Thanks for writing this. I spoke a lot about this around HF19. I realized my voice wasn’t being heard and so I just kind of stopped because I realized I could still reach people at the top even if I couldn’t convince them, so I’ve been trying to build a community of people who aren’t just trying to milk rewards and help to strengthen other communities who are doing the same.
I don’t think the witnesses are all bad or selfish people, I just think it becomes very tempting to capitalize on it when you have many opportunities to profit. @blocktrades for example can make money as a witness, through posting, through curating and through trades. I imagine working my ass off and then having that kind of money at my fingertips and I’d probably feel I deserved it to, and he/they probably do deserve much of what they receive. But they’ve got to make sure they aren’t circle jerking and I think this is actually very counterintuitive for them.
Think about it, if you’ve been working closely with a few people for a few years, you want to help out and look out for each other, and you even get rewarded with big curation bonuses for doing so since you are all popular accounts and witnesses.
If the witnesses and large accounts don’t minimize their votes to other large accounts and witnesses, this place will run into similar problems to steem.
I don’t know how to do this other than to reach out with them. It seems every change to the algorithms will lead to someone taking advantage until we change the culture.
The same way the witnesses don’t usually post 10 times a day to milk their autopvotes, we need to convince them to vote for each other less and to allow other people to go trending.
The only solution I can thank of besides convincing them to voluntary do so is to put more money in and try to sway with your vote.
I’ve never liked the economics of the place but it has always attracted interesting people and has always seemed to trend towards the better in the long run so I stick around and try to do what I can. I hope you do too! We need more people speaking out on this in a calm and unbiased way.