One good reason why you should downvote
Yesterday I was reading this post by @acidyo asking whether people would make use of the proposed downvote pool. This would allow you to downvote to some extent without losing voting power (mana). The concepts of flagging/downvoting has been in Steem from the start and is explained in the white paper (page 14):
The use of negative-voting to keep people from abusing the system leverages the crab mentality that many people have when it is perceived that one individual is profiting at the expense of everyone else. While crab mentality normally refers to short-sighted people keeping good people down, it is also what allows good people to keep bad people down. The only “problem” with crab mentality is when people wrongly believe someone is profiting at everyone else'sexpense.
The 'crab mentality' refers to a metaphor of crabs in a bucket pulling back any who try to climb out.
That post above has comments from people saying they never downvote. It is a personal choice, but it depends on what sort of future you want Steem to have. If we allow abuse to continue unchecked it will just get worse.
The reason I downvote is to reduce the rewards of posts who I think are abusing the concept of Steem, which is to reward good content. In some cases a post that is okay may be massively over-rewarded by buying votes. Those rewards come from a pool that is shared by us all and if some are taking more than their share then the rest get less.
By the way, I do not accept the argument that buying votes guarantees more 'exposure'. I see posts with $50 or more of paid votes and no comments apart from those of the bots saying they voted. Maybe if you get on the first screen of Trending then you will get a few more comments, but most experienced users do not go there looking for worthy posts. That is done more via re-steems and building connecting by engaging in comments.
A prime example of abusing the Steem platform is the user @crystalliu who I have been flagging for some time. He persistently posts plagiarised videos and junk comments that he buys votes for. Here is an example that he has resteemed from his 'alt' account @victoryeung. Exactly the same video uploaded to @dtube and 'botted' up. I really think DTube should blacklist these accounts.
He does this on his comments too.
My own voting power is a bit low at the moment or I would have downvoted all of these.
He must have hundreds of dollars in pending rewards from these posts and comments. He has other accounts such as @authorreward doing the same. He makes it easy to find these by resteeming and even uses the same graphics. How can this not be abuse?
Now you may be worried about downvoting in case of retaliation, but he only has a few cents of voting power across his accounts and he tends to use it up so it has even less effect. He keeps his liquid Steem to buy votes and I expect he will sell it the moment the price goes up.
What is interesing is that he has bought a lot of Steem. He recently added about another 16,000 that has been moved back and forth between some of his accounts for no obvious reason. If he were to power this up he could downvote around 30c, but I doubt he will do this. He has downvoted me many times to little effect.
There is plenty of strange behaviour on his account. He will sometimes send Steem to those bots that still support him with messages in Chinese instead of a URL. Of course these get rejected and it is a shame he gets full refunds. Then there is this, which is a text he often puts in replies to my comments where I say I downvoted him.
He has been blacklisted by at least three vote sellers, but unforunately some still accept his money. It looks like he is intent on continuing this behaviour despite losing lots of rewards. I can only take cents, but the good people of the @SteemFlagRewards community have been dealing with him and taking dollars away.
So can you see why I suggest you send him some downvotes? Of course that has a cost to you in lost curation rewards and you cannot vote on others (or yourself) as much, but by reducing his rewards you make more available.
By acting as part of #SteemFlagRewards you can downvote whilst being rewarded. Previously this was via votes from the main account on comments left to say you flagged, but it has recently changed. Now you do not have to once the @steemflagrewards account says it acknowledged the abuse. You just have to add your downvote and you will receive SFR tokens via Steem Engine. These can then be used to buy actual votes for your posts. There is a whitelist system to prevent abuse of this and I suggest you visit their Discord to make yourself known as an abuse fighter and get added to the list.
There is a lot of abuse of Steem that is harder to tackle due to scale and the risk of real retaliation, but this (ab)user can be used as an example to others that the community will deal with those who harm the platform. This may discourage others from trying the same thing. That said, there are lots of others doing similar things and many are being dealt with by SFR. I just choose to concentrate my limited efforts on one of the worst. If hundred of others join the fight then we can have a bigger impact. Even one downvote per day can help.
Many of us have done very well from Steem and I think we have some responsibility to give something back to make it a better place. I want to see it reach its potential and this is part of my effort to that end. Of course I am also helping small accounts to grow at the same time via @tenkminnows.
Will you join the cause?
The geeky guitarist and facilitator of the 10K Minnows Project.
- I'll buy guitar picks for Steem
- Get a Wirex Debit Card to spend your crypto.
- Get some passive income with Mannabase
- Get paid to search at Presearch
- Battle for cards on Steem Monsters
- I have Steem accounts to give away to worthy people!
