@papa-pepper asked me my opinion on this issue weeks ago when he wrote his post here. I have read through the whole post and all the comments a couple times. I have spent weeks pondering this very difficult question. I have wanted to write about it for a while now, but I have so much going on and it is a very complex/difficult and controversial topic which I generally stay away from, because if you piss off a whale around here it's a huge waste of time and resources.
I have a great amount of respect for @papa-pepper as he is one of the most committed Steemians on the platform and has contributed a vast amount of content of which is exemplary as a standard. I have also known him since I first got on Steemit way back in the day. He linked a photo of his beard on my introduction post haha.
Basically in summary of the post, @papa-pepper is asking the community what is to be done, especially the whales and Steemit Inc.
The consensus seems to be that there should be something done and that limiting the posting amount to 4 per day was a viable solution.
First, I want to address the haejin issue by itself, because in all honesty I have no desire to say what anyone should do, let alone a whole group of people. So in that sense I have no opinion as I truly believe in Freedom. With that being, said I do have a LOT of opinions about the varying layers of complexity in this matter.
It seems pretty obvious to me that Ranchorelaxo is either Haejin himself or has an exclusive deal with him, as rancho ONLY votes for haejin and interacts with Steem in no other apparent way. In truth, I don't actually see a problem with this, however what I do have a problem with is that Haejin pretends like rancho votes for him because his content is somehow so special. I respect honesty/transparency, not deception/manipulation.
It is also apparent that he posts so many times a day because he is trying to get the most rancho votes as possible, yet he tries to pretend like it's because his "fans" want him to post 10 times a day. Yet if you look through almost every post, 99% of the rewards for every single post are due to Haejin and Rancho EXCLUSIVELY. There are quite a few minnow votes too, but the value is almost exclusively 1 entity. It is not hard to create hundreds of minnow accounts and set them to auto upvote your main account. So in conclusion, all these "fans" don't really mean too much IMO. This just appears to be MORE deception/manipulation.
Finally, I have not seen any evidence to show that his charts/predictions are very valuable. In FACT most of the predictions that he has made if not ALL that I have paid attention to for selfish interest have NOT been accurate. Now of course it's not easy to do, and most people actually are not very consistently accurate in this crazy volatile market. The ONLY time I have seen him to be accurate was back when basically EVERY crypto was going up and thus pretty easy to predict gains.....
So all in all I have very little respect or like for Haejin. On top of this, I have seen plenty of evidence to show that he has actually hurt a lot of decent people in this community with tyrannical flagging. I don't believe flagging is wrong, just like guns aren't inherently wrong. The question is how do you use them? It seems very apparent that he has used them to silence people asking questions or saying things he didn't like because he is so manipulative and deceptive. I have also very rarely ever seen him respond to any comments or give comments upvotes even legit ones.
In conclusion, it doesn't seem like haejin cares about this community at all except for the huge payouts he is getting.
So that addresses my opinions on Haejin. Now for addressing the much bigger issue which is the discussion of how to deal with it.
I personally do not like the idea of limiting posts to 4 per day. Not because it influences me at all - in truth, I don't think that I have ever made 4 blogs in one day. It is simply that I love freedom, and this is by far the most uncensored and freedom based social media platform on earth. "Rules" are not about freedom.
Making rules that affect everyone simply because there is one or a few people being disrespectful is not a solution IMO. In fact, that reminds me of how the fucked up bureaucracy of USA and other tyrannical governments work. "Oh look someone used a gun irresponsibly, now let's make it illegal for anyone to have them. Oh someone got hurt using food grade hydrogen peroxide, now lets make it illegal for everyone!" etc etc.
I believe in freedom and responsibility. So I full heartedly disagree with more rules/limitations. Yes, people abuse freedom, but rules impose less freedom on the responsible ones too...
The truth is that scammers are going to scam, and rules just make it harder for the ones following the rules. It is so easy to create alt accounts and just spread the SP amongst them, or to simply upvote comments. Rancho and Haejin use almost exclusively 100% of their voting power on Haejin, so even with a rule of 4 posts a day you still have the exact amount of SP to combat either way....Rules don't deal with scammers, they only limit the ones who follow rules.
What I like more is that guilds form and choose to band together to oppose something they feel is wrong, which we have seen happen. Accounts like @fulltimegeek, @hendrix22, and others have shown not fully successful but honorable and powerful examples of this.
Also despite whatever anyone may thing about @berniesanders he has done more than anyone I am aware of to try and counter the rewardpoolrape by Haejin. He has done this by using his own time and finances to counter what he believed in. We may not all agree on everything but this is what people should be doing. If you want to stop or influence something that put your time and resources on the line.
Real solutions are not in people doing things for us, but us creating what it is for our selfs.
