Steemit Doubling Down On Paying Rent To The Trending Tab
I've had a bit more time to ponder the proposed economic incentives for HF21 and I've come to a few revelations on the matter. A while back I talked about curation and why it doesn't belong in the consensus layer. The reason for this is that curation is the act finding valuable diamond-in-the-rough content and making it visible for the rest of the platform.
Curation revolves around visibility. Therefore, it is implied that posts with higher payout are automatically more visible to the platform. However, this is not a feature of Steem, but rather one of Steemit.com. Having a higher payout has absolutely no affect on the blockchain whatsoever. All transactions on the blockchain occur in sequential order in real time no matter what.
This is an example of how Steemit Incorporated has manipulated the core consensus layer of the blockchain to suit the needs of Steemit.com, and it's happening again.
Parabolic to Linear convergent curve
What's going to happen if we change the reward curve to one that starts out parabolic and converges into a linear one? Well, the whales have already been accused of forcing users to "pay rent" to the trending tab via bid bots. This problem will be a lot worse with a convergent curve.
With a convergent curve, everyone on the trending tab is going to be required to pay even more rent to garner that mythical visibility on the platform. Why? Because everyone on the trending tab will have payouts high enough to invoke linear rewards, while content that isn't being bid botted up will be getting a higher reward ratio in relation to how much upvote power was allocated.
Sounds good right? Let's punish people who are using bid bots to shill their content to the top of the trending tab. This will punish vote buyers and perhaps get better content on the trending tab, right?
Wrong :(
Vote selling services can modify their rules to whatever they want. They are going to be able to pivot easily in the face of 50% curation and a convergent curve. Also, a lot of the people on the trending tab aren't really paying attention to the economic incentives.
If there's one thing I've learned about people and the economy, it's that they are bad at math and bad with money. People don't care what the rules are. They do what they are going to do. Emotions often times defy all logic.
On the flip side, what are users who do understand the new economic incentives going to do? Instead of creating the one post paying out $100 they'll create 100 posts that pay out $1.10. Hey, look at that, I just got a free $10 and now the blockchain is cluttered full of 100 more worthless spam comments.
Flagging pool
This is where the downvote pool is supposed to kick in. Surely, if we give everyone free downvotes then they will use them to nullify these abusers spamming the network to capitalize on parabolic rewards!
NO!
NO NO NO NO NO NO NO NO NO! This is how we got into this problem into the first place. We are seriously going to double down on the idea that everyone is going to be altruistic and give their downvotes away for free to make the platform a better place? God damn it, give me a fucking break.
Downvotes will be bought and sold on the free market just like upvotes are today. Why give your downvote away for free when someone wants to buy it on the cheap to engage in a petty flag war that hurts the platform?
50% curation
I've already stated my stance on curation, so doubling down on it is obviously a silly notion. You can't decentralize the platform by giving bigger kickbacks to the stake holders. On the flip side, you also can't stop the stakeholders from giving away money to the users they think are bringing value to the platform. The 50% curation hike will have very little affect on the economy as a whole, while the separate downvote pool will wreck havoc on the platform.
Again, there is absolutely no reason to force curation on anyone. Curation is a feature of Steemit.com and it's sister frontends. Clearly, it should be an optional feature to be determined by content creators.
Conclusion
All the proposed changes for the economy have one goal: to take money from the people who aren't paying attention and give it to those that are. This is not a call for Doomsday. I simply want a record how much I vehemently oppose these changes. I'll get to point back to these posts and be like... "Uh duh, I told you so, it was obvious." Perhaps one day I'll be taken seriously by the people actually making these decisions.
At first, I was thinking that everyone on board with these changes was a slimy lying snake, but now I realize that a lot of supporters of this new system truly believe that it's all going to work as planned. The worst-case scenario of everyone acting in their own self-interest is simply being ignored.
These changes are all part of Steemit Inc's plan to monetize the platform. MIRA and ads were just the beginning. Now, they are incentivizing big stake holders to power up and stay powered up to exploit all these mechanics at the expense of the little guy.
Who knows, maybe this is the best short-term move possible considering the circumstances. Why cater to the community and the content creators when you can lure more investors into the space? Personally, I think it's against the spirit of decentralization, community, and freedom, but that's just me.
