My point there was that privately selling votes cannot be stopped
This is true however with downvotes it can be made unattractive to both buy (because return on the vote will be poor) or and sell (because selling prices will be poor) votes in a content-agnostic manner.
Your voter muting idea doesn't help the proof-of-brain function really. It might help make your personal view more useful. I don't disagree it is a fine feature, just not one that really helps address Steem's core problems.
I agree that downvotes have a direct effect, but they have negatives too:
You are right on all counts but I see no other method where expressing an opinion has a chance to compete with voting for return or more precisely to anchor things so that voting for return is somehow connected with opinons. With all their downsides, downvotes are still the only viable option.
I'm not really sure how downvotes can achieve the aim of allowing opinion to compete anyway, without a culture being crafted that actually values opinion (I wouldn't use the word opinion, since there are many posts that aren't opinions).
Maybe we will just see downvotes being put up for sale too ;)
I am starting to feel this might be an impossible puzzle wherein the inherent conflict of pure creativity vs. pure capitalist mentality cannot co-exist. The only viable solution, as with offline life, is for the hearts and minds of those involved to operate with shared agreements - which we do not currently have here. e.g. in the offline world, a musician might find they are struggling with the financially based demands of a label boss - whereas here, the more creative are met with a similar effect from those with Steem Power who simply demand 'roi'. But if the offline musician finds a label boss who also values music over money, then things can go well for all involved.
It seems the social aspect of a social network just doesn't really work unless those involved intend to be social. lol
When you upvote you have a choice of:
When you downvote, your choices are:
Review these lists carefully and then tell me whether you think it is more likely that people upvote or downvote based on merit/opinion.
Everyone has different motives. Users such as @v4vapid and myself tend to vote more to promote content - whereas many other users vote purely for financial gain. Steem presents a mixture of key selling points that both include financial gain and the ability to post transparently (uncensored) and in a fair way. We have here, therefore, a mixture of capitalism and the desire for free communication both competing for the same space. What combines all of these together is liberty, in a sense - or something approaching anarchy.
I personally upvote my own posts and then mostly only upvote posts based on content/opinion. I don't downvote due to disagreement (unless in extreme circumstances) and I don't downvote due to use of bots. While I might feel motivated to downvote due to the use of bots - I prefer solving the problem in a more uniform way instead of some bot users getting downvoted while others aren't.
In terms of the behavior of other users, I don't have accurate data on that - but I do know that there is a split between people who think that bid bots are 'valuable businesses' (lol) and those who vote based on opinion/content.
I don't think that really got at the point. Of course there are always users with different motivations. The common threads that runs through all are the incentives that are built into the system. People will respond differently to them but all respond in some manner. It's almost impossible, if not actually impossible, to participate in the system at all without doing so.
With that in mind I think should be clear from the above why downvotes are naturally much more effective than upvotes in getting voters to express an opinon, considering incentives across a range of personalities, motivations, etc. When you look at the current system where a very large amount of vote power (and a correspondingly large amount of the reward pool) is deployed in a manner that does not particularly (if at all) involve expressing opinion aka proof-of-brain, it is clear this outcome is tied more to upvoting than downvoting (aside from the overall scarcity of the latter).
I'll admit it, you have totally lost me here.. lol
I'm finding it hard to track your points - maybe I am missing something. From my perspective, the issue I want to see solved - and the issue that most people I speak to want to see solved, is that actual proof of brain is being replaced with 'proof of wallet'. So we have a situation akin to corporate mainstream media instead of 'the voice of the people' - which is, really by definitions, what people actually want/need. I don't see how downvotes can really achieve that without a coherent effort from the community to continually downvote - to the point of it being quite time consuming. The financial reward for those doing the upvoting (of themselves and co-conspirators) will motivate them to spend their time doing that.. but for downvoters, there is no guaranteed reward, yet they are using their time to 'police' things. From a 'business' perspective, the motivation and reward for abusing the situation remains higher than it is for trying to fix the situation with downvotes. When it is considered that downvotes can ALSO be used to aid in abuse of the situation, I find it hard to think they will be helpful overall.
On the other hand, by empowering users to be able to take direct and permanent action to remove abusers from their experience, we at least give users the opportunity to clean up their own feed and trending pages. This won't automatically stop the real abusers from still abusing the system, but it is easy to imagine a situation where abusers realise that their posts literally aren't being seen by anyone and thus the only benefit they get from posting and buying votes is whatever small return they get from the bidbots and nothing else. The system could also display the accounts that are being vote muted the most across the network - inspiring others to join in. I think this is a much more powerful option than is being recognised here.
I am all for just doing what works - if super charging downvotes works, then do that - but I feel it brings a disturbance in the force ;)