OCD

STEEM: The Disproportionate Power Balance with Downvotes

One of the changes that came about with the last STEEM Hard Fork was the introduction of a pool of free downvotes to help counter disagreements about reward distribution (mostly caused by bid bots). In general, under the #newsteem banner, it appears to have made the bid-bot model unviable as most of the bot owners have turned their hand to curation instead (although, the success and quality of that curation is a bit up for debate at times...).

However, I would say that the main driver for this change was the change to the 50/50 model for author and curation shares of a post payout. This creates a much larger incentive to curate if you have a large SP stake rather than to take payments for a service that can't return short term ROI for a bidder.

The campaign to reduce the effectiveness of the bidbot model was led by @ocd and @acidyo (amongst others), and it was characterised by the proportionate downvoting of bot boosted posts to reduce the ROI to 0% rather than to create a loss for the bidders. This was in line with the reasoning that bidding was NOT for short term ROI gain but for promotion and visibility.

The key point here was the concept of proportionate downvoting. On STEEM, the power of the large accounts is such that their votes are disproportionately effective on most other accounts that are smaller. If you are hitting at your own size, then it can be absorbed via a self-vote or if you have a shield of voters around you. You just eat the downvote and move on...

However, if you are a smaller, then you are likely to get swamped unless you happen to have a few friendly large benefactors protecting you (which most of us don't, and this is NOT a sustainable solution for mass onboarding of the public). It is even trickier if you don't want to get embroiled in a flag war... and you just don't retaliate (aka, being a nice person and not escalating...).

Unsplash

Now, I get to the point of my post...

One of the nicer ways for a small to mid level account (like mine...) to support others in a long term sense is the Steem Basic Income program (SBI). By sending 1 STEEM to sponsor a different account, I am essentially locking up that STEEM away from the open market to provide long-term support to another account that is likely to be smaller than me.

This is done as a gift, knowing that I essentially forfeit 50% of the benefits of the sponsorship... whilst knowing that I am providing an ongoing gift to the sponsored account rather than a single one time sugar hit of a big vote (2 cents... ha ha...) or an injection of 1 STEEM. This is a long term view to supporting accounts, that works in sympathy with the curation projects of #newsteem, however, long-term projects are notoriously difficult to enact in this modern attention challenged age....

Unlike the bid-bots of old... SBI is a terrible ROI... but that said, it is a gift of support. ROI is the bane of STEEM and cryptocurrencies in general, as novice "investors" think that this is the most important metric of any asset! In fact, it is a measure that is useful... but not in the short term way that most "investors" have come to think of it!

I would argue that SBI is actually the more effective model for the public onboarding of users... whilst curation projects are great, the idea of receiving a big vote for one thing and then not for another can be a bit of a roller-coaster for new users and quite confusing.... the steady support of SBI from people who are interested in supporting you long term is a steadier way of growing... slow... but steady.

SBI has been shown to be ethical (blacklisting and removing abusers), trustworthy and honest in it's dealings.... and this was present before it was fashionable to show these traits openly in the #newsteem ecosystem.

I sponsor people via @pifc (Pay it Forward Curation) and @abh12345 (Engagement League) as well as two weekly contests (a game called Guess the Word and a different more open ended question post). It is part of of my way of returning back to others in the same way that I was helped...

However, there have been some who disagree with this SBI model of sustainable long-term support in a gifting manner of sponsorship. This is STEEM, people can do what they want (this may not be sustainable...)... there is one account that has settled one a proportionate downvoting response... I disagree, but am happy with that outcome, but it is a price that I'm willing to pay in order to gift to another person.

However, there is another account that is hitting much much harder in a disproportionate response... this highlights the problem with the STEEM chain. There is no response that I can make if they are unwilling to listen... I can't (and won't retaliate)... I have no shield of big account friends and the SBI community is by definition a collection of small accounts.

So, it highlights the problem that an account that is large has no stake risk in attacking smaller accounts disproportionately whilst the little accounts, even when banding together, can not stand up for themselves. I would argue that this is not a favourable outcome for the long term survival of STEEM.

There needs to be some stake risk for some actions on STEEM, voting and downvoting can be cast at the moment with no care for consequences (I have another post about that...), this creates a situation where there is no inherent risk for anti-social behaviour. Now, in an ideal world, people would be just good and there would be no need for any moderating risk... let's just say that the world is not perfect...