Leave it up to the free market. Petition the community to NOT upvote Haejin or to use their SP to downvote or delegate to a guild. This to me seems much more in alignment with freedom and responsibility. A free market solution.
Just as rancho can use SP however it wants, so can we. Then, when there is no longer incentive to post 10 times a day it will stop, or haejin will just leave. I do feel we need some kind of community flagging guild, but again the problem will be who is right and who is wrong? Who decides? It is very difficult, very tricky. That is why I love the free market. Let it decide, decentralize as much as possible, provide as much freedom as possible for people to act how they will, and let the community decide its value.
So in conclusion, I do not feel that Haejin's contributions to this community are worth such high rewards in such a short amount of time, yet I do not feel imposing rules on EVERYONE based on one person's actions we do not like is fair or in support of freedom. Also, I think that even if we did make rules, it would not actually work on anyone besides the people who follow rules - which are NOT the ones we are trying to deal with here.
I believe in this community and see a bright future. It is up to us to propose solutions, communicate, and work together for common purpose. Disagreements will be guaranteed, but fighting doesn't help. Working together for what we see as the ideal is what brings great progress. We simply have to be also able to live and let live. Nothing will ever be perfect, not even Steem.
I am now doing 50/50 payout posts simply because the payout is more valuable that way atm, but I will be converting it all to $teem to continue my perfect record of cashing out ZERO $teem nor ever powering down, thus powering up!
I appreciate your support and am grateful to be here in the SteemVortex. I welcome any feedback you have and if you feel I am valuable to this community please share an upvote!
∞§∞SteemOn∞§∞
Hi @quinneaker, I enjoyed reading your post and also I went through all the comments. I love your sincerity in tackling this issue.
I am not sure if there can be any solution to this haejin issue. But I have a mantra which is, nothing is impossible. So, sooner or later, their might be a good solution to the reward pool rape.
What most people see steemit as is that garden of Eden where everything and everyone is perfect. Everyone is looking out for each other and also, everyone cares for everyone. But the truth of the matter is, nobody cares.
Steemit is like real world. Shit happens and if you are influential, you get easily get away with it. It is no different here. If anyone thinks they can make that utopia happen, they should not bother wasting precious time.
Like @swissclive mentioned in her comment that there are:
(BTW, I found this post going through his profile. It's been long he updated his blog, so I was checking up)
What we should focus on is having a form of environment that is sustainable for a longer time. Like a balance. An ecosystem which will be sustainable. The truth is that some parties will be affected. Especially we the minnows. But we are called minnows, right? That's what the big fish feeds on in the big ocean. There will still be enough of us. It's survival of the fittest.
What am I saying? Rules of "post this", "don't post that" won't work. No, not on steemit.
Steemit will soon be 1 million users, haejin is just one of the many people that will come. Some crazy rich guys will still come and do what they like. We should not see this as a battle against one person but as a battle to sustain this system.
Just my opinion the. It's a free world, I can say what I want to say.
@mr-aaron That’s a good post. There have been plenty of solutions proposed. If one or several are implemented by the developers, I hope it will be done after due debate and, if possible, in small steps.
Here’s an example of what could go wrong:
Steemit decides to allow advertising. The aim is to increase the reward pool to help minnows.
Result: The increased reward pool encourages spammers en-masse. Genuine bloggers and readers flee to find an ad-free space on another site.
Wow...thanks for your response.
Any of the solutions proposed and intended to be implemented must be done with caution. A little at a time to see how it will turn because every change now is an experiment. It can turn out well or go the other way round.
I've been thinking of what you said about increasing the curating reward. At first, I thought it was not a good idea because they curators get to take more. But thinking about it again, that may be the best solution. Who wouldn't want more money? Curating becomes more attractive, investors becomes more attracted.
This too should be done a step at a time. And also, it should be done in a way that the posts with bigger payout attract lesser curating rewards.
stay blessed
I love your approach to freedom, and that you point out that limiting everyone for the sake of a few doesn't really solve the issue. Your comparison to the banning of guns is a great one. It's interesting to see how a community can come together to make change, how they can make shifts that benefit the whole, and how they deal with someone who is standing in dishonor. It's a tricky situation for certain. I'm interested to see how we all work this things out. Thanks for your opinion @quinneaker. I value your perspective.
For me, limiting the blog posting to a limit of 4 is better.
I have not posted more than 2 times a day since I came to steemit because I try to bring up quality post and just posting for the money. If the steemit platform must be good then greediness and stinginess must be dealt with.
I don't bother to follow most whales because they never upvotes any comment on the posts they make despite having a huge amount of steem power.
But as a statistician I was taught that nothing is 100% correct except God and that also applies to the platform. But together we can make the platform a better place.
Your are intetiled to your opinion but unlike me you are proposing something that is beneficial to YOU rather than the whole. I also never post more than 4 blogs a day as I clearly stated in my post yet I would not limit others their own free will unlike you.