Man, he even has $40 upvotes on comments! Insane. Gave him some downvotes!
At some point these bid bots with zero standards need to have their votes erased indiscriminately, no matter how good or bad the stuff is they are upvoting.
I think a lot of people are hoping hardfork 21 will make it non-profitable to buy votes. They could still be used to 'promote' a post. The bots should really not sell votes for comments and should have some standards. I know some do have ethics, but the whole business has distorted Steem.
Agreed, we'll have to wait to see how the HF shakes out, then perhaps an adjustment in strategy will be in order.
Done. But I only dropped rewards by a penny on the few that I flagged.
Thanks. It all helps. Beyond a certain point he is making a loss even if we cannot cancel it all out.
We will need a lot more flag power to mute this guy. It used to be that I went out looking for abuse, but this dude takes all I have now and that's not nearly enough.
Same for the rest of us. The sooner he realises it's just not working the better.
If it is too big for you, then where are some orca/whales? bernie comes to mind here.
Tell you what.., you go first and I'll follow your lead (only if good things happen though) :)
Haha! Not going there, lol.
Some big accounts are supporting this effort. Special thanks to @themarkymark for all he does. I know he gets attacked by various people for taking a stand.
https://steemit.com/steemleo/@coininstant/my-letter-to-themarkymark-in-response-to-his-continual-flagging-of-my-account-and-not-hearing-about-my-steemleo-block-from
WARNING: IF YOU REPLY TO THIS ACCOUNT YOU WILL BE FLAGGED, YOUR REP HARMED AND ALL OF YOUR REWARDS REMOVED. DO NOT ENGAGE WITH THE TRASH. YOU HAVE BEEN WARNED
Thanks for using eSteem!
Your post has been voted as a part of eSteem encouragement program. Keep up the good work! Install Android, iOS Mobile app or Windows, Mac, Linux Surfer app, if you haven't already!
Learn more: https://esteem.app
Join our discord: https://discord.gg/8eHupPq
There is an imbalance between the amount I can downvote with my stake and upvote via bidbots.
Additionally, what am I supposed to do in case of retaliation out of spite?
Downvoting is a blunt tool with a tendency to backfire for most.
Posted using Partiko Android
This is why I highlighted a case where the risk is minimal. Not all downvotes do real damage. He cannot even hurt your rep. It seems I inspired some to take action.
I don't want to be too snarky here.
Waiting on somebody to point small accounts to almost riskless downvotes, in order to protect the reward pool, can't be the answer to this problem.
We need to be able to delegate the upcoming downvote pool in order to move the scales a little. It won't be enough.
Posted using Partiko Android
Maybe it isn't enough, but it's better than nothing. I really want to see dolphins and orcas doing more about the abuse rather than the smaller accounts. Until the new downvotes pool happens we have to work with what we have and I've at least made people aware of the problem.
I had no idea about this. But I know he sends the crazy messages because with no url, the bot cannot vote on a post. Therefore what DID get to the bot gets a higher payout than it looks like it would have gotten. So other "normal" people do not bid on it since it looks like it is not going to pay out well. But then it does pay out well. So he must be connected to the other accounts on the bot.
I used the bots when they first started and saw this behavior at times. You would see a "bad" looking bot, but then it would payout well. Someone else was tracking it and just saw the analysis.
Are the bots that allow this on steembottracker? Getting them out of there would kill their performance maybe.
In case you do not already know @steevc, the @jerrybanfield bid-bot is out of business. He stopped maybe a week ago.He is still voting people's posts, but now doing it for free to see details. bernie hid it but it is still an ongoing offer and program. If I am not mistaken, jerry was subbed to the blacklists, so I think he would still do that - not sure.
Go to this post:
https://steemit.com/steem/@jerrybanfield/67-4000-automatic-daily-upvote-spots-claimed
If you sign up for Jerry's newsletter. You will get one great upvote each day by taking this action. I'm getting it now for a week, As soon as I started promoting, bernie flagged the post above, but it is still operational.
I'm bringing this to your attention wondering if maybe it is really true that the fork will kill the bots. I'm assuming jerry did the math and determined he could make more by giving the votes away - again, not sure.I have no direct knowledge.
Also @nonameslefttouse might be a good connection for the problem mentioned in your post. He is working to help steem and know bigs guys. Possible some of them would help your kill this off.
I saw Jerry's post, but I'm not bothered about getting his votes. It still doesn't seem right when I've seen him vote up so much crap. Hf21 may change the game and we will see what other schemes people come up with. Selling delegation may be a better deal.
