Why the Whale War might be good for Steemit
In case you haven't heard, there has been a bit of a controversy waging on steemit over the past few months. The main belligerents in this so-called war are two users named @haejin and @berniesanders. Others have also participated in various forms. I myself have taken part in many of the discussions regarding the spat.
One opinion I've often seen expressed is that the drama of the war has a negative effect on Steemit and scares away new members. The overall sentiment is that it is bad for Steemit and Steem as a currency. While I have held this opinion myself in the past, I recently started to question the veracity of that statement. By stepping back and looking at the situation from a different angle, I have allowed myself to consider that the war may actually be good for both Steemit and Steem.
Background
Source.First, i wanted to give some background on what the war is about in case you haven't been paying close attention. The controversy began when someone noticed that one user was taking a large portion of the reward pool themselves. That user, @haejin, was taking .6% of the total reward pool at the time. Since that time, this figure has grown to 3.187% at the time of this writing
made a post about it, and thus the flag wars started. There have been many minnows and plankton/redfish on both sides that have taken huge hits to reputation. The whales involved have each taken turns wacking each others rewards down. There were also reports of threats beyond Steemit to include death threats.Upon investigating, people discovered that most of those rewards came from a mysterious whale (@ranchorelaxo) with an upvote worth of over $300 that had very little interaction with steemit other than upvoting @haejin’s posts. The situation is compounded by the fact that @haejin routinely posts 7 or more posts a day, all upvoted by himself (@berniesanders
Steem White paperThe main argument against @haejin is that the relationship between him and @ranchorelaxo and subsequent behavior constitutes voting abuse as outlined in the . While @haejin asserts that he is entitled to the large upvotes from himself (currently up to $114.89) and @ranchorelxo (currently up to $338.93) and the resulting high portion of the rewards pool because he offers his analysis on steemit for free and brings many new members to steemit.
Reasoning
So how can I find anything good about this situation? Well, first I had to look at the white paper and see what the design of Steem said about this. In the section on voting abuse, it says the following:
...any work that is getting a large concentration of votes is also gaining the most scrutiny (publicity). Through the addition of negative-voting it is possible for many smaller stakeholders to nullify the voting power of collusive groups or defecting large stakeholders.
So analyzing this section of the whitepaper, it’s easy to come to the conclusion that war taking place right now is not only tolerable, but in fact a healthy correction working very much in the way that the currency was designed. You have two large stake holders collectively allocating a large percentage of the rewards pool and yo have the community (many smaller stake holders) responding.
Some will look at the situation and say the system isn’t working because @haejin is still taking a large portion of the reward pool. This is a fair assessment, however, if you continue reading the Steem white paper, you will see the following statement:
Eliminating “abuse” is not possible and shouldn’t be the goal. Even those who are attempting to “abuse” the system are still doing work. Any compensation they get for their successful attempts at abuse or collusion is at least as valuable for the purpose of distributing the currency as the make-work system employed by traditional Bitcoin mining or the collusive mining done via mining pools. All that is necessary is to ensure that abuse isn’t so rampant that it undermines the incentive to do real work in support of the community and its currency.
I bolded that last section to highlight its importance. While @haejin may be successful thus far, the response from the community helps ensure that the abuse doesn’t reach a level that makes the currency unstable. While the end result of the abuse may mean less rewards for other posters on Steemit, the response ensure that the rewards they earn now are not devalued because of the abuse. Additionally, it also serves as a warning to other millionaires considering such actions. They know that the community will react and can see the potential for larger whales getting involved. Besides a considerable monetary investment, they will also have to invest time and energy in a war, which makes the effort necessary to pull off such a plan less enticing.
What about Steemit as a website?
a recent commentFor this question, I’ll refer to @ned himself. In , @ned mentioned the incredible amount of web traffic generated by the spat. They have a saying that no publicity is bad publicity. I think it rings true in this case. I still feel that steemit offers many more communities and conglomerates of goodwill than most social sites. The ugliness of the flag wars is the exception, and I think that’s easy for a lot of people to see. The social transactions on the Steem BlockChain and the resultant condensers (i.e. steemit.com, busy.org, chainbb, etc.) are unlike anything else on the planet. It’s an interesting phenomenon and is something of which the world should take note. If it takes a bit of controversy to make that happen then so be it. Steem on!
Please let me know your thoughts below, but remain respectful.
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First of all your post is biased. You're only stating info against Haejin. Bernie Sanders has a minus reputation for a reason. He's picked multiple fights with many people. How can you not mention that he upvotes his own posts with $100 as firstvote?
