Yesterday I prepared an analysis of the down votes given by @steemcleaners @cheetah @spaminators for the month of November, and I must say it’s good to see work like this going on here on Steemit.
If you missed the post you can check it out here
https://steemit.com/utopian-io/@paulag/refilling-the-rewards-pool-when-cheaters-are-in-the-mist
But Flagging is not only done by the accounts mentioned above, many people on Steemit engage in flagging. Sometimes flags are personal and flag wars begin, But I would like to believe most of us don’t engage in this behaviour.
An account well known for flagging and being flagged is Berniesanders. @berniesanders has been on Steemit since the start. The account was set up in March 16. To use to his advantage @berniesanders also has a suite of steemit accounts.
I am going to be very honest here, I don’t know @berniesanders or any of the history. I just know there was some controversy about down votes in the past. After the post I did yesterday on the down votes, I have been asked if I could do something similar for the down votes for @berniesanders and his team of accounts.
The aim of this analysis is to present the numerical and financial data on down votes given by Bernie and his team for the month of November.
The team of accounts I have identified are
@Berniesanders @ngc @nextgencrypto @engagement @iflagtrash @randomthoughts @theyeti @steemservices @thedelegator @thecyclist @danknugs @illbeyourfriend @thebotkiller @yougotflagged @nogalert @ghettodweller @thesloth @thedumpster @sativa @indica @the.bot @theconnoisseur @liquidity @thecurator @chiefcrappster @ozchartart @ozmaster @steemizen
These accounts have been identified using time proximity on votes, along with verification via witness voting proxies, delegation history and transfers.
The Data
Following the process described in yesterday’s posts, I pulled data for all of the account above. However this identified a flaw in the model. The vote value calculation is based on the current effective Steem Power (ESP).
ESP is the Steem Power that you own, less what you have delegated out, less what you have delegated in.
With the accounts in question, using the current ESP gave a rather inaccurate result as many of these accounts have now delegated power out.
Adjustments on delegated power were therefore required to carry out the calculations. For simplicity, I have taken the ESP to be the owned SP. This should give a more accurate net result on the vote worth. I have also had to fix other values that would tend to float because of limitations of the database, so the financial values are not 100% correct.
For this analysis I have taken the November data from the Steemsql database held and managed by @acrange
The Analysis
The Downvoters
Bernie and his team of accounts down voted 7982 times in the month of November to 140 distinct authors on 645 posts.
The chart below shows all of these accounts sorted by the most active in terms of the number of down votes given
And below shows the average % weight used when down voting
The pie chart below shows the total distinct authors each of these accounts down voted for the month of November.
In total, these accounts returned $25,195 to the rewards pool in November by way of down votes. The table below shows these accounts sorted by the value of down votes given
The down voted Authors
140 different authors received down votes from this team. Thankfully I was not one of them, and I hope this post does not add me to the list.
Sorting by the Authors that lost most post rewards because of the down votes here are the top 50+ authors
And below are the permalinks that received the highest value of down votes
Time Series
Conclusion
$25,195 is a considerable sum to be returned to the rewards pool. Combining this with the $49,295 returned by @steemcleaner and co. $74,490 was returned to the reward pool by these select few accounts.
Taking from a different analysis carried out $1,191,723 was paid out in comment and posts written in November
(You can read that analysis here https://steemit.com/utopian-io/@paulag/is-there-still-an-uneven-distribution-of-steem-part-2)
If we now gross up the net pay out value, without these down votes the rewards pool would have been charged $1,266,613 in November based on votes, however only 94% of this was paid out.
The aim of this analysis was to present the data, not to make judgement or pass comments on the actions of any accounts here on steemit.
I am part of a Blockchain Business Intelligence community. We all post under the tag #BlockchainBI. If you have an analysis you would like carried out on Steemit or Blockchain data, please do contact me or any of the#BlockchainBI team and we will do our best to help you...
You can find #BlockchainBI on discord https://discordapp.com/invite/JN7Yv7j
RESTEEM UPVOTE and FOLLOW
So 6% of the overall reward pool was "redirected" (for lack of a better term) by two self-appointed pools of Steem Power for various reasons.
