For future viewers: price of bitcoin at the moment of posting is 9093.06USD

Good points. Though I've used bots in the past it is an annoying part of Steemit. As for upvotes, I don't think there are many who only upvote themselves are there? If I had a lot invested in Steem, I could see the draw as you could make back your investment quickly.

Great post sir...its hodl meaning 'hold on for dear life' lol. but in answer to the post of why would people sell at a low price if people need the money now then they will sell some people dont have the luxury of holding invested money there are bills to pay lol! please upvote for visibility please thanks =]

Thanks but when we should upvote our own posts??? Is there any rule for it?? Or anytime we can self upvote??

enlightenment very good friends, very useful, thanks for writing. @cicbar

thanks,

I agree with the points you have pointed out. It is harder for newbies to get noticed. But i support bid bots but want them to be more selective about contents they upvote.

I support your idea of 2 separate voting power but it should have a twist. First voting power which will replenish like what we currently have, but self-voting power will replenish in relation to upvote you give to others.

I don’t remember where I did read it, but the also have a use considering the SBD. Until recently most bots could onlu be paid with SBD. This increase the buy reasons for SBD. Which will increase the price from which we all benefit.
The early days on Steemit I do call the dark days. It is hard to get noticed. It does not matter how good your post are, there will be a luck factor involved.
Lets be honest most of us were allured by the money part! But we do know that hard work is needed to achieve this.
But you are right that it is important that the newcomers feels welcome and do understand how things work here. It is also good that the number is dor the second day in a row above 10k. These people will hopefully write about new topics and tags so that new communities will be created. Which will allure more people to Steemit!
I di understand that some things could be changed, but to be honest I don’t know what and how!

@cicbar
Sorry for all the typos. Was standing in a huge traffic jam, when writing the previous comment.
Also want to add another opinion. I was thinking about the two separate voting options, but I do think that this will not solve the problem. There are several reasons for this.
1. Steemians will be clever enough to find a solution to this problem by finding a new way to exploit it. It will not eliminate selfishness. People will just create voting groups. Where everybody is obliged to up-vote each other posts with 100%. Meaning that there will be no voting power left, to upvote posts which really deserves it, outside this ring.
2. It will increase the usage of voting bots. Besides giving your post some more exposure, it is a hidden way of self voting.

I don't consider myself selfish but I did upvote some of my own posts, luckily never a comment :).
In stead of doing this I'm now trying out voting bots, trying to give my posts some exposure. But I don't want to to this. But I feel that I have no choice cause a lots of us are doing this.
So after some thoughts, only popped up this morning in the traffic jam, I decided that from now on I will use the upvote bots only after the post is 12 hours old.
Why do you ask? There is a good reason for this but is a 2 side cutting knife.
I first want to have genuine upvotes and comments on my posts. So if I instantly use upvote bots, almost all the curation will go to these bots in stead of towards the people who really found my article worth an upvote.
But the problem is, that if a post is already has some value, other will be more interested by the post. Trying to get some curation or are thinking: hey some people found it worth to upvote, so it could be a great post.
This is the dilemma I'm facing at the moment.
(This time without typos, I hope)

Maybe two separate upvoting options are not perfect but they are much better than current situation. Even if usage of bots grow it still will not be significant. At today's post of @penguinpablo https://steemit.com/steemit/@penguinpablo/how-many-of-the-upvotes-are-done-by-paid-voting-botspayed upvotes are less then 2%

I did read the post and was surprised how low the impact was!

grate commant.

You are totally right. This is something I noticed very quickly when I joined Steemit. But up to this week no one seemed to notice it or post anything about it.

But the statistics already show for a long time that hundred thousands of people joined Steem in the past year. And almost all of them are inactive. I can't calculate the exact number as I don't know how many users there were last year?

I think tipping bots are overrated. Nowadays over 1,000 Steemonians use them daily. So what does it help? Nothing cause I won't notice you between those 1,000+. And I fully ignore trending and hot.

As newbie I really don't understand that it is possible to upvote yourself. My suggestion would be to fully skip that possibility.

