How does the top author on Steem earn more than twice as much as I do? I was curious to find out after looking at https://steemwhales.com/trending/?d=30 and seeing the @mindhunter is receiving 2.23 times more rewards than I am. I opened Evernote and started taking notes.
Here is what I learned in two sentences: the top author is currently earning $10,000 to $20,000 a month from discrete upvotes directly on comments that are then upvoted at the very last minute! To be more specific, @mindhunter earns about $20,000 a month mostly with comments such as "Me too" which get upvoted for $60 several times every day! See the picture below!
How The #1 Steem Author Earns $10,000+ A Month!
After looking at steemwhales.com we may notice that @jerrybanfield is currently in the top 5 somewhere. I am very grateful to be one of the top authors on Steemit and I am always seeking ways to improve because I already know what I am doing. I have millions of followers that consistently see the posts and videos I make about Steem. 2 or 3 times a day I make a new post with nearly all of my creative energy funneled into Steem. In other words, being a witness and author on Steem is what I do full time.
Now, I looked on the Steem Whales trending over here, 30 days authors, which anyone can go find here: https://steemwhales.com/trending/?d=30
I looked to see where I am at in the top author rankings today.
I'm very grateful that I'm at number four right now.
I was amazed to see that the person earning number one is making about two and a half times what I'm making. Therefore the top author may even be making as much as $20,000+ a month doing this. I went with $10,000+ to be conservative.
Now, I went to look at @mindhunter's profile to discover what exactly does he do? What can I learn from them?
#1 author on Steemit
Here is the current number one author on Steem: @mindhunter
A 72 reputation is very high. He is a philosopher with 29,000 posts, thousands of followers, and not following anyone.
Very interesting!
So, I go look at some of the posts to see how the posts are made. Here's a quick video in one post. Is this made by the author?
I am not sure, it might be, I have not actually read any @mindhunter's posts or ever seen them before, which is why I was shocked that he was the number one author because I'd never seen or heard of him.
Then I started scrolling back and saying, "Okay the numbers don't add up."
How is it @mindhunter can make photo posts like this, earning four dollars and getting 25 views, and becoming the top author?
This just doesn't make any sense.
So I kept scrolling and scrolling because I thought I must just be missing something.
Then I started to find some posts all made 12 days ago. This is one of the posts with a picture and $65, top-up voters, you can see exactly who voted it here.
$66 on a post seen by 21 people with 9 comments.
If you want a little comparison let's see a post of mine here. Here's a post I made that was seen by 685 people on Steem, and that I sent out to all my social media networks, to tens if not hundreds of thousands of more people, 679 votes.
Very generous upvotes for $215 in 16 hours, that's outstanding.
So the amount of views roughly correlates to my other votes.
I was curious to learn how it is possible to get posts where you just post a picture, and maybe this is the author in this one, and you get $79 with 26 views.
Well, interestingly enough, it seems that if the same people with a lot of Steem keep voting, you can just consistently do short posts like this and earn very well.
So the majority of the earnings are really short posts like this, over and over again, that are earning a lot of money.
Here's $84 for a quick video, 62 votes and 85 views.
I've continued to just look through and learn more.
Here's a picture of a cat.
$80 for this picture of a cat posted 17 days ago with 29 views on it.
Therefore, if you just roughly correlate views to earnings, or if you looked at that last post I did over here, it got 600 and something upvotes for $215, which is about 30 cents an upvote.
By comparison, if you look over on this cat post, 29 votes, that's about 10 times as much per view as I'm earning.
This still doesn't add up though because the total amount earned is two-and-a-half times what I'm earning. Now it can make sense here, but what about these recent posts, what's going on these recent posts?
Now it looks like more recent posts like this one got hit with a big down-vote, which removed almost all of the rewards on it by newsflash.
There are then several other posts, which have this massive down-vote on them.
So then with these huge down-votes wiping out the author rewards, I started to wonder, “Okay, how is it possible this author still earning?”
So I dug a little deeper and I went into SteemD, and then I noticed immediately upon just looking on the first page that these 100% upvotes come in all at once from these three different or four different accounts.
So I discovered these are all on comments.
This is a post from eight days ago, and then the upvotes are coming in right here on the comments.
Now, these upvotes are extremely well done, because the upvotes were put in at the very last minute, only giving people that want to flag these upvotes 12 hours to down-vote them before the rewards are paid out, very smart system here.
What's happening is the author is now making comments that you could easily find if you went through the comments. You should be able to see these upvotes in, if you can see the newest ones and scroll up the comments, upvotes have to be made when they're 6 days old.
So today's comments just came in right here. I could down flag these comments which would remove some of the rewards, but the author would still get the majority of the rewards. Meanwhile, I would have to use all of my voting power, which then I would not be able to give back to any of my existing followers.
In other words, it doesn't even make sense for me to even try and do anything about this, other than simply sharing it and making sure this is shown in the light. I'm not saying this is right or wrong. I'm saying we should be aware of how @mindhunter is earning receiving $20,000+ a month in rewards out of the same pool all of us are paid out of. Right now the top author is currently earning $20,000+ a month from discrete upvotes directly on comments that are then upvoted at the very last minute.
Some of these accounts have upvoted me in the past as well and I'm grateful for their upvote.
So there are several accounts voting up comments at the very last minute, and then sneaking under the radar with every day, hundreds of dollars of rewards from Steem.
This is done on a bunch of different posts, on some of the author's own posts, imagine that you get to make a comment with a few words and you earn $60 off of that comment.
"Jerry, you're just jealous because this system is even better than yours."
That's reasonable, you could also say that I'm impressed when someone's worked out a system to discreetly slide comments in.
You can see that not every single comment is upvoted up, but then there's one that slides in out of lots of other comments, which don't earn anything.
Then this last comment slides in and gets $65 on this post.
Extremely clever, you would have to essentially intentionally go to war on this one. If for example a person who is flagging them down before would have to sit there and watch comments exactly at the six day mark, and then hit them with the down-vote. Even then there is always all kinds of different strategies that could be done to get around that as well, which is why this is so interesting to look at.
You can just see comments after comments all over the place on different posts. This one is not a post by the author themselves, but a post by another author.
Now, this strategy might be even better if these comments were posted on trending posts, because they'd look legit then, and you could even get more uploads by other people on them and get more exposure, although I'm not sure if more exposure is the goal in this scenario.
There are lots of these comments hiding all over the place, and these are the newest ones. These could be then flagged down like this. I could put the flag up and remove it, but that would use my voting power.
I'd rather vote someone following me up than essentially try and take rewards away from someone else.
I've looked and found just over and over a bunch of these different comments like "Me too!"
Imagine saying, "Me too!" and you can earn $60 for it. I'd probably be saying, "Me too!" all day.
Look, I'm not showing you this as some angel who does everything right.
I posted a picture in my boxers and got $344 on it, so I'm not coming to you as some saint here who is just perfect.
I thought this would be interesting to show you. For further reading, see this post shared in the comments by @celsius100 at https://steemit.com/steemabuse/@mindhunter/a-message-to-newflash-a-sock-puppet-account-of-transisto-stop-downvoting-my-posts-and-acting-like-a-sociopathic-socialist-whale
#2 author on Steemit
Here is the number two author on Steem: @tamim
Now, the number two author has eluded me a bit, I still can't quite crack their system on it. I've taken a look over at their profile on Steemit and I still don't quite understand it.
Looks like this other author is just doing a brute-force approach, just doing a bunch of posts every single day, and then voting them up at the last minute to avoid being flagged.
If you look down at these posts then you can see this is an amazing strategy, because the author is just straight upvoting their own posts.
This author has 540,000 Steem and is literally single-handedly voting up almost completely their own posts.
This author can just literally vote their own posts up and there seems to be a clever strategy that's being used here as well, instead of trying to vote their own posts up and risking getting them in the trending category, whereas if the author voted their own posts up immediately they could guarantee landing on the trending page.
If they voted all these new posts up right away, every single one of them would go on the trending page. I imagine the author is looking at this and figuring if they did that they'd probably risk getting a lot more down-votes.
What the author does is very smart. The author is upvoting these posts after they've been around for a few days, then they don't go on the trending page because they are five days old.
You can see that at about five days old, the author then drops their full upvote on the post, and their full upvote is worth so much. Then they are earning the second highest amount on the entire website just by voting their own posts up and a few other people are voting them up as well, incredibly clever system.
You can always use steamd.com/@username to see whatever is happening in the backend of a user's account, it's an incredibly helpful tool.
I'm impressed to see this system, which is just incredible.
I hope in sharing this system with you that this is useful to see what is going on with the very top authors on Steem and some of the incredible things that are possible that you can do on Steem.
I've just simply looked at the results on SteemWhales.com, I've presented them and this is part of the downside. If you use systems that work too well you may get a lot of attention with them. I'm very grateful to be the number four author.
#3 author on Steemit
Here is the number three author on Steem: @papa-pepper
Papa-pepper has very much a similar posting strategy to me. Papa-pepper writes for Steem all day every day, has a big following and consistently is trying to contribute as much value as possible to Steem.
As it seems, the other top authors are consistently doing the same thing, therefore I hope looking at this has been useful for you today.
Thank you very much for reading this post and learning with me here today how the top authors are earning $10,000+ and as much as $20,000 in the case of the number one author, using some incredibly smart systems that are getting them hundreds of dollars of rewards every single day, in some cases without even needing to do more than say, "Me too!"
I love you, you're awesome. I hope to see you again soon.
Thank you very much for reading this post, which was originally filmed as the video below!
The feedback on the video was so positive that I spent about $100 to get this post created for you here out of the video, and then edited it prior to publishing! I appreciate you being here and I hope you have a wonderful day today.
If you found this post helpful on Steemit, would you please upvote it and follow me because you will then be able to see more posts like this in your home feed?
Love,
Jerry Banfield with edits by @gmichelbkk
Shared on:
- Facebook page with 2,258,619 likes.
- YouTube channel with 196,188 subscribers.
- Twitter with 105,735 followers.
PS: Witness votes are the most powerful votes we make on Steem because one vote for a witness lasts indefinitely! Would you please make a vote for jerrybanfield as a witness or set jerrybanfield as a proxy to handle all witness votes at https://steemit.com/~witnesses because when we make our votes, we feel in control of our future together?
Or
Hey Jerry,
with this post you lost me as a follower. I might be small and I don't matter in the steemit ecosystem, but it shall be a food for taught. This post is to underline that you should be first, at least this is what I understand from it. You try to present the two in front as scammer upvoters. They might be, but let's put it this way, you also upvote your own comments. Most of the minnows would be instantly flagged for it. As you got already a lot of traction people will just upvote everythig to get the curation reward.
Regarding the first two. Yes it is wrong what they are doing, but why don't you just flag them and then presenting this in here. I think 99% in here think they are wrong, but nobody has the balls to just send one flag. Well I might get flagged for this comment.
Regarding the witness vote. I don't know why I shall vote for you. You speak mostly about how much a witness makes, not about what a witness shall do. Most put a tremendous work on the platform and don't post anything as their are busy to keep the system running. Just check github to see how many people are involved, but are not having your visibility.
Also trying to bribe the whales to be a witness is so wrong:
You should be a witness for the things you do in the background not for the post you do. @nanzo-scoop told you already this:
Like said, even if I get flagged for this, it had to be said. If I would have been one of the top whales I would probably get some pretty good dollars for the comment.
Me too
hahaha yo tambien!!!
Thank for all my followers and fans. You too!
Priceless haha well done
Touche, good sir. But I think this one is played out now.
(Do not reply to this comment with me too. Argh. Now it's guaranteed to happen.)
Me neither @lexiconical
Thank you for posting your thoughts, despite the risk we all take when doing so in any controversial topic.
I think it's a little unfair to call those "bribes", but I get your point. I think it wound have been appropriate for nanzo to keep the 20 and shrug. One could also interpret this as Jerry's way of paying for the time of a whale, which is valuable and could be otherwise spent not reading transfer messages in the wallet. At least he bothered to check how often they each voted for him, thereby having a reasonable reason to assume they might support him.