There is also the divide that some of us are attached to our blogs and posts (like me...) and care if they are attacked... whilst there are others who have little attachment to their posts and use their accounts like money pots, and don't care if they are attacked. This is an obvious weakness of asymmetry that means that downvotes are much more effective against those who care... aka, the builders!

So, I am floating the idea... that some actions on STEEM need to have some SP based stake risk... in the same way that other chains have penalties for producing bad blocks or bad consensus calculations....

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Comments · 31

@nutritree(55)· 2358d
I love finding people to trade shares with. If you trade shares then you don't lose anything and both lock up steem in the manner as you describe. Thank you for this post.
@kazgandirgan(42)· 2358d
!sbi status
@trendotoken(59)· 2392d
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@wonderwop(67)· 2393d
!trdo

Posted using Partiko Android
@papilloncharity(83)· 2393d
All that I can say here is this! Who in their right mind would downvote a charity? Charities need all of the help that they can get, be it from SBI, ABC, XYZ, or whoever. Just doesn't make sense to me and it never will!
@mariita52(60)· 2393d
Thanks for this article. You are a voice ...
@logiczombie(67)· 2393d

The key point here was the concept of proportionate downvoting.

100% THIS.
@oneray(70)· 2393d
I have never provided a negative vote to any account. Despite receiving spam comments, I don't take them into account. Despite that, I have been punished with some negative votes even though I have never bought SBI.
@arcange(79)· 2393d
Congratulations @bengy! Your post was mentioned in the Steem Hit Parade in the following category:
- Comments - Ranked 7 with 54 comments
@angel33(39)· 2394d
i really hate professional downvoters
@birdsinparadise(68)· 2394d
Good information @bengy. I do find those random downvotes a nuisance, in fact they make one feel horrible when you have worked to created what you feel is meaningful content.
@wwwiebe(74)· 2394d
Well, I cannot give you as good a response as abitcoinskeptic did. What I can say, however, is that requiring someone to "put skin in the game," so to speak, is a great way to de-incentivise poor public behaviour. Upvotes and Downvotes are really the same thing, anyway, just on opposite sides of the 0; they require the same resources to perform.
@derekrichardson(71)· 2394d
I fully agree with your assessment. I don't know what the solution is, but I know I'm not abandoning my support of SBI just because some butthurt jerks wanna downvote me and my SoCal community for it. In fact it just makes me wanna support it MORE!! lol.
@hlezama(74)· 2394d
Very controversial topic. I hope something is done in the near future to stop abuse and benefit small accounts
@carolinacardoza(76)· 2394d
I don't understand much about it, but I think people like you who are interested in talking about what's going on are what we need on the platform. I'm going to read your poster carefully to learn.
@joanstewart(75)· 2394d
Balanced points raised in both content and comments, down-voting may have a place for people who constantly abuse if/when used wisely, this should not be allowed to be entered into the blockchain without good reason with a comment to the perpetrator.

Ad-hoc down voting should never be allowed this is just my opinion.
@free-reign(67)· 2394d
I have not made one downvote. I started getting a downvote here, a downvote there, but when I've looked up who downvoted, it's always been a rep. 25 acct. doing it, which I figure belongs to someone with a different acct. and they're just downvoting for whatever reason.

For me, I can only think it must be that I say something they don't like. I personally see nothing positive in promoting downvoting regardless of the talk suggesting that it's good and does good things.

I don't know, but I think the way it is now, it's just something else for abusers to latch onto just so they can be assholes.
@steemitbloggers(69)· 2394d
Congratulations @bengy! This post has been featured in today's Power House Creatives curation post!

You can find the community announcement on Discord :) and it has also been shared on our FB Page and Twitter feed.
@creativetruth(71)· 2394d
Yes, I agree with the assessment of the problem. Few people seem to be willing to acknowledge the problem the last hard fork presented. No repercussions against abuse of downvote power is a broken feature. Smart downvoters often create separate accounts for downvoting only, with no comments or posts of their own to interact with.

Rather than put their stake at risk, I think a more reasonable solution would be to put their downvotes at risk. There should be a mechanic to partially silence/weaken annoying downvoters temporarily by casting a counteractive downvote. Perhaps by a feature allowing people to go to the abusive profile and downvote to remove their allotment of daily downvotes. It would require an equal amount of stake to totally silence/weaken the staked downvotes of an abuser.

Not sure if this would work. It might renew the power of bidbots, undoing the "solution" of the last hardfork that beat bidbots. I will support any direction steem wants to head that better protects the legevity of active/honest/quality at authors. At the moment, I think disproportionate downvote power is one of the biggest obstacles for new users.