Last but not least, I think there are many more changes needed. Like getting rid off all kind of scams and frauds, stopping the greatest flagging war in history, bandwidth issues for new users and more like that.

Self upvoting is good and necessary because if you have invested money in Steemit and you have locked your Steem then you should be rewarded for that.

This might actually be the best explanation I have heard so far.

I still wonder if it's fair. Cause if you didn't invest, but started 1 year ago, then you probably have some SP now. As the rewards back then were about 30-40 times as high as now. People who have this can now really post crap, upvote their own crap and get rewarded for it. And the majority of new users could never get closer to the amount of rewards those crappy self upvoters receive (Sorry for my language, but I couldn't figure out a decent way to explain what I mean).

Your solution seems to be fair. Cause I agree that investors should get some return.

I guess we're still nowhere with me agreeing with you. As this probably won't get implemented ever.....

You are, you get to vote with more weight on witnesses, and then there are curation rewards, which ought to amount to more than 6% which is considered ok for investors. I don't think it's necessary.

I have also thought about idea with block possibility to upvote yourself. It's so strange to a newbie (for me it is). @cicbar, sorry for my question, but if somebody invested in Steem and got some extra SP isn't that a reward? He spent his money to be stronger, thought that how it works

I agreed with you & i really appreciated you think about other steemit members in the circle.I like you blog

This post was resteemed by @steemvote and received a 11.94% Upvote

Good post..

As fairly new in the community I agree with your points. I am here for a lot of reasons, one of them is the search for quality. Somehow it seems that the upvote bits and I disagree about what is quality content! It has happened too many times already that I have seen something that looks interesting and have several comments - and after checking out the post you find that all comments are from bots. It is the human interaction that should be put first in my opinion!

Bots ruin everything it seems, or rather the ones that are used for someone's selfish gain. I thought steemcleaners would help curb some of the bot problems and promote quality!~
Besides isn't steemit's economy supposed to be centered around a free market of ideas and discussion?

If you searched for quality you should ask for your moment back from the author. O nevermind it seems that good old confirmation bias (bots suck) is at play here, with another joining above, making a mountain out of an anthill because you've been happened to find posts with several bot comments. Can you even start a conversation then?

In my opinion for new users it's a little bit complicated to understand how Steemit works (SP, bots, reputation, ...) and for what you have to pay attention. Regarding the future of Steemit this could be improved.

Yes and no. Some changes could really improve the system but I do feel that the new Steemians are coming for the money and expect to get rich over night. We should not make it to easy :)
We all had the same problems and we all did overcome them and are still on Steemit.
This because we believe in steemit and actually did investigated time in understanding how things work. Doing experiments and so on.
Once you got the hang of it, you will have a steep learning curve. I'm still learning and enjoying my time on Steemit.

I completely agree with you. Using bots denies the purpose of steemit and the worst thing, it kills original material production.

When I started using steemit I saw it as a great platform do discover new intersting original material and I don't like the way that it's developing.
Your suggestions seem very good, I hope at least some of them come ture.

Very good Idea. Seem this will bring new hope to us as accnt with lower reputation.

Personally, I would like to see self upvoting taken out of the equation all together or only allowed up to a point, say, 50SP and under in order to help minnows grow. Otherwise it just brings out the worst in human nature: selfishness. Good post.

Great post! You just got a 45.95% upvote from @edensgarden!
Thanks for tasting the eden!

I like your ideas. From someone who can't maneuver their voting power because of lack of funds, it is really frustrating when someone who has over $50 upvoted in one posts only upvotes a quality comment or post with barely $0.10... I don't have the money to invest and have only recently started using one bot to help a little bit. I also didn't come here to make a ton of money just to blog and earn what people feel my content is worth. Would i like to make more money here? Of course, but I also don't want to force people to look at my page. I want quality people to see it and appreciate it for what it is. I think steemit will never see "fair" because everyone's definition is different. I do agree that bots need to either go away or pay more attention to the quality of the post they're upvoting. Great post!

After I joined in August last year, it took me a while to get my start in Steemit. I wasn't much of an active writer as I am now, but it seems that is no longer easy thanks to considerably difficulty of getting people to view your content. This bot promotion scheme is also disheartening at best.

good replay,

You got a 42.56% upvote from @allaz courtesy of @cicbar!