"Most put a tremendous work on the platform and don't post anything as their are busy to keep the system running. Just check github to see how many people are involved, but are not having your visibility."
I totally agree with you. However, if one is capable of outsourcing part of the technical work, could it not be potentially valuable to have a more public witness (whether that be Jerry or not?).
"Like said, even if I get flagged for this, it had to be said. If I would have been one of the top whales I would probably get some pretty good dollars for the comment."
I have been very pleased to see that the community has done very little comment flagging here today. I'm also happy to see you with those "pretty good dollars" you mentioned!
I'm coming from a former socialist/communist country, where freedom of speech was forbidden. I will do fight, even with risks for this fair right that so many take for granted.
He already posted that he wants to be a witness and the posts have been already voted by the whales, and if they real have read the posts and wanted to make him a wintess they woul have done it, without the incentive, so for me it is still bribing. Why did he not send to lower guys that voted him as a witness? It is economics, I would buy myself also in when if it is needed and the system allows it. This is to get back to the point. I do not condemn that he is doing it, just the way he tries to come out clean and point the finger on others.
The point of the witness is not to outsource the work. Let others do it, that have the passion for it, not for the money. I wonder if 50% of the witness would still do it if only the elcetricity and machine use would be paid, but this is another topic.
I'm happy also, because we can have an open debate with normal arguments.
Also I have to thank you for the normal reply, with marked points. I like having constructive discussions, where we can find solutions.
For the record...
A bribe absolutely requires quid pro quo by definition.
There was no quid pro quo here. This is a sales tactic used in marketing, soften the target with a gift. It's distinctly different than an offer that requires quo to get your quid.
This may be a semantic argument, but I think we should call it what it is, a sales tactic not a bribe. You can't have a bribe when you are allowed to keep the quid and not even respond to the quo request at all.
It's not really spam either, because if spam came with a $15 reward for doing nothing, we'd all be like "gimme more of dat spam".
It's a marketing tactic, and he's an internet marketer. I suspect that alone is enough to turn you off, as I've noticed a lot of other people with a similar opinion (honestly, including myself).
We can debate around this for hours. I was born in a country where corruption is endemic and a lot of the "gifts" are kept without doing the requested thing, as nobody will try to announce that he tried to bribe someone. For me, this marketing tactic is acting as a bribe. The "gift" is to influence one on the decission of doing something, which could have been done freely till then.
According to Merriam Webster Dictionary a bribe is:
Also I thank you for the constructive comments.
I was being a bit of a pedant. I still don't think this is a bribe because what is given is given freely before any chance of whether there will be a reward is known.
However, if you had used the word "corruption", I wouldn't have made this objection. Not that I'm saying it is or isn't, but I wouldn't have pointed this out.
If you called it "vote-buying" or maybe "pandering" (an option with a negative connotation), I would have been 100% unable to do anything but agree.
See what I mean about me having a penchant for playing Devil's Advocate?
Ok, let's put it as vote-buying from whales. Pandering would be to redlightish for the level of the discussion we are having here.
Gladly to find common sense.
As I said you can initiate a bribe and the guy can keep it without delivering it, but this is another part of the story.
Huh? He's not exposing them as scammers...he is simply analyzing them and sharing what he discovered. You should should be grateful for Jerry's content!
I think he presents the flaws of the system, but only on the ones on top of him. It would made more sense to see the top10 including him what tricks they are using.
It is the same like comment upvoting, a flaw in the system. This is how I see it. I don't find them right, but this is only my opinion.
Why should I be grateful? Okay, he does a great job as a content producer but I said something else, I said about the witness stuff, which is a little different than the content.
this is better than floyd mayweather vs conor mcgregor
Pick a random fight, and most chances are it will be better than floyd mayweather vs conor mcgregor
Let's get Alex to pose.
That made me laugh :)
This is not the point of the discussion.
But to give you an answer: As if we would fight on social media, I can quit from the start to keep losses low. If it is a fight like the one from last night, most probably I would be the winner, having some basics in contact sports and being in the heavyweight category, aiming to reach cruiserweight category end of fall.
They should change Heavyweight to the Battleshipweight category, and whatever comes under Cruiserweight to Destroyerweight.
This would satisfy my hierarchy-of-naval-vessels-tonnage desires.
Lol.
Because of your well tought comments, you gained a new follower ;)
[ This is not the point of the discussion. ]
Oh yes, it bloody well is, and you know it. You are pretentious, arrogant, and quite frankly, a flaming idiot. He called you out perfectly with that meme. You're attacking Jerry for no good reason to somehow show off as the moral superior.
Address the flaws in the Steemit system he has exposed, or STFU you miserable cretin.
I think you did not read the whole post or if you did, not comprehend it.
I try to summerasize it for you: One shall not blame others on gaming the system if he does it in another way. Blaming others when you do almost the same stuff is the thing I addressed.
I did not say that I'm moral, just read the thread.
On another note, as one that claims to be a rational conversationalist, you got flammed very fast, cursing without any reason. I did not bring any insult and with the other commenters, we had a decent inteligent exchange. Let's keep it to a certain level.
There are flaws in the system and not few, some of them can be corrected, some not. I would have the problems addressed not the users, like for example @tamim did not post for 9 days when the post was made, so to bring him in this in was pointless. Just name calling.
Lol.. I think it is pointless. Hoped for a constructive discussion but all that came was a video from a bad singer with some self upvote:
Thanks for this, as I'm convinced of doing the right thing with the comment and pointing some of the flaws out.
You pointed out some serious questions that Jerry should answer. Replying with a Kesha song is ridiculous, and bad taste. Thanks for the comment, and I hope you get a response.
As for Jerry, I am sorry that people keep re-steeming your stuff into my feed, however you did point out some interesting things about those two top authors. I feel like they are both scamming the system based on what you reported about them.
I shall thank you for the comment. I think the response is clear. He will probably not answer it and he will let it go ;)
It will be good if this scamms can be blocked. Some understood it before the post and stopped. Look at @tamim. ;)
Jerry, I hope you are simply busy at the moment as I believe you would do well to respond to this in a less meme-worthy fashion. There are fair points on both sides and an easier compromise here than on other issues.
You two should start here: "You try to present the two in front as scammer upvoters."
me too ...
man kesha sucks so much! lol love how you found a way to monetize VEVo videos lol its like, u got 59 cents for keshas music video LOL i wonder if youtube is gonna get mad at us for that? Im sure they will! We should cherish these good times on stemit while we are big enough tio make some money but small enough to stay under the radar!
I agree with Alexvan here, when you see something wrong happening you should do something about it and not use it to defame someone else for your own good.
Actually I think he is doing something. He makes members aware of an intrinsic problem of the platform, which is a first important step of thinking about it and finding solutions. I don't think single users are to blame 'morally' to exploit a system if the system allows it. So it is not the point if @mindhunter or @tamim act 'morally' wrong or not.
But in my eyes it is obvious that extensive self-voting, comment voting and other (completely legal!) 'tricks' can be dangerous for Steemit in the long run. If only a few are doing that, the system will handle it, but if more and more users are getting aware, that self-voting (without writing long, elaborated articles or communicating with other members) is the most easy and effective way to make profit here, then more and more people will do exactly that (they have the right to do it actually). The consequences will be less communication between users, low quality articles, frustration of newbies, and of course a low Steem price. So even if extensive self-voting may lead to some short term profit in the long rung it should be counterproductive.
As I don't blame single users like @tamim or @mindhunter (as I said, people will always 'game' an exploitable system - and by the way I also upvote my articles and some comments), I think we should try to improve the system, so that it will be at least more difficult to exploit it.
Actually all recent changes made it more easy to upvote oneself:
Actually all these changes also have their advantages but combined they favor self-voting a lot. Therefore I think we should collect ideas to minimize the effect of extensive self-voting and similar methods. I also haven't found any really good solution so far, but at least some ideas:
(These ideas may be inappropriate - I hope you will find much better ones! :) )
Maybe @jerrybanfield's article was not completely altruistic, but in my opinion he pointed out a real problem about which we should ponder to find suitable solutions.
I note there are other problems that stem from the same cause, which is weighting VP with SP. Perhaps the worst problems faced by Steemit is that this weighting scheme makes a Sybil attack on Steemit able to control the code trivial (all you need is enough money to buy enough witness votes), and PROFITABLE to those from whom the Steem would need to be purchased (all of the largest holdings of Steem were mined, before Steemit even existed), and the fact that weighting VP with SP makes Steem a security in the eyes of the SEC.
While the SEC has yet to set (publicly) it's sights on Steem, I am pretty sure it will, sooner or later.
I have posted on the only solution I can see to all the problems this weighting scheme causes, including exactly this rewards pool mining scheme @jerrybanfield points out in this post, and that is changing how VP is weighted. That is the only way to change how the SEC will consider whether Steem is a security, for example.
I have done my best to advocate for solving these problems. It seems to me that those who are either minnows and eager to be able to take advantage of these same design 'features' (vectors for attack) don't want it to change, and those unable to understand it is a problem, and those presently being advantaged financially by it (particularly those that mined their stakes, who are millionaires on paper), are manufacturing opposition to fixing the problem, for the reasons listed above.
Because of this I do not expect Steemit to fix the problem(s), and therefore the price of Steem is likely to continue to languish, rather than rise to reflect the potential of the platform to overtake Fakebook, and the capital gains that would inure to those who have invested in Steem to fail to materialize.
Fortunately, Steem is open source, and I know that at least one fork of Steemit is being written as we speak that intends to a) do away with the mined stakes, and b) weight VP with reputation in order to solve these problems. I am sure Calibrae will not be the last fork either, so if it doesn't succeed in solving these problems, another will arise, and another, until the lessons learned from each failure finally produce a platform that will kill Fakebook.
I personally am not focused on financial rewards from Steemit, although I am on Steemit because it offers them, and offering them has created a community the discourages trolling, and encourages polite discourse - a fantastic boon to social media platforms.
At first I thought Steemit was a fair and brilliant platform capable of growing to the point of leaving Fakebook in the dustbin of history, but after I read the white paper, and had conversations with witnesses, devs, and profiteers, I realized it cannot do so without changing how VP is weighted.
I could be wrong about whether Steemit will make the necessary changes to weighting VP, but I highly doubt it.
We shall see what the future brings.
The more I learn about how Steemit works right now, the more it becomes clear that the system is much too easily manipulated by people who can invest from the outside with fiat to get voting power. There must be a formula to figure out how much $ to invest X number of accounts to reach a sweet spot in voting power that can then be used make sufficient profit to justify the time spent - if you just vote for yourself.
That is very much not in keeping with what I understand the spirit of Steemit to be. I am very curious what the fork you mentioned will bring. I agree that reputation should be more heavily weighted in determining voting power, not financial value. Financial power = voting power is what made the world we live in what it is, and it is being replicated on a much much smaller scale here.
Clearly, you get it.
I agree that there is a break point where it is simply too profitable to self vote to bother with curation anymore - although some whales still do so. That they do is strong evidence of their personal dedication to Steemit, and one of the things that gives me hope, and causes me to continue to rail at those will listen, and try to advocate for changes that i think are necessary to prevent Steemit from suffering fatal injury.
I have posted on such topics before.
There is no fate, but what we make...
Sarah Connor
We seem to fighting a loosing battle against lobbies everywhere, in every single aspect of our lives...
And now we also have to fight BOTs on the dark side.
Sometimes I wish for the rise of google, so the battle becomes fairer...
I was just pointing out that he was trying to talk himself as the actual top earner, because the others are faulty and have issues, like comment voting, but he does the same, votes his own comments. If some low minnow will do upvote his own comment for a longer time he would be blasted by some other whale.
He bought his witness rank from the top whales, just check the blocks with the SBD sent to top whales. Now he can start implementig solutions on github, but no, we needed all to know what a top witness earns and how @tamim or @mindhunter cheat the system. By the way, @tamim did not post anything in the past 9 days, only resteemed.
Like said, the approach was what got me to post the comment. Don't try to appear clean and shift the blame on others, admit your faults and flaws, come with a solution and let's discuss it. Just throwing a blame in a room will not bring us forward.
