Thanks for this research. I have been trying to raise issues such as these from time to time but I have little to no reach on this platform, and my arguments are often waved away as complaints or minnow-ignorance.
I am seeing a lot of this going on, not just with the top accounts (although those are serious offenders IMO) but on a smaller scale with people getting pretty big upvotes for crap comments. All the while, honest minnows are having to struggle harder and harder to participate. It's almost to the point where if you just use the platform without any additional 'tricks' such as boosters or bots, you just won't get anywhere.
Hopefully with you bringing this to the attention to people, more action will be taken against this because this type of abuse is the biggest threat to Steem(it)'s future and if they're not able to tackle this I don't think Steem(it) can survive in the long run because inevitable the entire pool will be drained by these accounts.
Actually, it was me and @anonimnotoriu, I cited you here:
https://steemit.com/steemit/@lexiconical/devil-s-advocate-for-jerrybanfield-and-internet-marketers-a-malpractice-defense-of-rewards-do-no-harm-or-summon-the-pitchforks
When talking about this post, where he cited you:
https://steemit.com/steemit/@anonimnotoriu/why-i-mostly-couldn-t-care-less-about-the-trending-page
Now, I kind Devil's Advocated for the other side of anonimnotoriu, but I found your comment quite interesting and worthy of discussion. Anon and I had a good exchange in his post, too.
I find this all pretty interesting, but not angry or emotional about it so I can see all sides. I am watching eagerly to see what consensus the community will provide.
Ohhh yes, that discussion, I remember that. I thought you meant something else.
That kinda spiralled out of my hands!
I think ever since then it has improved though. I mostly went 'WTF' when Jerry posted a (let's not pretend it was attractive much) pic of himself shirtless and it fetched a ton of money. Since then, a bunch of people have complained about posts like that reaching trending, and I did notice the attitude has changed lately and there is more focus on content it seems.
Honestly, I can't believe anyone cared about that post.
BookingTeam rapes the reward pool every day by reposting cut and pastes from the internet, or reposting their own articles from a week ago, and they vote it up 300-400$. Multiples times a day. Look at the Business tag in trending.
At least Jerry's post was an actual piece of content.
Arguably the example you mentioned is worse, yes. I hate those posts too. It's not like I am pro-other posts that suck. It just shows that nobody cares about the content, and proves that people will upvote based on financial incentive mostly. As such, participating in this while knowing full well that this is the case, is by itself a form of abuse. If I know fully well that I will make $50 no matter what I post, and I then decide to post something shitty because who cares right, and then it turns out to indeed work that way, then that's a problem that will hurt the steemit ecosystem. It's something that should be discouraged.
I am in complete agreement. But let me play a bit of Devil's Advocate, as I am apparently compelled to often do:
"It's something that should be discouraged."
If we want to be the new Facebook (and I'm not sure we all do, but I think all the INVESTORS definitely do, and that's most of the big users too), then this may be opposite thinking.
Facebook is absolutely loaded down with narcissistic, garbage content with no value to anyone except puffing up the ego of whoever posted it by garnering likes. This is apparently what it takes to be one of the largest businesses ever.
Can we say for sure that promoting garbage and appealing to the lowest common denominator is not a recipe for success, when it seems to have worked for Facebook, Twitter, and now Reddit?
As Tracy Jordan said in 30 Rock: "I want a different answer!"
Valid point, and what is considered quality content is subjective of course.
But the point remains that most of the upvotes is not done on basis of the content, and this is the main problem as that is what curation is intended to focus at. If people vote based on popularity that is okay, but when people blindly vote whatever has the biggest payout then that is not healthy for the system. And those who participate in this 'flaw' of the system fully knowing what they are doing and how it works, are not helping and in fact hurting the ecosystem and diminishing trust in the platform.
The fact that things work now is meaningless, since Steemit is super new. Any value that it has is mostly speculative still, and could vanish in a puff of smoke if public trust in the platform/blockchain wavers. I just don't want that to happen. And you can just take a look around to gauge public opinion already: these problems are brought up many times. I kind of believe it's why the price of Steem hasn't done much lately.
"most of the upvotes is not done on basis of the content, and this is the main problem"
Agreed. We need to figure out a way to make the curation formula make it most profitable (and not prohibitively more difficult) to vote for quality content. I have begun considering options that would avoid taking more of the reward pool, such as also rewarding rep from curation (or a separate curation rep that affects your rewards from doing so), or some other way to incentivize users to curate better.
I'd like to make it so that users wouldn't want to self-vote out of economic self-interest.
"since Steemit is super new. "
I'm not disagreeing with you, but in crypto terms, Steem is actually more mature than most of the market cap list, and survived it's first 97% death spiral drop. That's one reason I'm here.
Agree with you. I only have a few weeks here and I have the same feeling.
An effort is made to make a quality post and nobody looks at it.
People vote for those who are up in the hope of winning something for curation but you can see that many of these post do not even look at them.
This is what I've stopped doing lately.
I want money of course, but chasing it instead of releasing and encouraging value just feels empty and dumb.
I mostly upvote new posts and offer encouragement.
I tend to link to my most recent post in my comments, but that's about it.
My newest post is about musicians on drugs.
I have seen you make well-reasoned arguments that were cited by others, although you may not have been aware that was happening.
Oh, wow! I did get a message about one of such instances but didn't know it happened more often :) That's awesome to hear and gives me some more motivation to keep at it!
You have the perfect name to write up a grandiose post on this issue.
I'll follow you and see what happens!
My thoughts exactly