Old ideas like diminishing votes for repeatedly voting the same authors or even keeping votes in a closed circle are being refreshed
Already about two years ago, I wrote the following in a post:
"How about if after each vote on a specific account (including one's own account) each further vote on the same account would lead to significantly less curation reward for the voter and less profit for the upvoted account? Thus, when upvoting an account which I had already upvoted before, my voting power would be smaller than in case I upvote an account which I didn't upvote before."
However, I had the impression that witnesses and bigger stake holders were not interested these days.
Unfortunately mitigation methods like this aren't as simple to implement as it seems at first, because most of the times there's loopholes that render the whole effort moot. Believe me, most if not all of the witnesses would be happy to have a bullet-proof system that just works, but they won't agree to building in hurdles that just affect the honest users in the end. It's part of their job to think these things through and find out how big the probability for it to really work is.
Smooth commented about the idea under this post, and I'm afraid he's completely right with the assertion that it's not a viable solution (as about always when he has something to say :D )
https://steemit.com/newsteem/@smooth/pyx57r
I know that it's not so simple to implement and also not 'perfect' (already these days some replies mentioned the problem of users with multiple accounts), but I do think ideas like this could partly make 'circle jerking' less profitable and less easy to execute.
Good to know that they are seriously discussing these things.
If something is not perfect, and at the same time it hurts honest users, it shouldn't be implemented.
Exactly my point about the curve when I think about it that way :D
I don't see how it would hurt honest users: even my best friends I don't need to upvote several times per day (or even every day) ... :) And I still could do that, if I insisted to, I just had to accept somewhat lower returns.
For example the curation window hurts me much more than diminishing returns ever could, as I never try to upvote any post within the first five minutes after it has been published. I can't find good articles that fast if curating manually (only auto voters can) and even if I did, I couldn't read and evaluate them within five minutes. As a result nearly everybody with a comparable STEEM power earns more curation rewards than I do ... but the good thing is: I don't care that much. :)
Anyway: you prefer the current state to solve the problem by downvoting abusers it seems?
Well no, I don't. But at least it's kinda visible when they stick to the same account and don't constantly switch through several. It's not really a solution, because it would hide the abuse even better when someone decides to do it.