Steemit has flaws, of course, some can be solved, some maybe not, the real witness are working hard on it, and deserve to be paid for their effort.
I see that your comment was writen in a constructive manner, which I appreciate, and most of the things I have to agree upon. I hope you take my comments also in a constructive way.
No, I will flag it with 100 %! ;-)
Thank you Sir :))
you guys are right.. it is bad for steemit and I didnt feel very good about it as a minnow.. while I do my best to create valuable content someone who has enough SP earns just with one image or meaningless comment.. it wont be that bad if the posts were good.. steemit shouldnt allow this and it is bad when someone sees steemit just as a way to get money...
Because their are advantages to current 'problems', perhaps the right solution is do what the steem white paper suggests, in its crab parable. Let the big boys take down the big boys who rise too quickly or 'cheat'.
In other words, first warn the abuser and ask his motivation, then publish this abuse and last of all 'take them down' kindly. Once they are 'tackled' as in football, do not keep kicking them. Chances are they have something to offer, even if it is just demonstrating system weaknesses.
HF19 has been well, perhaps this is strong, a disaster.
Sooner or later the most elaborated post will always get the best rewards. Self voting won't hurt the community
I disagree. Just check accounts like the one of @tamim or also @sandrino. They make huge rewards by upvoting their own posts again and again. For example @sandrino just overtook me in the SteemWhales list by doing nothing but upvoting his own posts.
As long as not too many users follow these examples, it won't hurt the platform too much, but if more and more members recognize how lucrative it is under the current conditions, it actually could be the end of Steemit.
If the gaming is allowed, unfettered, sooner or later, that will be inevitable result - everybody just gaming for up votes, which will kill it, like you say.
I don't see the ethical stance changing, which is whats is needed, before implementing any changes.
And certainly not from the current big players?- why would they? - its the game they want.
What is the process for actual change on steem? How are ideas implemented into the actual code and who does it? Have changes been made before?
The last thing a charlatan would want you to do is call them out while they are performing. This is precisely what Jerry has done. It doesn't matter if he serves to benefit or not, what matters is that there are people exploiting Steemit, and the public deserves to know about it.
Defaming people who have done immoral acts is the moral thing to do. If you don't, then they are free to continue. The only reason I can see for wanting to protect the immoral in this way is if you are one of them. Defending your own by any chance Elias?
silentwrath i guess you can look at my profile and find that i'm not, and i think Jerry also said that they are smart to have a strategy and that he should've had a better one. so...
I think Jerry is just trying to raise awareness in the community about potential flaws in the system, rather than to accuse others. He's always trying to build and improve Steemit. Just my 2 cents.
Thanks for you opinion. I ranted about the way he did it, attacking the two top earners in front of him and their flaws. It would have been better to present the top 10 or 20 including him, with the system gaming they do. As you expose yourself and point out the flaws in the system, you are not vulnerable to comments from others. I did not say he does not serve steemit, it would have been unfair, because he is producing content and brings loads of people in here.
You are 100% right!!!
Uh oh a $60 comment! is @mindhunter behind this? lolol
Sarcasm :D
I will donate the SBD from this post to a social cause.
its all good , i was just joking, and hey you should donate an upvote to my Steemit Africa friends @tj4real and @bania and @mcsaam
@tj4real is getting oots of afrian userson steemit hesin Ghana, Africa, and he has some amazng projects were working on im helping him organize a big steemit advertising campaign for africa, and he just needs lots of supporters and followers to help him upvote his fundraising pots, he has results, hes trustworthy and hard working and also @stellabelle and I wanna send more USB solar chargers to arica so they can all stay online longer (smartphones run out of battery fast especially whenonlien!) africa has a lot of existing wireless infrastructure that is usable they just need more smartphones and smal solr carger backups OR more pocket battery bricks to kep their phones charged
anyway we need to promote more mesh network decentralized interneyt and satelite recievers from outernet we need thsoe BRCK portable wifi backup generators, we need ays to get internet to evryone in africa, get cheap $40 android smartphons by the box and hand em out to people in exchange for signing up to stemit and peopel can geta LOAN to have a smartphone, solar USb charger and $50 prepaid internet for a month, , and they can signup on steemit nd show the program they used in their introduction post, and end up making $100 off their FIRST post to have enough to then pay back the steemit proga, whichg usesthat money to then buy ANOTHER $100 africa inteenrt kit wiyth usb solr charger, smnartphone,a nd one month of prepaid mobile data, 9e need a longterm soltion for free wifi to africa and developing countrues) but yeah we could use steemit to rowdfund so many new steemit users in dveeloping world, and now @tj4real is on his way to ecomning a steemit whale, i convincd him to save most of his searnings as stempower which he has, and now he will be able tp uopvte all the african users who deserve upvoptes, he will be there for his fellow arican stemit users in http://steemit.com/trending/africa and we should all go in there wen we can and sprinkle some upvotes to African steemitusers ! even if a small number of Africans are on steemit, when they start making money they become beacons of hope for the people around them in reallife! This is how steemit spreads best via word of mouth, when a minnow becomes a dolphin and they are able to show people steemit and the money theyve been able to make!
Thanks for the info! I do use @treeplanter a lot, to reforest a part of Africa. And I totaly agree with you on this. Africa needs a little push to selfsustain itself as a continent.
I like this @newsflash guy
Seems like he uses votes wisely
I did not check what he voted till now, but he brought the comment on top and also made a small shield for it as who will take the risk to downvote it and risk a flag on other post.
He got balls, I like it!
@alexvan, this is quite an insightful post and you raise a lot of important questions about motives. I completely agree with you that being a witness is about work, not self aggrandizement.
One thing that i think needs to be kept in mind is the 'techniques' used by the self voters. You asked Jerry, why he didn't flag them? Fair enough. But they also were voting at the very last minute to maximize their gains. So, although i agree with the sentiment, he kind of has to go out of his way in order to do that.
But all in all, great comments.
Lots to ponder here, cheers
Hey @v4vapid, thank you for the comment. It was one of the few that understood it. I was happy, that so many people responded to it, with their own comments, but most have been taking time to do it in a propper way, keeping the discussion to a certain level(some exeptions, but them we can ignore). This is showing me that steemit is on the good way, even if not all agree on the same topic. I'm happy to be able to have another opinion than others and still not to hold grudge and to agree on other topics. This is my image of the perfect society, to be free to have different opinions and still to respect the other.
My comment was just showing the principles of the witness on one side and not defending the top2, even if @tamim had stopped 9 days before the post (so it was pointless to point him out). I would have not made the comment if the top10 would have been presented, including himself with their good and bad voting patterns. This would fair to say, pointing the flaws in the system for all.
I'm more the sinner than the saint. I do use the bots to get more visibility on the post. My comments I do never upvote. But this is all my choice. It is how I see the impact on steemit and on the reward pool.
Bravos , Mr. Van , bravos. This needed to be said . I'm glad you are not a kiss-ass
Many of us are afraid to speak the truth because one can hurt a whale's ego , and therefore , be flaged .
I too know the feeling of being afraid of writing something I know is right because I fear being actually not just having comment flagged but having someone coming in and flagging the last 7 days of work i've done, which makes me wonder if it is even safe to do a lot of steemit posting all at once and if we should space out our work or maybe use multiple accounts to give ourselves a backup? I am totally public about who I am exactly on my account because i was a victim of identity theft and i wanna make sure people know what the real me looks like so no one can impersonate me etc but i now see that i will need to have a second account with followers and anonymity to keep myself safe incase something happens to my account where i somehow loose my rep or followers or get flag attacked by someone bigger than me, and unfortunately as steemit gets bigger will just have more psychopaths joining who will find it fun to flag people to fuck with them
and we do have to be careful about rewarding people for bad behaviour but we are humans too who are we to say what i bad behavior? Well actually we can define bad behavior and i don't care if you disagree but doing things like Spamming copy paste messages or leaving one line 'Follow and upvote me please!" is bad behaviour and i know 99.999% of you agree! and there's plenty of things we all know is bad and we need a way to protect people who get flagged unfairly without taking away any power from even the potential abuser.... becvause that person evenfi they are abusing their steempower (lol absolute steempower corrupts absolutely or Steempower tripping) so anyway even if they ARE abusing thgeir steempower, they still havethat right, but then the community has the right to flag them back as a group after warning them to take away flags or suffer flags tjemselves, and if that doesnt work we can send the user to like a special list where we give them enouigh upvotes from whales to balance out any potential flags given to them in an attempt to wipe out their earnings... i think this will happen so rarelythat we will not even haveto have many spare iupvotes around to fix any potentiual probelms and we have a whole tribunal and everythingwhere we have the user get on steemspeak.com discord voice chat to actually TALK aboiut the situation and we hold a court rom type thing with @frystikken as the judge or we vote on a judge but this was we can have a soret of systemn to deal with this stuff without taking away flagging roi something drastic like that
maybe make it so you cant flag someone more than a cartian number? or make it like so u need permission from like another RANDOM user to flag the article???
OOOH i like that Joint flagging permissions like a sort of Multi Signature Wallet deal where you haveto like get teh permission of a random steemit user picked at random to actually go ahead and flag a user IF they have a certain amount of Steempower maybe
For abuse and spam there are steemcleaners. Just report them in here https://docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1FAIpQLScCZuBdZmqg4FcOWcpF_nfvZ0_6rQbZJfnbUJjtglepuwcAhQ/viewform
It is anonymus and it is not based on once taste but on abuses.
well it was anonymous heh
but its one guy tho, hes fair but what if someone takes his account? see we need a group system decentral
but hey steemcleaners is like #1 now look
https://steemwhales.com/trending/?d=30
so i cant argue with that. gotta respect that
There are many in team, it is a shared account.
By the way, that many open tabs!!! I have 29 open now :)
:O You should write a post with the title "steemit hacks"
I will not, as the hacks will not be blocked and more will abuse them. I will try to reach the steemit team to do something about them. I do use also some hacks, so I will not play the morale saint in this story.
lets see if he has the courage to respond to this comment. People trying to act smart by exposing others are not that smart.
He already did with the video, he will not come with an answer as I'm irelevant on steemit. I think the discussion is closed for now. It is pointless to navigate around it.
I have been following jerry on mainly on youtube and I have always had a visceral feeling of punching him the moment he starts talking. (Thats my bad) but today was the last straw. I am done with him
I think this is not the best approach. If I can come up with an answer, I will just walk away and ignore him. Today I did unfollow him because the post was what I said before in the comment.
I don't care about the face or voice, I care about the data.
I see he brings new guys o steemit, which is good and needs to be appreciated. The crypto info also, nothing to argue.
The post today showed the blunt opportunism where shame was left aside. This was the comment targeted at. If you do something, stick to it, don't highlight others faults by hidding yours.
Also to be a witness needs some more than just braging about money. But this is how I see it.
A bit jealous? Me too ;)
No, not this is the point, just read what I have writen. I don't care how much money one makes as I'm a capitalist by nature. The point was that the two who make the most money have been presented as steemabusers and the third is clean, where it is not. This is it.
Ok I see. Thanks for showing us these details. Have a great weekend
FREE Author ATS tokens - Get 75 ATS tokens for FREE everyone that joins.
This needs a flag by @steemcleaners
Consider yourself off my list of following.
Did not mean to piss you off? I was offering you a gift.
How ungrateful?
Posting links like this is just spam. You could have started with a comment on the topic, and after some other comments just asking if I would be interesting in something like this, than, if I said yes you would have given me the link. It might be also my fault that I did not take the time to explain this.
please except my apology
You don't have to apologies for this. Just keep in mind that some will flag you for it, as it is not wanted.
Well said, to me it now seems Steemit is mostly a play between people who have more powers here. There is still room for creativity here, because truth always prevails sooner or later. But many members quit as a result of frustration.
The people who are on top, should start a trend where they would manually look at some of the new people's post and upvote them , to encourage people coming here. Otherwise, soon steemit will be left with only people who have already lot of power and will not add up many people, thus leaving the overall health of this echo system in a bad health.