Thanks . Indeed steemit is going far.

Hey @cicbar, great post! I enjoyed your content. Keep up the good work! It's always nice to see good content here on Steemit! :)

You got a 21.61% upvote from @postpromoter courtesy of @cicbar!

Want to promote your posts too? Check out the Steem Bot Tracker website for more info. If you would like to support the development of @postpromoter and the bot tracker please vote for @yabapmatt for witness!

This post was upvoted and resteemed by @okankarol
Thank you for using @okankarol

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I agree with the need of quality content - but as for now I mostly discovered only good content here.

At the same time: In my experience, the usabilty of the site and registration is still very low. I see much more need to work on this!

Very good news my freinds...
This is very useful.
Thank for sharing

64.31% @pushup from @cicbar

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Great Post...especially for newbies like me, who are having difficulty understanding how this works. Hope Steemit will take these into consideration and make it better..

UPVOTED | RESTEEMED \ FOLLOWED | THANK YOU
[IMAGE: https://steemitimages.com/DQmZqpoLLCvMRKC4ScjasxNYoVLHWRLWi6QbAZmPf4Msdpm/bitsham.jpg]

Excellent post and agree, people will always building better mouse traps. However, if love posting about whatever you love to post, the rest will take care of itself.

I hope the future steemit will always make it easier for newcomers like me.

Hello how are you, it is true that the money is very influential to the members of steemit, there should be a filter where you indicate the relevance of the post and thus give a mutual growth, because for those who are starting money is what that we do not have to be able to make investments that give you good benefits.

It was interesting to read your opinion, I'm still new to the steem, but some things have begun to irritate. In General, I can agree with your ideas.

You got a 88.89% upvote from @steembloggers courtesy of @cicbar!

You got a 13.79% upvote as a Recovery Shot from @isotonic, currently working as a funding tool, courtesy of @cicbar!

[IMAGE: https://steemitimages.com/DQmSXw8vxjHneakuQqD5RQBRXK8vLppod29ag3KMCMy37pv/image.png]
* Image from pngtree.com

@isotonic is the Bid Bot of the @runningproject community.
Earnings obtained by this bot, after paying to the delegators, are fully used to increase the SP of the @runningproject from which all affiliated members are benefited.
Check @runningproject posts in order to know further about.

You got a 100.00% upvote from @bestvote courtesy of @cicbar!

This post is resteemed and upvoted by @bestboom

Oh god, the bot overlords are onto us. QUICK TO THE BUNKERS!

You got a 46.15% upvote from @upmewhale courtesy of @cicbar! Earn 90% daily earning payout by delegating SP to @upmewhale.

Improvent that Im mostly looking after on steem right now is private messages between users.
Lack of this forces me to leave the platform when I need to talk to someone from here and I have to ask publicly for someone details for contact. And either mine or theirs data is being revealed while doing so.

This is a major flaw.
Also some sort of notification, when somebody answered me would be useful.
Those things look tiny at first, but once introduced they prove to be very convenient and major improvements.

I know this from experience from other websites, so its not just a theory.

[IMAGE: https://steemitimages.com/DQmU7BEv1oXFz36JwGR356Bkp42HT7Ccy7ztnqp3L9ptFMx/1520864732366s.jpg]

I would like also private messages between users and user based search.

Totally agree with you @laserade, private messages will be awesome to have on Steemit.
About notifications, I tried playing with the app Steemify once, it didn't really do anything in terms of notifications or maybe I'm just missing something.

I fully agree! I've had to track people down in all kinds of ways because I didn't want to give out private information publicly!

private messages are absolutely needed.

There's a lot of truth in some of the comments. If there's a better way to get noticed, that is to promote your post in groups and communicate with good whales on Discord. Without the use of bots or self-upvotes, it might seem fair but people will find another way to get ahead. If you have good content, 'make the most out of it', I think is a good term. Nobody is cheating unless they hack into the blockchain.

I agree 100%. It's not cheating unless they hack into the blockchain.

Whales :D!

