Steem pyramid scheme revealed

[iamnotback]

If you want to measure the "buzz" effect of a post, that will be a game-theory clusterfuck.

Of course that is not what I want to do. It isn't likely you will guess what I have in mind.

[iamnotback]

To reiterate my recent realization (which I figured would be the case from the get-go):

Steem could hard fork to minimize whale’s power and have a better distribution of the steem token trough a more horizontal voting system.

Sorry I believe the bolded is an impossible option.

The only way would be to change from voting out of a shared pool of debasement to tipping from individual wallets, which is not a viable model.

Sorry IMO Steem is stuck between a rock and a hard place.

And the rich are now growing richer on Steem.

I wrote two days ago they need to abandon curation rewards, and now the entire thing is starting to unravel:

https://steemit.com/steemit/@chitty/whale-s-dilemma#@dantheman/re-chitty-whale-s-dilemma-20160812t155654929z <--- Dan's post

Another post of mine:

https://steemit.com/steem/@dantheman/people-rank-using-page-rank-algorithm-for-better-curation-and-rewards#@anonymint/re-smooth-re-condra-re-dantheman-people-rank-using-page-rank-algorithm-for-better-curation-and-rewards-20160811t150420008z

[iamnotback]

You do read a lot of threads and comments and spend a lot of time writing comments. A few clicks for upvotes in things that you find nice (in content that you are already engaged in) won't hurt your time schedule.

Btw I do. But I don't have time to keep track of when I am not doing it enough.

[smooth]

I don't think people can invest in Steemit as a community, because they can't develop their own community. Getting a lot of followers doesn't really mean you will earn a lot. If the whales don't vote you, you don't earn much. The ones that are voting me very heavily in the first 30 minutes (up 80 - 100 votes) is because they expect a whale to upvote my posts. I will stop blog posting for a while, because I don't want to feel I am abusing the BROKEN system.

I don't see anything broken there. That is the whole intent of the 30 minute reverse auction. Voters have to compete by voting earlier and earlier, and by doing so the rewards are shifted to the author. Thus authors who are gaining votes based on track record and reputation are rewarded for it.

If someone votes early expecting there to be later votes, and then there aren't (assume because later more careful voters look at the post and decide it is crap), that vote is wasted. To the extent there is a luck component based on what happens to be seen and what isn't, that will cancel out. Smarter voters will do better. (The luck component -- and didadvantage to people in certain time zones -- will be reduced when the first voting period is put back to 24 hours from 12 hours; that was a bad change IMO.)

[AlexGR]

I don't think people can invest in Steemit as a community, because they can't develop their own community. Getting a lot of followers doesn't really mean you will earn a lot. If the whales don't vote you, you don't earn much. The ones that are voting me very heavily in the first 30 minutes (up 80 - 100 votes) is because they expect a whale to upvote my posts. I will stop blog posting for a while, because I don't want to feel I am abusing the BROKEN system.

I don't see anything broken there. That is the whole intent of the 30 minute reverse auction. Voters have to compete by voting earlier and earlier, and by doing so the rewards are shifted to the author. Thus authors who are gaining votes based on track record and reputation are rewarded for it.

If someone votes early expecting there to be later votes, and then there aren't (assume because later more careful voters look at the post and decide it is crap), that vote is wasted. To the extent there is a luck component based on what happens to be seen and what isn't, that will cancel out. Smarter voters will do better. (The luck component -- and didadvantage to people in certain time zones -- will be reduced when the first voting period is put back to 24 hours from 12 hours; that was a bad change IMO.)

At the human voter level this is pretty much it. But once you map whale behavior statistics in relation to authors getting upvotes and have values and correlations like 70-80-90%, then you can automate the upvoting process and start milking the cow.

I mean, let's say I know you are going to vote anonymint with 80% chance, then my risk is too low. He'll get my upvote quickly to front-run "smooth the whale". Now repeat this with every other whale and their favorite authors, or even comment authors, and you are suddenly milking the curation through automation via a robotic circle-jerk. Humans are pretty "low entropy" in their behavior and it's not gonna get better anytime soon.

Having said that, we are far from being in a totally broken system.

You do read a lot of threads and comments and spend a lot of time writing comments. A few clicks for upvotes in things that you find nice (in content that you are already engaged in) won't hurt your time schedule.