Hello @sanjeevm, most people, if not all who join steemit do it for the financial rewards. I did it. But most don't do the math, it is a long term investment and if you are trying to get rich quick on it will probably not make it.
Only a few can make a living out of it. This either invested a huge amount of money, which is also a high risk investment and need to have a decent ROI on it. Others who make it on here, post very good content and are seen by people with influence.
So if you believe in it as I do, just stick for the long run, it is only in beta.
Agreed, I believe Steemit will give returns in the long run.
Me too !
almost forgot!............. Me too! : P
wow super useful insights thanks!
Did not know about @sadkitten. I've seen some minnow with low numbers because of selfvotes. Some other that are bigger tend to downvote them. Usualy the bigger whales don't get a flag for selfvotes.
Me too!! There are a lot of Me toos in everyday society
Whoaaaaaa, ME TOO!
upvotes please LOL 😂
Your learning... me too lol :).
that's so crazy! me too!
me too
strange... why did none of us earn 100$????
Too Me, or not Too Me, that is the question!
I contributed my $0.23 lol
5th times the charm
lol
Don't be jealous Jerry, just start doing the same thing... and you'll be #1 in no time at all mate! 🐳
lol
me 2 :p lol
Hello @luisneira, can you help me with answering my question.
Will I get flagged NSFW for this picture from one of my photo shoots if I use it in my intro post?
borderline. id assume yes
thanks
I'd assume no, as there are no sexual organs on display.
@mindhunter I want you to upvote my comment :P
Oh I forgot.
Me too :D
Interestingly @mindhunter's 100% vote is worth a meagre $0.19, worse still he's been drained to 17.86% voting power.
Bottom line, the guy is a hit and run farmer trying to harvest and clear out of steemit as quickly as possible
Can he be stopped, or is the system still able to be game by him so easily?
What would the developers have to change in order to stop behavior like this?
I have been saying, and still believe that they should take away the ability to self-vote, but would that actually ever happen is a different story all together.
That is a totally pointless and harmful fix. However, I realize you propose it with good intentions. Let me elaborate.
Self-voting cannot be stopped. Not unless you remove delegation and monitor every account for IP addresses, banning multi-accounters and sock-puppeteers.
It's actually better to leave it in, because at least you can track it. If you've been following this thread, you may have noticed this has nothing to do with self-voting. Self-voting is a witch hunt newbies to the platform throw in on (often out of frustration with rewards or jealousy) without even considering the game-theory ramifications (that it cannot be stopped because of vote-trading, multi-accounts, sock puppets, delegation, etc and that it would greatly reduce the utility, and therefore price, of Steem).
Consider if there were two versions of Steem, one that allowed you to vote on yourself to promote posts, and one that didn't. We all know which one would be worth significantly more to the market.
The solution must be carrot based, not stick.
PS - This is not an attack on you, thank you for your comment.
What if everyone on Steemit just wrote, and up-voted their own content all day... could that system survive long-term?
Probably not. We aren't in ideological disagreement. But because of delegation, vote trading and sock-puppets, you can't stop it. You would just help the best of the abuse even better since they'd be savvy enough to do it in private slacks, etc.
You have to make it more rewarding to do the desired behavior, rather than attempt to punish or prevent everyone else from the undesired behavior.
The Steem whitepaper is very clear about this, noting you cannot prevent all abuse and the crabs-in-a-bucket analogy.
Interesting data, thanks. I'm not sure it provides a conclusion, however.
Love the last line "hit and run farmer..."
Sure, but you have to produce good work as well. Jerry gets paid because he produces good work.
Me too! Not easy for me to follow... as.. I am new to Steemit. I just started using it. I need to learn a lot from you. I am following your account, can you please follow me as weel?
Cheers...
too true!!!
The irony is that I started upvoting mindhunter because of this video https://steemit.com/hf20/@jerrybanfield/we-double-our-steem-power-upvoting-ourselves-every-181-days from @jerrybanfield.
I didn't have time to post and upvote myself so I made a deal with @mindhunter. He was effectively buying votes from me like the dozens of other vote buying schemes on steemit.
I started upvoting mindhunter's posts and had to upvote his comments when @newsflash started to notice and flag.
There was no ill intention from voting at the last minute, it was purely to make the most out of my vote.
This has been discussed in lenght the last few days and people can read my posts to see my stance on it.
If a minnow was doing this there would have been no flag and no one would be bragging about it, so this means large stake holder are discriminated, they can not use their steem power freely which is stupid considering they are the ones feeding the whole thing.
Ultimately the question we need to ask ourselves is : Do we want to prevent investors from making money? and is there a good and a bad way to make it?
My response is that everyone supports the system by default just by owning a share in it and so they should be able to use it as they wish. You have to stay powered up in order to profit from the system thus profiteers contribute to increase the price of steem.
I have stopped upvoting @mindhunter a few days ago because @newsflash was flagging all his posts. I realize there may be other better ways of supporting the community, however I didn't have time to scout for content and voting for @mindhunter was the easy hassle free way of doing it.
@jerrybanfield I think you are an asset to the community, what you have done for steem so far is amazing which is why you are both on my author and witness voting list. You definetely deserve the top spot.
I don't judge this behavior morally - maybe everybody has the right to post 10 minimalistic posts per day and then just upvote them (like @sandrino does) or also his comments.
The question is however what would happen to the Steemit community if everybody starts doing that, because it's the most simple and effective way to earn steem. Will we still see elaborated long articles and communication between the platform users? And in case not, what would that mean for the growth of the community and the Steem price? I fear the consequences would be everything but positive.
If everyone did that, you'd see a race to the bottom in quality. A trend like that wouldn't be so hot for Steemit's reputation. But it is a beta product and it's going to take time to work it out.
Since that kind of activity seems beyond my sphere of control, I'm just going to focus on the content.
I'm afraid I agree.
Also, I applaud you for focusing on the positive (ie. where you can make a difference, authoring).
I hate to make the "snowball effect" argument, but it does seem that Steemit would devolve into a cesspool of circle-jerking that was not much better than a MLM scheme if we were all to maximally exploit the system as "allowed" by the code.
Curation of content is not very incentivised and most people do not spend time on things with low short term gains. @mindhunter was not doing anything different than what many other people are doing. Mindhunter just did it on a larger more detectable scale. Whats kind of even more ironic is the fact that even @jerrybanfield is profiting from this because he is writing about it with a profitable post. :)
I think we need substantially higher curation rewards. We should make self-voting or vote-trading the LESS efficient way of maximizing Steem gain.
Even super-saiyan human curators like @ats-david may have trouble keeping up with curation rewards relative to straight-self voting, if the rewards I have seen from curation are any example.
I'd love to hear his thoughts on how we could make curation more rewarding.
Lmao right! At the end of the day everyone is here to make money :-)
While I am very grateful the rewards have been so great from using Steem, my main hope is to collaborate with all of us to help heal our world here and help empower each of us to have a good life together. The existing companies drain employees of life while draining the entire planet of creative energy into a funnel which then allows advertisers to maintain control over the majority of the planet. I hope with Steem we have a chance to break this cycle and empower every individual to earn enough money to pay for basic necessities by sharing here.
Yeah, no.
I am not here simply to gain money, but rather to use a platform where financial incentives strongly discourage trolls, and the blockchain precludes removal of posts entirely.
While there is nothing wrong with money itself, and I don't hate it, capitalism is dependent on value being delivered in order to gain capital, and so many tricks are used to simulate value that real capitalism just seems to not even be possible.
Every crypto has the potential to deliver capital gains to the investors, and each seems to have a different use case. Steemit is the use case that seems to me to deliver the greatest capital appreciation potential to investors.
While I don't see any problem with authors that produce content focused purely on wealth accumulation being considered valuable, and upvoted accordingly (I hope this indicates that I am not jelly, as I do not post such content, and am not focused on wealth accumulation), it is a fact that gaming the rewards pool drains it of rewards that would inure to authors and curators that deliver such valuable content.
That decreases the rewards available to promote the creation of such valuable content, and strongly incentivizes folks to simply game the system, as you found to be true.
I reckon were the system such that content creation and curation were strongly incentivized over gaming the system, you would have no compunction about using those means of improving your profitability.
Since that would increase the value of the platform, and thus increase the value of Steem, you would see significant capital gains as a reward for your investment in Steem, which I also do not denigrate. Indeed, I strongly support the capital gains mechanism, as it is a true capitalism - as long as it isn't the result of less fair businesses, such as the defense industry promoting war and the profiting from selling weapons to nations through capital gains.
At the end of the day, you seem to be focused on making money, and that's ok by me, as long as the means you use to do so don't harm others. I see certain games and financial manipulation as strong negative impactors on the potential of the platform to grow, and to deliver on it's potential to create uncensored content and overcome the controls on capital used to devalue humanity, and concentrate wealth to the point where 85 people have more than 3.5 billion.
There is a point beyond which wealth accumulation is untenable, and I reckon the world has passed it. YMMV. Perhaps you simply want to be the 86th. I am not stating that you do want that, but that, if you are only focused on wealth with such a goal, I consider that evil.
People are worth more than money, and money is merely a veil behind which real wealth is concealed.
Actually, I'm here because the blockchain means my posts / profile can't be erased from the internet by some totalitarian freak who hates free speech. The money is a nice side benefit though, don't get me wrong.
Lol, yeah, your existence is probably contrary proof to the assertion you responded to.
hahaha you are right!!!
@azfix you're right the combined power of all the systems we are not noticing is probably more than the top 10 authors combined from bot networks voting up comments $1 or $5 hundreds of times a day to authors posting on hot topics like this and then getting a lot of upvotes as has happened so far here on this post. None of us can totally separate our selfish motives from our unselfish ones :)
The problem is that short term selfishness often doesn't lead to long term success. If finally everybody came to the conclusion that it would be much more easy to upvote ones own comments or articles only, the quality of articles would decrease rapidly, new users would be completely frustrated (even more than already now) and the steem price would decrease as well. As long as only few accounts are doing that it may work very well for them - if all are doing it that's the END of Steemit.
It's a bit like the classic prisoner's dilemma.
"The prisoner's dilemma is a standard example of a game analyzed in game theory that shows why two completely "rational" individuals might not cooperate, even if it appears that it is in their best interests to do so."
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prisoner%27s_dilemma
I agree with you there on the curation vs. posting decision. I love to write, so I tend to write more than curate. But we need curators.
I read some time ago that the best way to allocate time for steemit is to post 2 or 3 times a week and spend an hour or two per day just curating and commenting. I'm beginning to get the sense that is what needs to be done.
You are on track and have discovered the key to getting more exposure with good comments that show you have read the content. Manual curation is important no matter how big we all get on steemit. I am not opposed to bot voting but it needs to be with reliable consistent content creators and checked for quality now and then.
Good comments are critical to gaining followers.
Unfortunately, I don't think curation is rewarded nearly as much as it should be, game-theoretically.
@snowflake thank you very much for replying here along with upvoting the post and voting for me as a witness! I love that you started the upvotes after the most I made :)
You have made a powerful point that I agree with in that investors need good motivation to hold Steem Power and be active here. It will not matter what authors contribute if too many investors pull out and dump Steem because of an inability to earn a good return. I know as an investor with my life savings here I feel I have a right to get a return also. Curation currently does pay but not nearly as well as posts or upvoting ourselves.
The question is how do we both ensure authors and investors both have a way to share in the rewards that most of us are happy with? Currently it is not simple or easy for either. Authors struggle to get started while authors at the top are consistently rewarded. Investors not posting or wanting to spend hours reading articles each day to decide where to give the very powerful upvotes have few options to get a good return in both time and money while investors setting up systems to guarantee a return often are earning a lot from auto upvoting posts accepted by curation guilds to upvoting authors that consistently earn a lot from posts to accepting a portion of the upvote back as a thank you.
How do we make it easier for investors and authors to help each other in a way that readers enjoy the most?
I appreciate your reply here especially because writing this post with you as both a top witness upvoter and the upvoter featured in the comment felt like walking a tightrope. I am very relieved to read your reply and am grateful for your kind feedback here!
