One-Sixth of Author Reward Pool Diverted: Anatomy of a Culprit
Meet @crypto-p. @crypto-p has about $70,000 invested in steem.
Yesterday, @crypto-p was frequently rewarded 0.212 SBD, and 0.122 STEEM POWER for up-voting his own very brief comments (like "Thanks for sharing this post, following you").
Frequently as in ~100 times per day (1124 times since the hard fork to be exact). Indeed, his per comment profit would be much higher except for the fact that his voting power is at ~40% from up-voting himself so often -- but he's still pulling off hundreds of dollars per day.
@schattenjaeger called him out four days ago HF19: Is This What We Want? (Spam Self Vote Galore) and @crypto-p resteemed it. @crypto-p also resteemed my Punishing Rabid Self-Upvoting of Comments from yesterday.
@crypto-p is currently powering down -- adding downward pressure to the price of Steem.
He seems as if he might be a nice-enough guy. Maybe he envisions himself like Warren Buffet -- against tax breaks for the wealthy but willing to take them as long as they are legal . . . .
Steemit as a community needs to decide that this behavior is unacceptable and what should be done to prevent it.
The range of responses to my Punishing Rabid Self-Upvoting of Comments was fascinating. A number of people felt guilty for the very small amount of self-upvoting that they had done for very valid reasons. Others wanted the possibility of self-upvoting removed from Steemit. Both missed my point -- it is the RABID self-upvoting of comments, the blatant acts of self-enrichment over the well-being of the community, that we need to act against.
This seemed to be so cut & dried but . . . .
Hopefully, together, we can bring this scourge under control . . . .
Major props to @aggroed, one of the founders of the Minnow Support Project, for calling this problem to my attention.
Slides courtesy of Peter Antman
Some thoughts:
Why not drop the value of self-posts? Halve the value of them, or some other percentage?
Alternatively, could de-incentivize self-votes in other ways, like increasing their voting power costs exponentially with each one.
Or, once you are over a certain # of followers or SP, your self-votes do not count at all. The idea being that you now have a community enough to vote your posts and are less dependent on your own vote.
I like your second and third ideas -- subtle and effective!
You have to take into account multi-accounting, so only the second idea would work if you would get lower rewards each time you upvote the same author in a certain time period (week?).
I've just published another idea on how to counter self-voting by de-incentivizing it. Read about it in my latest article Curation problems (incentive, rewards and self-voting).
Nice post.. Upvoted and followed
there is nothing wrong with what he is doing.
any time someone speak of 'ethics' I check my wallet.
Because your wallet is more important than everything else?
yup...without my wallet I can not exist in today economy and society unless i rely on charity.
If you want to be a beggar then I suppose you would think differently..
No one wants to be a beggar.
then handle your account wisely. Do what YOU think best..and leave others to do as they see fit also.
any aggressive actions (flagging) will likely cause retaliation. A word to the wise is sufficient..
Note: I've made posts about this very subject in which I suggested to my 1400 followers that they should consider the subject and what to do about malicious flaggers.
muting comes to mind.
totally erase them from our world.
hmm...I have 1400 followers...each of them has several hundred...each of them has...
I wonder what would happen of all of them were to
mute the malicious flaggers?
Do you ever wonder what would happen if everyone self-upvoted themselves a hundred times a day?
do the math then you don't have to wonder.
they have 10 full power votes a day
(when the power is gone their votes are worthless)
...how can they upvote themselves 100 times?
math is hard.
You're funny . . . .
a) you knew what I meant and ignored the question
b) your smart-ass answer is wrong (votes decay exponentially and it takes far more than ten/day to reach anything close to worthlessness). I guess that math really is hard for you.
Congratulations! This post has been upvoted from the communal account, @minnowsupport, by ethical-ai from the Minnow Support Project. It's a witness project run by aggroed, ausbitbank, teamsteem, theprophet0, and someguy123. The goal is to help Steemit grow by supporting Minnows and creating a social network. Please find us in the Peace, Abundance, and Liberty Network (PALnet) Discord Channel. It's a completely public and open space to all members of the Steemit community who voluntarily choose to be there.
If you like what we're doing please upvote this comment so we can continue to build the community account that's supporting all members.
Great work. Great reporting, hested discussion, and kind treatment of all those involved. To you my good sir who just taught me those words to the "ruins of the common"
I see what you mean bro. People have said it. If HF20 = no self voting at all Will all the bad whales powerdown go and buy a porsche and never think of here again?
Hmmm I read this entire comments thread and I am not surprised to see a very selfish person here who loves to mute people, threaten people with whatever he things he has, tell people to shut up in his posts and call them babies. And really supports selfishness for the sake of selfishness. Sad.... I thought the nature of this platform was different.....