RE: Downvote Pool Deep Dive

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jrcornel 6 years ago

Agreed. Wisdom of the crowd just doesn't work when money is involved. Increasing downvotes and as a result, toxic behavior, is a terrible idea.

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9 votes

thedegensloth 6 years ago

Except downvotes or negative votes work in any other social media system. So because users won't get paid out every post now its an issue? Just remember what system we came from. This no way at all effects how users post.

You can almost bet anti-abuse groups will pop up because of this. And their incentive is the curation the get for helping someone out who was attacked. So its a win win.

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valued-customer 6 years ago

Neither @curatorhulk nor @freezepeach who have undertaken to mitigate flag abuse concerned themselves with financial rewards in the slightest. Their incentive was non-monetary. Society is far more valuable than it's economy, and disregarding that is less than optimal.

I dunno what happened to @curatorhulk, but @freezepeach is around. Instead of postulating their motives from nescience, just ask them why they do it. Curation rewards already exist, and no one is countering flags to receive them, nor have I ever heard of anyone doing so for that incentive. Far more valuable returns were their goal.

Fairness, opposing bullies, censorship, and idiots are all real reasons people have acted to oppose flags. Apparently, those are more valuable than curation rewards.

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phoenixwren 6 years ago

@curatorhulk is still around! I've gotten upvotes from them (and I'm not a target of flags).

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valued-customer 6 years ago

That is good news. Last time I approached them about some friends that were being flagged I received no response from them.

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iflagtrash 6 years ago

I flag trash. You have received a flag.

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4 votes

iflagtrash 6 years ago

I flag trash. You have received a flag.

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jrcornel 6 years ago

This is completely different because money is involved. When money became involved it changed the game. It can't operate like any other system. The community has proven that downvotes will not be used altruistically or responsibly but instead levied personally. Which will happen again here for the vast majority of downvotes, guaranteed.

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smooth 6 years ago

Nothing has been 'proven' because what happens under one set of economic rules and balances are very different from another.

It could very easily work out exactly the opposite of what you are claiming because the trolls are willing to pay the high price for their abusive downvotes, but others are not willing to pay that price for altrustic annd beneficial downvotes (which increase rewards to legitimate users and contributors by pushing them back from the milkers). So by keeping the cost of downvotes high, as it is now, you end up with only abusive downvotes and toxicity, but with cheaper downvotes you have non-trolls willing to use them for good.

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jrcornel 6 years ago (edited)

Lol of course. You can make any counter argument for just about anything and we can't 'know' for certain how it would go unless it is first tested. However, stepping back and thinking logically, do you actually believe that is how this is going to play out? I think we both have a pretty good guess as to what is most likely to happen with free downvotes... and that is them being used primarily for personal reasons as opposed to responsible and altruistic curation.

Given that context I highly doubt this change ends up encouraging people to purchase steem and likely is a net negative to both the price of steem and steemit.com.

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smooth 6 years ago (edited)

we can't 'know' for certain how it would go unless it is first tested

We agree on this

I think we both have a pretty good guess as to what is most likely to happen with free downvotes... and that is them being used primarily for personal reasons as opposed to responsible and altruistic curation.

I think they are likely to be used for both. In fact they already are, just on a very small scale, and that small scale introduces a severe imbalance in the system which opens it up to a vast degree of milking and other value-destroying behaviors. That is a far bigger problem than a relatively small amount of trolling. That is my view.

But, again, we don't know until we try. The rate of iteration on Steem/Steemit is far too low in my view. If we only get to try something every few years there is really no chance of reaching a better outcome before Steem sinks permanently into obscurity.

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jrcornel 6 years ago

Then why not test things with SMTs and communities first before implementing them on a larger scale that takes so long to implement changes?

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9 votes

smooth 6 years ago (edited)

It will be at least months before SMTs are ready (I don't know the schedule for communities) and even then will likely be additional months or years if ever before any SMT becomes large and valuable enough for such a test to be meaningful at all, and even then it won't be clear whether such results would scale up to the entire Steem platform. For the foreseeable future the primary concentration of value on Steem will be the STEEM token and therefore the native Steem reward pool will be the primary motivator of voting behavior.