Btw I do. But I don't have time to keep track of when I am not doing it enough.

It's ok, don't worry about it.

[iamnotback]

I don't think people can invest in Steemit as a community, because they can't develop their own community. Getting a lot of followers doesn't really mean you will earn a lot. If the whales don't vote you, you don't earn much. The ones that are voting me very heavily in the first 30 minutes (up 80 - 100 votes) is because they expect a whale to upvote my posts. I will stop blog posting for a while, because I don't want to feel I am abusing the BROKEN system.

I don't see anything broken there. That is the whole intent of the 30 minute reverse auction. Voters have to compete by voting earlier and earlier, and by doing so the rewards are shifted to the author. Thus authors who are gaining votes based on track record and reputation are rewarded for it.

Yeah that is my point, it is benefiting me too much, because that huge burst of votes is getting me always into the attention zone where my blogs can at least make it to $300 with one minor whale or a few dolphins. And then reasonably good chance a more significant whale will vote because I am writing about important tech stuff they can appreciate.

So it creating a groupthink. They aren't making any curation decision. They are just trusting my skills are reasonably consistent, per my track record.

We can't have relevance without thought. And we can't have successful site without relevance.

My analysis is everything is out-of-whack on Steem and it will fail. I am now about 95% sure of it. Next stage is for me to decide if it can realistically be fixed.

I can't detail all my reasons. I made a short list today upthread. I am very sleepy right now so I can't post very coherently until after I awake.

[smooth]

I don't think people can invest in Steemit as a community, because they can't develop their own community. Getting a lot of followers doesn't really mean you will earn a lot. If the whales don't vote you, you don't earn much. The ones that are voting me very heavily in the first 30 minutes (up 80 - 100 votes) is because they expect a whale to upvote my posts. I will stop blog posting for a while, because I don't want to feel I am abusing the BROKEN system.

I don't see anything broken there. That is the whole intent of the 30 minute reverse auction. Voters have to compete by voting earlier and earlier, and by doing so the rewards are shifted to the author. Thus authors who are gaining votes based on track record and reputation are rewarded for it.

Yeah that is my point, it is benefiting me too much, because that huge burst of votes is getting me always into the attention zone where my blogs can at least make it to $300 with one minor whale or a few dolphins. And then reasonably good chance a more significant whale will vote because I am writing about important tech stuff they can appreciate.

That is exactly the intent. You are getting those votes because of consistently good content. I see nothing wrong with that at all. Curation rewards start to disappear in this case because of the earlier and earlier voting. The one actually producing the consistently good content (you) is the one rewarded.

If the content starts to suck, you will lose your audience and stop getting votes, with the same incentives working in reverse. The later votes will disappear and then the earlier votes (which exist because of the later votes) will unwind too.

This, frankly, is exactly what people want in a content source. You can try creating a site where content is completely blind without any labeling of authorship or brand and instead every post has to be individually evaluated in a vacuum, but I'm virtually certain it will fail (except perhaps due to its novelty value as a sort of game).

@smooth, I'll reply after I sleep. Zzzzz.

Huh   I saw a long reply from @smooth, then it disappeared. He must have deleted it.

The formatting sucked, so I'm going to fix that and repost it.

[smooth]

I don't think people can invest in Steemit as a community, because they can't develop their own community. Getting a lot of followers doesn't really mean you will earn a lot. If the whales don't vote you, you don't earn much. The ones that are voting me very heavily in the first 30 minutes (up 80 - 100 votes) is because they expect a whale to upvote my posts. I will stop blog posting for a while, because I don't want to feel I am abusing the BROKEN system.

I don't see anything broken there. That is the whole intent of the 30 minute reverse auction. Voters have to compete by voting earlier and earlier, and by doing so the rewards are shifted to the author. Thus authors who are gaining votes based on track record and reputation are rewarded for it.

If someone votes early expecting there to be later votes, and then there aren't (assume because later more careful voters look at the post and decide it is crap), that vote is wasted. To the extent there is a luck component based on what happens to be seen and what isn't, that will cancel out. Smarter voters will do better. (The luck component -- and didadvantage to people in certain time zones -- will be reduced when the first voting period is put back to 24 hours from 12 hours; that was a bad change IMO.)

