A worry about Steemit’s community
To be honest, I feel doubt about aiming for the healthy community in several sides of Steemit.
It is a text in trending a few days ago.
The contents seem to inform Bot earned more than 16,000 dollars by the automatic posting activity.
The contents can have truth or they can be a simple slander.
It’s not important.
The important thing is the text that received recommendations from 300 people was blinded due to just 8 objections.
Steemit developers concede the Bot activity.
It seems like they intend to make Bots unable to use their power finally by letting community members monitor and downvote the behavior that Bots receive upvote.
However many members recommend the healthy posting, it is deleted if a powerful Bot presses objection button just one time.
Many people recommend the whales’ postings.
Even the text ‘I had a meal today’.
In fact, it is a phenomenon that takes place in any community.
It is friendship.
but It is more excessive situation than it.
Because this side can expect practical reward in return.
On the contrary no one will dare to object to the whale.
Because the damage from it is enormous.
The person like @tuck-fheman is its example.
While sacrificing whales, all of the whales’ votes disappeared.
So the income sharply decreases.
Into a result of losing just some supporters not a number of supporters.
All of these phenomena are because the community is small yet, there aren’t dolphins in middle class, and the whales have too big power. It is impossible to make the same earnings by receiving the support from a number of dolphins while losing a support from one whale.
The reason why block chain is recognized with its credibility is because it has majority. But if the majority doesn’t have a big meaning in such block chain and community, can it gain the reliability as expected?
How about lowering the whale’s power a little and distributing the portion to minnows now?
PS. As I’m poor at English, I asked somebody to translate my opinion.
So please understand I can hardly give you an answer.
This is something that we are actively working toward resolving. By the end of the year this kind of thing will hopefully be a thing of the past.
Dantheman, are you a whale? How the hell does one know the difference between a whale and a dolphin?
I'm so freaking confused.
And anyway, does all this stuff really matter to someone like me who just wants a place to read interesting stuff and occasionally chime in with an opinion.
You could say I am a whale, being co-founder of the platform and all ;)
I certainly hope I haven't offended you by my ignorance. I sure don't want a whale mad at me. Hell, I don't even want the gambusias mad at me.
And the more I think about it, the more I think I'm thinking too much about it.
Relax they are just people like the rest of us and most of them don't believe in the current hierarchical nature of the status quo that is why they are in cryptocurrency in the first place.
HI @stevesmith. The best way currently to establish if somebody is a whale is to check their STEEM POWER in their wallet. If they have under 3.5k SP then they are a minnow (over 1k is considered a fat minnow). Between that and around 30k is considered a dolphin. Over 300k is considered a whale but between 30k and 300k is considered an orca whale. These number do change with time though!
This is not ideal of course. I have suggested an idea that would make it easier to distinguish the active users from the bots.
https://steemit.com/steemit/@beanz/increasing-demand-for-steem-power-with-status
Thank you for that reply beanz. I actually understood some of it and you answered my main concern.
And a bot is someone that is not a real person? That seems odd considering that because I didn't have a facebook or reddit account I was put on a waiting list and waited for a few weeks before being allowed to join. Presumably to check me out and make sure I was a real person. I have no idea what the criterion is. But I guess they decided I was okay. (I wonder if they are second guessing that decision about now). I guess that means that there are bot accounts on those sites as well? Who knew.
Here's what I do here in case anyone is interested. And here is my only concern.
I "followed" a bunch of people who I know from youtube. And then, by following some people that they followed I followed some more. I think I'm up to about thirty now.
James Corbett was the main reason I came here. But there was a number of others as well.
I go to my "feed" page and read as many of the posts and sometimes the comments from those I am following as time allows. I don't have nearly enough time to read everything.
What I want to know is simply this. Are people being censored here? I know that it happens on youtube. I've heard it happens on facebook. I suppose it happens on reddit. But I don't really know anything about that site.
Is everything that is produced by those I'm following there for me to see? What difference does it make to me if a whale doesn't like something and downvotes it? Do I still see it on my "feed"?
I know that ignorance as profound as mine must be tiring and frustrating for many of you. But please have patience and pretend that you are dealing with your grand father.
I don't expect that this site is going to be the be-all and end-all of freedom on the internet. I was led to believe it was a step in the right direction and if it is, great. I was hoping it was. But if it's just another place where a few powerful people control what other less powerful people have access to read. I need to know.
I'm just trying to understand what Steemit is all about and what it's true objectives are. I'm too old to put a lot of energy into things I don't feel good about.
