It's unfortunate that users like this are rampant throughout the platform now, as they represent the very dilemma that the Steem White Paper warned about:
"Steem is designed around a relatively simple concept: everyone’s meaningful contribution to the community should be recognized for the value it adds. When people are recognized for their meaningful contributions, they continue contributing and the community grows. Any imbalance in the give and take within a community is unsustainable. Eventually the givers grow tired of supporting the takers and disengage from the community."
Users are disengaging from contributing original content here. And this doesn't reflect the best of what the blockchain has to offer. Steemit has to clean itself up. It's an existential necessity at this point. And I commend Bernie and others with influence who recognize that and are trying to clean this place up.
People often say that Steem as a decentralized blockchain is separate from Steemit as a centralized platform. Yet it's hard to see the distinction when the very rewards distribution system of the blockchain itself is enabled and abused by this particular platform being its first, and quite frankly deficient, proof of concept.
Does punishing the victims of the scammers help toward this end? Punish the scammers, yes, but why target their followers?
I have seen the same being done to those that comment in support of the efforts being made by Bernie and others to clean the platform up.
The harsh truth is that Steemit has inadequately represented the potential of the Steem blockchain and in my opinion it is this very dilemma that impedes its broader adoption, thus constraining its valuation relative to other crypto projects which it had a multi-year head start on.
The evident flaws in the rewards distribution system must be addressed. Kicking this can down the road any further is inexcusable. After all, the daily inflation of Steem is inextricably tied to the posts being published on this site and what is evident is that instead of being distributed to high quality content producers, it's being disproportionately consumed by those that exploit its deficiencies in cahoots with some whales that favor short term gains versus the long term viability of the underlying blockchain.
Isn't the most effective way to counter the distribution problem to focus all of your voting power on hitting the posts by the scammers? If you create a war between Bernie and haejin supporters then that will drag more people into an expanding conflict. However, if you downvote the scammers and create quality content to increase your SP then the scammers slowly get squeezed out.
Respect 👌🏻
Very well said.
My first experience with the problem:
Shortly after I joined steemit I brought on board two friends of mine who are hardcore cryptocurrency traders.
When they saw day after day a steemit member(ozchartart) cut and pasting steem charts and adding a very very shallow technical analysis making hundreds of dollars off each post they both stopped participating in steemit.
Thanks for the feedback. After recognizing the riff raff that is rampant around here, I too stopped publishing original posts. I still engage in commentary because I know that there are still folks around here that want to see things improve.
Therein lies the glimmer of hope. Actions speak louder than words and it is a promising to see some of the users that care about the long term success of the blockchain calling for better governance. Because it's clearly not being done to the extent that it is needed by Steemit Inc or the Witnesses.