First I wanted to thank @meno and @therealwolf for taking my question during their @dlive post which can be found here:
https://steemit.com/dlive/@therealwolf/907d9d74-9b3c-11e8-9e1e-0242ac110003
This was my question:
“What will you do about whales that abuse the platform and its users? I am talking about the Ranchorelaxo and Haejin self voting scam that allows this user to get rewards far above what other similar content is getting. If the community tries to flag this content, he tries to destroy their accounts with retaliation flags.”
I didn’t want to respond to this too quickly as the flag wars were still burning hot and I wanted a calmer time to discuss this rationally.
In response to my question, @therealwolf mentioned a number of points:
“Heajin is using the current system”
In the English legal system, we often talk about the law and the spirit of the law. As much as the protocol may allow a large steem power holder to upvote posts far above it’s relative value, we must ask if this is in the spirit of the “law” we have here on the steem blockchain.
The protocol also allows flags to reduce the value of posts where the community feels the rewards are higher than they should be.
The immediate problem is that people are afraid to flag Haejin as he will retaliate and flag a users posts - not one or two, but all of their posts and comments until there reputation is well into the negatives. Would you say this is someone just using the protocol or would you say this is the type of behaviour that we as a community should decide is not appropriate?
It is the combination of votes and flags that allows the “proof o brain” to reach consensus on what posted content is worth. When a whale upvotes their own posts and threatens others who dare to flag it, this system breaks down.
If we allow this, then the steem blockchains consensus protocol has failed.
If this happened with Bitcoin where one large miner was able to threaten others to accept his block so he could receive the block reward, we can all agree that the Bitcoin’s proof of work consensus would have failed, at which point the blockchain is worthless.
If the steem blockchains consensus mechanism is being held hostage, is it any surprise that a lot of users are losing faith in the platform and looking at other up and coming platforms?
“Haejin gets voluntary votes from Ranchorelaxo”
We now know that Haejin controls the Ranchorelaxo account. This means, not only is he self voting from his account, he is “self-voting” from his second account.
You can see the evidence here:
https://steemit.com/busy/@kabir88/guess-who-paid-moeknows-a-visit-then-promptly-tried-to-hide-their-footsteps-on-a-blockchain-rotfl
Again, this wouldn’t be a problem if the value of the rewards were corresponding to the content. Most sensible people would agree that a one line comment shouldn’t be getting a $100+ reward.
I wrote about this and was promptly flagged by haejin. You can find my post here:
https://steemit.com/haejin/@kabir88/haejin-watch-still-abusing-steem
“Ranchorelaxo has the right to use his steem power how he sees fit”
I agree, but we should also have the right to use our steem power how we see fit and flag bad content, without the content creator then attacking those users with retaliatory flags on all their posts, irrespective of their content value.
I wrote this blog here to show how important flagging is in reaching consensus on the right value of content:
“Change the system”
No one user has the resources to do this, so I would like to see a more community led approach. I am really happy to see projects like @steemflagrewards that rewards users for flagging bad content. I hope more people become aware of this and the larger steem power holders are able to delegate some steem power to support this great project.
I have also seen a new project that @jaki01 is supporting called @steem-ua, this looks really promising. Hopefully those of you who have programming skills and steem power can contribute to this effort.
I have also tagged in the following people who may find this post of interest:
@transisto @timcliff @sircork @fulltimegeek
Some of you may be wondering who I am. Here are some of my recent posts:
https://steemit.com/upvoteplankton/@kabir88/upvoteplankton-my-new-initiative?sort=new
https://steemit.com/dlive/@kabir88/3efeb030-86a3-11e8-adb2-bf4283a63cb9?sort=trending
Yes - these are a bit old, but why create content when most of it is hidden after haejin flagged my account to -11? @fulltimegeek and his army of bots have helped, but it's a long way from -11 back to even 0 where my content would be visible again.
And a timeline of haejin’s activities and how I earned by -11 reputation score!
https://steemit.com/truth/@moeknows/haejin-timeline-updated
I hope we can continue the debate and find a solution for this problem. Even if Haejin voluntarily changes his behaviour, how will we stop the next person who chooses to follow this formula?
I see haejin has come to have a read of my post and no surprises for guessing the reaction
This does certainly make bare another flaw in the system...I watched your rep go negative and still feel that your contribution to this community is valid and shouldn’t be censured.
I’ve been victim to some flag bots...but I’m too small for it to have made any difference.