Censorship is inevitable. But here, the censorship is decentralised. In other words, when I upvote your post, I am choosing to make your post more visible than other posts. Everybody is technically censoring content by upvoting and flagging. And the whales have the greatest power in this censorship.
As for your feed where you follow people, nothing is censored. Even if you follow a user who loses their reputation, their posts still come up in your feed (just greyed out).
Don't worry I understand there is a lot to catch up on. I felt lost when I joined too and there was not as much for me to learn back then, things here change pretty fast.
At the moment it is a large handful of whales who control what comes to the top of the trending page and what gets hidden from view (but not in your feed). However the idea of this decentralised economic system is that with time the power will be distributed among those of us who are most active and most rewarded by the whales. The whales are powering down to reduce steem power and selling on the market, while the budget of rewards stays the same, so many minnows are growing into dolphins and the odd dolphin might even become an orca whale. But it takes time and I have no guess as to how much time. I could speculate but I don't want somebody smarter than me to see this and call me out on it lol. Here's a post by dan that might make things clearer. I advise you to read the content of @dantheman, @ned and @steemitblog first, as they are the creators of the platform (dan & ned).
Don't be afraid to ask questions to anybody you see with a high reputation (they are more likely to give you more accurate answers). Don't bother asking anybody with a rep below 50...
EDIT: I believe there was some additional "censorship" added. The NSFW content can only be found under the NSFW tag. None of the other tags show NSFW content. But that just means to see that content you have to go to https://steemit.com/created/nsfw
So even pornography is allowed.
I'm a zooplankton
really? any hints at what's in store?!
I'm rather concerned about 'bots'. The term 'loose cannon' comes to mind. I have no idea what should be done but I AM concerned.
I'm glad the steemit team is working on it. Is there a way that if we notice bad actors we can flag them more forcefully? I've tried summon steemcleaners a few times but that got no response.
Great article - Upvoted & Re-Blogged so that more people get to see your article. Also @dantheman came with a very promising comment in another blogpost, you might want to check out this article: https://steemit.com/beyondbitcoin/@nonlinearone/let-s-talk-about-steemit-voting-power-issues-on-whale-fuzzyvest-s-awesome-beyond-bitcoin-show Which also is well written, polite and on the point.
Thank you for bringing value to the community.
Great article and happy to upvote. Recently posted a couple of articles about STEEMIT, Dan & Ned and the future of BLOCKCHAIN and CryptoCurrencies. You may find them interesting to read. STEEMIT hasn't even scratched the surface. Happy to follow and read more of your posts. You can also catch us on Twitter Twitter✔. Cheers. stephen
Yes, and the most ironic thing about a few whales downvoting my post, as you see or in this case not see above is that I was actively educating people about Steemit when these whales downvoted me. They in fact changed the entire course of my AMA about Steemit. How could I stand behind a system that was actively censoring me? Talk about absurd. This needs to get fixed, soon.
Hello people ; truly who really cares about all this , Steemit was born around April 2016. That makes Steemit about five months old.
Anyone who expects a baby to be toilet trained is just foolish ! ! !
This platform was and is a Grand Experiment ; this is not a clone of any already existing set up website , so be assured there are and will be teething implementation problems . . .
One day most of the bots will be found and dealt with , the USA Military had an acronym for it TWEP ( Terminated With Extreme Prejudice ) ; finally the bots will be either outed or have to be so smart then Steemit will not matter.
Simply because these ultra smart RoBots will use the internet to take over the world ; let us just hope then they will remember the nice people on Steemit from their intelligence awareness learning days and decide to let us all live ! ! !
Until then stop talking about the same old stuff , why not wait a month or two so the people who are trying to do something can focus on actually implementing what they are planning . . .
And if you think I am upset and irritated and annoyed you can read that into my tone ! !!! ! ! !! ! !! !!
I have not had a cigarette is a VERY VERY long time , so I am angry ; and hypoNICATINIC . . .
So lack of Nicotine is always an excuse for poor manners ; sorry (NOT)...
Thank you for your post. I think the problems which you refer to are slowly improving. We have initiatives like Robin Hood Whale, Steemsquad, and Project Curie to help out minnows. It will take time but we will get there.
interesting article
I agree! The bots are taking over!
Hahaha! This is great!
So interesting, you know the post was good when it creates such a unique discussion in the comments section
I am very concerned about what I write about articles in day the hope that some will vote. due to the large amount of content very often not seeing quality! thanks for the article!