Whales do not use vote buying services, do they? This discussion is about whether vote buying services are abusive or not.
There are minnows burning thousands of dollars in SBD to promote their posts and to be seen at least for a couple of hours. The only winners in that game are those who sell their votes to them.
Attention - our most valuable good in this economy - is no longer earned, it can be purchased. Also quality doesn't matter anymore, since visibilty is provided to those who are able to pay for it. That's how the currency attention will constantly lose its value, and the vision of Steem to give value back to those who create value is no langer valid.
Attention was always available for purchase under the rules of the Steem blockchain. This idea, whether you agree with it or not, was one of the fundamental design elements and its use for things such as advertising was intended.
The idea of selling attention to advertisers (which was presented by Ned Scott at the first Steemfest in Amsterdam) is a completely different scenario. That has nothing to do with the eco-system as it is designed right now. Selling my attention to a product advertiser (which has never been able so far) is a completely different thing than selling my VP to a minnow who wouldn't be seen in the network otherwise.
From my point of view the future design of Steem shouldn't support these trades.
I don't see what you think is different from a regular person buying steem to get attention versus an advertiser buying steem to get attention. Maybe you're arguing that the "regular person" is only doing it as a way to get additional rewards, whereas the advertiser isn't. While this could certainly be true, it certainly isn't necessarily so.
And in any event, both scenarios were considered in Steem's design.
When the advertisers buy themselves in it's contributive to the whole network. When a vote trader sells VP it's only contributive to that one vote trader. That's where I see the main difference.
When a minnow buys SBD to gain visibility it contributes positively to the network because it creates demand for SBD.The rise and popularity of bots lately is the reason SBD is pumping. I used to be like you @surfermarly I didn't like bots but my conclusion is that its a pretty good advertising model for steemit. The promoted tab doesn't work and advertisers are not going to lock their money to promote their stuff, so this is the best system so far. One thing though that's flawed is that 'advertisers' have a limit on how much SBD they can spend to promote their stuff, this is stupid considering that they increase payouts of everybody else when they buy SBD...
No, the post was claiming that vote buying services and delegations were the root of steem's problems. I don't think it's the root issue, I think it's a problem with the way rewards are handed out currently under the blockchain rules, and I think the only realistic solution is a change to those rules.
You mean, to the 50/50 curation share, and the 5 minute idea? That makes more sense to me, for all of the reasons you have gone into.
Oh, and yes, whales certainly do use voting buying services. I've seen a number of such posts...
We should ask @aggroed to invite us to a panel and discuss this explosive topic with a couple of more people in detail. I'm losing track of the comments thread already :-)
I just don't see more discussion really achieving anything. In my opinion, the only viable solution is a change in the rules, and there is already a plan to make some changes (I'm not in full agreement with the version of the changes proposed, but I think it will be better than what we have now).
Unfortunately now it's a matter of waiting for the new rules to get implemented, and they're delayed by other coding issues that are arguably even more serious (e.g. bandwidth issues).
Yep. Cut the chat. Change the rules. Bandwidth shmandwidth. :0)
Well by talking about these issues we make clear where we see the priorities.
I'm off, thanks for the valuable conversation! Appreciated.
I actually love the discussion. This post -- this thread in particular -- is vital for Steem and necessary to explore now, while this platform is small. This is a really an existential question. And one I'm wholly unqualified to offer an informed opinion.
I would only point out -- as long as you allow people to buy votes, you will always have a market for upvotes. Votes are a commodity on Steemit. @zombee has proposed a solution. The upside is, this solution will almost certainly curb the use of bots. The downside is, this solution will almost certainly curb the use of bots. Bots do good things -- for whales and minnows. But they also create problems.
I would ask how you can achieve the goals of Steemit by allowing bots to exist. By their very nature, they're antithetical to the idea that "quality content" will organically get the most rewards.