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RE: Daily Discussion No. 5: Addressing the Paid Upvote Bot Controversy - Calling a Spade a Spade
The problem with paid upvotes is that they are better than promoted posts, so people prefer them. But, the money goes to the providers of the upvote service, creating a pretty classic "rich get richer" thing where there's a poor allocation of rewards.
There's nothing wrong with the rich getting richer necessarily, but, as steemians I don't think we want to allocate our rewards to vote bots. Personally I want to avoid letting any of my allocations go there.
... at the expense of everyone else. - Yes, that is a fucking problem, and is what's happening on Steemit right now
... while everyone else does too. - You're right. Wish we could find a way to make that happen.
After a couple days focusing on @blocktrades recent post regarding curation, I have concluded his proposal will make his, and other's, mined stakes vastly more profitable.
Now, can I blame him for wanting to be more profitable? Of course not! Should I expect him to devote all his blood and treasure to altruistically making the rest of us rich? NO.
However, we do have complete responsibility for preventing predatory profiteers from extracting our wealth, as individuals, and as a community. @blocktrades doesn't. He already has mined his stake, and has a different purpose, as different as is his stake.
Thanks!
Again, I harbor neither delusions nor desires that someone like @blocktrades should launch himself into altruism.
What I DO expect is a degree of due diligence in terms of exercising financial wisdom. I expect someone who has $5m to look at that and think "How can I best support this investment so I have $10m two years from now?" Well, best way to do that is probably to take supporting actions that will help double the price of the Steem token...
One of the challenges we face here is that for many of our esteemed pre-mining rich whales this is the first time they have had "a lot of money." This isn't necessarily "smart money" sitting at the top of the pyramid... I expect much of it is more like "lottery winnings" and lottery winners are notorious for frittering away their winnings and ending up dead broke at the end of five years.
One of the positives (a small one) I got out of the blocktrades post was that he DOES have a longer term perspective in mind... and that's my issue, too. I am just not that concerned about my payout on THIS post... I'm concerned about there being a place-- 5 years from now-- where I can still post and perhaps earn a reward (or perhaps not).
But it often feels like I am in a tiny minority, with that kind of thinking...
Very good insight!
I know it. But, I always have been, and often a minority of one. At least a lot of folks are in agreement that there are problems that need fixing. I'm not getting a consensus of agreement with your epiphany that paid votes are advertising - despite that many bot owners say this themselves - I think mostly because people don't want to end up in the promotion feed, and want to buy votes.
Again, long term strategic thinking...
Matt, totally agree. And part of my issue is that you have some of the biggest whales delegating SP (which is a fine enough idea) to others who then create upvote services with ZERO discernment... which then ends up putting crap content on the same level as well produced, researched content.
I have nothing against the rich getting richer... it's HOW they are getting richer. The "big whales" could just as easily rent their 100,000SP block delegations to a known active manual curator as to a spam farmer running a shady upvote service. That's where my issue really is.