At the human voter level this is pretty much it. But once you map whale behavior statistics in relation to authors getting upvotes and have values and correlations like 70-80-90%, then you can automate the upvoting process and start milking the cow.

That's exactly the intent. It's individually milking, yes, but the auction means these rewards are transferred to the author. Once there is less curation decision to be made (because the answer is 70-90% predetermined) then there is little curation reward.

Dan's posts pay about 5% of the normal curation reward. Anonymint's posts pay more, but still less than the full reward that votes on a complete unknown would get. Seems about right to me.

[Dafar]

I mean, let's say I know you are going to vote anonymint with 80% chance, then my risk is too low. He'll get my upvote quickly to front-run "smooth the whale". Now repeat this with every other whale and their favorite authors, or even comment authors, and you are suddenly milking the curation through automation via a robotic circle-jerk. Humans are pretty "low entropy" in their behavior and it's not gonna get better anytime soon.

Having said that, we are far from being in a totally broken system.

This is why I vote people like heiditravels 30mins to an hr after she blogs, there's never a shortage of whales on those. It's amazing how many people do the same.

I agree with iamnotback that it's hard to form a community when whale votes are the only ones that really count. Every other vote is almost negligible

[AlexGR]

I mean, let's say I know you are going to vote anonymint with 80% chance, then my risk is too low. He'll get my upvote quickly to front-run "smooth the whale". Now repeat this with every other whale and their favorite authors, or even comment authors, and you are suddenly milking the curation through automation via a robotic circle-jerk. Humans are pretty "low entropy" in their behavior and it's not gonna get better anytime soon.

Having said that, we are far from being in a totally broken system.

This is why I vote people like heiditravels 30mins to an hr after she blogs, there's never a shortage of whales on those. It's amazing how many people do the same.

I agree with iamnotback that it's hard to form a community when whale votes are the only ones that really count. Every other vote is almost negligible

Yes but it's just starting to get traction. One month ago he got 0 vests. Now he has 10m vests. In 6 months he might be at 100mn vests. It's a process of whale-building as coins are also given to the bottom.

That's exactly the intent. It's individually milking, yes, but the auction means these rewards are transferred to the author. Once there is less curation decision to be made (because the answer is 70-90% predetermined) then there is little curation reward.

Dan's posts pay about 5% of the normal curation reward. Anonymint's posts pay more, but still less than the full reward that votes on a complete unknown would get. Seems about right to me.

I'm seeing Dan having second thoughts on curation rewards though...

[smooth]

I mean, let's say I know you are going to vote anonymint with 80% chance, then my risk is too low. He'll get my upvote quickly to front-run "smooth the whale". Now repeat this with every other whale and their favorite authors, or even comment authors, and you are suddenly milking the curation through automation via a robotic circle-jerk. Humans are pretty "low entropy" in their behavior and it's not gonna get better anytime soon.

Having said that, we are far from being in a totally broken system.

This is why I vote people like heiditravels 30mins to an hr after she blogs, there's never a shortage of whales on those. It's amazing how many people do the same.

I agree with iamnotback that it's hard to form a community when whale votes are the only ones that really count. Every other vote is almost negligible

Yes but it's just starting to get traction. One month ago he got 0 vests. Now he has 10m vests. In 6 months he might be at 100mn vests. It's a process of whale-building as coins are also given to the bottom.

Exactly and as she gains traction voting 30+ minutes won't work. You will have to vote earlier to get anything at all, curation rewards end up reduced, and she is rewarded a bit more (up to 33%) for her consistency and reputation. There is no real value in "curating" someone who has already established herself as providing consistently good posts.

That's exactly the intent. It's individually milking, yes, but the auction means these rewards are transferred to the author. Once there is less curation decision to be made (because the answer is 70-90% predetermined) then there is little curation reward.

Dan's posts pay about 5% of the normal curation reward. Anonymint's posts pay more, but still less than the full reward that votes on a complete unknown would get. Seems about right to me.

I'm seeing Dan having second thoughts on curation rewards though...

Sure, there are other issues with it, but this isn't one of them.

[smooth]

What do you guys think of my list of the main problems of Steem?

I mostly agree with your points. I will quibble on a few details but that doesn't constitute overall disagreement.