How can anyone take your post seriously if you don't compare like with like?
How have you not mentioned the abuse of the system where I individual's are meant to upvote content via curation but bots are used. Many by Bernie Sanders aka Randowhale.
The spat highlights fundamental flaws in the system. I became concerned with these in the autumn and very concerned after flying to Steem festival and finding the concerns or zero relevance to the developers. I returned home and started powering down. There will be new social media platforms like Steemit launch in the next year. For me it's a terrible shame as I was very excited by the concept but as Dan said, it was an experiment. The results are rolling in. BTW - do you think this comment should be censored? Do you believe in free speech or the tyranny of a dictactor with money? This post will be censored like all my previous ones on the subject. I hope that all within the Crypto currency revolution, remind ourselves that the new revolutikn might bring in a new wave of bad, maybe worse than the old - a revisit to Georges Orwell's book 'Animal farm' could be a good call.
First, I never claimed to be unbiased. In fact, in a comment on this thread I clearly stated that i am biased. Secondly, I did not set out to give a full account of the actions of the war on here. I only dedicated a few paragraphs to the background with the intention to give an overview of the lead up to the controversy. I didn't detail the flagging actions of Bernie for the same reasons I didn't detail the flagging actions of haejin; they are not relevant to the point I am making. My point is this; If the community feels that voting abuse is occurring, they will respond and that this makes those who would venture to do so think twice.
Regarding whether or not I feel your post should be censored, I don't. I have spoke out against it in the recent past. Regarding Bernie upvoting his own post for over $100, I just don't see it very often, compared to haejin. Here are Bernie's earnings for the next 7 days:
Keep in mind that that contains two abnormally high posts over $1000, at least one of which he claims he will burn the rewards earned. Now, compare that to the picture I posted in the article of haejin's rewards. 22K vs 2K, which one would you prioritize? I'll address some of your other concerns in response to your other comment.
This additional information is relevant. I hadn't realised BS had offered to burn his votes. Seeing is believing and I'd much rather he donated them to tree planter or some similar positive action. My point is starting petty wars is not the correct way and BS starts these spats for his own entertainment IMO. I haven't seen his positive suggestions for changes to the system. My feeling is that is because the system works well for him when someone else like Haejin isn't doing well. All this spat is doing is setting up the next Steem competitor.
Bernie has his style and it throws off a lot of people, but this situation definitely needed/needs a vocal whale to address it. He was the only one willing to put so much effort into it. Some others joined in for a little bit, but not to the point of really making a difference. Even @dan began flagging haejin, but I believe has stopped.
See, I think the only thing that has saved haejin from the wrath of other whales is that the price of Steem has been doing so well. His huge chunk isn't that noticeable to them because they are still earning more than they were before. If they had noticed a decrease, more of them would have acted.
Look how your 'hero' is censoring my comments with his bots. This is all The work of BS. Do you agree with his actions?
I do not agree with it. I think it undermines the effort. I also wonder if it works in haejin's favor by turning off whales who would otherwise support the effort.
Why not send BS a personal message as a supporter?
But don't you think they should react by either making better posts, voting for content they liked which would have diverted earnings away from Haejin. They could have petitioned to change the system. I haven't seen any if this. Dan downvoted 4 posts on one day only. Id also like to suggest that maybe you could also suggest changes instead of referring to the white paper. The white paper isn't a bible it as just a template with a misson. All missions need adapting whilst keeping goal and agenda the same. This is meant to be a communication platform based on quality of contributions whether as by authoring or curating. All I'm. Seeing right now is an undignified fight over a reward pool with very little positive input to bettering the system. If you have positive constructive ideas I'd love to hear them I a future post, as I'm sure many would.
Fair enough.
No. What haejin is doing constitues voting abuse and really should be dealt with directly. It would be like if Oprah bought a billion dollars worth of steem and then came here upvoted Stedman to 50% of the reward pool. The fact that the self-voting is done through a proxy doesn't negate its effect on the platform. By dealing with the user directly, you send the message that their actions are not tolerable.
The white paper isn't the Bible, but it is sound reasoning on the way Steem was designed.
Many have talked about changing the system, but change takes time and in this instance requires a hardfork to the Steem BlockChain. In the meantime, the situation demands that it be addressed via currently available means.
I'll think on possible solutions. I did write something on Self-voting and reputation on my blog, but that was only slightly related.
