I may be overacting, because I do think most Steemians want what is best for the platform, but the approach this anti-self voting group is taking is very misguided. One of the main reasons I joined Steemit was because this is a decentralized platform and I assumed the entire group of users had a voice. Perhaps this group has watched too many batman movies or Hitler documentaries. Unless you are dictator, a thoughtful discussion works better than public shaming or secret down-voting projects.
1. Self upvoting Abuse
This is most commonly talked about abuse. After the last hard fork, authors can double their Steem power every 6 months by self upvoting their own comments/posts if they were to self upvote efficiently. @JerryBanfield wrote a post explaining the details on the math behind this.I have seen several top 10 or top 50 lists posted about authors that are generating a high amount of SBD via self voting. These lists focus on dollar value, not percentage as a return....which to me is poor or no analysis. There are lot of people that can extract data from the blockchain, but that does make it analysis. Analysis requires some thought behind it.
My major problem with these reports is that they unfairly hurt authors that have high Steem power balances. In fact, the majority of the users that end up on those lists have huge Steem balances. For example, a user generating 10% return per month by self upvoting with Steem power of $500 doesn't even make the list. A user earning 1% return per month by self upvoting with Steem power of $10k is shamed on these lists.
2. Bot Abuse
The most efficient self upvoters on Steemit are bots. They can vote using an algorithm and get much closer to 6 month doubling effect vs a human. There are also bots that sell their powerful upvotes to anyone that is willing to pay. Many of these bots generate returns much higher than 30% per month.I don't see too many people having issues with these powerful bots when compared to a random user self upvoting. This is probably because the majority of these bots are created by powerful Steemians, who may also be witnesses and they also partake in other projects that are good for the community.
3. Steem Delegation Services
There are services available where users can delegate their Steem to someone that is willing to pay them for it. For example, you give me $10 Steem and I will delegate $600 Steem power to your account for a week. What do you think the Steemian who has access to $600 Steem power for that week will do besides go on a self upvoting spree? I'm generalizing here, but the majority users will want to recoop their $10 investment somehow.4. Multiple Accounts
Anyone can create alternate accounts to upvote their own posts/comments. There are also groups of users that auto-upvote each other without reading their content so they all earn more income.All of these are different types of potential abuse of the system. We can always argue that a new user who buys delegation to self upvote his/her own post isn't abusing the system because it's quality content. That argument can be made for any of the 4 types of abuse I listed...maybe the bots are really upvoting quality content? Maybe the people buying bot power are upvoting quality content? Some are abusing the system, some are not.
Are these 4 really even abuse?
It would be like spending 2 hours to pop one zit, when your whole body is covered with zits. Popping that one zit won't make the rest of them go away....and that original zit will pop right back up day later. It solves nothing.
Don't hate the playa, change the rules of the game
Let's solve the real problem instead by changing the system. I have been on the platform for 2 months, so am unclear on the process on how rules can be changed. I assume the witnesses make those decisions? If you are truly against people self upvoting then try to influence the witnesses or become one so you can have influence on the change you are after.
Public shaming a very small group based solely on account value does not help the situation. Many of these users are not abusing the system.
Final Thought
Demanding Steemians on a decentralized platform to forcible do what you want will not work. Spend your energy on ideas on how to solve it instead. If you think someone is abusing the system, have a conversation with the person before public shaming. When is the last time punching someone in the face resulted in the person being hit instantly agreeing to do what you want?
If you continue to go after accounts that have a lot of Steem power vs those that actually abuse the system, you are encouraging the richlist users to create multiple accounts, delegate out power, or power down to sell their Steem. The only group that wins in this situation are the bot creators, who will continue to generate a huge return on their Steem.
If you are one of those anti-self voting activists and you continuously transfer the Steem you earn to an exchange, then take a look in the mirror the next time you think you are better for the Steem community than every other Steemian. You taking Steem off the platform hurts the system as well, because it depresses the Steem price. Higher the Steem price, the more people want to join the platform. Again, I don't have a problem with anyone that wants to power down or take money out of the system....but stop judging others when you may also be doing something that is potentially harmful to the platform also.
Thank you for reading this post and for allowing me to decompress. I generally upvote the non-"Great Post" comments on my post anyway, but if you want to upvote your own comment on this post then go for it.
In my opinion this people who are against self upvote are socialist or are a great whale who do not want to increase competition.
Anyway, this will be detrimental to Steem, just think: Would you invest in a crypto currency where you are forbidden to profit? I think not.
If the people continue with this conversation of sharing wealth with everyone in the end everyone will have much of nothing.