I think we should go back to a 50/50 model. Currently it is 75% authors 25% curators but used to be 50/50 which was better imo.
According to this rule https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1%25_rule_(Internet_culture) only 1% of users actively create content, so why should the 1% authors receive more than the 99% lurkers?
Someone was saying recently that there is too many authors compared to readers on steemit. I believe a 50/50 could rebalance this ratio a bit. It's important that we have engaged users that actually read content..
"so why should the 1% authors receive more than the 99% lurkers?"
Well, the obvious answer is 1 author provides more value than 99 lurkers. Or 999 lurkers. Or 9 million lurkers. Lurkers are useless.
Curators are not lurkers, they are hard workers who can't be differentiated from lurkers by 99.9% of us other than by stalking the steemd page and looking for votes.
I'm defining lurker as non-author who doesn't vote.
I fully agree that curation should be more rewarding, but perhaps something between 25% and 50% would help. Maybe a small portion of the pool each day could be set aside as a boost to curation payouts. Perhaps the formula itself needs changing.
This jerrybanfield post is the first time I'm seeing your comments. Great curation efforts!
I'll be following you now.
Thank you for your support!
I am also agree with the 50/50 but then you also should re-think the VP curve ... The people should have the possibilitty to vote more often ... In general people vote less now and they tend to go to authors who always get good rewards... I know everybody is not here for the money but the majority part are...
With the equality update it does seem like an adjustment to increase curation would be helpful!
This seems to be a fuss about nothing. @mindhunter has put massive effort into building his account, but hasn't made that much money compared with some. I think he deserved some good rewards. I can't see that he is going to make $20k
I think you're misunderstanding the situation.
"I can't see that he is going to make $20k"
What you "can see" is irrelevant. This is past-tense. Already happened/happening.
"hasn't made that much money compared with some."
Demonstrably false. He's the highest earner on the platform last month.
You handled this very well and your response is quite valuable.
I don't actually have a problem with @mindhunter or especially you in this matter. I feel that not only is it the right and responsibility of anyone with investment to use it the way they want but also feel that we need to implement reliable ways for investors to easily profit here on Steemit.
The key to the price of $teem going up is new investors, and big ones are the ones who really make it jump up.
Yet big investors are only going to come here if they can reliably and quickly/easily profit on their investment. If it takes time its not worth it because most people with a lot of money are already very busy making money....
Great to see you a part of this discussion and contributing your intelligent and reasonable perspective.
This is an important topic. I can see how anyone who is not making good rewards would be upset by something like this but they wouldn't make ANYTHING at all if it were not for the big investors.....
SO rather than try and make the investors figure out how to game the system how about just provide easy and clear ways for them to profit on their investment simply and quickly.
I very much enjoyed reading this post and seeing your comment made it even better.
SteemON!
Your position completely ignores capital gains. Capital gains is the ONLY mechanism that gets folks to invest in BTC, for example.
Consider this: @jerrybanfield made a post not so long ago that showed that mathematically he would be able to double his stake in 180 days by only self-voting. That's about 150% gains per year.
However, if Steem is at $1, and then goes to $20, then that is a 2000% gain, and that can happen in less time than a year.
By allowing financial manipulation of the rewards pool to provide 'dividends' for investors - and the largest holdings of Steem, indeed most of the Steem in existence, are the result of insider information and mining before the Steemit platform even existed - then this is essentially the same as fractional reserve banking creating wealth out of thin air - but only for the banks that are permitted to do so.
Merely working hard, and saving up enough money to invest cannot result in gains competitive with those banksters, nor the early miners, so those parties will always gain more in such systems.
Steemit authors producing valuable content is a far more valuable creator of appreciation in the price of Steem, as the recent skyrocket of Steem price at the end of May showed, as that was the result not of major investors buying Steem, but of many new accounts being created on Steemit.
The bottom line is that financial mechanisms that appear to be swindles are suppressing the growth of Steemit, and repressing appreciation in the price of Steem, and that is a far more profitable mechanism to reward investors than self-votes. The widespread perception that Steemit is being gamed by folks like @mindhunter and @tamim is a huge problem for not only the author community, but for investors.
I don't know if your responding to me, but I don't disagree with what you said.
I was replying to you, as you seemed to be of the opinion that the accounts referenced were just doing what was financially rewarding, and that was ok.
I hoped to convince you otherwise.
A truth about investing is that the greater the potential reward, the riskier the investment. This is certainly true with cryptos like Steem. It is why Steem could reward investors that bought at $1 with a 400,000% return if it goes to the price BTC was recently at.
But, if Steemit continues to permit mining the rewards pool with the scams the two highest paid authors on Steemit are running, well, the price of Steem will never rise to that level. Only showing that the use case for Steem, the Steemit platform, can grow and continue to drive adoption of Steem by paying account holders in Steem, can those gains become reality.
No one should be more outraged and against such scams than those that have plunked down hard cash for Steem.
Yes, but any crypto currency you can invest in has the potential to go up at base value. I mean bitcoin doesn't even have a platform, product or anything its its value is thousands of times what was invested.
To me the attractive part of investing in steemit is that that investment can be USED but currently its not really that easy for an investor to get immediate returns. If there was then people wouldn't NEED to GAME the system like is happening.
We need to accept that fact that investors want to make money and build that in for them. Also I don't think there is any crypto that didn't have insiders getting the biggest stake on the early. Thats just the benefit of being on the inside. Sucks for others but good for them. Its just the way it is.
Minnows are being voted down every day for misuse of the vote buying programs. These posts should also be flagged for disagreement on rewards.
@whatsup The 'disagreement on rewards' thing comes from the false idea of scarcity. People wouldn't care what others were earning if there was unlimited money to go around. The good news is that there is unlimited money, since the price of steem can increase indefinetely. Unfortunately the majority of users fail to grasp this concept.
You are so wrong, The price of Steem can go up infinitely high but not if more people do what you're doing. Not only are you sucking the LIMITED supply of new Steem from the pool reward, you are making the value of Steem go down because you do not promote good content.
I think there is a worse problem here which is censorship through flag abuse, because I believe in free speech. Why did you flag Roger Ver?
I noticed that transisto and his accounts promote core, other than that he seems like a nice guy
He can support core without abusing flags and engaging in censorship driving good people who love their mothers away from this platform. I'm kind of a free speech kind of man.....
Lol, I still don't get what you did, flag, vote and withdrawn, but I can't see what on steemd. Can you please say what was the order? Thank you in advance for the effort
I personally really don't care what you or mindhunter do with your stake.
Don't kid yourself that you are creating infinite resources here.
I bet the price of your votes would go down a bit if they were flagged.
If someone does care, they should just flag it and move on, we don't need all this "press"
How do you expect steem to pay the millions more users in the future?
Didn't get any of that, maybe too obvious?
There are deeper implications that comes with the flag. I wrote a post about it recently https://steemit.com/moderation/@snowflake/the-last-missing-piece-of-the-steem-puzzle
I have to at least partially disagree that the idea of scarcity is false.
It's a fact of human life. There is only so much Steem. The more that is inflated to weak hands and sold, the less it's all worth.
The present amount of Steem is not unlimited, and rewards are based on extant supplies, not future theoretical supplies. There is a limited pool of rewards at the time of any payout, and those payouts are proportional to the weight of the votes applicable to them.
Thus, when @mindhunter and I are both being payedout at the same time, the amount of rewards I receive are less the more rewards he is payed. I am not jelly, and do not write in order to receive rewards, but many, many do, and since @mindhunter's rewards aren't based on curation, but on buying votes, this practice directly diminishes the rewards payed to others.
It isn't a false idea of scarcity that is fooling people. It is false to contend that, because Steem can continually be inflated, our current rewards aren't impacted by scams and schemes that draw from the rewards pool.
It is frustating to see minnows comes up with a 4hours of post and not hitting a 1/100 worth of that self voting post of a whales. To have work hard is the only choice of minnows and to work smart if the smarter choice of whales.
Yep, but unfortunately, it's still Reward = Quality * Reach.
It's not Reward = Quality.
Steemit, like Life, is a popularity contest
got linked to this post...most important one ive seen yet.
convinced me to set you as proxy and resteem. gave a big vote too jerrybanfield. good work.
@nikez452 thank you very much for resteeming this and trusting me with your witness votes by setting me as your proxy! What advice do you have for me going forward here on Steem?
i think you are already doing it. you were very careful to write this post without making anyone too mad and its a tough topic. you work a lot and made it to #3 so far.
as long as you keep showing you want whats best for steemit your popularity can only increase. it is difficult to find any problems with your recent posts and actions.
keep it up.
@nikez452 thank you very much for your reply here because I am probably my harshest critic and it helps to see how the contributions I make look from your point of view!
Interesting and very informative post. Thanks for sharing your findings.
Jerry, I daresay you've stumbled upon a can of worms that was only recently just opened. I noticed about a week ago that Mindhunter started getting flagged by a group of curators. transisto at least, and I think Bernie too. Scroll back in Mindhunter's feed and he posted about it, and you can check the comments of those posts for further info.
I will comment more thoroughly (time-permitting) once I have a chance to finish the other half of your article.
Thank you for this detective work, and your attitude when approaching it from the start to try to learn is top-notch.
Have a great day!
Here is some background from a recent post: https://steemit.com/steemabuse/@mindhunter/a-message-to-newflash-a-sock-puppet-account-of-transisto-stop-downvoting-my-posts-and-acting-like-a-sociopathic-socialist-whale#@mindhunter/re-transisto-re-mindhunter-re-transisto-re-mindhunter-a-message-to-newflash-a-sock-puppet-account-of-transisto-stop-downvoting-my-posts-and-acting-like-a-sociopathic-socialist-whale-20170815t071324046z
THANK YOU for the context of the existing discussion which I added into the original post! For better or worse I enter into this with near complete ignorance of what has already happened!
Thank you for finding the post for us!
I wonder if this is something CommentWealth could help fight? The gears are starting to turn...
Jason I noticed the same which is why the comments are being made now instead of the posts because posts are easier to flag than the comments. At the same time, if the posts are being flagged, does the author have some responsibility to consider why the flags are coming and adjust contributions accordingly?
I think it depends on how much the author in question cares about the social norms of Steemit. They are the main "thing" at odds with maximizing one's investment.
The fact remains that the game-theoretically best way to make money on Steem (for minimal effort, non-authors) remains upvoting your own hidden comments with high stake. Unless something changes in the code, or all abuse spontaneously stops, this is a situation we're going to have to live with. Given the anarchist leanings around here, it may be that these authors are simply (selfishly) making the correct game theory decisions for operating on the platform, as it currently stands.
Interestingly, I noticed some of the accounts in question upvoted your post, like Snowflake.
So, if the formula for authors is Reward = Quality * Reach, and investors want to maximize their profits by placing their votes in ways that increases the value of their investment, but don't have or want to spend the time searching for quality content, then in a nutshell the way to find a win - win solution is to marry the needs of these two groups.
Is that a fair statement?
That sounds very reasonable to me. It could be tough to do.
Traders would hopefully stick to liquid Steem, and therefore never vote. Their stake is simply ignored for rewards-pool calculations.
Investors (people with Steem Power, not liquid Steem) in Steem hopefully have some belief in the fundamentals of the platform.
I think the idea of powering down was partially to help separate "traders" from real investors in the platform. Most real investors in the platform would be either content creators or big users of social media.
The problem I think we've seen is that the amount of gains that can be made voting for yourself, or vote-trading, are large enough to tempt traders (or anyone willing to hold 13 weeks) into maximizing this value. Once other people start doing it, the rest of us are forced to do so or fall further and further behind.
I think people will always act in their own best interests on average, so we need a way to encourage everyone's best interests to align with the group.
Perhaps we can figure out a way to rework curation to be based more on rewards given, than rewards given after you give rewards. Somehow, curation has to be more valuable.
It seems more curation benefits could encourage more readership too, at least a scan.