Honestly, SMTs and communities were a bit of a scam sold to us by Steemit as being something that: a) going to be was finished in a reasonable time, b) would instantly power all sorts of large and valuable projects which don't currently exist, and c) would successfully compete with countless other existing and in-development token systems in the blockchain world. Maybe (b) and (c) would have had a better chance had (a) actually occurred, but it didn't.

To be clear I think SMTs and communities are fine and I'll welcome them when the come but they aren't even close to a panacea to solve all of Steem's problems the way many seem to suggest (nor do we have even the remotest idea when they will actually exist).

takes so long to implement changes?

There are efforts under way to attempt to improve this as well. We'll see. But I'm not in favor of putting all eggs in the SMT basket for sure. I'd rather take advantage of all of the available opportunties to try to move forward.

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valued-customer 6 years ago

People don't flag whales because whales can flag them back far harder, not because it costs them VP to do so. It takes thousands of minnows to flag away bot votes on shitposts, and they're not going to do it. One whale can flag them all into the negative and then none of the minnows posts will be visible at all.

The only people that will take advantage of free downvotes are those that already use their VP to downvote, either because they don't care if they're flagged into the dust, or because they have enough SP to deploy.

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iflagtrash 6 years ago

I flag trash. You have received a flag.

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valued-customer 6 years ago

You neglect that minnows can be crushed by retaliation. Making downvotes free to minnows does not protect them from retaliation. That's the real reason minnows don't police whales, not because it costs them VP to flag.

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iflagtrash 6 years ago

I flag trash. You have received a flag.

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smooth 6 years ago

I mostly agree, but I would say it is additive. You have the risk of retaliation and also the cost. Reducing the cost helps somewhat, but it doesn't go all the way, and indeed may not work.

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baah (1) 6 years ago

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jrcornel 6 years ago

The whale experiment was completely different. It was 2 whales capping influence at X vests. Any vote that was cast that was higher than that amount was countered (negated) with a downvote. It had nothing to do with quality. It was simply removing the largest votes so everyone else's votes had more influence.

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baah (1) 6 years ago (edited)

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valued-customer 6 years ago (edited)

The whale experiment you refer to achieved exactly the purpose of the Huey Long algorithm I have proposed: limiting the profiteering potential of perverting curation via financial manipulation.

The only differences were that the algorithm was different, and it wasn't cast in code, but done by altruists. It didn't last because it wasn't cast in code as the Huey Long algorithm would be. No downvotes would be necessary from the Huey Long algorithm to achieve the same purpose.

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iflagtrash 6 years ago

I flag trash. You have received a flag.

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baah (1) 6 years ago

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baah (1) 6 years ago

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midlet 6 years ago

Seriously can't understand how more people aren't seeing that this is what will happen.

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jrcornel 6 years ago

It's mind boggling that they think this is a good idea and will improve steemit.com... literally mind boggling.

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6 votes

baah (1) 6 years ago

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skepticology 6 years ago

Police don't allow mobs to go around lynching people which is the type of behavior this change is encouraging. It's not about community self regulation either like it's being sold. This only empowers the largest wallets, of which there are few, with the largest ones being those who are proposing these changes. It's regulation by the 1% just like the mainstream media where billionaires use their power to produce propaganda rags for their cause and stifle dissenting voices. All of the changes I can see Steemit making are ones that favor their position on the blockchain, including normalizing a culture of downvoting behavior, and providing free downvoting mana so the largest wallets, most of whom are anonymous and could easily be multi-accouting, can more easily steer the reward pool into their own hands.

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baah (1) 6 years ago

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skepticology 6 years ago

What makes you think "the Whale experiment" was a success?

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baah (1) 6 years ago

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https://steemit.com/steem/@timcliff/the-whale-voting-experiment-explained-including-downvotes-from-abit

skepticology 6 years ago

You mean this stuff?

Looks like a total clusterfuck with zero data on what happened and therefore no way to measure success. Most of the comments are negative and it looks like several people left the platform over it.

https://steemit.com/steemitstrike/@kafkanarchy84/steemit-strike-apology-to-followers-and-announcement-of-indefinite-break-from-blogging

https://steemit.com/steemit/@karenmckersie/hello-abit-smooth-steemit-stike-notice-is-on-your-experiment-did-not-work

However I did not ask what other people thought of it, I asked why you thought it was a success. Care to answer that question or not?

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baah (1) 6 years ago

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