Bots are a good way to work together in communities that promote the content you enjoy and to support your friends' content.

Even then it's the blockchain's fault for being hackable.

Not hackable. No one's money is stolen. It just has a pretty good api.

"Nobody is cheating unless they hack into the blockchain."

^ THIS!!!

If I wanted steemit to be like any other platform, I would not be here, enough with the bullshit!

Great

@delusionalmadman, lol, met you in the comment section :). Wrote you at the start of my journey a couple months ago. I'm still here :D

I've been busy, working on a big project.

Actually some of good content is flushed by weak quality ones. If you have no influential friends or powered up account your content will become quickly unnoticed. Take this post as an example. It represents an example of fine photo. But it will vanish quickly unnoticed, and author discouraged will return to facebook
https://steemit.com/dog/@dogimage/last-catch-of-winter#comments

I totally agree. Bots are adding to dilution in some cases.

Seem like that, but just for curiocity, how it is different from FB. In total you have to invest money in both to achieve something

Because they have unreal expectations. If they have realistic expectations they won't be disappointed: First day-0 views. Second day 1 view, 1 upvote. That's an improvement but many will turn their heads up to it. The third day, fourth day, one day at a time you build and connect, and even on facebook, you have to do that, except you are pandering to your family and friends which is a given, more like 0 views.

I've been at it for a few months now. I have no doubt building a reputation will take at least 6 months and that's minimum. I'm patient because I see the bigger picture. I'm not sure others will .

Hihiroyamagishi
,Nice to read about you,
em Salman Lodhi From Pakistan am also new on streemit and Welcome you to streemit,
i Have Followed you,so can also follow me,
best of Luck!

I totally agree with this post, great post

Where are the groups here? Also, isn't Discord another (competing) social network? This is my 4th day of being active here and I can't begin to express just how frustrating it is spending hours and hours here writing blog posts, even tweeting them to tens of thousands of people only to see zero comments, almost zero views and only a few upvotes worth $0.00. At least if they actually got views with those results, I'd know I really do need to tweak the content, but no views suggest something is up here to hide the new members' material all together. They should ban the bots, if they are the cause of such treatment to what I feel is some decent quality material - at least the last few. It's also a huge learning curve just trying to learn all the many complexities and language used in the steemit site. I love the concept of steemit, but I'm not sure how much longer I will last here under these conditions. All the best

Ay @positivesynergy totally understand that frustration. Here is a great community group called the Steem Music Alliance. We are a very supportive and interactive group. So if you have any questions or need help we are here to help. Here is the link bud https://discord.gg/tqeK5pw

Thanks, @chiefmappster! I appreciate the kind jester. I keep seeing people speak of using Discord, which adds more confusion here, especially given it's negative name. Is it owned by steemit also? I see enough discord here in steemit, albeit not as bad as the other social media sites, and thus the name itself keeps me away from that.

@positivesynergy Discord is voice & text chat a. All the whales and bots are there. It is also a platform where we could find like minded people sharing views. But I felt that people are spending more time chatting away but I might be wrong I am still learning.

Thanks, @zestforlife Sounds a bit like whatsapp, which I don't like much, or messenger. Although, messenger is integrated into FB.

You're very welcome. It is not owned by Steemit. It is just an app that a lot of Steemians use for community building and interaction. It has some awesome features. Theses apps are what you make of them. Discord is definitely an awesome new breed of mobile apps.

"but no views suggest something is up here to hide the new members' material all together."

I'm afraid you are just overestimating the size of the audience here for articles that don't even make it to hot. That audience is basically 0.

No point in tweeting your posts to people, because Twitter followers don't have Steem and can't vote.

Yeah, clearly that's the case. I remember seeing someone post the latest stats that there are now nearly a million total members and about 60k active daily steemit members. Certainly, given steemit is blog based, more could be done to balance the scales for more than 0 of the 60,000 daily members to see new posted articles.

BTW, I tried the tweeting in part because it was suggested by another high rep. Steemian.