I keep seeing Steemit needs to do this or that, but no one is able to implement this or that except those at the very top, who don't seem to be interested enough to do this or that. So in light of the issues and lack of response to the issues, how can users marry the two? Could the arrangement @snowflake had with @mindhunter have been seen in a positive light if it somehow benefitted the platform? Not saying how, just asking for clarity to possibly come up with how.
Steemit is overall pretty anarchistic, so they don't like "fixing" stuff with rules. That includes the community as well as the company, from what I can tell.
I think if the situation could be seen as a positive for Steem's overall value long-term, it could be seen as beneficial or at least neutral. Hypothetically speaking.
Interesting, when I think of a fix I was assuming more in functionality than rules. I guess rules are used in code to create functionality though.
I'm not entirely clear on which is the second group. Authors? Curators?
Investors actually. In this case @snowflake is the investor, who did't have time to spend looking for good content to vote on, but wanted to vote and increase his investment. (from my understanding of his comment above)
Many investors are also authors/curators, but some don't want to or can't participate much personally, I guess.
I think authors and curators are aligned in the way they can achieve rewards, but they are not necessarily aligned with investors. As @lexiconical mentioned traders would be included with investors, which I hadn't thought of, but investors who are casual users were more what I was thinking.
So, since the "needs" of these two groups seem to be different, I was questioning how to create a more symbiotic way. Don't know if that really cleared anything up.
Ah, you had mentioned investors, and I understood them to be one group. I did not understand that creators/curators was the other group.
Thanks for clarifying!
Edit: well, now that I understand, I should make an effort to answer =p sorta obligated lol
The white paper intends that investors, those with substantial holdings of SP, are expected to curate, and thus the curation reward is intended to be motivation for that purpose. @andybets recently posted, just as @lexiconical above has, that curation rewards need to be larger.
I argued against it, but perhaps I am better understanding now why that might help.
Clearly, to date, curation rewards have proved insufficient for those with substantial SP to preclude their self-votes, and other rewards mining schema.
Perhaps @andybets and @lexiconical are right. I still reckon that weighting VP by SP is the root cause of the issue, as it delivers more 'freedom of speech' to those with more money, just like the Citizens United vs. FEC decision did - and CU was reckoned the end of free speech in America by some.
I feel that those people interested in dialogue on the platform can be rewarded without encouraging gaming the system by those more interested in money better by equal vote weight, or better yet, by weighting VP with reputation.
This removes most of the incentives to use SP to mine the rewards pool for profits, which in turn degrades the quality of the content and discourse on Steemit. Some have argued that this would remove the incentive to hold SP (just Steem but locked up for 13 weeks), and I am not sure they are wrong.
However, a strong social media platform that rewards it's users in Steem is a GREAT incentive to buy and HODL Steem, as the potential capital gains from such a platform being successful are practially incalculable.
Were Steem to reach $4k, equal to BTC, then at the recent price point of $1 for Steem as an entry point, investors would see 400,000% capital gains (Re-Edit: I suck at math). That is far more than can ever be attained by self-votes or scams, and frankly, Steem is a better crypto, with orders of magnitude better transactions/second, no transaction fees, and no mining and wasting of electricity, amongst other benefits over BTC.
IBM, GM, and other blue chips will never grow and offer investors gains like that. Risk is inherent in investment, even in blue chips. It did not stop the various cryptos from gaining currency (super pun intended).
Thanks for the reply, I didn't understand that investors were supposed to be curators. I think I'm allergic to white paper reading, besides, who reads the directions before they have to? lol
Curious, do you have an opinion as to whether this would be viewed differently if @mindhunter were consistently putting out quality, meaty content?
Were the comments that had been upvoted substantial, no one would ever have found out he was buying the votes.
That would have precluded anyone viewing the issue at all, so yes, very much different.
@mindhunter has produced good content, and I was a follower of his - until @transisto caused this whole kerfluffle to fall into the light. @jerrybanfield has substantially contributed more information, and his personal comparison is quite illuminating.
The white paper has been known to cause those trying to read it to begin yearning for death about half way through (srsly, according to @everittdmickey), although I didn't find it hard to understand. I did just skip the math (it took me three tries and two confirmations to calculate the capital gains percentage I included above in my head. I am not the strongest mathematician you will encounter in your life), but, for the most part it is pretty easy to understand, and very informative.
I have no doubt you will profit thereby.
Everybody has the right to decide how to earn money on Steemit the way that is most convenient and possible for him/herself and nobody should judge or flag that; but again, you don't live in an ideal world.
If this is indeed the established cultural norm, most users would just post spam and self-upvote it.
If that's what we want, we should establish that as a community, so that those of us following the social norms are no longer game-theoretically disadvantaged.
I expect that you neglect to consider that the rewards pool is a common resource. When you upvote yourself, you draw down the rewards pool that all others depend on for their own rewards. Therefore they have a vested interest in your actions, because your actions impact their own rewards.
The rewards you just upvoted yourself will decrease the reward I may get from someone who upvotes my comment, for example.
This is why I stand on principle, and never upvote myself.
My intention is to benefit others with what I contribute. I am not very concerned with my own financial rewards (but I am weird) as I have simple needs, and meet them through work.
I hope you are able to understand that everyone that is impacted by your voting actions, and thus has not only a right, but an obligation, to judge it, and flag it if they feel it's abusive and they need to do something about it.
As you can see from the flag I DIDN'T cast, I do not feel it my obligation to be your judge. Also, my measly $.02 vote means you are safe from me. Just don't be a big meany and flag ME =p
Well it's not free money... they first invested heavily into STEEM to get their voting power!
Some of them mined it when you could
What is being done with it now is probably more important than how they got it initially.
Either everyone is going to do this, or nobody can do this. I don't have a solution.
Yeah pretty much how I see it. Steemit is so polarizing to me lately. Everyday I come across a new valuable post or cool person. Yet daily I also find big issues.
In a way, that makes it a fair microcosm of life.
This does seem to be the human condition - we waffle from extreme to extreme.
Yeah, not so much. Most of the Steem that exists was mined before Steemit even had been created.
@berniesanders got his stake that way, and so did @dan, @ned, and some few other early insiders that controlled the mining, even relaunching the chain when someone else had mined a substantial stake that they couldn't counter.
The playing field isn't level. You can't even mine today.
Thanks for this research. I have been trying to raise issues such as these from time to time but I have little to no reach on this platform, and my arguments are often waved away as complaints or minnow-ignorance.
I am seeing a lot of this going on, not just with the top accounts (although those are serious offenders IMO) but on a smaller scale with people getting pretty big upvotes for crap comments. All the while, honest minnows are having to struggle harder and harder to participate. It's almost to the point where if you just use the platform without any additional 'tricks' such as boosters or bots, you just won't get anywhere.
Hopefully with you bringing this to the attention to people, more action will be taken against this because this type of abuse is the biggest threat to Steem(it)'s future and if they're not able to tackle this I don't think Steem(it) can survive in the long run because inevitable the entire pool will be drained by these accounts.
Actually, it was me and @anonimnotoriu, I cited you here:
https://steemit.com/steemit/@lexiconical/devil-s-advocate-for-jerrybanfield-and-internet-marketers-a-malpractice-defense-of-rewards-do-no-harm-or-summon-the-pitchforks
When talking about this post, where he cited you:
https://steemit.com/steemit/@anonimnotoriu/why-i-mostly-couldn-t-care-less-about-the-trending-page
Now, I kind Devil's Advocated for the other side of anonimnotoriu, but I found your comment quite interesting and worthy of discussion. Anon and I had a good exchange in his post, too.
I find this all pretty interesting, but not angry or emotional about it so I can see all sides. I am watching eagerly to see what consensus the community will provide.
Ohhh yes, that discussion, I remember that. I thought you meant something else.
That kinda spiralled out of my hands!
I think ever since then it has improved though. I mostly went 'WTF' when Jerry posted a (let's not pretend it was attractive much) pic of himself shirtless and it fetched a ton of money. Since then, a bunch of people have complained about posts like that reaching trending, and I did notice the attitude has changed lately and there is more focus on content it seems.
Honestly, I can't believe anyone cared about that post.
BookingTeam rapes the reward pool every day by reposting cut and pastes from the internet, or reposting their own articles from a week ago, and they vote it up 300-400$. Multiples times a day. Look at the Business tag in trending.
At least Jerry's post was an actual piece of content.
Arguably the example you mentioned is worse, yes. I hate those posts too. It's not like I am pro-other posts that suck. It just shows that nobody cares about the content, and proves that people will upvote based on financial incentive mostly. As such, participating in this while knowing full well that this is the case, is by itself a form of abuse. If I know fully well that I will make $50 no matter what I post, and I then decide to post something shitty because who cares right, and then it turns out to indeed work that way, then that's a problem that will hurt the steemit ecosystem. It's something that should be discouraged.
I am in complete agreement. But let me play a bit of Devil's Advocate, as I am apparently compelled to often do:
"It's something that should be discouraged."
If we want to be the new Facebook (and I'm not sure we all do, but I think all the INVESTORS definitely do, and that's most of the big users too), then this may be opposite thinking.
Facebook is absolutely loaded down with narcissistic, garbage content with no value to anyone except puffing up the ego of whoever posted it by garnering likes. This is apparently what it takes to be one of the largest businesses ever.
Can we say for sure that promoting garbage and appealing to the lowest common denominator is not a recipe for success, when it seems to have worked for Facebook, Twitter, and now Reddit?
As Tracy Jordan said in 30 Rock: "I want a different answer!"
Valid point, and what is considered quality content is subjective of course.
But the point remains that most of the upvotes is not done on basis of the content, and this is the main problem as that is what curation is intended to focus at. If people vote based on popularity that is okay, but when people blindly vote whatever has the biggest payout then that is not healthy for the system. And those who participate in this 'flaw' of the system fully knowing what they are doing and how it works, are not helping and in fact hurting the ecosystem and diminishing trust in the platform.
The fact that things work now is meaningless, since Steemit is super new. Any value that it has is mostly speculative still, and could vanish in a puff of smoke if public trust in the platform/blockchain wavers. I just don't want that to happen. And you can just take a look around to gauge public opinion already: these problems are brought up many times. I kind of believe it's why the price of Steem hasn't done much lately.
Agree with you. I only have a few weeks here and I have the same feeling.
An effort is made to make a quality post and nobody looks at it.
People vote for those who are up in the hope of winning something for curation but you can see that many of these post do not even look at them.
This is what I've stopped doing lately.
I want money of course, but chasing it instead of releasing and encouraging value just feels empty and dumb.
I mostly upvote new posts and offer encouragement.
I tend to link to my most recent post in my comments, but that's about it.
My newest post is about musicians on drugs.
I have seen you make well-reasoned arguments that were cited by others, although you may not have been aware that was happening.
Oh, wow! I did get a message about one of such instances but didn't know it happened more often :) That's awesome to hear and gives me some more motivation to keep at it!
You have the perfect name to write up a grandiose post on this issue.
I'll follow you and see what happens!
My thoughts exactly
First, good investigation. Resteemed. I kind of was wondering if something like this might happen when they got rid of the reward penalty for essentially doing more than 4 (6 if you were careful) posts per day. Though I believe the comments are where the bulk of the problem is. I seriously think revisiting the idea of splitting the reward pools so that the comments cannot drain the pool used by actual posts. This way if comment voting abuse gets out of hand it will be limited to whatever the size of the comment pool reward pool is without also draining the reward pool for posts.
Anyway... good work.
In my experience, my rewards are usually about 3/4 from comments, rather than original posts. As I am sure you either know, or can easily ascertain, I neither use bots, nor - ever - upvote myself. Your proposal would be likely to very much decrease the rewards I receive from my comments.
As I don't have 29k followers, or pander to accounts with substantial holdings of SP, comments are actually my best means of reaching a broader audience. Also, my own limited imagination is no longer the extent of my ability to write, as posts on topics like this aren't often even contemplated by me, greatly improving the negligible reach of my mind.
Can you think of no better way to reduce comment spam? Other than my original proposal to no longer weight VP with SP, that is. Actually, I am not so sure that the idea originated with me, although I did arrive at it independently. What I meant by 'original' is that was the first idea I had to fix the problem.