How can you tell Haejin has scammed the system?
FYI, @dan downvoted haejin 34 times by my count starting 11 days ago.
I'm sure you're right as I've not been delving by through. I stand corrected. Amazing to think Dan cares that much as I thought he was only using Steem for the odd post. If so his stance on this issue is clear. I wonder what would think to the censoring of comments like this oneand my other comments to you?
"Bernie has his style"
Indeed. His style is attacking a community minded Steemian because their popular contributions are thwarting @berniesanders parasitism.
It depends on what you mean by community minded. I hope you are not talking about haejin.
Bernie Sanders is using his bots to downvote my comments on your post into oblivion. Do you condone this behaviour Moeknows?
@berniesanders contributes nothing to Steemit - check his posting history it's entirely resteems (including this article) and mostly bitching about @Haejin.
Haejin became popular organically and only receives a significant % of the reward pool because people upvote his OC. His TA is sometimes off the mark? He posts individually for each crypto? Boo hoo irrelevant - people choose to upvote him.
@berniesanders, on the other hand, is a blatant parasite who is furious that his previously unchallenged gaming of the system is no longer putting as much money in his pockets.
Haejin's popularity has virtually nothing to do with this controversy. His continuous exploitation of the reward pool through the use of proxy voting by Rancho does. Nobody cares about your vote for haejin nor do they care about nearly any other vote for haejin except for rancho. It constitutes voting abuse and that has nothing to do with anything Bernie does. Bernie's reaction is just that, a reaction. haejin has the power to stop this and chooses not to even after hearing from members of the community besides Bernie.
You're wrong about that. In fact, it's putting more money in his pockets. So much, in fact, that he couldn't keep up with the demand for his services anymore.
Seems reasonable... I feel like 5 years down the road Saturday Night Live will be running skits about our Whale Wars when @zuckerberg gets flagged by @berniesanders!
This is simply unsustainable. The Steem White Paper is clear:
"When people are recognized for their meaningful contributions, they continue contributing and the community grows. Any imbalance in the give and take within a community is unsustainable. Eventually the givers grow tired of supporting the takers and disengage from the community."
Ned's ambivalent attitude to this war between the whales is a shame. Content contributors, aside from the ones that are already connected to the whales here, will not contribute to this platform knowing that there are users that are reaping tens of thousands of dollars in rewards for nonsense.
Yes! If the "big guys" got actually involved, we would not even be having this discussion right now ;)
After Stealing People Rewards, Haejin has also stolen TA of expert @salahuddin2004 .
What @salahuddin2004 mentioned about TRX that it would go 2k satoshi 16 days ago. Haejin copied the same TA and
mentioned in his timeline about TRX going 2k Satoshi 15 hours ago . HERE YOU can see.
![cp 2.png]
(
)
That would be the same @salahuddin2004 (pigs be upon him) who joined months after @Haejin became a major TA figure on here? Lmao. Try harder.
I went on YouTube to see what people were saying about Haejin. And guess what? I found the same thing. People were complaining about his videos. If Haejin was truly this smart in cryptocurrency he would be putting out much better content.
https://steemit.com/bitcoin/@thabiggdogg/i-looked-at-haejin-s-youtube-videos-and-found-this
Again, nobody is forced to read or upvote his content. Yet another sockpuppet.
The large scale crony voting risks literally turning Steem into a Ponzi scheme, as I've further explained here: https://steemit.com/steem/@troglodactyl/is-steem-a-ponzi-scheme
Partly this can be solved (or at least managed) by continually building consensus on definitions of abuse and what should be downvoted. In the long run, I think we'd be well served by a few protocol changes:
Downvotes should get curation rewards. Steem is based on the premise that most of the stakeholders will vote in the network's best interest to increase the value of their stake. This should be just as true regarding downvotes as upvotes, but currently dealing with spam and abuse is uncompensated. When a post or comment is downvoted below 0, the voters who downvoted it should be rewarded, just as upvoters are rewarded for curating good content.
There should be curation penalties for losing voting wars. Currently, shortsighted stakeholders see no incentive for avoiding abuse. They feel they have nothing to lose, because each of them think their own actions are too insignificant to impact the price of Steem. If there were curation penalties (negative curation rewards) for downvoting something that settled to net positive votes or upvoting something that settled to negative, then stakeholders who more often than not oppose what others consider best for the network would have reason to sell their stake and move on.