I've been on Steemit for only a few days also. I wrote a quick post with the tags "introduceyourself", "introduction", "introducemyself", "steemit" and I got 7 comments. I haven't spent much time writing other types of posts yet but I do know that it is hard to get noticed on the web without advertising or having a following.

Thanks for the input, @swarmy. It's good to hear someone has had some luck from the start. That's one tag I haven't done yet and will try to get to sometime in the next few days. I know what you mean about not getting noticed online without advertising. I've been at it since the mid '90's when I got my first domain. I had it lucky then, because I published a magazine in Europe, which I put online. So I carried a fairly large niche market from the start. BTW, welcome to steemit ;-) All the best

the introduce yourself is pretty important, but I know how you feel, I'm posting and no one is seeing. I hope eventually I have have enough good content backing up my posts it'll get me more. Have to build a tribe of people here. :)

Thanks, @vgc5000 Yeah, there doesn't really seem to be any magic pill or something, but it seems to be something that really only persistence will overcome. I still haven't done the introduceyourself tag yet, as I'm undecided as to what to share there. I tried a bot or two and to be honest that doesn't seem like it does much for visibility. I added a little steem to power up my steem power and right away my rewards from day 1 came available. As little as it was, at least it gave a feeling of some accomplishment. On my 8th day now of plugging away with lots of posts I am starting to see a few views trickle in. There is soooo much more to learn still with so many intricate details here, but I'm getting there. All the best

I'm with you, it's only been since December that I began and I still don't know all the little details. If you learn something interesting, let me know! maybe we can help each other. I will follow you-

Thanks! I followed you too. I was just trying to figure out how to transfer some steem over to steem dollars, just for reference, since I powered what little I had there to steem power. Listening to one guys video just figured out I can do that on the market to trade between them.

Yes, I saw it and looked at it but haven't tried. What I bought so far was through an exchange so it went to steem then I can turn to SP. I heard it is cheaper, I should look on Youtube--

I haven't looked that far yet either. BTW, another thing I learned from that big fish, which seems important, that many do not do (probably because we thought upvotes come out of our steempower) is while steem power enables how influential one's upvoting gives, upvotes do NOT cost a cent and on the contrary actually earn curation points. That might be a good post to do once I can verify the validity of it all. Of course that's not to say to upvote every post and comment either. But I did think that point was fairly significant in the way steemit functions. It's just not clear enough yet to me, given I don't recall seeing any curation yet and I know from my first day I upvote those I like. Maybe I haven't seen it yet because my steem power has been so low. Time will tell...

Yes, I read that recently too! That would be a good idea. Is it commenting AND upvoting for curation? Let's keep this chat going and when this post closes, we could tell if conversation helps--

Good question. I'll have to go and try to find out... Have an awesome day :)

BTW, here's really good video on many of the complexities of Steemit Curation Rewards:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mo73OqqYv8M

Seems way too complex at the moment to create a post on until I can really figure it all out. I guess I've been going a bit overkill on the upvotes, LOL... because my voting power is down to 25% at the moment.

lol ok what are the implications of that?? I read vote 10
Times a day full power is best because it regenerates that much back daily but I’m not sure what happens when you upvote a ton—

LOL... Like I did... The voting power goes down from 100% and thus when you upvote it is worth less than 100%, which effects (or limits) your curation potential, as I understand it. In other words, yesterday when I added a good chunk of steem to my steem power I noticed each of my upvotes gave about 3 cents (0.03) and towards the last ones they were a penny or so. So I'm trying to detox from upvoting to let it recharge. Did you watch the video? He does a great job going fairly in depth.

BTW, if you look at https://steemd.com/@vgc5000 you will see you are at 100% strong.

I want to go find the other video I saw a few days ago, implying at one point to upvote everything and you get more yourself. That was from a guy who has been here several years and is an even bigger whale. I'd like to ask him, especially since Brandon doesn't seem too keen to reply to post, despite saying he does. That limit of 10 or 11 upvotes/day, which I think is very limiting, could be one of the many things that has changed here, such as this new feature they seemed to add yesterday which appears to break each comment conversation into appearing as if it's it's own post thread, which to me seems a bit strange and I'm not sure how much I like it. Brandon did say that once you have, I believe it was, 500 steem in steem power you get a slide bar option to adjust what percentage you give to different one's you upvote. Thus, you have more ability to give more weight to the content you like the most. So many complexities...