And it would still leave botnets and sockpuppets as problems, just much lesser problems, and problems we need to find a way to deal with anyway.
Actually I don't think it would substantially reduce your comment rewards. Also if we are only going to think of ourselves and not actually what is good for steemit/steem then we might as well not complain. Making any changes to try to address gaming of the reward pool issues is likely to impact each of us in some way. If we say "Don't do it, because that is where I get most of my rewards" then we might as well not try to fix anything.
I only pointed out my own rewards because that is what I have experienced, and I expect there are many more that also gain more rewards from comments than posts.
That is why my own experience was mentioned. Not to safeguard my personal rewards =p
If such a division of the rewards pool can be envisioned that will not significantly decrease rewards for comments (which are every bit as essential as posts, IMHO, as post without comments are practically void of the 'social' aspect) then I would not necessarily be averse to them.
However, the idea would seem to be to concentrate scams into the comments rewards pool, and if this worked, that would clearly decrease comment rewards. For new accounts, as commenting is the best way to gain exposure (practically the only way, besides paid promotion) this would lock them into a pool of decreased rewards.
Fine for established authors with substantial followings, but essentially a guarantee of poverty for new accounts.
If it didn't work, what's the point?
I absolutely agree that gaming the rewards pool is a great threat to Steemit, and investors in Steem who invested to attain capital gains. All of us should be concerned and intent on solving these problems.
Perhaps trying to stuff all the problems into one corner is better than the present, all-inclusive, suffering, but, because of how it would impact new authors, I don't think it will.
Neither does it actually solve the problem, merely trying to confine in a space where it's impact is limited in extent.
Yeah the idea is that IF someone games the POST reward pool, comment reward pool would be unimpacted, and vice versa. It wouldn't solve the problem it would just prevent a problem in either are from bleeding over into the other.
Comments currently are way easier to get away with scamming, and if it continues it will impact your rewards and everyone else in the comment section whether it is partitioned or not, but at least if it were partitioned it wouldn't drain the post pool as well.
It also could potentially make comment rewards payout better than they currently are since there would be a guaranteed comment reward pool allocated. At the moment I don't know if the bulk of posting rewards is going to comments or to posts, but I would suspect posts are still likely where the bulk of it goes. I up vote comments commonly, but I still think most people do not.
There are also combos, like a vote timing collusion effort I once was offered participation in. The author, trending regularly, has a chatroom, where minions gather to receive advance notice of when the relevant post will air.
All the minions can time their votes so as to be before the 30 minute cutoff, after which the curation rewards are greatly diminished.
I don't know either if the bulk of author rewards goes to posts or comments, all I know I for me comments are usually more financially rewarding.
However, I often make comments that people say 'you should make a post', and then feel guilty, having made too long of a comment LOL
I need to better exemplify 'brevity is the soul of wit'.
As one of those guys who has told you to make posts out of comments.... um... you should make a post out of your comments in this thread, really. :D
I recently was offered something like this as well. I believe it was, if I pay them 4 Steem, they would guarantee 400 up votes. Human beings are so clever at gaming.
I think this idea has real potential merit, but I want to make sure comments can still be well-rewarded. It's one of the only places true minnows can earn.
Yes, it wouldn't remove comment rewards. It is more like thinking of splitting the reward pool into 60% posts, 40% comments or something like that. Neither new split pool could touch each other. The percentages I listed are only for example. So if someone is draining the posts pool the 40% comments would be unimpacted by that. Vice Versa, if comment pool as being drained as @jerrybanfield's post here illustrates then it would have no impact on the posting pool.
Interestingly enough, the two posters we're discussing in this case were taking from two different pools. Tamim from the posts, mindhunter from the comments.
It might be that a split wouldn't do much good in the current situation?
Hard to say. It would partition it where we could potentially focus on specific problems.
@jerryanfield I think it AWESOME that you are shedding light on these things. Yes, their "earning systems" are smart. Yes, they are making big bucks but Not all are very "tasteful" nor "ethical" in their earning manner - not in my opinion anyway... BUT.... those things are always short lived.
The people on this platform that work hard at contributing quality content like @papa-pepper are the ones that will remain standing at the end of the day... you know what they say... "Easy come, Easy go..."
It is somewhat frustrating to see such things, (even for a minnow like myself) because I work REALLY hard at the content that I publish here on Steemit! ( I actually have a burst blood vessel in both eyes as I sit here right now, because of how long I have spent in front of my laptop on Steemit this week. hahahahaha) - no really! lol
But, I would rather continue in the manner which I have than try to make a "quick buck" out of everyone. It holds no value in this space. Teaches nobody anything, builds no relationships and takes you nowhere.
Your wallet can be full (for the moment)... but that does not necessarily make you fulfilled.
Great post - as always!!!
@jaynie keep doing a great job because we will continue here to do better making sure authors and investors collaborate to earn together!
Thank you @jerrybanfield - I believe that emphatically which is precisely why I persevere.
Another point to consider is that those scams that mine the rewards pool cost you money, since they draw down the rewards pool that your own rewards come from.
This is the frustrating reality of Steemit, it's all about your web clout. I can spend a full day or two perfecting a post and earn fractions of someone who throws something together. I guess I need to invest more into steem to have people falling over each other hoping for me to bless them with an upvote.
Keep up the good work, I just checked out your page and you are a pretty talented artist. Just keep doing what you are doing, and yes investing a little in Steem power is never a bad idea.
thanks my friend! I am happy to see this aspect of steem as well a community that rallies together to push undervalued posts up from the bottom, in hopes to increase their traffic and encourage quality content!
Barry you are right which was a big part of my motivation to make this post. To make Steem the best possible, sometimes we need to dive into seeing things that may frustrate us to help us find our way forward together.
Jerry I applaud you for bringing your findings to the community. Let's see what happens now all together
Don't get discouraged. It's not quality = reward. It's quality * reach = reward.
If you'll forgive the self-promotion, I just posted about this phenomenon for frustrated minnows 2 days ago.
Yes this is frustrating
keep at it steem on
Jerry Banfield; investigative journalist and defender of the city!
Since we are talking half-assed photoshop jobs, I gotta put this here, because I didn't get much traction on it in my post using it initially:
Honestly, my devil's advocate for Jerry post just didn't take off:
Jerry, looks like there is going to be an album's worth of half-assed photoshop jobs with your face in it! I think that's an honour!!! lexiconical, I take my hat off to your dedication to the photoshop endeavour!
I thoroughly enjoyed yours as well.
When I did Banfieldjuice, it really seemed like he posed perfectly for it on purpose. His torso is really in the Beetlejuice orientation.
Original Post: https://steemit.com/steemit/@lexiconical/devil-s-advocate-for-jerrybanfield-and-internet-marketers-a-malpractice-defense-of-rewards-do-no-harm-or-summon-the-pitchforks
Pure steemit silliness :P
Cool :)
Lol :)
jajaja excelente imagen Kate.
I laboured over it for hours as you can probably tell from the high quality of the image stitching ;) You would hardly be able to tell that it was a Photoshop jobbie! :P
Yo espero que su trabajo sea valorado. Es muy bueno. Felicitaciones.
Hmmmm. My toung was in my cheek and I'm not sure if yours is in your cheek too. If it is I've been out-done on the dry humour! If not, really, that image took 2 minutes to throw together!
jajaja definitivamente la traducción automática del ingles al español es muy pobre. Ahora Entiendo.
Rs rs, desculpa, foi um inglês meio complexo! Eu não falo espagnol, mas falo português....hmm, mas espagnol não é o mesmo do português - será que você entende português?
I enjoy your posts @jerrybanfield, but I have to say that @mindhunter was one of the first to welcome me when I joined Steemit and has continued to be a source of encouragement along the way.
Honestly, the fact that either of you guys are bringing in $10,000 to $20,000 a month on Steemit is amazing to me -- not because I think you don't deserve it -- but because it's such a large amount of money! Most of us are making $100 or less per month, and are happy if we hit the $10 mark on a few posts.😉
I appreciate your investigation into how others' are finding success on Steemit. I just hope you don't let your discoveries overshadow your own phenomenal success here. You're doing great!
Best wishes to both of you and thanks for continuing to support the little guys.
I do believe Mindhunter provides a valuable service for this reason. Many other high-rep users will not respond to anything short of a legit thesis-paper written in response to one of their postings.
Thank you @redhens! Given that we are drawing out of the same rewards pool, those that earn more are directly reducing what those are the bottom make. For example, if all the rewards were eliminated from the top 10 authors, about $100,000 would then be disrupted in a month to the remaining authors are a ratio equal to existing votes. Thus, I think it is important for each of us getting a high percentage of the total rewards to be accountable to everyone else about what we are contributing in exchange for what we are getting. The authors we allow to earn the most also limit everyone else's rewards the most.
Very true. But unless -- or until -- the playing field is levelled out more or the "rules" are changed, I can't fault people for making it work for them. As with anything, if we're relying on those at the top to equally share the wealth out of the goodness of their hearts, we'll probably be disappointed. Some may, but others will not.
I'd love to see a more even distribution of rewards, driven more by votes than by investment. But until then, I'll have to be happy with my small rewards and focus on enjoying Steemits other perks.
I do appreciate your work and the insight you provide into Steemit's inner workings though. I think it's a valuable reality check for new users to be aware of how people are making as much profit as they do, if only to keep our own expectations realistic.
I agree we need to balance the interests of authors earning fair rewards with investors earning a good return by holding Steem Power. If we go too far either way with the rewards skewed too much to authors while investors struggle to earn, the price of Steem is not likely to grow. If it is too easy for investors to get a return but great authors struggle to earn anything, we will never hit critical mass in terms of users = readers. I trust in looking at these needs we will find the best way forward for everyone involved to get a fair share of the rewards and maybe be at peace with what we are each receiving and giving today.
This is very lucid. There are many examples of real world investors being too greedy and eventually cutting their own throats because of it, Enron, Bernie Madoff, more beyond count.
The white paper supposed that ~90% of rewards going to ~30% of accounts was the correct ratio to best encourage growth of Steemit and price appreciation of Steem. However the lastest numbers I have seen indicate that ~99% of rewards inure to but ~1% of accounts, and this is orders of magnitude more skewed than they claim to have intended.
This data is from just prior to HF19. I don't think (but don't know) that the situation has changed much. Some of the names have changed, for example @mindhunter should be at the top of the chart in recent data, but the distribution of rewards is probably the same, or perhaps even more skewed, as the decrease in minnow votes by 400% has dramatically impacted curation.
You have to put money into steem to make something out of it, or lease sp, or u are just wasting your good post.
If the only valuable result of a good post is money, then Imma quit posting. Perhaps other rewards than money, such as creating wider understanding of social problems that potentiates solving them, planting trees in Africa to combat habitat loss, or other benefits also have value.
Maybe even just the conversations and ideas being shared might be considered valuable. I know those things are more valuable to me. I frankly don't post at all for financial reward. I don't mind them, and find that such rewards being at stake dramatically have diminished trolling, making Steemit a much better platform than 4chan, for example.
People come into steemit to make money, get real now, 90% of them heard they can make money here so that is why they are here, if there are no $ they would stay on fb. People dont really care about ur post, good post dont get much money.
I am being totally honest: I have never spent one satoshi of Steem, and have no plans to do so. I came here because censorship. Fakebook, Twatter, Plebbit, Youtool, all are censoring their users, pushing propaganda, and Fakebook is even contemplating some pretty dramatic mental control technology, by incorporating VR/AR into the platform.
@corbettreport recently posted on Canada pushing an app that 'guides and rewards' good citizens.
That's why I am posting to the blockchain. Even if I get flagged to death, my posts, though invisible, will still exist. All other platforms can just delete them.
I'm not even sure it could be done here without a majority of the witnesses agreeing to do it on a per post basis, or at least per account.