I am a buyer of delegation, so it would be nice to see more sellers.
I'm not sending you this so YOU can get the vote. My point is that many small accounts will be getting it and already are. I'm looking at the "fallout" of what Jerry is doing and what it means with the fork coming.
If he was subbed to the blacklist people, I think he was not upvoting bad posts. But maybe I'm wrong. I have not been watching this at all. What were you seeing?
I'm sending all the good little people I can to him now. $1 per day is a lot for someone new with less than 100 sp.
I have seen plenty of posts I considered worthy of downvoting that had votes from him, but getting people blacklisted takes time. I don't follow Jerry, so I don't know his motives, but what he is doing now has potential to spread votes around a bit more, whilst getting him subscribers of course.
I hope you will send your redfish to him. He's voting over 250 people now.
It's a step in the right direction, and he was the first one who took it. Credit is deserved for that. One less bid bot, that's a win for STEEM. His vote across potentially 4000 people is of least concern to me.
a lot are forgetting that he was the reason why so many people joined steem, when I joined more than 2 years ago I watched so many his videos about steem what made me join that time and I think a lot of people here !
I appreciate that Jerry brought people to Steem, but he's done a few odd things since then. This may be a sign that he wants to do more to help the platform. There are too many just taking and we need big accounts to give something back if it is to grow.
You are right, in the situation with the steem price and ranking in coinmarketcap anything that support steemians is good, even that little upvote he is distributing now may keep some people here.
Bid bot operators are persona non grata to me, but I saw he did this and was immediately supportive. I hope this is something he can sustain long term to reward his followers.
This type of constant bidbotted spam definitely needs to go away. Threw a few downvotes to take some cents away from him.
I think it is a good thing to start talking and do flagging already because it will change the whole sentiment around it and get people to do it more in preparation of HF21.
In cases like this I completely agree that they need to be downvoted. No rational reason for getting that type of payout even with bots. This is a great reason for HF21.
What scares me is like the camillesteemer account. It's sole purpose is to downvote or when someone pisses off a whale. It truly is the retaliatory actions people are worried about. Now knowing their downvote will affect the payout pool, will give them more reason to cause turmoil.
Accounts like camillesteemer are not a worry when they have hardly any sp. Of course they're are those who do much worse just because they know they can get away with it. I've been hit with some big flags before, but it's not the end of the world.
This user has almost 300 accounts and is the one who is mass voting/unvoting witnesses 100 times a day. It has been going on for a long time now. Most of the time, it was without bid bots, but now he is aggressively using them regardless of profitability and flags.
Mental illness, I guess.
I've used much SP downvoting this abuser's accounts.
I guess after HF21, he will get a lot more downvotes.
I think maintaining an opinion of not downvoting means you tolerate abuse. It's cool if you are new.
I have a hopeless fantasy that we can punish the bid bots and main delegators who tolerate these use cases.
Posted using Partiko Android
Thanks for helping to deal with the problem. Hf21 may help in that buying votes will be less profitable. Big self votes may still be an issue.
actually that metaphor of crab mentality are always use in our country. They're referring my fellow Filipinos.
Downvote sometimes is good but sometimes is bad. People use it for no reason. What if they use downvote with bigger. It means the hardwork of that person will go to waste. I'm not against but at the same time I'm not into it. Buying votes are part of steem, and I think we have no right to stop because they spent money for that.
In my own opinion
Posted using Partiko Android
Paying money on plagiarized/copy pasted content, and general lewd comments about sexual behavior on an actress he's obsessed about is not what I considered
we have no right to stop him. If you think that makes people flock to Steem by reading that crap, then I don't know what planet you live on.Dude is literally creating inflation for non-content, non-utility, non-reports, etc. The big bots who still refuse to adopt the Global Blacklist API are the problems. Abusers flock to them. They work in synergy to mock your stake, your tokens, and your money.
no, that's not what I meant..what I meant was the writing that they did. That's why downvote must be considered in many ways. Like myself, someone downvoted my content even though it's just my thoughts. I wasn't hitting someone.
Posted using Partiko Android
That's fair. Apologies for misunderstanding.
You can think whatever you want, but bidding that stuff to trending will earn you some scrutiny, especially what that Crystal guy is doing.
true..nope I'm fine, I was wrong in some point anyway. I should be specified some topic to make it more understandable..
Posted using Partiko Android
We are all entitled to opinions. Steem gives us freedom and that can be used for greed or to attack others. Selling or buying votes is part of that freedom. In the case I have given there is no hard work involved and he is actively harming Steem. That is why I propose that it is justifiable to downvote. If we do not he will continue and could get worse.