Yes I have that bar. I noticed when I upvote, it will go for 8 or 9 cents then down to 6 etc. So that must be the diminishing power. No I haven't watched yet. I have our season opener April 15 so I've been trying to work on that first THEN steemit. But I really want to do that the other way around and work on Steemit first! ;)

I know the feeling... I'm juggling and bouncing between 3 or 4 different things now...

BTW, despite what success I have had on steemit and how much I have learned in now 11 days of being active thus far, I just noticed that I still have yet to get anything at all in "Curation Rewards"... So either I've missed something completely or it must have changed since the videos and few posts were created that I've seen. Perhaps later today I can find the time to take a deeper dive into all things "Curation Rewards" to see if I can find the missing piece. I gotta admit that steemit is like a game or maze with so many aspects to explore as to the workings of it's full operation; and I love an adventure... LOL

It is crazy. Now I’ve read and commented for 2 days and haven’t posted. Now I will have to look and see what I’ve gotten for curation —

One thing that confused me when I was new was - Discord. People kept telling me "Join the Discord" - Discord means "disagreement between people" or "lack of harmony between notes sounding together." It sounded like people were inviting me to a place to argue. I didn't know what Discord was, and certainly didn't want to join a place to argue with people. NOw I know wat it is, but honestly it;s still confusing so many people invite me to so many things and contests and channels and I don't know who's who and they all have different rules and rooms for specific topics and it's just enough to make your head spin if you;re new on TOP of learning the Steemit platform. lol

haha that's hilarious. Discord really does mean that...for some reason that thought never entered my mind until now. Haha I know....soo many different things. I feel like I spend all day on a rabbit trail just learning, and then I realize I haven't actually DONE anything. Been trying to figure out for weeks how an openmic contest/thingy works.

I used the "openmic" tag because I saw other music posts with it, then got a comment that it was a contest and if I wanted to use it I needed to follow the rules etc.. But, what if I actually recorded an actual open mic at a bar? I wouldn't be able to use that tag? lol Slow and steady, it sure beats Facecrap any day lol

@adammillwardart hmmm...thanks for sharing...guess I better check out those rules then. Lol I guess when you mention it, that is kind of weird that people can have "ownership" of a tag basically and then you're not allowed to use it b/c someone else doesn't deem it relevant

very nice
follow upvote comment
https://steemit.com/success/@muhammadabid/forest-management-in-nepal-development-country-success-story

I agree with this post, bots need to go, BUT at the same time I love them because you can use them to get exposure by getting on the trending page for the whole steemit world to see and also on the promoted page so your post keeps being seen.

All that leads to followers, upvotes, resteems, and comments which leads to more success on form. It is deceiving to some people though because they see a post and wonder how it got some many upvotes, not knowing bots were paid for the upvotes. Much like this post I see you paid some bots.

Upvotes definitely red to be changed, because you’re right people are selfish and don’t realize that when they’re selfish on steemit that it doesn’t do any good to the community, just themselves. And if we get a community that is “just for the selves” then we really don’t have a community at all.

> All that leads to followers, upvotes, resteems, and comments which leads to more success on form.

If I vote for a minnow artist because I think they're stuff is amazing, it's incredibly annoying when someone comes along with a few dollars to push them aside and cut in line. These people just end up quitting... and I tried my best to help. It's so selfish buying those votes and pushing people out of the way, I don't see how anyone can call it "success".

If I give someone a trophy, they EARNED it. If someone buys a trophy, then acts like they're "successful", where I come from we call that a fraud.

If more people with high rating are like you, Steemit would be better. But most of them are not like you...

If people quit because others promote themselves or others promote them then they are quitters and would have given up at the next adversity, but I am the Bah so throw some caution to the wind. It makes no difference to me though because it's always been promoted work, so they feel that it's worth that much, being mad about that isn't a helpful reaction because ultimately this is an issue of supply and demand and not a question of personal integrity or morality.