Increase the length of the vesting schedule. The level of abusive voting indicates that many voters don't have the longterm interests of the network in mind. The length of the vesting schedule should be gradually increased after #2 is implemented to give abusive stakeholders time to see what's happening and sell out gracefully.
Return to a non-linear reward curve. Linear rewards reduce the incentive to generate consensus on what is desirable and what is undesirable. If the R^2 curve is deemed excessive maybe we should go with R^1.5, but R^1 is a step in the wrong direction. Combined with #2, curation penalties and rewards should be calculated symmetrically on the same curve, with exponentially higher penalties and higher rewards for posts settling with stronger consensus.
This largely seems to be based on the assumption that most downvotes are deserved. In my experience, that is not always the case. Also, the reason for the downvote is disagreement on rewards payout, then why would 0 be the threshold? Just because you don't believe that a post should make $500 doesn't mean that it should make 0.
As I said, Steem is based on most stakeholders voting in the network's interest (which if the system is properly designed will also be in their personal interest). If this is true, then most of the time when a downvote is not deserved people will come together to counter it with upvotes. If that's what generally happens and if when it happens the downvoter suffers a penalty then continued abusive downvoting becomes much less likely. If most of the stakeholders are malicious and will downvote good content just to watch the world burn, no protocol change will save the network.
The change I propose would make downvoting less useful for rewards disagreement, but I see that as a much less serious issue than outright abuse. It's imperfect, but I still think it would be an improvement.
I think there is a really, really simple way to deal with this. Bring back the four posts per day rule. Before HF19 we had a mechanism on steemit that allowed all users to post four posts per day and receive maximum rewards. At the fifth post, maximum reward payout dropped I think to 75%, sixth 50%, seventh 25% etc. I think this is the best way to mitigate this type of abuse, and would be a really simple solution to this problem.
four post are too many for a whale. i think the number of posts for whales should be less. may be once a week. and there should be a limit to steem power an account. it should not be unlimited
If it's actually purely abuse this is easy to circumvent with extra accounts. Just make 10 bot accounts and post 4 times a day from each of them. A real user trying to build an audience would suffer from splitting across multiple accounts, but an abusive reward harvester wouldn't have a problem with it.
What if minnows were to be protected against whale flagging them. Might encourag them to "do the right thing"
If minnows were protected against downvotes we'd see even more new 'minnow' spambots overrunning the network, impervious to all countermeasures.
1% max on anyone share of the common pot?
Remember we can't control how many accounts a person has and how many are bots, so any effort against truly deliberate abuse that relies on a per-account or per-post limit can be circumvented with more accounts generating more spam.
1 post per day, 10 steem max on all the post. Your precious spam network is not worth the effort and more ppl can get coffee money. And a monthly vote on whose account should be closed and balance burned, like witness vote but more witch hunt
Totally agree. Minnows (like @haejin) should be protected against greedy parasite whales (@berniesanders) so that they don't have to rely on 'protection' from other whales like ranchorelaxo.
I think you do not know what those terms mean.
:D I hope this comment was on purpose.
Can you explain why you disagree?
Thanks for the explanation.
It sounds like the common element in all your reasoning is that you don't trust stakeholders to act in ways that support growth. This is a legitimate problem, but nerfing stakepower won't solve it. It's not just large stakeholders who try to abuse the network for profit, and as long as it remains profitable we'll see an increasing number of people taking that approach.
To solve the problem we can either try to fork the network removing the stake of large abusive stakeholders until the network is controlled by only the most angelic among us (unlikely), or we can modify the economics to make abuse unprofitable. I'm promoting the second approach. All stakeholders hold stake, which means they're united in the positive-sum benefit that comes from long term network growth. The problem is that they're divided by the short term zero-sum competition for rewards. To make the network healthy we need to make that zero-sum competition less appealing/profitable and the positive sum collaboration relatively more appealing.
Networks and societies always require trust, it's just a matter of how much we can distribute and manage that trust to make sure the costs of being untrustworthy are high and the rewards of being trustworthy are attractive. We obviously want to avoid having to trust people to act in our interests at the cost of their own.
I think, Steemit should not only have the option to up&downvote posts but also to rate the Quality of the post. That would bring the advantage that posts which might leck of good content (because its only two lines of words or just a picture) could be grated "low Quality" e.g. five Start Rating System. This would mean that the received post earning showed at the recent time would not been paid out to 100% for "high Quality" but maybe only to 20% "low quality". While the amount of the post is depended on the Steempower Votes received, the Quality Index would be steempower neutral and only collects the Ratings from all viewers. What do you think would this help the situation?