Since voting services get more curation, they can 'subsidize' the vote prices with the curation received. Instead of paying $1.00 for a $1.25 vote, maybe you only pay $0.55 and the after curation margins remain the same.
I did a full analysis for @steembasicincome and this is exactly what will happen. The total rewards going in member pockets from each upvote are not going to change at all from move to 50/50.
Convergent linear and downvote pools are a lot less predictable, depending on your level of pessimism. Largely I think you're correct... vote sellers will find a way to monetize their downvotes. Since demand for paid downvotes will be really low and the downvote mana can't be used for anything else, I expect pricing to be really different than pricing for upvotes.
Is that a good equilibrium? If somebody can buy an 'anonymous' downvote on your content for a fraction of what you pay for an upvote, that's only a good equilibrium if you expect community norms and reputational effects to drive a community consensus toward some normative 'quality'.
No, it's the other way around. To make it to the linear part of the curve, you need a lot of voting power upvoting a post. If the voting power directed at your posts falls on a number of low-reward posts below the linear part of the curve in rewards, you lose money compared to all that voting power concentrating one post of yours.
The little guy will get shafted as in having a somewhat less valuable vote than now. But that can be remedied using a bot the little guys can delegate their voting power to. (Owing to RC limitations, this is only helpful to near-Minnows). That bot creates a placeholder post every 2.4 hours and upvotes it with full power to get to the linear part of the curve. It scans the blockchain constantly and pays rewards to the authors (and curators) of those posts that its delegators have upvoted. The bot powers down constantly to liquify all of the rewards to be able to pay them even with a delay of one week. If the whales don't like the bot and start downvoting the placeholder posts or its delegators' posts, that will be an open declaration of war on the little guy and the death of Steem.
This is not my understanding of the convergent curve.
https://steemit.com/steem/@vandeberg/reward-curve-deep-dive
As explained in this post
was used as an example curve.
1 to 0.83 (x83%)
10 to 33 (x330%)
100 to 476 (x476%)
1000 to 4975 (x497%)
Ah yes, so you're right. For some reason I was thinking the parabolic rewards would give an advantage to smaller payouts. In affect, everyone would be incentivized to buy votes to avoid the penalty, which is exactly what supporters of this new system claim to avoid (thus the confusion).
This mishap really undermines the entire foundation of my post but at the same time is a great example of how overcomplicating the system is going to confuse a lot of people. Ironically enough, the title is still accurate even though the body assumes incorrect information. Instead of punishing vote bots it greatly rewards them. This makes perfect sense as the stake holders running the vote bots are in charge of approving the changes to the system.
Thanks for clearing this up. Much appreciated.
I agree with you on this. My main concern is not financial. Im really disappointed in this downvoting nonsense. I honestly believe downvoting will be the end of our ecosystem. There is a social media element to steemit and over the last decade Facebook, twitter, instagram, snapchat and pinterest have trained people how to both consume and share content. We need to embrace short form content in all forms or we are doomed. I have never downvoted and I never will. Its the dumbest thing about steem.
SteemIt Inc doesn't get it. They keep making all the wrong moves and then ask: "where did we go wrong?"
It'd be nice if they just put ads up and gave people a cut of the ad revenue based on clicks, like on every other blog site, in addition to the upvotes. That would vastly incentivise good content and give the little guys a chance to actually earn something. I don't know if that's even possible though.
Not to worry, someone will make a better frontend than Steemit and give all the power to the content creators. It's just annoying that Steemit Inc is so blind to their own obsolescence when they pull shit like this.
!dramatoken
While slightly dramatic in delivery, the points that you make are valid.
Your core point that the mechanics of a dApp don't belong in the underlying blockchain is spot on.
Unfortunately, we are in a position where the dApp runners are in charge of the blockchain development.
You've got DRAMA. You are going to be a Whale!
To view or trade
DRAMAgo to steem-engine.com.I'm raging along with you. Still can't believe the downvote pool idea. This is horrendous.
It's better to have complex systems like this in place. That way money flows from stupid to smart and eventually system will start to balance out. This is drugwars at steem scale.