It's a shot to morale, which in turns kills work ethic. The same thing happens on the job if someone shows up, acts shiny on the surface, kisses ass, then gets the job promotion before others. Before you know it, the workplace is full of brown nosers and productivity slips because the actual workers were kicked to the curb and left for greener pastures. Quitting doesn't mean they give up life, it means they're looking for something better.

There's genuine promotion and then there's folks just looking for shortcuts. Those ones taking shortcuts are causing many others to stress. Those taking the shortcuts are contributing to centralization of power. All of that money is going to a handful of bot owners. There won't be much supply and those bots will be in high demand. I don't see why centralization of power makes people feel so good, but whatever, it's not me paying to screw the place so I'm not to blame.

Quitting from a social media/public forums because people promote themselves through large stakeholders based on a overwhelming demand for those promotional services is still a very poor reason to quit. In the real world centralization of power happens by the hand of those bosses. Here centralization of power is insignificant to people that are like me, who will speak and upvote regardless of how many flags or how much resistance there is because to me centralization of power in that respect doesn't affect me in the way that actual centralization of power would. I hoe that those that left did so because they considered the alternatives (none) and decided that they are better, but that's not likely, they probably went back to the mindless facebook newsfeed.

Hmm interesting. I hadn't thought of it like pushing minnows out of the way, I thought of it a bit like Facebook ads.

In my opinion, as a general rule, There should be zero self upvoting. I mean reposting or publishing anything at all would be one validating, verifying, approving or something in the first place. I mean ppsting is upvoting it in a way. Any content create, published and/or reposted has author's/publisher's approval. That counts as a self vote too. So upvoting one's own self is redundant any way is what i am trying to say.
That was my take one of the points. Good piece though. Cheers.

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Still learning, but very excited.

This post has been resteemed to 6100+ followers and 100% upvoted by @talhadogan
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FIX THESE THINGS FIRST:

a) We need good content on trending page, and no 2 liners or only specific content related or of specific members only or just a dinner shot.

b) Bots should review the posts before upvoting.

c) Need genuine Meritocracy, not fake (Give Fair chance to everyone, not just the rich)

d) Meetups/Programmer related should be funded privately, and not by trending, This is not called good content. Need a speprate page for it like an UPDATE or ANNOUNCEMENT page.

e) Or You can remove Trending and Hot page, so people will only look for content they are intrested in, using search bar or tags, & not upvote only for rewards.

f) We also need Reward limits and Posts limit. I guess if we keep max 200$ per post and max 5 posts, that comes to 1000$ per day means 30000$ per month. Which is morethan enough for any one to live life in any part of the world. and obviously you can invest in steem/SBD or other cryptos. This will also limit greed.

g) Also a minimum reward like 50 cents to 1$ (more or less i leave to experts) for every post with a minimum content (bots can handle this im sure) will give a boost to minnows, and will also lead to genuine wealth distribution.

All the above points will eliminate the "Central Banking System for the Rich only" type scenario that going on on steemit.

[IMAGE: https://steemitimages.com/DQmWbFe6pdUojXstiba69fpzybvxKJYDVSC1igBQQCcCbXU/Untitleda-2.jpg]

Reposting here as it gets ignored all the time..

Been using Steemit for a couple of months now. Still do not completely understand it's inner workings but I would have to whole heartily agree with you about the virtual "Central Banking System" that is being created here is the very thing we all are trying to escape from the real world.

Some good ideas, having a limit on earnings will hurt the system tho.

it wont, its called proper wealth distribution..

a) you cannot force that. obvs.
e) then you may never find abuse simply because someone could be hiding in the most obscure tag, nor would you find anything that wasn't in a regular tag. The next problem will be tag spam. The next one would be tag whoring, tag raping, tag spoofing, and whatever it takes to subvert attention and promote oneself by those means, which complicates things a little more.

b)can't code that

c)can't code that either

d) That's right, it's not good content, It's great content. and it's tagged appropriately.

f) reward limits don't encourage much more than alts voting on comments and other schemes which would be harder to detect that would bypass the limits.

g) you might as well give them money instead of promoting spam of a certain length. weren't you grandstanding that promoting from the reward pool is not ok? MUH for economic freedom bro?