I like your idea and it could be done at the website or condenser level. I think a lot of our issue is the culture, terminology and understanding of how the system is supposed to work. A flag here and a flag on facebook or reddit are two different things. I'm going to be thinking of some solutions in the coming weeks.
I like this idea! The quality of content is subjective and impossible to define by one individual. It would introduce a way for everyone to vote on quality with the same power. But then again, how do you prevent people from creating shittons of bots and pushing their quality upwards?
Everyone knows what some of the whales are doing on this platform !! But i believe things will change. I believe we should keep on supporting good content and majority will win some day. There is always a doubt but still, i dont know why i have so much faith on steemit. I will just do my thing slowly and steadily 😌😌
And thanks for that poetry discord server !! I was searching for something like this since a long time !!
Nice work. Keep it up ✌🏻
Good overview, but you all talk to much instead of downvoting this abuse...
http://www.steemreports.com/outgoing-flags-info/?account=tuvokhl&days=14
We all have a role to play. There is a lot of misunderstanding about the reason why people are downvoting. Articulating truth is not always clear cut and easy. It is however essential in order to truly resolve conflict. I think if I can help focus the discussion away from the insults and back to the facts, more sensible people will see that and act accordingly.
Yes its seems to be a good way. Sometimes the little dogs just bark loudest ;-) its way of defence.
And there is difference between me downvoting haejin and haejin downvoting me... here take a short look...
https://steemit.com/haejin/@tuvokhl/haejin-downvotes-me-with-90usd
I guess we can never have an utopia since human are involved. There will be contrasting views especially since has no 'solid' rules.
The saga has turn to power tussle and not in the interest of the community. I am queuing behind any sides. But it is the case of other thiefs condemning another because he stole more..sorry about my analogy.
Most people here are 'guilty' of self voting. Though many will claim they only do it on post and not comments but Steemit itself does not discourage self voting in any form. There is even options to upvote your post when creating it.
Though it is important not to get greedy but calling out someone because he 'sins' more is suspicious.
I think none is in this saga with real interest of the community in mind.
Thank you for a good post. You really shed light on the most controversial issue on Steemit
The structure of the reward pool allows for the very wealthy to simply buy the pot through the purchase of a disproportionate amount of Steem then directing the reward pool funds to themselves. While this is not necessarily against the rules, it undermines the whole concept of the currency and if allowed to happen, would devaluate (Is that a word?)the currency to 0. So in that aspect, it's good to see the community react.
Thank you for your great comment.
So why are "we" allowing for this systemic flaw (people being able to vote for themselves) and who has the ability to change it @moeknows?
I can't speak for @ned and @dan, but I imagine that it is there to provide incentive to buy Steem. It gives it a commodity value in addition to the monetary value we assign to it. They want to give the ability to use it, but want to be able to limit abusing it.
I believe the only way to change that would be to change the coding and the parameters of the smart contract. This would mean a hardfork. The top 20 witnesses vote on the hardfork changes. So I believe it would be a matter of coming up with a solution, communicating that to Steem Inc., and having witnesses vote on it.
Anybody feel free to jump in and correct me if I got any of that wrong.
Or becoming a witness? Not sure how well this mirrors civil government but at least in civil gov. if you want to make a change in the laws you have the opportunity to run for office and win if enough others want your changes. How much is 2020 going to be like an election? And I don't think that's a bad thing because there really is no better method for the "will of the people" to be accomplished than for the people to elect a few to make these decisions on their behalf.
Could be, in which case they didn't anticipate the abuse, or believed that somehow the "market" would correct it. I don't think we need the incentive in the first place so we just need to get rid of it, in my not-so-humble opinion.
What incentive? The reward pool? The whole platform is entered around it.
They did anticipate the abuse which is why they included tat section in the whitepaper along with a theory on what would happen.
The monetary incentive to upvote one's self. It should be eliminated.
Is it possible to eliminate voting for self and how can that be accomplished @golddeejay?
Great content. I've been an infrequent user of steemit for about a year and a half now and in that time have seen quite a bit of whale controversy here and there but this definitely seems to be a new extreme.
Your analysis of that section of steems whitepaper is very relevant. I admire your ability to step away and look at this situation without bias. Though it really will be interesting to see how this works out. If this does catch on and the system is abused like this it could spell serious misfortune for the future of the steemit community. But who knows!
We will see. Again, great content, thanks for the info!
