RE: 🗨️ NO Structure, NO Sense, NO Rambling, NO Silence, NO Thinking, NO
I am sorry for the loss of your cousin. 40 is much too young.
This isn't a proper dev. update because I don't have a huge amount to update you on.
I've been checking your account for updates recently, so I'm glad to see that stuff is going on behind the scenes. Looking forward to seeing the redesign.
This time, things are different and every time I search for something to vote on, I end up adding more people to my downvote trail than people to support.
I see this with Thoth, too. If it takes him about 1-2 hours to find five posts in the early days, it might take 4-6 hours with the same screening rules in recent times. And even if the modern stuff meets the screening restrictions, it's still more likely to feel "soulless". I think this actually might have started trailing off in 2019, which surprised me. I would not have guessed that before starting the project.
I'm still hopeful that #lifetime-rewards can turn this around, but trying to get to that point is slow, uncertain, and frustrating.
And one of Steem's top witnesses who uses a Steemit Inc. delegation to run one of the worst offending services without oversight.
Wow. I was unaware of this. I always wondered about their witness voting on that account, but delegation, too.... I don't get it...
Beyond the conversations that I have with you, there's absolutely no discussion about how bad the content on Steemit has become. It doesn't even get a mention on the Witness channel, with people instead talking about "Marketing the platform", "getting investors" and alternative uses for the STEEM coin. Which when I think about it, is little surprise given that a lot of them are the cause of the problem... and profiting from the problem... so don't see it as a problem.
It feels to me like the blogging side of the STEEM ecosystem is reaching its final days. I've seen some once notable communities disappear (along with their leadership team) for the same reason. And communities with over 100 active posts, will have zero comments the length, and thought of which I am typing now.
https://steemworld.org/@misterdelegation
Check out the top delegations and what they're being used for. Only sc01 and sc02 have larger ones.
It's becoming increasingly difficult to keep going. (I was going to write "caring" instead of "going" but I obviously really care!)
In June of 2020, I spent one month curating with a Steemit account when I was "between jobs" (I think it was the first month of the program[?]). Even then, it was very time consuming to find enough content to keep the account's voting power below 100% full time. I'm sure it must be an order of magnitude harder now.
I think your team is on the right track with your semi-automated approach. If attackers are augmented by automation (which they are), then defenders must be, too.
From your application post, I had also been hoping they'd let you experiment with downvoting. Overall, I'm not a fan of downvoting, but at present I definitely think it is a "necessary evil".
Not sure how I never noticed that. I guess maybe they're leasing SP, too? I have long wondered how they stay afloat for years with no apparent revenue stream.
I believe that if the account was allowed to downvote, it would still be too weak to have a significant impact.
Thanks. It doesn't do anything too clever - although it saves any mistakes from switching between accounts.
All that the semi-automation does is enforce a few rules:
The primary reason is the aim of optimising the rewards for each user - we also feel that it's a much more efficient use of time if it follows our own votes (under specific conditions) - an idea that the Steemit Team could potentially implement themselves and save them from distributing Posting Keys each month!
I don't think the Steemit Team's leasing SP. Those delegations are all over 5 years old (circa Hive split by the looks of things). I'm fairly sure SteemHunt's nothing more than a reward farm now too. It's somewhat depressing to see how those users are using the power delegated to them. When there are enough people doing better, more valuable things.
Probably true in the short term, but at least it would have sent a signal.
Yeah, I noticed the dates. Maybe just an exchange for witness voting. If so, it seems like the "statute of limitations" should have expired by now...
I think it always was. Potentially interesting concept, but I don't think it was ever a great fit for Steem, as a platform. Same with dlike. I really like that concept, but curbing abuse is/was even more difficult than with long form posting.
Yeah, not just those recipients, but other large investors, too. Slowly strangling the goose that lays the golden eggs is such a short-sighted perspective.
At some point, the price falls far enough for someome with better ideas to gain a foothold, but who knows when, and it's painful to get there.
Things will be different when I rule the world. 😉
I don't suppose you've got a date for that 😉
I suspect there's a larger stakeholder than Steemit Inc. now but whether that equates to a takeover and change of direction or not, I suspect not.
Can you imagine what would happen to many of the authors if the Old Guard were still here with their stake... how much of the existing content would get culled and what would remain.
It's increasingly difficult to remain optimistic. I'm in another conversation about values and what are Steemit's values? I've just asked if the author how many of the current leadership (i.e. the top 20 witnesses) follows these values. 2 spring to mind and without looking at the top 20, I doubt I'd think of a 3rd.
Doom and gloom. Yay!
I'd be surprised if that's the case. From the accounts I'm aware of, I think that Steemit has somewhere around 48-50M SP on-chain. I'd guess that they probably still have another 10-40M STEEM on the exchanges. I suspect that the next strongest "team" is approaching 30M (?) - unless you're aware of a connection that I'm missing between groups. Either way, if that second coalition was going to change the dynamics, they'd have done it already.
(Side note: I'm very surprised to realize, though, that Steemit probably only holds 10-15% of the ecosystem's value now? Back in 2016, Dan Larimer mentioned that their goal was to get down to 25%.)
Coincidentally, I just saw this in Thoth's logs... Even the "old guard" had a difficult time with many of the same actors. I mentioned once before that I now think that's a big part of the reason why they exfiltrated the Hive wallets from so many non-Steemit accounts -- I suspect that witness voting just provided the cover story.
I was watching an episode of The West, and there was an interesting parallel. The episode detailed how a consortium of large cattle ranchers in late 1800s Wyoming tried to squeeze out the small ranchers and gain full control of the ranges for grazing. This led to the Johnson County War. Some of the same incentives were visible. I might do an article on the parallels, if I find the time and motivation at the same moment.
I'm actually more optimistic now than in the recent past. 1.) there's actually development happening; and 2.) Thoth has proved to me that the incentives here are dynamically adjustable.
I agree, and I'm confident that we're thinking of the same 2. However, to me, values are less important than incentives. If a platform depends on people to be altruistic for success, it's doomed to fail. In order to succeed, Steem needs to have incentives that align between short and long term. In a Maslow's hierarchy sort of way, I think that values are a tier-2 need here.
Back when we had developers that could make layer-0 changes, everyone wanted to strike at this problem by altering incentives at the blockchain level - but Thoth proves to me that this is unnecessary. So, now we know that passive rewards are possible, and anyone can play around with their own decentralized rewards balance. This leads me to believe that eventually someone will find the right balance between delegators and authors. It probably won't be Thoth, but I'm convinced that the solution is there, and it's just a matter of time 'til someone finds it.
This is way longer than I intended, but last mention before I go. I won't be able to watch/listen to this tomorrow, but maybe interesting (or maybe not).
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