SO even though you have a tyrannical approach I will not flag you or judge you simply disagree logically and reasonably!
Blessings~~*
Thanks.
Another great post , I loved this : "If you piss off a whale around here its a huge waste of time and resources " So true @quinneaker !
and also this : "I believe in freedom and responsibility. So I full heartedly disagree with more rules/limitations. Yes, people abuse freedom, but rules impose less freedom on the responsible ones too..." As well as your whole post , I totally agree !!
I also believe in this community and its future , but we need to work together like you said ! and all this flagging going on now by Bernie Sanders has now moved into the trending section , and hes flagging a lot of people if they say say something he doesn't like , no matter how small it is in the comments section , like he did to my son for standing by someone else , by flagging all their posts , really neeeds to stop as I see a lot of good steemians leaving steemit including him because of all of this . Even though haejin I think deserves it , not everyone does .
A nice peaceful community would certainly be a welcome change my friend !! KEEP UP THE GREAT WORK !!💕✌👍 Upped and resteemed !!✌👍
Thanks for your feedback! It is much appreciated as you have been a very active part of this community for a long while.
We are the power~*~
Your welcome !👍👍👍
There are downvote guilds, really - you mentioned @fulltimegeek and @hendrix22, all them are essentially acting as one.
I don't agree with a limit of four posts a day, but I do think perhaps some kind of vote power shift might be in order. There have been, when looking at updates, THOUSANDS of downvotes on haejin, and though they have put a dent in his earnings, it's not enough to get him to stop doing what everyone has a problem with. Essentially it is acting just as the corrupt US: rich few people have massive influence, whilst the masses have almost none. It's Citizens United: money is speech. I'm not sure what the solution is, because just making all downvotes equal also opens the door to revenge flagging by spammers. But as it stands, haejin can destroy a minnow's rep with just a few downvotes, but thousands of minnows and even a handful of whales and dolphins can't touch his. Maybe downvotes should effect higher rep proportionately to the rewards? So like all the people downvoting him wouldn't nuke his rep, but thousands of downvotes do chip away at it?
I have read a lot of posts about this topic, but am still rather a noob and don't pretend to fully grasp the politics of it.
Yes you do not fully grasp this topic and that is ok, especially when you acknowledge that.
Yes it is true that there is a majority of people who do not agree with Haejin but it is not true that "everybody" dislikes Haejin.
It is also not true that If everyone donwvoted him he would make profits. There are actually very FEW people who downvote him in percentage. If EVERYONE down voted him he would have a rep of negative and ZERO profits.
That is why I say let the free market decide.
Blessings~*~
Why would we limit everyone to stop one person's account? Why should we all be punished for one person's actions?
I can think of several scenarios where a blogger might need more than 4 posts per day on steemit:
Many of these kind of posts cannot be made on other big platforms like facebook, youtube, or twitter. It either won't reach the intended audience, or it can be pulled down because it goes against the terms of use that the corporation can alter at any time.
Not every post is going to be viral or important to the entire steem community. It just needs to be available to remain visible for those who want it.
If you want to stop a single account who you think is abusing the system for everyone, it might take a whole lot more than 4 posts per day to get the majority of the community to come together on this to take responsible action. People will have to be constantly made aware of when, and how, to take action to halt abusers on the platform.
Agreed!
It certainly is a tricky situation for sure but here is one solution I have thought about. If someone created an application that used SteemConnect where all users over a certain reputation had an equal vote of whether to basically flag @haijin 's posts into oblivion.
We could make the reputation criteria pretty high like 60. That way people had to be on here for awhile to get it.
If We vote yes then the Witnesses are required to flag his posts.
We would all rather not go this route but this is a pretty extreme situation. He is like a virus and if we don't neutralize him the whole system is harmed.
Its a decent idea though we could organize something like that just with a post. A post by a powerful whale of which stated that with a certain amount of value or votes etc they would listen to the community overall consensus and use the VP accordingly.
Yeah, then the whales who downvote would be able to say Sorry @haejin but the community decided this and we have to do what the majority wants for the community. Then WHAPPPP...... Flipper Smacked
At this point I feel like he is Agent Smith in the Matrix ...... we will have to call in Neo.
hahahaha well as an individual he is very powerful, but as a community is VP is nothing. It wouldn't take much actually do stop him if there was real community consensus....Just goes to show how complex and difficult it is to live in functional sustainable community.
Part of what I am so proud of for creating such harmonized paradise here in @gardenofeden for over a decade~*~
So much truth in this post! Thanks for this...
I am happy to share truth and honored that you deem it so~
Blessings~*~
this is absolutely true
bitter you are going to punish the one that commit the mess around than punishing everybody by setting new rule.
Better ban them if that is to be than, than causing trouble to everybody.