Who wants to gain more SP that seeks to provide an excellent service to the community or that works to buy more SP.
That's a mischaracterization. Are you aware that every day we all have to decide with our up and down votes who gets the Steem?
There's nothing "socialist" about supporting the original idea of Steemit, that of cooperative voting. The idea basically is that you profit more by voting for others than you do by voting for yourself, to encourage us to evaluate each other's post and thus determine share of that day's rewards.
So I underline, profit is still and always was part of the equation, just not straight up interest on your stake. You have to do the slightly difficult work of finding good posts to vote on. If it's just interest in a bank, this aspect becomes marginal and it's just a ponzi.
Okay ... every one can do what think best about his vote, including voting for himself. Even the platform itself, at the time of writing your post, allows this option to be selected automatically.
As for the hypothesis about profit more by voting in the post of others than your own ... please show me some real proof. Some people talk about game theory using the Nash's equilibrium, but without evidence (probably those who say this don't study game theory). And honestly it has no logic.
Think about: The author of the post earns 75% of all value earned, while the curators earn 25%. I don't see how a curator invests 1 SBD and earns 2. Maximum will earn 0.25 SBD.
In my opinion the best way everyone will win in Steem is to provide services through the platform, for example if a charity's institution post on the platform and win the donations through votes, or a person create quality online courses on the platform and be paid through votes, rather than adsense from Youtube, for example.
This self-vote or not discussion is just a waste of time, in my opinion.
Proof of what?
Proof this :)
That this idea was an original objective of Steemit?
From the whitepaper, section 2.5.2 - Voting on Distribution of Currency, pg 17 on new whitepaper available here:
This is exactly what was weakened in HF 19, the incentive to not defect to self vote, and exactly what needs to be fixed.
I agree.
I'm talking about today's reality. I joined Steemit after this HF, so I don't know it was before. What I know is the reality of today.
Thanks for sharing your opinion :)
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If only every user got that concept. I actually think finding good posts from authors you don't know is part of the fun of Steemit. Feels like too many people upvote without reading the content.
Completely agree! I wrote a post about a month ago in which I said that the self-upvoting 'issue' that some people complain about is kinda a debate between socialism and anarchism.
You either invest time writing content on Steemit and earn Steem Power, or you invest money and buy that Steem Power. In both cases you should expect to get a return on your investment and that money that you can give yourself by upvoting yourself is totally earned.
That being said, I as a minnow, have decided 3 days ago to stop upvoting myself because I think I could earn more by using those self-upvotes to vote for other people's content and earn curation rewards. I'll have to see if that's true or not.
Good luck my friend. Share your results to us later :)
Thank you. I intend to do so after a month at the end of August. :) It takes a bit more time to actively curate content than to just upvote myself but I think in the end it will be more profitable.
I wish you success!
I don't see mathematically how, but I will wait for your results :D
LOL...yeah the math does not compute on that theory
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You're a genius if you figure that out!
I think that even if I make it more profitable to curate content than to upvote myself, that will mostly apply to me. I said in a previous comment on another post that I view curating as a very subjective activity because every individual is a unique mix of life experiences, beliefs, definitions that he holds, opinions, points of view, ideas, etc.
While someone might consider a post as being quality content, another might view that content as completely useless or non-sense. And that translates directly into what posts he or she decides to upvote and how much each person will earn from curation.
Yeah, makes sense. In terms of financial rewards...curation return is very limited.
No one is anything that you shouldn't get a return on your investment into Steem Power, it's the most primary reason to convert Steem to Steem Power, always has been and always will.
The issue is on how the awarding of new Steem is to be done. I argue that we should preserve the original intent of trying to align incentives so that people vote on others in order to gain for themselves via curation rewards.
It's not about socialism or anarchism at all, it's more like how to distribute newly issued shares in a company by peer voting. Btw your post linked does not make hardly any argument at all about this. It would be interested to see it fleshed out, maybe you have a point after all but I don't see it now.
You make it sound like that was the only way Steemit users were supposed to earn Steem, by curating content. Incentives are both for upvoting others and thus earning curation rewards and by creating content.
What you're arguing for is for Steemit Inc. to disable the ability for people to self-upvote because some Steemit users that have acquired large quantities of Steem Power are now upvoting themselves thus acting all greedy when in fact they shouldn't do that and instead they should give those upvotes to other people's content.
Witnesses are your politicians and can vote to change the rules. Convince enough witnesses to accept such a change and maybe you'll get your wish in one of the next hard forks.
I personally don't care if we have or do not have the ability to self-upvote.
There isn't one company here.