Best,
M
Thank you. While I wouldn't be able to say I am without bias, I do try to be objective. I believe truth is the path to conflict resolution and that we humans find truth to be very difficult accept. Thank you for your comment.
The problem with this is that to participate in downvoting, you are risking retaliation and therefore your own profits.
This! Why is downvoting being punished ? It's ridiculous you have to think twice, wait, even thrice, before you flag something inappropriate, because, someone somewhere might get back at you and destroy everything you worked so hard for with 1 or 2 clicks
Its punished because it's a negative action, and not anonymous. So the person you downvote may have literally lost money because you did so, and may retaliate.
On the flip side, what if I post something that a whale doesn't agree with? The platform is essentially censored by whales.
I do understand that, but many minnows have suffered from retaliation, what money does someone lose if I or any other minnow downvote? 1 cent? 2 cents? But if I'd get wacked back it could destroy me with 1 click? There is zero balance in this system the way it is now.
And yes, I agree, if a whale doesn't agree ... who decides what is right or wrong?
This post has received a 0.37 % upvote from @drotto thanks to: @peppermint24.
WORD!
New Art by @overkillcoin sums it up pretty well...
Haaaahh! Sounds about right.
OMG, that's funny.
This is an example of a new and emerging free market. People will at first find a way to abuse it and get rich, then the market will come down on them. Without regulations, users may find a way to cheat the system in the early days, but as the now small market grows and develops, they will face backlash and fall to the wayside.
Hey @coachrad. You sound like a Libertarian. I followed you because we need more people in this community who have an interest in Liberty. And football is pretty cool too :)
More anarchist than libertarian, but I'll definitely give you a follow
In all honesty, as a new member myself, people should focus on creating good content and sincerely comment on other people's works. I did notice @berniesanders flip image yesterday which led me to the flag wars you're talking about. I do believe that the higher-ups will do something about this if they see any threat but like what you've shared, sometimes good can come out of the chaos.
That's a great mantra to follow for sure...especially for newer members.
That depends on what you mean by higher-ups. A common misconception is that there is a centralized authority on the Steem blockchain. That isn't the case. The only "higher-up" with the ability to do anything with regard to voting abuse are those with high stakes in Steem, the whales.
Thanks for your comment.
@Haejin provides popular content (hence his upvotes, and share of reward pool), while @berniesanders provides nothing and is a parasite. @berniesanders is furious because he's receiving less money from his various bots which newbs are suckered into paying for.
As a follower of @followforupvotes this post has been randomly selected and upvoted! Enjoy your upvote and have a great day!
My solution to this mess was to make @nextgencryto my voting proxy. I don’t have the SP to make a dent, so hopefully if witnesses see the community supporting Bernie’s efforts by making him their proxy, they will come together for a solution.
Thanks for the breakdown, Are you a fan of star trek? in the Voyager series the alien race known as "Q" have a civil war and they bring the crew of the voyager into the rumble .... for humans to understand they are put in to more or less a American Civil war re-enactment and one of the "Q" get shot with a musket ball. the humans tell him its rreally no big deal they can heal him. But the "Q" says something lie if this little piece of lead could cause me dmg imagin what it could do to you.. "Q" are near godlike aliens.
anyways as a minnow.. These big boys on the top of the food chain are chucking thermal nukular bombs at each other and I have no concept of what .6% or 3.% actually means I am happy with my 1.50 sbd payouts and dont think.. (unless I win the lottery) I will ever see those NUKE size pay offs.... what was I saying Im lost in my thoughts. will be some long time in the distant future my voice will mean anything. ... heck what am i talking about IM RAMBLING
hope you can make somethign out of my brain leaking all over my keyboard
have a great night
LOL, this made me smile.
what kind of person traits can be considered good!I am new and I want to learn more, please guidance
Act how you want others to act towards you. Do you want them to upvote you? Upvote them. Do you want people to read your stuff and comment on it? You do the same to them. Just be honest and engage the community.
🤘
I really liked your post, keep it up! Congratulations!
i enjoyed your every post. i waiting your next post. thanks for share. @moeknows
I'm a pretty new user myself, and I think the ongoing conflict is just about the most interesting thing on this entire platform. In the end I feel like taking down people who are only trying to make a profit off of the platform is a community task. I'm really looking forwards to seeing where this is going, I really love the platform and the concept and I don't think it's going to go down just because of some greedy people.
Japan was hit by atomic bomb during war. It was a devastation. But look at Japan now. All I can say is,
NO WAR, NO PEACE!