Petition was done, I think steemit inc will act also.
just like this scammer account that keep scamming and giving phishing links, that should be ban from here. Or let them roam freely
There is no way to "ban" an account but it is possible to flag/donwnvote an account or simply NOT upvote it. I feel that is the way it should be and is a perfect free market system.
That is also the flaw of free market. Scammers account are freely roaming because there is no way of banning
Free market can always come up with solutions, its not a problem, it IS the solution~~*
Thanks for important post.....i liked your post....
Upvote done.....
Interesting article, I like your opinion ..
Glad you find it interesting, it is an important topic and conversation/discussion is key to any community.
Nice post, thanks for sharing
@bsaddi you will ruin your reputation and get flagged if you don’t read the blog and make interesting and meaningful comments. ‘Thanks for sharing” wastes time and space.
all too true.
Brialliant response to a difficult problem! I agree, let the Steemit community decide on value
Bam~*~
I agreed with the points expressed, Some might just ignore it and that can ruin the reputation of this platform if no one try to speak it up. Have a nice day @quinneaker
Thanks
Great job @ quinneaker , also and resteemed !👍👍👍✌
Wonderful response, Quinn. Thank you.
It's amazing how often we need to be reminded how beneficial freedom is. We so often want to control others just because bad things happen. Bad things will always happen and focus on controlling others just makes more bad things happen.
At the same time, boundaries are good. Art is framed by the boundaries of the canvas. Systems and structures can be tools to create wonderful things. The balance, I think, is to find out what changes increase well-being for the greatest number of people (nash equilibrium type stuff) and what changes are just power grabs. We can certainly do a lot of things manually but at some point it makes more sense to automate and systematize what most people in a community choose as a default approach anyway.
Example: organ donations went way up when they changed the form to be opt out instead of opt in. Simple changes like that can help improve the world. The challenge for us is much of the world is not all that simple (and neither is the motivational and economic realities of the STEEM blockchain).
So I agree with what your saying but what your saying seems way to vague. Its like your hinting at something important yet not really getting to the practical and relevant point.
Which is kinda weird because usually it seems like you are not affriaid or shy of getting to the point and saying what needs to be said even if its controversial or difficult. So maybe its just ur not taking it seriously enough since its just a comment on my post and ur busy?
I don't want to make any assumptions, but I would like it if you refined your comment to be a bit more specific/practical/relevant to this post as to what "should be done".
I really don't think there are many if any people in this community who would give more comprehensive feedback in this matter than you.
Best Regards Brother~*~
My thinking at this point is that some things are broken AND that many (if not most) of the top-down fixes have unintended consequences that are worse (which I think you outlined well). My comment doesn’t have a specific answer at this time because I don’t think we’ve found one yet. As much as the free market of downvotes might solve this, the reality is it’s not working. It’s expensive to downvote so many avoid it and prefer upvoting others instead. I’m optimistic a systems level improvement can be made, but even some of the best suggestions (a separate voting power pool for downvotes, for example) also have some unintended possibilities.
Sometimes the best answer we have is admitting we don’t have answers yet and continue to evaluate new options. Sure we can say “let everyone do whatever because FREEDOM!” but that attitude (taken to an extreme) might sap some of our motivation to continue working to find a systems level solution that increases positive benefits for more users instead of just a small handful. People want a meritocracy, but they are quite difficult to create in practice. It’s a combination of building fair systems with simple rules (but no simpler) combined with personal responsibility.
We’re still working on the optimal combination of code changes and community action with tools we already have.
Hi, Quinn! As this topic is so hot at present that even an almost-totally tech illiterate and posting-as-blogging-centric such as myself can't help but notice it, this morning I thought I'd hop over to your blog and see if you'd commented on it. I'm glad I did, as I actually feel that I have a better understanding not only of the situation after reading your post and some of the comments on it, but also of some of the technical aspects of Steemit which usually go right over my head. So thank you (and @swissclive) for that! I've also added a few more like-minded Steemians to my following list whilst reading, which is always good. I say like-minded, because I am with you all the way on the subject of freedom with responsibility, both here on Steemit and elsewhere. There's no way in hell we should be limiting posts or slapping down rules carte blanche because of the self-centred behaviour of a minority of people who are just here to reap the harvest without care for the platform or the community of individuals whose labours and love bring it to fruition.
Your last paragraph sums it up perfectly for me. Where action needs to be taken, it needs to be done in a spirit of love and care for this amazing little 'world' we're all creating here, not in a punitive spirit. That doesn't mean that the actions will be wishy-washy or nothing at all, just that they must be measured against the yardstick of freedom from tyranny.
I wish I could offer some constructive ideas of what those actions might be, but since I barely understand the basics, I will leave that to those whose forte it is instead and continue doing my best to contribute something of value here in my own little way.
Much love to you and all at the Garden!
Jay