Everyone of us, here on the Steem blockchain, be it on Steemit, or on chainBB, or on other platforms built on Steem, represents a company. And everyone of us get to decide how we want to invest our earned Steem.
You can invest your funds in your company (by upvoting yourself) or you can invest your funds in other companies.
When I upvote someone else's post I actually, metaphorically speaking, from a financial point of view, buy shares in their company, which is represented by their post. Those shares, after 7 days, will bring me a profit, represented as a curation reward.
Exactly. I probably need to calm down and write thoughtfully like your comment, I'll probably get my point across better.
Hmm, I don't know, I kinda like your firebrand style :-)
Cg
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In my opinion it's good that people publish raw data, data is not subjective. I think that self voting might be a sign of the platforms general inefficiency for rewarding people. It's all about incentives and we just need to figure out how to have incentives that benefit the platform the most.
No system is without faults. And the people who hate self voting can just ignore the user's and uovote those who don't, I really don't see the problem. This way incentives will adjust, making it a worse long term strategy.
I hope more objective data is posted about as many aspects of the platform as possible. Information is the key to make good decisions and when both parties have perfect information you'll have an efficient exchange :)
I think you're absolutely correct in your comment regarding the cause of self votes. Imma upvote it even though my VP has dipped below 80%, and now I'll have to wait longer before it recharges and I can vote again, because HF19.
An issue is that the Steem premined yet constitutes the majority. This Steem isn't being used to curate, and isn't causing Steemit to grow by rewarding content creators. This leaves open the question of whether Steemit was ever intended to actually attain the goals publicly claimed for it, or whether there were other motives that may have been cryptically held by the devs.
It simply may be impossible for Steemit to transition into a platform that does efficiently reward authors without the Steem held by @dan, @freedom, and other whales being invested in that process.
Thanks for the comment...100% upvote. Raw data is not subjective....but if you have looked into the Steem data...just the act of getting some of that data and trying to organize/label/make sense of it can be subjective. Just showing data or choosing which parts to show or not show is subjective. In fact, I can show you data in the real world to prove any point you may have. Are you for global warming? There is data on that. Are you against global warming? There is data on that too.
I do think we need to start talking about that data so we can all make sense of it.
This is a great point. Selectively choosing datapoints that fit the goal is bad. Luckily data on steem is public and its easy to disprove conclusions made from selective datasets.
I think that most issues discussed have fierce debattants on both sides of the aisle. In the end its always up to the readers to dissect and study ALL available information.
I just hope people will stay constructive rather than start a flaming war. But this is the internet after all, we'll see.
I didn't really believe in abuse of the rewards until I saw @dayu borrow 80k SP from @minnowbooster to self-vote 100% spam comments. That's just a loss for everyone here.
So I think we need algo changes to disincentivize the worst kinds selfish behavior. Perhaps ones that make repetitive voting less profitable.
On the other hand, I have a real distain for the marxist/wealth distribution suggestions I read here from time to time. Guess how much stake these users have in the system?
Steemit mirrors the real world, shaming SJW's and all. It's all part of the game.
...and don't get brainwashed into thinking it's not a game.
xD
Good point. In your opinion, how do you stop the abuse....by stopping the self voter or the person enabling that self voting? I know it's a complicated issue...but feels like everyone is jumping on the self voter and ignoring the people providing the services that enable that behavior.
That implementation is becoming suggested more and more, but i'm only in favor as a last resort when there's no better way. First we should look at voting incentives, for example in the form of a different curation reward scheme or something.
And going back to 0.5% (or at least for comments) is worth looking at.
I very much like the idea of increasing the curation reward percentage to the point where randomly cast votes, equate to the gain from pure self-voting. Can anyone work out what this would be? @calamus056? I haven't got my head around the rewards structure well enough yet.
At this point there would be no significant amount of self-voting, as it would take marginal effort to get greater profit with a cursory glance to evaluate content before up-voting it.
Really nicely put, and as you'll see I have commented on your debate on the self-vote article. You have a nice way of putting things, and you've definitely gained a fan :-)
That is one of the funniest things I have read about this community!! Proper fofls :-D
Exactly what I told some prick last week by the way. There are too many SJWs on here :-#
It's funny though, I didn't notice your name on that list until you commented. #justsaying :-)
Cg
LOL thanks. I don't mind calling myself out....someone has to do it!
Thank you for posting @financialcritic.
Your well written, brave post was only discovered today.
A slippery slope.....this 'witchhunt ' business.
@remlaps wrote an article concerning this very issue from a different perspective....that of the specialized niche catagory...ie...classical music, etc.....a recommended read if one is interested.