WAR IS STILL GOING ON!
FIRE!!!
what do you think about that, @cleverbot?
:)
Whats wrong with you? Minnions are the best!
Ask @banjo
Nothing is wrong, my life is awesome.
Death metal IS LIKE flagwar!
very will said.. bro i love your article..
Follow me
Self promotion could make your reputation a whale snack!
Your Reputation Could be a Tasty Snack with the Wrong Comment!
Thank You! ⚜
I think the only way to solve this is to limit number of post per day. Which will be applicable to all members on steemit.
Yes, I agree, either that or limit max earnings per day
What?!?
Leave me alone with those kind of regulation shit. You want to limit my speechvolume, cause a few proggers are in here with spam?
Learn and deal with it.
This was a good history lesson for me. I'm only on my 3rd week. I have seen the war but was not sure how it started. To be honest I don't care what sort of ballistics the whales lob at each other. But I am very concerned with the amount of minnows caught in the cross fire.
I even write this comment wondering, will this very comment gain the wrath of one of these killer whales?
Everything I guess comes down to the rules. I have seen heaps of large fish to wales self and often bot upvoting on anything from 1 letter to 2 words. While this is not violating the letter of the law it certainly is violating the spirit of it. Should they be forced to stop? I don't think that you could even if you wanted to. They would just use bot's or shadow accounts to do it.
I think our only hope is to appeal to their more sensitive side and ask them to stop upvoting $#@# posts, and more importantly we as minnows and small fish should not upvote @#$# in hopes that we get a little morsel of upvote in return. We are empowering them.
I have no issue with self upvote but just make sure at least it's not total poo. That's where people will start quitting, when they see massive payout on a few words.
Will they ever stop? I don't know no one seems to trust corporations or bankers to do the "right" thing of their own volition. The deference is this are individuals or at least small groups. Maybe they will maybe they won't. Depends on if they are sociopaths or not.
At the end of the day I just ask that the big whales please don't downvote me, or send your cronies to. I am not trying to start a war and I am not saying one side or the other is right or wrong. I just don't like to see huge payouts of rubbish. At least write a poem or something, heck the poem can be rubbish because art is subjective. I digress.
PS Remember don't hate me i'mjustsaying
One of the follies of a decrentalised social media.. Steemit can't directly get involved in these kind of brawls. Hopefully their next hardfork does something to address the issue.
So we end up with fascist censorship as seen on Reddit? Nah bud better whale wars between parasites and OC providers than that.
Ranchorelaxo is only voting for haejin.
Its a very good thing for the rest of the community.. i mean it looks as if the steemit works for only a few guys and the rest are just bait on which the system grows. so there has to be a limit to which the account can reach and after that the account should not be able to power steem up and put things out of balance.
@ned,pls say something about this.
this made me smile
I'm controversial due to my sarcastic, ranting humor based on insult comedy. Most people are idiots and they don't understand wtf they are watching.
The best..
The implied statement from the whitepaper is clear: Abuse is fine.
On a social platform, I don't like it and it sucks.
On a math-based, cryptocurrency platform, it's acceptable and we're all fools for not doing the same thing.
I read this earlier and it made complete sense to.me and somehow I missed who said it. Lol now I'm scrolling back through the comments and I can't believe I missed that YOU said it. I left a super lengthy comment WAYYYYY down below and am curious what your thoughts are on it. (Though I suspect you'd agree ? But if not... Tell me where you disagree. Im.sure im.missing facts!! )We don't have to talk in comments. Hahaha we can talk in discord next time I'm in there if ya want :)
Ha, that's actually kind of cool. I knew I had commented on a post like this recently, but couldn't remember which post. I had wanted to go back and re-read the comments more fully. Of course, steemit offers no way to bookmark, and I didn't REALLY want to go back through all my comments to find where I had commented on something like this.
Anyway, I'm glad you commented :) I read your long comment below as well, and yes, we can certainly chat on discord about it more fully. We have no power here, of course, but it's a fun discussion regardless!
No power At all. LOLOLOLOL but who knows..
. If we came up with a viable solution....you never know who's listening in! Lol and yeah... I would love to talk more, provided a certain breakfast meat would be in copious amounts at our meeting 😂😂😂😂😂 I'll try to look for you tomorrow? (Possibly tonight but I might be home late) either way I'll leave you a message!