Remember, downvote communities are forming that downvote and reward eachother for profit when a member flags and reports a "crime". We rely on the good judgement of these members to flag fairly, and to refrain from flagging excessively for greedy profit. Eventually anyone with enough collective community power can enforce their own downvote rules without any repercussions. Diversity of thoughts on steem eventually becomes nonexistent.
@tryskele(65)· 2394d
Well said!! I feel the same way. I am one of those 'nice' people that doesn't want to downvote due to 'causing negative behavior.' Anytime I have downvoted (which has been for legitmate reasons) I have been retaliated against. I am sorry but an appics post with just a picture should not be getting a $15.00 payout. I understand that a larger portion of upvotes are from the communities and trails that one is involved with. As much is it my right to downvote as I see fit, it is as much as someone's right to downvote on a whim. Not having a SP at stake for downvoting is a mistake. It should absolutely affect your VP.

As you know and many don't I am one of the judges for @pifc Pay It Forward Curation Contest. I have been involved with since the day it started. It takes time and energy to create these posts as many of us know. We do this because it is one the best ways to support the community. This is where #newsteem has been wonderful. Getting a bit more for curation helps immensely and rewards you a bit more for the work. Using SBI is by far the best option.

I am essentially locking up that STEEM away from the open market to provide long-term support to another account that is likely to be smaller than me.

This says it all. Using SBI as a reward you are investing in someone. Granted it may take some time to equal, however it will end up giving much more in the long term. I think of it as starting a savings account for someone. You put $1 in. It collects interest, you add more and get more interest. Over time that $1 will become more (I know very simplistic) That is where I fail to understand why someone would have such a vendetta against this process. I am guessing because they didn't think of it first? They were caught abusing the system?

Bidbots to me are the bane of Steem. Yet who am I to tell someone how to invest their money? If that is what floats your boat then have at it. The one thing I have noticed and I don't know if it is related or not, but the value of Steem has dropped significantly during this time zero tolerance of bidbots.
@steevc(80)· 2395d
There used to be a cost to downvoting in that it ate into your voting power, so few people downvoted. Now you get some for free and can use them if you like. Most people still don't downvote. I do because I can find plenty of people just leeching Steem for almost zero effort or engagement. I am less fussed about SBI these days. It pays me cents, but I have bought shares for lots of people. Many of them are inactive now, but I still get the votes. I am not getting flagged for using it that I know of recently, but then I stopped delegating to them. I can use my SP elsewhere to do more good and I don't care if I make less in the process.
@ropaga(57)· 2395d
So now I know those downvotes I get from time to time are because of SBI shares.

All the abuse prevention measures implemented on STEEM are based on the rewards system, so they only apply to creators (writers, witnesses, dApp founders, etc.)

Investors are immune to that measures. They can use their STEEM POWER without any penalties. If they try to get the best ROI, they can just upvote @sbd-potato articles to get big curation rewards while the author reward will be burned, and proportionately downvote random articles to modify the pool reward even more in their favour. Bidbots may be dead but there are other methods for exploiting STEEM economy.

Your idea of adding mechanics to reduce SP is a double edge sword, because it may increase even more the abuse of big downvoters. In my opinion, the problem is that SP should not be the only factor involved in STEEM governance and rewards distribution. 1000 upvotes from different accounts should worth more than 1 upvote for an account with the same SP value. However, it must be done in a way that prevents creation of massive networks of bots accounts. Maybe a 2.0 reputation algorithm?
@abitcoinskeptic(75)· 2395d
The way I describe SBI is as a vote subscription service. Exactly like bidbots, there is no proof of brain. Similar to bidbots, you are buying votes, except you are just paying now for future votes. The main difference is with a bidbot, you get some, they get the rest. With SBI you get some and someone you named (perhaps your alt) gets the rest. It's vote-buying, it's just a less toxic form of vote-buying. SBI wasn't the only honest vote-buying service that would blacklist and ban really bad users either, OCDB only allowed whitelisted users to vote and quite a few would remove votes of abusers with enough pressure.

That said, I like SBI. I agree it is good for onboarding new users. However, I do wish that they would create their own token and payout in that. If you cannot create your own token for such a service, in the end of the day it is a tax on the platform. In other words, SBI is taxing everyone who doesn't use SBI. We didn't vote for it.