• Liquidity is very low:
  

  Is the high debasement rate on STEEM that is making the liquidity so low (because only 3% of the money supply is powered down into liquid STEEM)?

Or is that the money supply was increasing 10 fold over the past months still at a 300% per annum rate, thus market cap is not a true indicator of the actual investor interest?

I don't find liquidity to be all that low. You can easily trade $10Ks of both STEEM and SBD in a relatively short time with little problem. $100K if you are willing to move the market.

It is slightly lower than other coins with similar market cap, but within the overall range based on my experience trading it and other coins. (I don't know of a useful and accurate objective metric of liquidity that is easy to obtain but trading volume is an often-quoted approximation and while it is lower than some other coins it isn't terrible; 3x DOGE or XMR today for example.)

But that may be based on the high short-term supply rate as you suggested. As the rate of new supply begins to approach its longer-term equilibrium with a huge portion of the supply locked in SP, the liquidity may further erode.

• No one is investing in creating communities (plural) because there is no monetary incentive to plant a homestead on Steem. Rather everyone is extracting from the groupthink. The exodus out of SP may have already started as I've seen some of the star ladies taking money out. Everybody is gaming the system, there is minimal investment into it. @smooth even you gamed it by mining it (no offense intended and thanks for sharing the love a bit)

I think a lot of that is the organization of the web site. There is nothng at all like a subreddit, personal or group home page, group feature with memberships, or other community features of any kind. The categories feature is underdeveloped and doesn't really work. In fact the whole web site seems like a afterthought that is poorly developed (though I wouldn't take anything away from their building a reasonably decent web wallet and blockchain explorer for the content; that was a significant effort).

• The viral growth is not working because perhaps only 15% of the people who join earn anything worth mentioning and perhaps only 1% earn anything like an income. So I assume this isn't spreading beyond the first degree of relation from the exuberant cryptonerd that begs their friends to try it.

I find the growth on the slow side but I don't really agree with the reasons you put forward. Most people are never going to earn anything like an income from a social media site, so this is somewhat of a straw man. People will join because it is fun period, or because it is fun to earn even a little (or both). But if you are saying that the viral growth was supposed to be from significant earnings  (like an income) and that part isn't working then I agree.

Although I would say that even today viral growth appears to be working among successful bloggers. They are getting significant earnings and recruiting their colleagues, who in many cases are doing the same (so literally viral growth). The bloggers may bring the readers. Perhaps with more readers that will bring more bloggers (even without direct recruitment). So this could work. I'm not sure.

• Steem has the wrong promotional model for long-form blogging because Medium has found that only 20,000 serious bloggers serve 25 million readers, i.e. telling people they can easily earn $1000s on blogging is attracting the wrong demographics. Instead it should be telling them they can earn money doing something they can actually do well:

So Medium has found that 1/1000 of the user base earns anything significant. I find that number very reasonable and I doubt that is going to change. If something needs to change it may be the growth model beyond that 1/1000, to the extent that it is too tied to earnings. I don't see any of the upcoming competing sites doing anything any better though.

I also agree with the later comments about voter apathy.

@smooth even you gamed it by mining it (no offense intended and thanks for sharing the love a bit)

None taken and I agree I absolutely gamed the mining of it. It was set up to almost require that someone do that. If it wasn't me and the few others who did, it would be someone else.

[iamnotback]

I post this here mainly because she mentions her friends having abandoned Steemit already (dunno if it is relevant as she may just be a defeatist or perhaps disabled from the neck down?):

Since you (attempted to) read my recent blog post and commented there, I came over here to see if there was something I could suggest or respond to. I don't have much time, but I will give a little bit of it to you because I care.

To drive more interaction, we need to ways to allows users to form interest groups. Limiting activity to force people to behave a certain way will just send them fleeing the site to something that allows them to do what they want.

My suggestion to you is to think about your interests and who would share them with you. And then tell us why you can't reach those interested people on Steem.

I am trying to write about my interests but no one seems interested as it's not what there looking for BUT thank you for popping in

I am not asking what they are not liking. I am asking you who will like your writing? Try to think about who shares your interests? Do you have a lot of friends that you share links to things online with in other social networks? Identify who your audience is, then we can figure why your audience is not here on Steem yet.

