RE: A simple, radical change to Steem that could fix most of our problems.
It seems to me that for the Core Game to be truly voluntary it would have to have less returns that simply electing to extract a stake dividend, at least on average.
Since every exploit has a significant cost in the effort it takes to actually do it, as long as the returns from self-voting are kept essentially the same as the returns from pure staking, pure staking should win. Maybe a few people will try to find ways around that but they will be few enough that they can still be controlled by the folks around here who really love the idea of flagging people who don't play by their rules.
People who are choosing rshares should be active voters, since it makes no sense to choose rshares and then not vote them. That keeps the average stake return for the two systems consistent.
abuse the Steemit.com faucet delegation on account creation
That, for instance, will still be a problem. (I categorize it with spam since it's mainly spammers who do it.)
Another thought on consequences. Leaving your VP at 100%, not voting, does not prohibit you from posting, as you pay for that (and any operation) with bandwidth. So you could never vote but still comment and post stuff.
I can imagine a new culture emerging of people who post and comment regularly to try to garner others' upvotes but who very sparingly vote, attempting to maximize the amount of time they spend at 100%. And a counter culture of those calling them out. Maybe I'm too cynical 😅
That's a very useful point.
Right, and those who "really love the idea of flagging people who don't play by their rules" (ahem, of which I am one, though I reject your characterization) attempt to increase this cost, or rather reduce the exploit payouts. It's a large, underfunded, frustrating and mostly thankless job, but removing scam is good for the platform longterm, thus everyones' stake.
I guess your proposal isn't really for the bottom feeder scammers but the mid and top feeder scammers, those making pretty seriously low quality attempts at content to disguise their actual purpose of simple token extraction, and for whom there will always be a gray area and level of plausible deniability.
And it's also not for the top platinum lambo moon scammers, like those who shilled BitConnect and whatnot. They thrive on the personality cult to, but I can imagine them going back and forth between passively collecting and making noise about the latest pump and dump.
Technical details aside (as discussed in other thread) I'm chewing this in my brain to see if it's better, still not sure but intrigued.
It's not targeted at scammers at all. It's targeted at groups of people who all have different legitimate goals. Part of the problem is the casting of people who just want their stake rewards as scammers. That not only leads to inveterate conflict on the platform but cuts back the resources to fight the people who are here to actually defraud others. Those will always have to be prevented the old-fashioned way because they take advantage of people, and people's decision-making. There's nothing we can do technically to prevent someone from voting their stake on someone who wants to sell them gold so they can eat it. That has to be done by humans.
Wanting stake rewards without playing the game does not categorize a scammer. Not at all. But I would argue that acting on that want by cynically playing the game for rewards only (for example, posting random images to up vote with your many alts) is fraudulent by definition. The only reason this fraud is okay is that it is not fraud on a systematic level, all operations are legal, as code is law. The contribution to the game though is clearly just for show as the only way to get rewards for stake. This we know.
Enough has already been written about this I think, but to mention it, this is why we have bit bots. Large stakeholders invented a game on the game to (attempt to) legitimize their desire for passive return on investment. This has been a success for them, but arguably not good in the long run.
Here's the thing that you are attempting to sidestep: your proposal would give people who are expending unnecessary effort by playing dishonestly an avenue to make the actions supporting their aims (rewards only) legitimate. This cannot be overstated and it's why I talk of scammers.
I'm sorry, but I see no logical basis for this argument that doesn't boil down to "my values are the right ones so yours are a fraud." These other people did not agree to your value system, and the fact that the system tries to force them to conform to it is evidence that the system is a fraud, not the users who are circumventing it.
This is why the most important element of this proposal is not who gets what rewards when but converting to a fully-consensual model of participation.
Arguments are not based in logic, but if they are good they proceed in logic. The premise of my argument is that the whitepaper is the founding document of the platform, which outlines the game. If you read the whitepaper you will see that the game is the only supported means of reward. Subverting the game is (currently) subverting the platform, which is fraud. I should note that the larger game outlined in the whitepaper is larger than the blogging platform somewhat, but not by much.
You are really abusing the concept of consent here. "A fully-consensual model of participation" sounds great, but in fact we already have that. No one can stop you doing what you want to do with your own stake, and you can't stop anyone doing what they want with there. In terms of a social network, that is never seen before.
Under the current system people are not entitled to rewards based on their stake, it is up to the free vote of potentially every single account on the platform. You propose to implement a change so that people will be entitled to rewards based on their stake. This has nothing to do with consent and everything to do with giving more options to stakeholders. It is potentially a good thing, but you are muddying the conceptual waters by attempting to frame it in terms of consent. I can see it being a politically useful misdirection, but that's all it is.
They absolutely are; those rewards are rshares. Or the right to vote a certain amount, if you like. It's one of only two types of actual blockchain rewards, along with block producer rewards (which are already paid in SP).
What the system likes to call "rewards" are not in any way rewards. They're an extremely complex multi-user currency exchange.
Nope, I'm just changing what currency they're paid in.