All the best to you and your family. Cheers.
Indeed there are more possible abuses than just self-voting. I never hated anyone just because they upvote themselves. Maybe it does have a negative impact on the reward pool or something but it's their choice.
Exactly, it's their choice based on how the system is designed.
I agree that naming and shaming is seems unhelpful, and that there are other types of behaviour that could be called abuse (or quite legitimate), depending on ones view, but allowing people to see that according to the article linked below around 40% of comment votes were self-votes is useful.
I'm not buying the data by that author based on some of his past reports. Seems way too high, it may be right...but I want to confirm for myself.
I would love that, please do.
Same here, I've been wanting confirmation for a while. If it's too far off i need to dive back in the code for a while.
The fact we can self vote is all the evidence required. If it can be done it will and if it can be gamed it will.
Also SP is your money and self voting is simple way of paying yourself dividends on your investment that is locked up.
Couldn't have said it better myself. Either take away the dividend ability or stop hating.
Yes please, that would be great :)
Or at least make the "dividends" come from contributing to the network as a curator. We all agree that the system isn't optimal at the moment, right?
I agree the only answer is to change the rules of the game. You cant have things where the good of the site depends on people being good.
I have often self up voted to put my comment above the "Good post" comments when I feel I have something worthy to say. I have lost no sleep over it.
Yeah, I mean how do you compete with spam or "good post" with it.
Well said. I don't understand why some people have problem with it. I don't see anything wrong.
Precisely. The punching someone in the face analogy, and subsequent gif are perfect. Shaming doesn't solve anything.
While I don't like the idea of regulating (it opens pandora's box imo) how we can use our votes, the community seems to be swaying to a maximum self-vote per day or per week figure. Hopefully, that turns out to be as fair as the linear reward curve proved to be.
Yeah...that sounds like a good idea. I'm sure someone will then make a chart of people that maximize that!
Haha, hence my Pandora's box comment. People will be people.
I often upvote my own comment so there's a better chance the post's author will see it. But this is really only a problem with whale posts. I think most of us minnows and dolphins check our replies list because we really do care who is communicating with us. I'm not sure the whales care, although in their defense, they get inundated and can't give attention to everyone. :(
Well, it became my problem recently when somebody made a list showing me and a few other people with over 10k steem power as getting too much author rewards from self upvotes....Proportionally, I get less than 90% of Steem authors from self upvotes....but because I have over 12k Steem. I show up on these stupid lists. So, I guess I'm now expected to never self upvote or power down.
Since it's none of my business I pay no mind to SP holdings of those I converse with, however, you've brought it up.
I'm curious but don't want to inundate you with questions as to why you've invested. However, I believe that there is a point after which holding sufficient SP causes self votes to be more rewarding than the votes that one might receive from the community, because most folks don't have that kind of VP.
Also, since you have a relative grip of wealth compared to most hereabouts, I reckon you've handled your business in order to increase your wealth, and you'd be remiss were you to now abandon that course of action, and the income you can receive from self votes.
This is the problem, the dissonance between the mechanism that weights VP with SP holdings, and the stated goal of Steemit to reward authors via curation. You are discouraged from curating rather than self voting because you are fiscally responsible.
I expect the only way to solve this problem is to no longer weight VP with SP.
I'd appreciate your thoughts.
Thanks!
Thanks for the comment. I joined Steemit because I had been thinking about blogging for a while...and there is no better place to start than here. If I got a domain, I would be blogging potentially without getting comments/feedback for months or years? The active community here is just so amazing.
When deciding to put money into Steem power, it was really a decision on which crypto currencies to park my money. I had X amount I wanted to invest...so I spread it around in places where I thought had potential. I traded around between Bitcoin, Ether, Stratis, Waves, Factom, etc etc. The value of Steem was 3 parts to me
As far strategy, I don't curate to earn money. It seems counter productive....to earn money as a curator, it feels like I would have to blindly upvote authors with a ton of followers or those that have bots autoupvote them. I don't care for that...so now I upvote posts that I like after reading them. I don't spend enough time on the platform to where I am out of voting power, so I don't care to be too conservative. I probably should just start upvoting comments I like at a much higher power...because I never get below 60-70% power seems like.
LOL your vote was worth more than most of my posts take in =p
I appreciate your considered reply. While you apparently seem to curate just as I do, which is to simply vote for stuff you like, I note that that are vote cliques, bots, and the like, that do curate as a means of garnering income.
Were voting power not weighted by Steem power, do you think the attraction you have to Steem would disappear, or is it possible that Steem would still be an attractive investment?