Thank you but I really don't have many friends. I'm disabled and housebound the people I joined up with on here have just about stopped writing so my network is pretty dead. Thank you for trying to help I appreciate it but unfortunately I am a lost cause

Well don't give up on yourself, even if Steemit can't help you. I am blinded in one eye, I have been dealing with a very bad chronic illness which has effects similar to Multiple Sclerosis, but I didn't stop trying to do something with myself. No matter how much more difficult it was to do the things that I used to do before I got in this condition, I still push myself to try to do. There was two years lost to a daily frustration of mostly collapsing back into the bed after every few hours of trying to do and not getting anything done. I think what helped me in my case is:

• I'm a male, so have some natural fight (testosterone) inside me. Also I'd been a American football player and all-around athlete, so I'm historically very competitive and hate to lose or give up.
• I love doing sports activities so much, that even it was struggle to do those, my memories of how much I love it, propelled me forward to fight to continue to do it, even it was miserable and painful. And now lately, my healthy is improving somewhat and starting to have some good or better days.
• I could still use my mind sometimes (even though this was also difficult due to headaches, chronic fatigue, stomach pains, etc) and I've been prolific in the past with accomplishments in computer programming employing my mind.

I think the first thing you need to do is find your life outside of Steemit, before you can make an impact on social networking.

If your handicap doesn't prevent you from traveling, how about traveling to some place of poverty and working with the kids there to inspire them? Something like that. Spending your days playing and interacting with people who may look up to you as a role model who cared enough to spend the time with them.

I think if you posted very large and high quality photos (note readers are visual and the photos you've posted in your blogs have not been good) of yourself accomplishing great things in spite of being handicapped and explained how you had overcome, I think you would get a lot of respect on Steemit and gain a lot of income. They might even fund you to be able to continue doing.

But mostly do it for yourself, not for the money. Find your purpose to still be here on earth alive. I am confident you can do it. It is all about how you view life. I often forget I am blinded in one eye. I just imagine I am not blinded, and so I am not. I focus on what I can do, not what I can't do.

Apologies if I don't have the time to actually help you do it. I enjoy being a motivational doer role model. But at age 51 and in my current condition I can't actively help as many people as I used to do in my younger age, I am spread too thin and can only offer my words of encouragement.

Take care.

EDIT: Just to expand on that a little bit, you've got to find something that makes you feel important, loved, and appreciated. Even if you are handicapped from the neck down, find someone to wheel you around who feels important doing it, and then go to Africa where you are a role model because you are white and there are so many neglected kids who need a grandma or big sister who loves them. Just an idea, and maybe you have a better one because you know your interests better than I do.

P.S. I read this to my gf to ask her if it sounded patronizing or BS, and I couldn't stop myself from crying while I was reading it to her (fucking eh not something I want to boast to a group of males). Apparently the emotions of how difficult of a struggle this has been, are more intense than I normally think about. It is normal I guess that I don't normally want to think about it. Always trying to do, and not wallow in thinking about it. Grrrr. Fight on!

[iamnotback]

I don't find liquidity to be all that low. You can easily trade $10Ks of both STEEM and SBD in a relatively short time with little problem. $100K if you are willing to move the market.

John McAfee said he declined to take a $600K investment because "you can buy in, but you can't get out". Perhaps he was referring to the STEEM POWER 2 year divestment delay?

P.S. Interesting story about John:

http://www.businessinsider.com/john-mcafee-what-really-happened-in-belize-2016-5

http://www.businessinsider.com/the-insane-life-of-john-mcafee-2015-7/#mcafee-didnt-make-things-any-easier-for-himself-in-2013-he-uploaded-a-bizarre-video-entitled-how-to-uninstall-mcafee-antivirus-it-showed-him-surrounded-by-scantily-clad-women-while-trying-to-uninstall-the-software-he-invented-which-he-denounced-after-leaving-the-company-the-video-also-showed-guns-and-allusions-to-drugs-and-drug-use-although-it-was-undoubtedly-meant-to-be-some-sort-of-parody-2220

https://steemit.com/mcafee/@cryptoshow/that-time-i-shared-bath-salts-with-john-mcafee

http://techgenix.com/mathematics-ethereum-hack/

Edit: I see John and I have a connection from the past:

Breaking bread with MGT board member @NolanBushnell of Atari fame.

