Why We Should Flag Garbage Supported By Absentee Delegators

in #steemit6 years ago

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Warning to readers: Many high-level account holders are extremely sensitive and view flagging as an emotional, personal attack, and not simply a "disagreement" on rewards. As such, before flagging any high-level account, please be sure you know the potential consequences, which may include the destruction of your account via diminished visibility resultant from agitated whales and their legions of controlled bots.


It's time to start flagging the garbage that is making Steemit a poor investment or speculators and bloggers alike.

"Absentee delegators" have been wreaking havoc here by supplying virtually endless income streams to accounts which are at best supplying low-quality, inactive (non-engaged) content to the platform, or, at worst, are engaging in abusive economic behavior here, and causing high-quality bloggers to be obscured from view.

Delegation is great. But it is not great when delegators refuse to take their investment seriously, and refuse to read/view--even in a cursory manner--the content they are supporting/promoting.


In view of all of this, and with a proper view of "flagging" as defined articulately in this post by user @schattenjaeger, I will, from this point forward (indeed, I already have been), be applying reasonably weighted flags to content I perceive to be overvalued in view of what the actual community--in context of my personal experience and activity here on the platform--truly tends to value, and what they do not.

I do NOT support "nuking" unsuspecting smaller accounts into oblivion for the sake of a mere disagreement. What I am speaking of is protecting the investment we all have here on this platform in the form of pointing out junk content receiving disproportionately high rewards as compared to content where it is obvious that actual talent, time, and craft were employed, and which provides value to other users.

Of course, said determination of value is all subjective. That is great. If too many people go "flag happy," this platform, and the investment of the trigger happy mob, will all go down the drain.

However: What is happening now is equally as detrimental. Out of fear of retribution, honest users are hesitant to flag garbage because of the threat of being fundamentally de-platformed here at the hands of a few hyper-emotional whales/delegators. This has to stop, if Steemit wishes to succeed as a viable social medias platform/investment.


Activity currently promoted and rewarded by lazy delegators:

  • Near total non-engagement in comment sections.
  • Self-upvoted flame-thread comments (sometimes to the tune of 50 - 100 USD for a one-line insult).
  • Infomercial-type bullshit accounts.
  • Plagiarized material/unoriginal content.

DISCLAIMER:

I DO NOT SEEK ANY TYPE OF POLICY CHANGE OR PLATFORM-LEVEL, TOP-DOWN REGULATION. I SIMPLY WANT TO SEE THE INDIVIDUAL MARKET ACTORS HERE ENCOURAGED TO SPEAK UP, AND TAKE THIS PLACE TO MAKE IT THEIR OWN. THIS WAS THE WHOLE IDEA, IN THE FIRST PLACE.


Encouraging charlatans, bot mafias, and other cheap, scammy content creators is only going to sink the ship, and all of the smaller free market individual investors with it.

Thanks for reading.

~KafkA

!


Graham Smith is a Voluntaryist activist, creator, and peaceful parent residing in Niigata City, Japan. Graham runs the "Voluntary Japan" online initiative with a presence here on Steem, as well as DLive and Twitter. (Hit me up so I can stop talking about myself in the third person!)

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I don't have much to flag with so I have mostly been using my flags when I encounter copy pasta comments (not just on my own posts) and obvious plagiarism.

But I agree the "lazy delegator" issue is an important one, and if something doesn't change we might end up looking at 7-cent Steem again...

7-cent STEEM actually sounds good:

  1. MOAR VESTS;
  2. Vast exodus of those who don’t understand that Bitcoin didn’t become a thing over two years only. Or any company really.

7-cent STEEM sounds crap because bot operators have already resorted to 100% return to delegators now their curation rewards are massively up. They will profit even more. Especially because of lazy delegators as well. :/

If only some of the big accounts realise this and start doing something to protect steemit

There is a group of brave Steemians who stand up to such abuse. You should check out @friendsofgondor, @lyndsaybowes, @hendrix22 and @fulltimegeek for group support.

Yes, those are a united and well organized group, and they DO stand up against garbage and people manipulating the rewards system.

I joined a year ago and haven't done much on the platform since. I just reconnected a few days ago and have read several mentions on this subject. It makes me question the integrity of this community a bit.

Many of these individuals should definitely be questioned openly.

really comes down to the BIG whales; the ones the devs set up from the start.

the devs ought to be specific about what is spam and/or abuse, and what is not, and hire people to flag spam from those accounts. Or perhaps to set up and fund an account specifically for countering spam/abuse.

the goal here was for a community driven selection of good content; obviously the continuation of posts like this acknowledges the problems obtaining that goal with the current set up.

No system is perfect, and there will never be a perfect balance between allowing people to use their invested SP at will and a platform free from spam and abuse.

However, that means that the platform accounts have a community responsibility to act on specific problems

I cannot support top-down “policy,” as such, but wish some of these cats would take their delegation seriously. The free market—the freer it is—weeds out disproportionately rewarded content.

Consider it as the big wigs using their personal curation power, but I do undertsnad what you're saying.

I was trying to update my comment to reflect that point, but it took until after you commented to get through ;>

Haha. Don’t get me wrong. I think you raise some very valid points.

And if the initial investors do not take their investment seriously, it will tank.

I think we should warn them first before flagging them. You are absolutely right, they are destroying the quality of steemit.
But they should be warned by Steemit platform to cut this.

Well, fair enough, but in many cases, warnings have already been issued. And extensively so.

The more, the merrier.

How do you feel about the point we put forward here?

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