I also think the $.02 post payout threshold should be tempered by like 3 votes...otherwise the system invalidates smaller account voting entirely.
Thanks @definethedollar, appreciate the positive vibes
Keep posting and stick around, this place will continue getting more interesting
If we ban self vote and combine that with quality control on bots, that should do the trick ?
Where do I vote for ban on self vote ?
It's not self voting in it self that is the problem, it's how it is used, the value of the vote and the content it is voting on.
Haejins posts are nothing more than copy and paste.
It's why more people need to start flagging, but it seems those with the most SP are busy looking the other way.
Then everyone wonders why there aren't a flood of new users and a rise in the price of STEEM.
I had one very popular crypto blogger tell me they signed up to use steem, then gave up as they saw it was manipulated by a few whales.
Maybe steem will become the MySpace of social media and someone will come along and make the Crypto version of Facebook.
Having a 1000% ROI in a coin that is going to zero is pointless.
If more users can be encouraged to join and stay, the steem holders will get a massive gain through capital appreciation. The need to make more on top of that is just greed and massively counter productive
Yes, not all self votes are the same.
But all of the listed issues will be solved with ban on self voting, sounds like a good enough solution. .no?
Would be hard to implement, you could just create a second account and vote on your content... like haejin does with the rancho account
good point.. so it's perpetually broken !!
What the whales fail to realise is that, if they don't fix the system, something better will come out soon. In fact, I could just hire a team of developers, stick my marketing and branding team on it and we could have steem 2.0 in about 6 months. But there are a still a few good people here who are working to fix the problems, lets see how it plays out.
As I've said before, getting ROI and increasing your STEEM holding is pointless if the value of STEEM ends up going to zero. The way some large steem power holders are behaving, this isn't an impossible scenario.
When the market picks up, how many minnows/dolphins will stick around if they can exit at 10x and go join another platform?
Also...liked and resteemed..
Thanks dude! Appreciated
Did you know your replies don't show up under the reply tab ?
the grayed out visible thing is obvious due to the low rep but I just learned about the reply thing since I checked steemworld.org
Yep - such is life with negative reputation... I could just drop some $$$ into steem and fix it. But then I wouldn't be experiencing the steem blockchain like everyone else.
If I recommend this to other users or investors, I need to tell them what it's like for the normal user
I am sure I will eventually make my way back up
so...you going the jesus route on this :)
haha - maybe I spent too much time reading the wrong books.
I hate using vote bots, those guys are messing with the whole system. I did try minnowbooster, but the voter was someone with -10 reputation, so that didn't help :))
I don't have an issue with bid bots , when used with quality control , it's basically a promotion service.
so how does one go about increasing reputation ? does it only improve if you get votes from X number of people with Y reputation ( graded on curve ofcourse)?
lol, that might be an opportunity!
Basically need votes from people with high reputation scores.
It's on a logarithmic scale,so the closer I get to 25, the easier it becomes to go up to the next level
my votes are only 1 cent but since it's rep based I gave you bunch of uppies...
best of luck and see you around
Hey, kabir, that's not quite true. The voter's rep score doesn't matter as long as his/her score is positive. The weight of the vote is what matters most.
From the UA post today:
However, by self-promoting a few published posts, any user could quickly increase its own "Rep Score"
Maybe the flag's strength should not be tied to the users SP (assuming this is how it works). Instead each user would have the same voting weight with their flag. This would require a community consensus for an account to be truly effected. That way one individual cannot destroy someone's reputation because of their singular view of how the blockchain should be used. In this scenario it would take a majority vote and this may also encourage everyone to use their flag without fear of retaliation by one single individual.
I don't think it's appropriate to judge a TA content with how many words he is using or how many lines are there. Especially elliot wave TA,every EW TA chart is like a math problem,you don't how much time a treader spend to complete one wave count
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We need a system where accounts have a spam score that is totally detatched from steem power. The only way to increase your spam score should be by receiving upvotes from accounts that have not previously upvoted you. Known bots should not affect spam score.
Spam score would essentially be your flagging power, with reward and visibility impact as follows:
Flag power = total spam score for all flags the post recieved.
Each users Spam score should also have a max cap, and no one user should be able to remove all rewards or hide another users post or comment.
Repeated upvotes from the same accounts should also decrease in value unless supported by upvotes from other non-bot accounts that have not upvoted you before. Without these measures, I really can't see Steemit ever achieving a state where it truly and fairly rewards great content.