And how much of that 6% would have been directed to people who were producing good content if none of those down votes had been given and, instead, they had been redistributed as upvotes to quality content?
Note that the above is without judgment of the methodologies executed by either group. However we know that some down voting has occurred, possibly from both camps, based on purely personal reasons and not altruism toward the platform. Net positive benefit to all of us thus must be somewhat less than 6%, right?
Essentially I'm trying to get at the question of effectiveness, here. Is this the most useful exercise of that really vast reservoir of SP? How much does that $74,490 actually affect the people in the bottom half of the population active on the platform?
Is it at all meaningful?
The overall feeling that I get is that a lot of this is sound and fury, signifying nothing. I glanced down the list of Titles that have been most voted down doesn't really give me a great feeling. Some of those are clear and obvious spurious spam entries, sure. Some of the stuff at the very top of the list – I have some questions. I also have some reservations.
I approach this problem as someone who looks at it as a game. And as someone who likes good game design, I have to ask if – given my particular definition of "winning", which is not simply trying to have the biggest numbers but to read the most interesting content available – any of this is actually working?
6% of the monthly inflationary payout got dumped back into the top of the bin to sift back down via distribution.
What does that actually mean to me, as a member of the platform? And has that activity actually resulted in significantly less abuse of the platform from any perspective I could see?
I think these are fairly important questions.
Agreed. Here's an upvote so this comment may get some much needed engagement.
What do you mean by "self-appointed pools"?
To paraphrase Monty Python, "I didn't vote for them."
Pretty much every administration task on Steemit is done by a group of self-appointed vigilantes, by necessity, because there doesn't seem to be any sort of administrative guidance or engagement by a core group of people who have actually been intended to pursue that goal.
There's no official group to contact in case you find what you might think of as abuse on the platform. In fact, you're positively encouraged to find a group of like thinking individuals – or forge them, Golem-like, from raw money – and run around enforcing whatever set of standards you imagine should be the case.
If those standards just so happened to be different from another group who happens to have stumbled on the same very obvious response to anarchy then the gangs throw down and rumble right there in the middle of the street.
No matter who happens to be caught in the crossfire or what actual collateral damage it does.
As organizations, all we really care about is the fact that they have massive pools of SP which they weaponize against their chosen targets – some of which are deserving by my personal measure, and some of which it would be a stretch to suggest deserved any kind of down flagging.
Both sides tend to favor scorched-earth tactics. Some of the members of both sides bear personal grudges and work to make good on them whenever possible.
But, and all cases, because the only really important thing about them from a mechanical point of view is that they represent massive accumulations of system-specific fiscal power and that their membership is purely self-created, they fulfill every requirement to be referred to as "self-appointed pools."
Right, except you're missing an important word such as "regulatory", i.e. "self-appointed regulatory pools". So that's what I was wondering.
Your dramatization seems legit. With no system-level way to perceive justice we're left to form these mobs. I once formed one, though I wouldn't have accepted the description "mob" because we acted calmly (well, I did) and had our own standards that we stuck by, we did use the "force" of flagging to fight abuse. What we thought of as abuse. And I've held a couple of grudges. I don't act on them but if I'm honest there are few accounts I now think very badly of.
But we all know this story. We don't know where the story goes though, except for on and on like this until SMTs and communities shelter us from each other, supposedly save us.
EDIT: btw, is that Monty Python quote from The Life of Brian by any chance? 🙃
I try to avoid the word "regulatory" whenever I can, purely because it gives me the same response as other people have to the word "moist." It's inherently kind of disgusting. Also the whole purpose of these organizations of people is to attempt to regulate the behavior of others on the platform – with very scant evidence of actual effect.
Wanting to see some of that evidence is part of why I'm involved in this thread. I want to know. Is this really what it is going to take to maintain a relatively clean street for the rest of us to do business and socialize on? Are we going to have to recapitulate the ontology of local governance from scratch, plagued by robber barons and warlords while we go about our day-to-day?
We know where the story goes. If anything, the last 25,000 years of human history have shown us the possible points of exit from the state of being. At least with human history, we had the advantage of geographic distribution to help protect and shelter individual communities who experiment with different types of conflict management within the society, allowing some to flourish and some to die.
