlejerk of egos and white knights and abusers. *face palm!
Just be glad you haven't been here for the months before the last HF gave us the tools to clean up a bit.
The process is ugly, the results look promising so far.
o
Including your original comment for transparency.
I understand retaliation votes hurt, but that they have to be expected was mentioned in the post. There are many people here helping to recover from retaliation who you could have contacted, or we would have done that for you if you gave us a notice.
Lieing about your intention to follow the trail,and at the same time throwing everyone else under the bus by apologizing to and upvoting the circle jerker, giving him confirmation that his scare tactics work, is just sad.
Unfortunately his tactic does work. Too much for me to take.
When it happened, I tried to get in touch with curangel guys but can't find any Discord or ways to communicate. The team should perhaps publish details on what protection can be provided.
But for now, this game is too dangerous to play. So I am out. Sorry for causing convenience to you.
The discord is linked in every curangel post except that one.
There's no blame for leaving the trail when the heat is too much for you. But you put a knife in the back of everyone else on the trail while doing so by switching to support him. I don't even find words for it.
Oh ya, found the Discord. Not going to defend myself, as this was a mistake, from the very beginning. In fact, I am not against Slowwalker as there are other worst circle jerkers compared to him. He is even on my followed list (and I don't follow many people) and I upvote him sometimes. So its not like I suddenly support him, his posts are already on my Feed.
I don't need your apology, if anyone would it's the other people on the trail.
Looking forward to your suggestions of the worse circles who extract >200$ per day with selfvotes and 1:1 trades. The one you suggested in your original comment is way smaller, besides involving him too.
Hard to find out which witness that is, I looked through a few accounts but couldn't find a very familiar name :D
This pie chart and the ones of the voted accounts definitely point to a circle that could use some "love". Interestingly slowwalker is in there too.
Bots with daily stats aren't per se useless (see the curangel one :P), but sure, some of them would be valid targets for sure.
In the end it's up to the curangel delegators to decide what to downvote. I keep out myself of that decision, because the weight is spread by stake and my delegation is so big that it wouldn't leave much for the power for the rest of the suggestions.
It's on the CN side. Mostly the Adm users.
#abuse @steemflagrewards
lol? xD
He thinks I'm @themarkymark and other accounts. I'm just tired of seeing his foolery.
Lol yeah, nevermind, I had a quick look and found myself reading trolls of incredible stupidity. Should've done that before I give him the attention he wanted.
I know you are... not think!
I just try to be as stupid as @enforcer48
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I don't know anyone else who used his upvotes only for himself and extracted 200$+ daily with spam posts over years. I added the probably because I of course don't see everything, but personally I don't know anyone worse.
You aren’t wrong. He was #1 “author” for the longest time by a wide margin.
Blindy there can only name Bernie and Marky.
#abuse @steemflagrewards
He's not worse. Just more visible.
Only looking at the last months before the EIP gives us several contenders for the first place. Bernie has a long history of supporting the community, and when haejin started his scheme he was one of the few trying to stop him. He was attacked a lot for that, and I assume at one point decided that it's not worth the trouble and he'll be better off doing the same. There were quite a few people who did work for the community before joining the farming scheme, as they didn't have the possibility to effectively fight it and didn't want to watch the abusers grow in power while they lose out for being honest.
I never supported this behaviour, and I'm happy to see that most of them, including bernie, changed their ways and support newsteem with honest curation and using their downvotes to go against abuse. Something that can't be said about haejin unfortunately.
Maybe freedom could take the first place too - his stake is higher than most of the others combined, and he solely uses it in ways that make profits for him, no community interaction at all.
It's hard to say for sure, and it depends a lot on perspective and what you actually consider abuse. Haejin doesn't see himself as an abuser at all pretty sure ;)