[smooth]

I don't find liquidity to be all that low. You can easily trade $10Ks of both STEEM and SBD in a relatively short time with little problem. $100K if you are willing to move the market.

John McAfee said he declined to take a $600K investment because "you can buy in, but you can't get out". Perhaps he was referring to the STEEM POWER 2 year divestment delay?

Yes, when I first saw his comments I figured that's what he must have meant. Or maybe he waits to be able to trade out in an instant (in which case I agree with him), I don't know.

[iamnotback]

I mean, let's say I know you are going to vote anonymint with 80% chance, then my risk is too low. He'll get my upvote quickly to front-run "smooth the whale". Now repeat this with every other whale and their favorite authors, or even comment authors, and you are suddenly milking the curation through automation via a robotic circle-jerk. Humans are pretty "low entropy" in their behavior and it's not gonna get better anytime soon.

Having said that, we are far from being in a totally broken system.

This is why I vote people like heiditravels 30mins to an hr after she blogs, there's never a shortage of whales on those. It's amazing how many people do the same.

I agree with iamnotback that it's hard to form a community when whale votes are the only ones that really count. Every other vote is almost negligible

Although I agree with @smooth that the rewards system does find a way to pay out some of the authors who can consistently deliver reasonable quality content, the problem for Steem is not whether the content is quality or not. IMO, this is entirely underappreciating that the value of social networks is not the content, but rather the connections in the network (and the impact that has on viral adoption and ecosystem network effects).

To be more precise, curation is only rewarded if the groupthink recognizes the blog posts. And so all the incentives in the system are designed around curating content that will appeal widely, not specifically to any sub-group.

The rewards system is creating a rigor mortis of structure that forms a groupthink that discourages the formation of more connections in sub-groups. From my analysis, I think this can't be fixed in any way through voting. It is fundamental and as I wrote way upthread weeks ago, they won't be able to fix this without entirely changing the reasons to own STEEM POWER (thus violating the current vested interests) and thus I think it is impossible for Steem to be fixed (which some people have noted in some aspects in their replies when Dan mentioned removing curator rewards).

You may argue that multiple genres can be popular simultaneously, but the economic force is encouraging centralization and this can't be solved without discarding the concept of voting from a shared debasement pool...

Yeah that is my point, it is benefiting me too much, because that huge burst of votes is getting me always into the attention zone where my blogs can at least make it to $300 with one minor whale or a few dolphins. And then reasonably good chance a more significant whale will vote because I am writing about important tech stuff they can appreciate.

So it creating a groupthink. They aren't making any curation decision. They are just trusting my skills are reasonably consistent, per my track record.

We can't have relevance without thought. And we can't have successful site without relevance.

My analysis is everything is out-of-whack on Steem and it will fail. I am now about 95% sure of it. Next stage is for me to decide if it can realistically be fixed.

I can't detail all my reasons. I made a short list today upthread. I am very sleepy right now so I can't post very coherently until after I awake.

The reason it can't be fixed through voting is because the only way to prevent voting from being gameable by collusion groups, is to have the whales there to stomp on any such attempts. But the whales can't be a spontaneous proliferation of sub-communities. I explained this in my recent blog:

https://steemit.com/steem/@anonymint/blog-rewards-can-t-be-widely-distributed

And in my numerous comments on @dantheman's blog post:

https://steemit.com/steem/@dantheman/people-rank-using-page-rank-algorithm-for-better-curation-and-rewards#@anonymint/re-dantheman-people-rank-using-page-rank-algorithm-for-better-curation-and-rewards-20160811t031807328z

Also read the comment trail here:

https://steemit.com/steemit/@chitty/whale-s-dilemma#@dantheman/re-chitty-whale-s-dilemma-20160812t155654929z

If the content starts to suck, you will lose your audience and stop getting votes, with the same incentives working in reverse. The later votes will disappear and then the earlier votes (which exist because of the later votes) will unwind too.

This, frankly, is exactly what people want in a content source.

The content doesn't suck when the metric is overall groupthink approval, but it sucks because it wasn't targeted to any following. And that is absolutely essential. Make sure you understand this. Because this is my secret weapon that I will use to compete.

You can try creating a site where content is completely blind without any labeling of authorship or brand and instead every post has to be individually evaluated in a vacuum, but I'm virtually certain it will fail (except perhaps due to its novelty value as a sort of game).