Disagreement with rewards is the only reason you need to downvote something.
We have freedom to use our votes as we like. I can't stop people flagging in retaliation. I wonder if we will see more hate speech and other 'nasty' content that would make Steem look really bad. Should that be flagged to make it less visible? It's up to the community, but the whales could determine how it goes.
Downvotes
What is the real value of downvoting? Why should we have the right to interfere with what a person earns from what they create? When have you ever not watched a video on YouTube because of the amount of dislikes it received? Can we truly demonstrate that downvoting has helped Steem?
If I place my vote for an Author, which adds a monetary value to their post, why should someone else be allowed to cancel out a part of what I've wanted to give that Author? If I were to pull my money out of the bank and place it in a bowl, together with others, to give to someone because we like what that person has done or created, how dare someone come and take money out of that bowl to give back to the bank!!! I would go ballistic, and forgive me, but might actually hurt the dude!
To be honest, I'm afraid to downvote for fear of retaliation! And I know I'm not alone! I don't have a lot of Steem Power, nor do I get a lot of votes for my posts. And there are moments in which I would like to hit the downvote button to show discontent with what I've read, or a person's behavior, but I don't!
And this is where I believe the real value of the downvote should be focused. It should be a tool for the expression of discontent, and not a determination of whether the Author, or his posts, have value. Who are we to decide what others should like or dislike? The only reason a downvote should take shares out of the reward pool is to counter a self-vote. In this way, you are directly challenging the Author, and not interfering with the decisions made by curators.
Self Votes
I believe self voting should be automatic. In other words, when an Author writes a post, there should be a slider near the POST button to determine the self vote %. If 0%, then no self vote is cast; however, if you set, for example 50%, your account will upvote your post after 6.5 days. Why? Because investing in one's own ideas or projects is in alignment with the entrepreneurial spirit. When the true entrepreneur is bringing his or her idea into the world, they are looking to offer it for the benefit of others, and self. Often, entrepreneurs put all of their personal funds into a project because they are the first to believe in themselves and what they are creating. But what they create is ideally intended to be of service to others. Hence, my reasoning that the self vote should be scheduled for 6.5 days, because it would add to the curation pool, adding value to those who upvoted you in the previous days. It's a win/win. Otherwise, we should simply eliminate the self vote.
So, basically all bot votes? Because people seldom bot someone else's posts out of the kindness of their hearts.
Every vote you receive or cast on this platform is PENDING
inflationorprinting new money. The money is not yours until payout. Everyone is entitled to agree or disagree with thatinflation. Everyinflationmeans your tokens are less valuable, hence the emphasis on value of content. But, discontent is fine too because it shows you disagree with the pending rewards.Not possible. You can create other accounts. Haejin does that very well. Traf does that very well. And so on.
@enforcer48 has summed it up well. You do not give away your funds when you vote. It is like voting in an election to decide who gets what, but you can vote on lots of things to control how the rewards are distributed. If someone is getting a lot through buying votes, self voting or through coordination with associates we are allowed to adjust that down. You say 'who are we to downvote', but why should we be allowed to give and earn rewards? I recommend reading the white paper to understand what Steem was intended to be.
I do not self vote. Who am I to decide if my content has value? I do not generally buy votes either, but I will admit I make use of services that let me exchange tokens I earn from Steem Monsters or Steem Flag Rewards for votes. My Steem gets powered up so I can help others.
I think fear of retaliation is why a lot of people do not downvote. You have to act with care to avoid that. You can delegate to those who will flag some of the nastier elements to reduce the risk.
As I said, you have freedom here. I chose to not just use it for my own benefit.
Hi, @steevc!
You just got a 4.34% upvote from SteemPlus!
To get higher upvotes, earn more SteemPlus Points (SPP). On your Steemit wallet, check your SPP balance and click on "How to earn SPP?" to find out all the ways to earn.
If you're not using SteemPlus yet, please check our last posts in here to see the many ways in which SteemPlus can improve your Steem experience on Steemit and Busy.
Hi @steevc!
Your post was upvoted by @steem-ua, new Steem dApp, using UserAuthority for algorithmic post curation!
Your UA account score is currently 5.942 which ranks you at #372 across all Steem accounts.
Your rank has dropped 3 places in the last three days (old rank 369).
In our last Algorithmic Curation Round, consisting of 266 contributions, your post is ranked at #43.
Evaluation of your UA score:
Feel free to join our @steem-ua Discord server
Interesting concept. I didn't think about the ability to game the system like that.
When there is money to be made people can be very crafty. It is not hard to find many more cases like this.