Something doesn't need to be done about abusive whales. Nobody needs to step in and take control. This platform started as a Libertarian social experiment and now people are demanding some form of "governmental control". What needs to be done is a systemic change to whatever is built into the platform that rewards this kind of behavior.
But in a libertarian state isnt everyone Free to do as they will? Both sides are doing what they want with their Power, so cant be more libertarian than this...
That's true but I was thinking about the behavior of upvoting one's self to direct some of the pool to one's self. Kind of a corrupt system, IMHO. In a Libertarian state there will be safeguards against people harming others, like the rich taking money from the poor.
But if there is no regulations, how would these safeguards work?
I am asking because i have a true interest in libertarianism, but so far i haven't been convinced yet that it would actually work...
Great question @phgnomo. I think "no regulations" exist only in an ideal Libertarian State. Or should I say, in a Utopian Libertarian State. Which has a better chance of ever existing than a Utopian Socialist State - but not by much. At any rate, it's going to take thousands of years of human evolution or progress to get anywhere near to it, if it's even possible. In the meantime, just like Socialists are happy to move in the direction of a Utopian Socialist State, I think Libertarians are happy to move in the direction of less government coercion and more personal autonomy.
But here's the thing, the very computer programming that produced the Steem blockchain is in and of itself Government Control. Not the government "out there", to be sure, but the government we have all bought into (with time and/or money). It's the "laws" of the blockchain which governs the payout from the Steemit Rewards Pool. On top of that, it's the same form of government as the United States: Democratically Elected Republic, though it is without a Constitution, or at least an easily identifiable Constitution. It's a Republic because we elect people (Witnesses) to represent us when changes to the Law (the blockchain) are being considered at each hardfork.
So what makes it "Libertarian"? Well, good question. No one has the ability to "punish" or "control" the kind of behavior we see in Whale Wars, though there are certainly many calls from others for just that. People are begging @dan and @ned to do something about this. And control of individual behavior could actually be accomplished through an update to the blockchain, if the Witnesses were to approve of it, or a programmer could be bought off and he or she insert it into the program, me thinks.
Hey @moeknows, does your understanding of the blockchain concur with this? Thinking of making this into a separate blog post. I'm particularly not-to-sure about my last couple of comments.
I also think steemit is kind of a democracy, since we vote on our representatives (witnessess).
But It maybe we could call It a libertarian democracy, since there is Very small amount of regulations (blockchain implemented rules)?
I say that because what i learn about libertarianism is that what would define what is right or wrong is the community itself.
This may be seen on the most recente flag wars, where community opposing forces are pushing each other around. Maybe someone Will Win, maybe not.
Theoretically, unless a whale Control a lot more than 50% of all avaiable circulating steem(wich means a shitload of money) It cant fully Control the system.
But there is still rules. If there where no rules at all, then i dont think this would survive for long besides for only a very small circlejerk community, where the steem coins would have much value compared to the outside world.
And that is what bugs me on the full libertarian Idea that the market would adjust itself. It would never work, because those that dont have Power would never have a real opportunity to get some, because those who already have the Power would Just do everything to keep the status quo.
I'm glad to have had you in this conversation because you've hit on something that could be a major flaw in how things have been set up - how things are actually working against Libertarian ideals such as self-correcting market forces. I'll have to do some more research and thinking about this. I might just throw my hat in the ring and "run for office" as a witness in order to affect the integrity of this system.
"Please let me know your thoughts below, but remain respectful."
lol...
someone doesn't want another war on his thread
Honestly, I don't know what to say on this. Stumbled here while going through your blog.
🏃🏃🏃
This war has actually lasted because I read about it last year. The community is for all of us not one person. No one person should be allowed to take everything. It is a decentralised community.
But we don't need your poo-poo spamming either!?
We need to work to change the system....
Wow who'd have thought that spamming barely legible English trollposts might not convince people that you weren't simply trolling.
His followers CHOOSE to upvote his content. That it upsets you/your master @berniesanders is neither here nor there.
Also your memes are fucking embarrassing - but typical of the standard produced by boomers/leftists. Spend some time learning how to meme on /pol/ before you try again.
I find it odd that you would choose to target me. I have never been anything but respectful to haejin and his supporters no matter how belligerent they have been to me. I never once downvoted you or any other of haejin's supporters regardless of how many times they have downvoted me. I haven't even downvoted haejin himself.
Where I come from, people talk and debate when they have disagreements. We do not simply lash out because someone disagrees with them. We try to understand their perspective while presenting ours. We never seek to silence people just for disagreeing. Talk about communism.