Of course I am not going to tell anyone now the algorithms I have in mind, but let me just say I solved the Grassmannian problem that @complexring spoke of.

The problem with the algorithm I had presented is that it had no reference point and everything was relative to everything else, so this superimposed it on a manifold of itself. This is why it isn't stable. We obfuscated with the relativity that we really have insufficient information to solve (all of externalities) the variables.

And I need to entirely get rid of voting. Everything will be entirely determined automatically from user actions (which can't be Sybil attacked in my formulation).

This is going to be deep. And sorry for talking about vaporware, but you said can't. And I think can. I'll try to speed up so we can publish specifics so you aren't debating againts something unspecified. At least you have my blog post as a rough idea of where I am headed.

But the economic incentives in my design will be much more attuned to the fact that 1/1000 users are good bloggers. I have an incentive for the other 999 which they can do.

Also my model is not specific to blogging but works with any content publishing and distribution, such as music promotion.

• No one is investing in creating communities (plural) because there is no monetary incentive to plant a homestead on Steem. Rather everyone is extracting from the groupthink. The exodus out of SP may have already started as I've seen some of the star ladies taking money out. Everybody is gaming the system, there is minimal investment into it. @smooth even you gamed it by mining it (no offense intended and thanks for sharing the love a bit)

I think a lot of that is the organization of the web site. There is nothng at all like a subreddit, personal or group home page, group feature with memberships, or other community features of any kind. The categories feature is underdeveloped and doesn't really work. In fact the whole web site seems like a afterthought that is poorly developed (though I wouldn't take anything away from their building a reasonably decent web wallet and blockchain explorer for the content; that was a significant effort).

I don't see any of the upcoming competing sites doing anything any better though.

I also agree with the later comments about voter apathy.

For as long as they have the voting feature, it won't matter much how they change the UI because the voting feature will just be noise relative to the sub-community groups. It has no relevance at all. And economically everyone will still be competing for the groupthink popular vote. As I argued to you several times upthread, but you just don't seem to get my point, is that 1 + 1 = -1, not 2 in this case. The monetary incentive is creating an ecosystem design to do one thing well and nothing else.

You can't readily see the -1 effect, because what we see is a lot of reasonable quality posts at the top of the rewards ranking. But the -1 effect is in all the lost sub-communities that are not spawning.

What I am trying to solve in terms of automatically ranking content well for relevance is something none of the social networks have solved, except Google seems to have done a good job with search. I will use the knowledge of the HIVE to solve it, but viewing the HIVE as a collection of sub-groups, not of one-mind (popularity). Scaling the algorithm required using decentralization of computation+storage to solve it, because there is no way it would fit into DRAM on a server.

Even Medium is trying to move away from the long-form format, because they realize only 1/1000 can contribute and engage. They found that most of the 25 million readers don't even login.

[iamnotback]

@biophil is the game theory researcher:

I'm not completely sure I understand your 2nd bullet on #1. Is it assuming that I go grab a huge pile of free signups, and then have each of them post articles and they all vote on one another's articles?

Even if we set a threshold for voting above the level given to free signup accounts, the attacker could buy STEEM POWER and vote his free signup accounts above the threshold. Then consolidate them by using them to vote (or just continue voting them up from his STEEM POWER) to reach the threshold for powering them down.

The point is that if we allow voting to be linear it enables targeting which accounts we want to transfer value to via voting, and popularity of the content becomes irrelevant in this attack.

I think we need to very carefully consider how a 1-account-1-vote might be implemented via a semi-autonomous verification system.

I assume you mean that if we can identify account holders then we can prevent Sybil attacks on free signups. But this isn't the only vulnerability with 1-account-1-vote (linear) weighting. Besides, account verification will likely drastically curtail signups, because nobody likes to be forced to do KYC just so they can try the site and vote.

As things stand right now, the big voters are simply too big for minnows to have any financial incentive to stick around.