Like you, I'm hoping that SMTs and Communities can replace some of that geographic distribution, making it harder for self-appointed vigilante superhero teams to run around and impose their personal standards of not only "this is bad for the platform" but "I think your community is rewarding you too much for giving them something they want," both of which are writing in the same boat right now.
Geographic distance did not suffice to save every community or way of approaching and doing things. We know how this is going to turn out, eventually. The best that we can hope for, I think, is to limit the damage that the bad elements can do while simultaneously giving smaller groups the option of whether they want to adopt the methods of the others or invite them in to have an outpost or outreach in that community.
I hope. If we get to make it that far.
In the meantime, it would be nice to have some metrics to judge whether or not the activity that's currently happening is actually useful and effective.
6%. Is 6% of a monthly distribution really worth all of the blood and treasure being expended to wage these brushfire wars? Maybe it is, maybe it isn't – but I think we need to ask.
I know what you mean, but "self-appointed pool" is missing some necessary context without it, or an equivalent word.
I do wonder why such a thing as SMT oracles couldn't be applied more generally. I think everyone is hoping that the flagging (as an issue) gets solved indirectly by some other thing.
I happen to support some of those teams, but self-appointed they are, as is the style here. The real thing that communities will give is some kind of moderation. This is a step towards local governance and would be a kind of "geographical" distance. I think we'll make it that far. But the point is some moderation instead of none.
Well, it's much less dramatic than that. I think it's worth it surely, on the path to Figuring It Out™️. That's worth doing. The original designers didn't go that far.
Also, "I didn't vote for you."
Ah 😂
Man I see some accounts on there who produce some great content. It's a shame that they seem to have been indiscriminately downvoted.
If they was manual and thoughtful "welcome" comments I wouldn't mind self upvotes, but self votes going towards bots or copy&pasters I don't think is right.
If @berniesanders and his team can take care of these proxy self voting farming bots would be great: https://steemit.com/@newsteemians/comments https://steemit.com/@hien-tran/comments and there's probably several more. The #introduceyourself is always rife with such farmers and they give newcomers the impression of a scammy environment in which "Welcome"bots gain more rewards than the newbie who actually wrote the introduction post. @patrice said she doesn't want to deal them nor has the steem power to do so, so I'm looking for someone who can.
Do we even know if it's mathematically possible to possess the SP to deal with that particular kind of spam?
I'm not even asking that facetiously. Given the prevalence and the extremely scattershot nature of that particular type of exploitation, what would the literal cost to stay ahead of its general production rate be?
If it's not possible, we ought to be able to at least come close to proving that to be the case. If it is possible, likewise.
Trying to deal with it absent that kind of information is sort of like jogging into the woods at night without a flashlight. We know there's snakes but we have deliberately chosen not to see them.
Great post @paulag. I think adding a column for author REP of the top 50+ posters by post reward lost due to flagging would be a very useful thing to give this more context. Obviously the very act of getting flagged and losing rewards lowers your REP - but I think you could still learn something useful from this, particulary where the author flagged still has a decent (or even exceptionally high as in the case of @jerrybanfield) REP. Whatever you think of @berniesanders squabble with @jerrybanfield, looking at Jerry's current REP of 73 and current pending past week author rewards of $4,558 USD leads one to believe that he will probably be able to weather this storm - it provides valuable context.
Of course if you can somehow figure out the impact on author REP from the downvote and factor that in to the analysis - e.g. current REP and what REP would have been without the downvote - that would be even more informative.
Keep up the great work :) Much love - Carl
All of those accounts that are using this type of flagging and down voting system are terrible for the Steemit community.
The focus should be on the people with ghost accounts.
Great work. Now imagine what an analysis on how much the pesky bots take from the reward pool would reveal!
Well appreciated ma'am @paulag another information I'm a neophyte member here on this steemit community still on the process of learning.
re steemed! Thank you for this data @paulag it is much appreciated.
Nice
Impressive analysis! I can't begin to image the spreadsheets behind this data. Nicely done.
happy to read information from you. although my account name is not yet in the current list of current names .. because I'm still learning to work and creating quality contests
Hi friend I think you right.
Awesome analysis, you rock! :)
Nearly important info how u got these info. It really nice post.Good anlytics @paulag