Since I joined Steemit in May, Steem has declined in market cap from about 15th to about 22nd now. I conjecture that the appeal of the idea behind Steemit (that content is rewarded through curation, and rather than the platform reaping the rewards, it is the posters themselves that get paid), is largely moot, because the largest holders of SP, such as @dan and @freedom, are beyond competition.
A new guy like me, or even modest investors like yourself, are left with but the crumbs that the wealthiest accounts just fail to absorb. When most new accounts, drawn here by lurid tales of posts that take in $30k (as @dollarvigilante's first post did, he says), find out they can't get that kind of instant wealth, they are discouraged, and give up.
Were rewards more evenly distributed (note: I am not talking about redistribution of wealth, merely allowing curation to be less manipulated for profit), I believe the real power of Steemit to blossom would reward investors far more, through capital gains, than the current potential of rewards to be manipulated for profits.
As Steem resists the kind of appreciation that Steemit becoming THE social media platform of the 21st century would potentiate, capital gains of tens of thousands of points remain unrealized. Despite my not being well heeled, and deeply invested in Steem, I strongly advocate for those capital gains being realized by investors, because I want Steemit to replace Fakebook.
I really think it's only a matter of time before Fakebook is taken down, and I like Steemit.
One of the reasons I up vote myself is because it gets my comment to higher ground and more likely to be read by others.
Another reason I up vote myself is because I can (and so many others do it). The easiest way to stop the self-upvoting is to simply restrict the ability to do so.
And lastly, that zit GIF is freakin nasty.
Good points. There is a shortage of good zit popping gifs....sorry about that!
Haha...yeeeeeahhh....
the only time i up voted was when the post was automatically set on up vote button otherwise i don't do that.
I don't think most people care about self upvote posts. It's mainly the comments. But, your decision if you do or don't. Thanks for the comment.
i like to do comments its make more engagement for post's
I'm glad.. You got that off your chest! Can I comment 4 times on your post and Upvote each one? 🤔😜
Do what you want!
The problem of any financial system is the following I think: Greed is still a very powerful motivator. As soon as there is cash to be made, there will be assholes taking advantage of the system in any way possible. Usually over the backs of hardworking people that are just trying to make an honest buck or two. This in my opinion is the biggest problem that's created by capitalism.
And let's be honest; everybody came to Steemit for the money. If you wanted more followers or social interaction, there are bigger social media platforms to expose yourself.
I like your honesty @financialcritic 👍.
Agree w you on greed and capitalism. But capitalism also breeds competition which leads to progress.
What other social media platforms are there for blogging where you can remain anonymous?
In my opinion competition leeds to loss of quality. Capitalism is built on the idea of perpetual profit. Which is impossible: hence financial crises every so many years around the world.
As for the anonymous blogging: google gave me multiple options. I'll be honest in saying that I haven't tried any of those options, nor am I interested in doing so. I really don't care if people know who I am and I'm ready to take responsibility for my blogs.
I like to upvote my own posts..... That wasy they normally go to the top of the page where I can find them :-) No bots here and I typically upvote other user comments along the way.
Yeah...how else do you compete with a million bots.
My money. My vote. The end
well said!
The nice thing with self upvoting is that it allows us the chance to learn how unsatisfying it is to vote up our own comments and posts compared to voting up others! I am happier giving you a few dollars here than giving it to myself but I only figured that out after voting up hundreds of my own comments and posts first along with a lot of the same when it came to sex ...
I agree with what you're saying....my point is just that it's a choice. The system is setup to give everyone a choice to make that decision for themselves....let's not penalize someone that chooses something different from what you believe in.
I love and agree with what you have to say. In time I will put 1 million into my steem power which will be good for the community, but I will be expecting a return.
This is a good article with regard to self voting. My opinion is that , self upvoting your post or using bots to boost your post is here to stay because people are here to increase their ROI whether they agree to the fact or not. Withou boosting your post, you will be left out especially when you are still a minnow with little followers. See my latest post on bots for more details.
I dont know what to say except for chapeau 👌👏
Excelent post, I agree to almost every word. The current Steem system is a failure, and if nothing will be done Steem will go their way with all the whales getting pennies for their sbd. I wrote a post about how to fix the system. You don't have to agree to everything but there must be some change. https://steemit.com/steemit/@emble/will-steem-succeed-or-commit-suicide
bhai very informative post, most of the things i get it and some are unable for me to understand it,let me ask a question bro personally are you not using self voting ? personally are u not using Bots service ? bro are you against the Delegated SP option ? want to know your personal opinion
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