Still, I think it is a good tax. If it was put to a poll on the SPS/@steem.dao, it would probably beat the return proposal or any no easily. I don't know too many people who are actually against it. Most people are only against the actions of certain individuals abusing it who are banned. I say this as someone who wrote a post that helped SBI adapt to a post EIP hard fork consensus.

Less related to SBI, personally, I think the current solution of just using your downvotes how you want is most fair. I have more SP than some because I acquired it one way or another. It's proof of stake, the more you have the more influence you have. This works exactly the same regardless of the account. Just like SBI, there is no brain involved in having more or less.

If a project is using its upvotes or downvotes in a way you don't like, stop associating with it, or downvote it. Or if it doesn't produce content, downvote whoever or whatever it supports. This is a fundamental part of Steem which would need to be changed after a whole lot of discussion I argue is currently unnecessary. I'd save it and potential solutions including removing all rewards and paying out in SMTs, or worse some sort of centralized authority, for another rant.

One thing I don't personally like is auto downvote or downvote trails or delegating to anyone who downvotes. Unlike upvoting, I like to be in full control of my downvotes and know exactly who I am downvoting case by case and why. Call it a bias, but I think most people here share that bias. Getting random upvotes feels nice. Getting random downvotes sucks. We don't need bad feelings. That said, I don't think most decent (1000SP+) downvotes are random.
@jongolson(82)· 2395d
thank you for posting this.

i think this is such an important topic and here’s my biggest issue with it all.

SBI’s biggest ROI is retention.

People feel welcomed. Appreciated. And like they are valued on Steem from getting regular upvotes via SBI.

This is why SBI is so important. It’s ability to make people feel welcomed on the blockchain. Because as we can see, it can be a vicious place when folks don’t agree.

I hope more big players get behind and support SBI and what it does for user retention.
@beerlover(65)· 2395d
^{View or trade BEER.}

Hey @bengy, here is a little bit of BEER from @fullcoverbetting for you. Enjoy it!

Learn how to earn FREE BEER each day by staking.
@fullcoverbetting(74)· 2395d
Indeed sometimes the steem ocean does feel like a toxic place. I am fairly used to getting the 10% downvotes which do take 0% away from the value of the post. But yesterday things did change. I did get a 100% downvote from a so called curator account, taking away 20% of the value of my post. I do think that when placing a downvote, the downvoter should be forced to add an explanation for the downvote. Only this measure would decrease the number of downvotes by a lot. While receiving a downvote is bad enough, it is just worse when you don't know why you have been downvoted.

!trdo !BEER

Cheers, Peter
@slobberchops(82)· 2395d
I guess you mean the @mkkkk... account?

I have a lot of SBI's and that account no longer downvotes me as I don't delegate to SBI anymore. That is his beef, not bought SBI's but using delegation to have more SBI's and gain bigger votes.

I can see his reasoning to some extent. Are you getting DV's from this account and you don't delegate to SBI?
@whatsup(76)· 2395d
I've been a huge advocate of downvotes, but I stopped using most of mine due to some of outrageous downvotes of the large accounts and trails.

Most of us will handle a downvote or two with dignity and class, but when one group decides another is bad and has a huge amount of voting power, I was turned off quickly.

I also think that SBI was a great project and I think it is clear anytime you look at Trending that curation isn't about quality, so I have no idea what the puritans are fussing about some projects like SBI that does good work and helps with retention is.
@nickyhavey(74)· 2395d
I sold all my sbi shares as it I see it as some kind of bid bot service, except you get the returns over a long period rather than in one post.

I'm not downvoting anyone who uses it yet though as I believe it's helped with onboarding and retaining users but it's a grey area. I've seen posts that have blatant plagiarism being upvoted by sbi and I'll start downvoting if I see things like this happening. Also seems sbi just upvotes blindly regardless of length or quality of post - have also seen 20 word "shit posts" get more from sbi than others who have written much more in depth...

Jury's out
@fionasfavourites(77)· 2395d
Bengy, this is probably one of the most sane and sanguine analyses I have seen about SBI, downvotes and bidbots. I am one of those accounts that took a beating because of having invested SBI so I cashed in. Although I still get downvotes, they have no value. Similarly, I don't understand what precipitates them - and the accounts concerned are just serial downvoters. No posts, no upvotes. Just downvotes.
@revisesociology(82)· 2395d
The only solution is some kind of 'heeling' account.

NB SBI actually has one of the best ROIs on the platform, it's not 50% like some of those BOTs were, but it's getting on for 20%, which beats the 11-12% you can get from @dlease.