In my opinion, unfortunately (or fortunately for me) it is impossible to fix without discarding the concept of voting from a shared debasement pool. I am moving on to completely redesigning a Steem-like onboarding mechanism

[r0ach]

Anonymizer and Smooth, I need you to look at my tiered benefits proposal for Steem to see if you think it would benefit the system or not:

https://steemit.com/steem/@r0achtheunsavory/steem-is-much-more-inclined-to-a-tiered-rewards-system-rather-than-linear-scale

[iamnotback]

The only freedom the Larimers support is the freedom to pimp out women over the internet as long as they're getting a cut of the proceeds.  So, if you want to strip naked or post degrading pictures of women you're in luck

This sounds like a great system.

I don't think those girls would be there if they weren't enticed by $1000+ rewards for just taking a few photos.

But I wonder if you two aren't missing the point that people like to have fun. A social networking site can't be all serious and only about valuable production.

What am I missing? Seems r0ach wants a social network to be about social ethics and social production optimization?

I agree of course that if the site is unidimensionally focused on bimbos and cryptoculture then it won't go far. Is that the essence of your complaints too?

It's more like this:

You've got a point there.

I wonder to what extent the youth prefer virtual sex to real sex. In Japan, the youth don't want to procreate any more. But then they don't need real girl tits, as the anime variety is more fantastical.

r0ach I made this post in honor of you master Yoda:

https://steemit.com/life/@sweetsssj/kissing-santorini-s-magical-blue-sea#@anonymint/re-tomkirkham-re-sweetsssj-kissing-santorini-s-magical-blue-sea-20160813t093355328z

P.S. I replied on your latest blog.


Same blog author:

That fluffy white cat with the big eyes that you are holding in the yard is very cute. What breed is that?

We were walking in the appliance section when my gf first saw that THE SECRET LIFE OF PETS on the flatscreen and I couldn't get her unglued from it. It is funny and cute. Some (most?) girls really love cute animals. I guess it is part of their instinct to adore and nurture (kids).

I think you need more girls and Asians on this site to appreciate that stuff. I notice the Asians are really getting into virtual anime, online digital art, and cutesy stuff. The Western ladies are more into  tangible art and volunteerism that involves real interaction with community. Asians are more into cliques of friends. Well at least that is my impression since I live in Philippines and have visited Hong Kong. What is your perspective?

My understanding is that Asians have to save face, status is also respected which can be inhibiting, and Asians are expected to respect authority thus they are sheltered and shy.

Whereas, in the West we don't respect anyone nor anything and do what ever the fuck we want, which has its tradeoffs.

Even within Asians, there are some significant differences between for example filipinos and Chinese, e.g. Chinese are mostly atheists and thus see no ethical problem with rampant use of birth control.

It seems to me though that Chinese can also be quite stubborn and do what every they want, for example deciding to sleep on display sofa in the furniture store, cursing, and spitting/urinating on the sidewalk. Maybe that is only the lower classes who do that?

I also noticed it is more difficult to break into North Asians cliques, than for example filipinos and Thais, who are more friendly. The North Asians are somewhat more reserved and colder like their colder climate.

Well it doesn't stop some Chinese ladies on my visits to Hong Kong from giving me the eye. So I guess some phenomena work the same every where, lol. Not implying anything about you and your (middle class girl?) white & nerdy friends obviously.

Holy Sweetjesssusj! Asian baby got back.

[iamnotback]

I read somewhere the point that live video rarely ever suffers from being plagiarism. Also my point it is something everyone can do. Click the links in the text below:

@jtech11, can you review my logic at Bitcointalk (read pages 6 and 7 of that linked thread) and feedback to me your thoughts? Also can you explain to me more about how Snapchat avoids likes in order to decide how to rank which content the users see?

With all of this being said, Steemit in my newbie opinion could suffer the same fate if people simply write or share content based upon how many votes, money or comments received.

I made the similar observation and explained in detail with examples at the above linked discussion thread. I would like to read your feedback.

Sure thing @anonymit. I'll check it out. I don't personally use Snapchat but to take a crack at your question, if the system is not based on likes then simply put, people must want to see your content. Seeing how manipulation of Youtube, Facebook and Twitter Snapchat may not be as manipulated as easily.

I have further thoughts at another blog that it is the interaction and user engagement of video that makes it more of bidirectional media than static content publishing. I agree that Likes (votes) are not a user engagement metric.

Realize Facebook Likes are not going to survive as a value proposition.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oVfHeWTKjag (given to me here)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bOE1HFEL8XA