Then why do you continue with the bid bot in the first place?
Exactly. It's like Churchill saying "Yeah, we colonized and ruined half the world, but hey - at least we didn't start World War II or perpetrate the Holocaust."
I will of course not blame voting bots opportunistically exploiting a broken system, but it is nevertheless a corruption of the social network as it was intended. Indeed, I admire voting bot managers for their resourcefulness. The same way I admire scammers like Frank Abagnale or even the infamous Charles Ponzi. However, voting bot owners should accept that it's a corruption, instead of pretending to be altruistic - they are not in the slightest. Maybe some are less corrupt than others, but that's not even a backhanded compliment at this stage. Whales and large SP delegation recipients were meant to curate engaging and popular content, to build the network and make it accessible to the mainstream. The curation rewards were meant to compensate for their efforts, plus a much higher price that would be the result of the network going mainstream. Unfortunately, with bullshit that makes even 4Chan look quality trending regularly, it'll never be mainstream. It's heading towards being the next 4Chan-like cesspit, and regular, sane folks stay away from insane shit like that. If you really give a shit about Steem, instead of lining your own wallets, that's what you should do with a large amount of SP delegation - CURATE. Curate, not sell. Imagine how much better Steem would be if those millions of SPs and 10-60 hours weekly were actually used for curating popular content.
Unfortunately, I don't have a solution. A social network with money involved is probably inherently a bad idea. Greed will always take priority over social interaction. Worse still, being decentralized means scammers can not only get away with unethical acts - they are actually incentivized to do so. Over time, what would be unethical is normalized, and that's what has happened with voting bots. The banality of evil. Mind you, I'm not dumping on Steem here, it's become something else quite different from the original intention. It can still a valuable market and can succeed with SMTs and such incoming. It's highly undervalued (relative to other shitcoins), and I will continue to hold Steem. But in its current form, it'll simple not be a good social network (except in some moderated niches when Communities launch).
Getting rid of SP Delegation will not really help. Ex-delegators will just follow votes instead, and scripts can easily track how much voting % is going where and how much curation reward is generated by each different followed account. Not as easy as SP delegation, but the effect is ultimately the same; and the effort is well worth the exploitation of the Steem network for personal benefit. Increasing the voting target to 40 will make it worse, as that incentivizes the people making tons of votes - voting bots in this case. Same for superlinear - the voting bots command a vast majority of SP, they will dominate even more with prior protocols.
So, yes, I give up. I have no solution. The idea of a decentralized social network with money involved is inherently flawed. Well, I do have a solution, but people here will hate it. Yes, it involves governance.
PS: Superlinear will certainly help with spamming, but that's a different topic. The real problem here, as I have argued before, is the exponentially generous bandwidth limits. It literally takes a few thousand dollars to disrupt the network. (We saw what someone did with a few hundred last week.) No human needs that kind of bandwidth.
Bandwidth is a problem. Like you, I’ve been banging that drum for a long time...since at least last spring/summer. But just like they did with the hard forks last year, the inmates running our asylum decided to remove that abuse mitigation.
And they don’t care about the results. They just plow ahead with their next (likely shitty) hard forks.
Do you think bandwith could improve the user retention @ats-david? From my personal point of view one of the greatest issues is the fact that new accounts are not converted into active accounts since more than three months now:
Daily active users: Source: @penguinpablo
What's the matter with those who sign up but don't start being part of this community?
THAT is to me the no. 1 of all questions.
Usually, their expectations are way too high. They join, expect to make a lot of money, don’t make a lot of money (or any at all), then quit.
Or, they just can’t figure anything out and get frustrated due to the complexity of the system and the horrid user interface.
Those are probably reasons #1 and #2 for the failure to retain users.
Generally I believe if users expectations don't meet with what the product is actually able to offer, it's not only a users mistake. Then it's rather a lack of communication.
Why do people expect getting rich on steemit? 1) Because there are a few who're filling their pockets on a daily basis. 2) Because they weren't educated before joining the whole thing.
Have you ever seen the welcome page of steemit? After opening that page I had actually no more questions... 21st Century, blockchain technology, and then... a loooong text, haha! The most important advice comes at the very end, so I wonder how many people have even read it?
Yes, that's it. But nobody knows.
If this was an article, I'd resteem it right away. Thank you @liberosist!
I'd love to read more about that part actually. Probably one of the main problems of Steem is that people believe decentralization = absence of governance. That's at least what I've perceived during the past 1.5 years on this platform. But decentralized networks don't work without accountability, and accountability requires a set of certain rules.
Right now the Steem community enjoys absolute freedom, a freedom that includes the ability to rip off the whole eco-system and destroy it from the inside.
The result is: stagnation.
Stagnation in numbers: (Daily active users, stagnant since 3 month now - Source: @penguinpablo)
Now I have a déjà vu. I've got the sensation that we've talked about that already a hundred times. Yes, we did! You and me, and all the others...
That's why Steem needs to wake up. Very soon more players will enter the market and then it's too late to fix it. I really hope that these big promises called SMTs and Hivemind will have any impact. Yet, the system like it's today is totally corrupt - not sure if new features built on the very same basis will be even able to make a difference.
Again, thanks for your massive comment. Really inspiring, and I hope a lot more had the chance to read it :-) Happy weekend!
You're absolutely right, of course. I'll write up something.
Nice! Let me know to not miss it then :-)
The more I see posts and comments like this, the more I'm convinced the solution I'm working on, is the right one :-).
I must agree with you guys, even though I like @themarkymark, I would just cut the bot all together, and find a better way to reward quality posts.
Cg
If there is no struggle, there is no progress.
Off topic but related to the opening Churchill quote; they did something worse, they spread their religion! ;)
Ha, that's an entirely different can of worms.
follow me I just made a publication