And I'm not saying I don't WANT rewards, just that I work for a living and did well enough bending nails and smashing thumbs to die old. Cuz, I'm old. I can't take a bunch of possessions with me, so I dumped my possessions. What I can do is leave behind my children, loved ones, and thoughts, if the blockchain remains secure.
I like money, I just don't need more of it than I have.
Thanks for exposing these accounts Jerry, not that it's easy to do anything about it...
nice hat lol
This post received a 2% upvote from @randowhale thanks to @mountrock! For more information, click here!
@jerrybanfield You are seeing just the tip of the iceberg and this is not uncommon on a smaller scale as well. With automation you can fly well under the radar. Just think about 1000 small accounts making $1-5 a day all owned by the same user and automated. Likely no one would look twice at a post with a few bucks on it. The best long term goal is to produce good content and curate content from good consistent posters. We did the flag war a while back and it pissed off tons of people caught in the crossfire.
@azfix yes the most effective systems are the ones that draw the least attention! The combined power of what you just shared is probably significantly greater than what we can see!
Very good point and probably being done.
Haha, @mindhunter , you got it figured out! And here I thought you earned very little all these months I have chatted with you in comments. I would even upvote you sometimes just to make sure you got paid. LOL You were earning way more than me the whole time.
Very interesting @jerrybanfield thank you for shedding light on this and sharing with this community. I wonder if there is more of this going around and if this will be more of a problem moving forward. Thoughts?
Sincerely,
@joeparys
for sure it will be.
Yes a lot more! Fortunately I think it is easy for us to move forward together also and continue to find the best ways to collaborate together!
Hello # 1 Author xD
This post received a 1.5% upvote from @randowhale thanks to @roy92! For more information, click here!
Very informative post about these whales. I would like to be like them someday :)
We all would.
Hey @jerrybanfield nice, good quality post again! However I think you have made a mistake with one of the link! Its meant to say STEEMD.COM/@username- HERE is it is, You can always use steamd.com/@username
I think you've got it backwards:
"steamd.com"
Notice the "a"
No thats the direct text from jerrys post! Mine is the caps text so mine is 100% correct lol. 😉
Oh, whoops, sorry I must have read it backwards.
Incidentally, if you type Steem into Google it thinks you mean Steam and autocorrects, giving you Valve's website as the first result.
Cersei Lannister was always right "Power is Power"
Steem Power !!!
"What good is power, if you are unwilling to use it?"
Hi Jerry, just dropping by to let you know Japan is starting it's steemit https://alismedia.jp. Hope this gets upvoted to you and can help.
That is interesting. Thank you for the link.
These guys are making a joke of steemit! They can't have any pride in these inferior posts, must be laughing at the amounts they are making. Why can't they try and be more creative and deliver some quality content? There really is no victory if there's been no effort! Is it honorable? I think not!
There are a lot of users trying to scam the system. It's easy money for may of them. I once made a post where I earned a few cents on it and someone commented on my post and upvoted himself and made something like 4$ or something. He did't even say much in the comment... just "nice work" or something along those lines. I checked his comments on others' posts as well and they were pretty much the same. Each comment was upvoted by him and some other accounts that always upvoted on his comments. It was always the same 2 or three accounts.
It really upset me to think that all my hard work is meaningless if someone like him can just make some dumb comment and earn a lot.
Thanks for sharing your experience. Life certainly isn't fair, but nonetheless, it would be much better if the system here was set up such that it couldn't be gamed without actually earning the reward based on the quality of work put in..
yea i agree
Hi thanks @jerrybanfield for the post but i think @nanzo-scoop is right on his comment about your post what i think on my perceptive is that the top authors on steemit community are greedy since they just want to stay on the top forever hence they are mischievous of which is wrong anyway.
Great Post, Jerry (as usual).
I was looking at this post yesterday, https://steemit.com/steemit/@emble/top-posts-on-steemit-one-year-ago-today-4-aug-24-16-top-author-payout-usd6359-to-steemdrive-for-steemdrive-first-steemit#@solarsherpa/re-emble-top-posts-on-steemit-one-year-ago-today-4-aug-24-16-top-author-payout-usd6359-to-steemdrive-for-steemdrive-first-steemit
This shows daily top posts consistently over $1,000 a day, which allowed a lot of people to gain a lot of $$ and SP.
I do like the work you and Papa-Pepper do - honest posts.
Keep doing what you're doing and the wheat will separate from the chaff.
Interesting link.
I am up-voting your post after a long time. This is a detailed review of how people are gaming it.
I think one good way of curating these kind of practices would be to make payout at the end of ten days. Allow up-votes till 7 days, but allow negative votes for the next 3 days to make sure that people don't misuse the system. A list of posts, comments that have huge payouts due to should be posted which the proxies(or general steemians) can take a look at and approve.
I am not sure how feasible this but definitely we should try something like this to make sure that the systems are not abused.
Approval should come from no one. No one needs sexually frustrated 'mods' killing our payout/vibes. Too open for abuse. What happens if you upset their fragile views on life. They'll silence your account. Perfect for censorship behind good intentions.
Tyranny of the majority is a real thing. It's part of why @Dan made Steemit.
I suspect that the "mods" in the family court system had no problem with his being divorce-raped. Mods will virtue-signal to white knight any cause they think will raise their social standing.
r/bitcoin is a perfect example of just how ridiculously abusive mods can get. That place is 1984.
OTOH, when people are draining the rewards pool that we all rely on for rewards, we all need to take action to protect our common resource. Just letting anyone do whatever they want, even when it is attacking our own assets, or shared assets, is just as foolish as letting the majority determine your every thought, word, and act.
Naturally it seems naughty, I’m just not a fan of the Karma Police.
Shaming is enough.
Soon there will be better ways on Steemit to make a profitable return than self voting such high amounts. Investment opportunities via loans in delegating SP.
Those already exist. @neoxian has been doing so, or was. He may have given up. Dunno for sure. But such delegation will potentiate greater earnings how?
Only by doing exactly what whales do to gain rewards: self-votes, circle-jerks, and etc... How else could having a substantial delegated stake be profitable?
Lending it out, sure I can see that being more profitable for those that find the aforementioned scams unpalatable. Borrowing, though, not so much.
By earning them a high % of interest. No more posting/blogging needed unless they enjoy doing so.
These do not exist to the level I’m talking about to satisfy the above abuses of voting but one day will, and not only delegation but other methods for the investments of high SP accounts. If the Steemit platform grows, the opportunities will come.
And it needs to be available to anyone as an investor, not one person loaning out to others. Everyone gets to play, at different levels, based on their stake.
If this existed, then why bother shaming yourself in public when you could earn up to 45% interest/profit per year by clicking a few buttons in a few minutes.
I really think that were such interest available to holders of substantial grips of SP, then they wouldn't rent it out to someone that could make a profit by renting their money, and earning interest on it. It just makes no sense the original possessors of the SP wouldn't just take the interest themselves.
I agree with you. They shouldn't allow those with huge amounts of SP to gain, essentially free money... Yet with that said, The Steemit platform is still in beta process. Hopefully they can patch these issues soon.
80 SBD for a picture sure of a fat cat... What the fudge?!
This is probably the best suggestion I've seen to handle this issue. We'd still have the problem of "wasting" voting power on flags and the effort put in, but this is an improvement.
We need a separate flagging power.
I like this solution well played @gokulnk
That is a pretty interesting and original idea! I like it.
how on earth you can easily get 862 votes ... while me ... i cant hardly get 1 vote
darn you the man
11000 followers.
lol ... okay ....im following you
Thank you for checking out my blog!
Your research is awesome and good that number one and 2 were caught ...would love you to see my post and anylse me too before I overtake you in earning!!! better catch them early before they surprise you isnt it? hahaha upvoted your post, always.
Feel free to see my post on steem plus excessive supply and the effects in altcoins...wish you a blessed weekend.
Thank you Charles! Nice work on your recent post with I upvoted just now!
You are welcome Jerry , thanks for checking out my post and sending in your support
Great read! Haven't been on steemit long so your post shed some light on how to understand the platform. Thanks!
Congratulations for you..
I kangum see your post ..
But also one side I envy you, how can you be like that?
I'm very motivated after seeing your post.
I will try harder to be as successful as you.
If I may ask, maybe you can give me some tips so I can follow in your footsteps.
Maybe you are willing to help me.
I really like your post.
Thank you very much..
Selamat buat kamu..
Aku kangum melihat postingan kamu..
Tapi juga satu sisi aku iri sama kamu,bagaimana kamu bisa seperti itu?
Aku sangat termotivasi setelah melihat postingan kamu.
Aku akan lebih berusaha lagi untuk bisa sukses seperti kalian.
Jika boleh aku bertanya,mungkin kamu bisa memberikan aku beberapa tips supaya aku bisa mengikuti jejak seperti kalian.
Mungkin kamu bersedia membantu aku.
Aku sangat menyukai postingan kamu.
Terima kasih banyak..
awesome story, well, i cant do with this anything, so upvoted and resteemed, it was fun translating all your investigation
@jerrybanfield's new job
Lol, really? He didn't even take a position on it. This is as evenhanded as it gets.
Do not Centralize!!!! Your thinking the old way!!!!! Let the people do what ever the want!!! Remember decentralize blockchain!!!!!
If you want to decentralize Steemit, you'll have to figger out a way that the VP to replace the witnesses can't just be purchased by someone with enough money.
Weighting VP with SP is the most centralizing mechanism possible.
Mindhunter is cool. I suppose I was a subscriber before it became mainstream
So, he is making $60 with a simple comment of 'Thank you'. Interesting ?
I make barely $1 after writing a whole article of 1000 words with lots of research and information. So, who's to be blame here? I guess the steem system or what?
It should be fair because with every rewards making, the rewards pool get diminsh and people with worthy content remains behind.
I am sure your all posts are well deserved the payout they make @jerrybanfield. You really work hard. You should be proud of yourself :)
You also have to understand that they put lot of money into buying steem, since u didnt buy in you have to work your way up.
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Thanks buddy, I appreciate that.
This is startling and worrying... when the top two authors on steemit are just self-vote schemes, we have a problem.
This stuff is inevitable at some level, but the very top users! No good.
Thanks for bringing this to light jerry. Unfortunately I don't see much of a way to help as a smaller user myself... but I guess awareness is step one.
That's a great observation. While we can expect scams and such to impact us from time to time, and to varying degrees, the fact that the two highest paid accounts are scams is exactly what you said - startling and disturbing.
Edit: followed. I have noted in the past your cogent comments, but was trying to keep my information overload under control. That's a silly excuse to miss your insights.
Thanks!
Its shady stuff like this that calls the system into question. In economics its called 'rent seeking.' The few that greedily game the system end up sucking the lifeblood from it and it dies. Such a shame. Its the weakness of POS, you end up with a degenerate aristocracy who centralize power.
I thought that crypto was all about breaking such unfair choke holds, but its amazing how the old ways creep back in and corrode.
Unfortunately, greed can win out in a community like this. Steemit has some great intentions but the reality can be different than the ideal. You can self-police all you want, but if there aren't rules and tools to stop the gamers of the system, they just keep on taking home the money.
Silly hat !
Great read. Again great piece of research that will improve steemit infrastructure.
I usually never read these kind of looooooong posts, but this one is quite interesting.
As i understand you basically made this post for:
Seems like you are a bit jealous, but i could be wrong :)
Yeah, you're totally wrong. I'm not surprised, since you probably did not carefully read the post, since apparently you qualify this as "loooooooooong".
I take it you aren't a big fan of books or learning complex topics?
i read all your post carefully.
"usually" i don't read these kind of long post, but today i did.
And the major thing that i can see, is a person who launching shit on better user in ranking :)
Well, you might want to read it again, given he launches no shit. He explicitly does not pass judgment and even praises their ingenuity.
By assuming merely pointing out an activity means passing judgment on it, you are the one actually passing judgment.
To earn that much you need to invest a lot of money. What's wrong with that if someone buy lot of STEEM to vote for himself? I'm leaving Steemit because people here do not understand that. Everyone thinks the price will rise only from themselves and without investors.
Which should be the reason for investing. To give you the money?
Price appreciation, like almost any other investment?