There is no central banking system of the rich. If you want to eliminate it go ahead and fork the project, it's open source and you can even keep all the posts, transactions and accounts, people would simply log in! You could start implementing all this new fairness! Fuck me I've literally challange numerous detractors to go and do this, guess what happens every single time someone has the time to list numerous proposed solutions without considering them? Noooooooooooothing.

No real way to stop human greed, but I think a away to curb this is to increase the voting power penalty self upvote and make it a thing where you can recover faster if votes are dispersed amongst others.

To combat voting groups a simple repeat upvotes without variations lead to increased voting power penalty.

I agree with this post, bot should its not there but that's not possible

Half of those active users you're mentioning are probably cos of Youtube's new policy. Me included. Cos we are feed up of Yt being more 'popeish' than a pope himself

good information for all of us. thank you for giving us useful information.

Very nice post @cicbar, May I reblog

Of course. Thanks😁

New trends that you have introduce to steemit are really very well.My inclination is more in the favor of division of upvoting system so that people might upvote new comers like me and enhances our motivation.

interesting post, but I like the robot vote

You got a 18.18% upvote and resteem from @ebargains courtesy of @cicbar. Thank you for using the @ebargains UPVOTE and RESTEEM bot.

If you are looking to earn a passive no hassle return on your Steem Power, delegate your SP to @ebargains by clicking on one of the ready to delegate links:
50SP | 100SP | 250SP | 500SP | 1000SP | 5000SP | Custom Amount

You will earn 80% of the voting bot's earnings based on your delegated SP's prorated share of the bot's SP pool at the end of EACH voting round! That is over 38.5% APR! You can also undelegate at anytime.

Don't you see the irony of your post? You paid for votes in order for your call to fairness be heard.

I am new here. A noob. I have read as much as I could about steemit and I have to say that this system is rigged. It's not what you do, it's about who you know. Same shit as in the real life.

The thing that goes on my nerves is how everybody is pretending and lying about what steemit is and how it works. Those who invested real money are getting return on it because the small fishes are believing they can make some of it too.

Tens of thousands of small fishes are polishing the turd while the big players are buying votes and upvoting themselves to riches. Welcome to the AnCap decentralized blockchain future. Give me a break!

I agree with you and this is why we need changes to make Steemit better.

I don't see what can be done to make it fair. I don't think that your proposed solution will work. It will boost voting on others content a bit, but it won't solve the core problem. From what I see, the accounts with a lot of SP are not doing anything, they are not posting, they are not commenting,... they are leasing that power to the bot owners and collecting money.

The whole thing depends on the new users getting engaged and profiting enough to stay and invest their time in it. No new (and active) users and the whole thing goes down.

It's in the interest of the big players to prop up the small fish, but who will do it? Not me, not me, not me,... A classic example of the tragedy of the commons. Everyone is going down, but there are no incentives for a single individual to do anything about it. Lease your STEEM POWER to the bots and collect the money while it lasts.

Perhaps, the whales should put together a Welcome aboard! bot that will upvote the efforts of the new users. I don't know.

I was very enthusiastic about it, but the more I read and the more I see the less I like it.

Also, I'm not hating on those with a ton of SP. They are doing what they think is in their best interest. I don't hate the players I hate the game. I've been mistaken about what the game is when I decided to join in. I thought it was something better, but it is not.

Sorry for ranting on your blog

Good points, however I myself have never leased my steem power to anyone, nor do I ever plan to do so.

Why not? As I understand it is a good way to make money.

I'm not hating on anyone who is leasing their steem power. I'm just ranting a bit for I've found that the article does not live up to its advertising :)

"Why not? As I understand it is a good way to make money."

If money was my bottom line, I would be much more richer than I already am in "money"

Perhaps someday in the future I will make a blog post on steemit about why money is not my bottom line.

And when you write it I'll make sure to read it.

No reason for sorry, I really like to hear other opinions and I agree with you at many things.

I think if steemit had an advertisment, and users got paid on a per click basis it might help generate more revenue for new users.

They could also spread their posts around on social media, generate more traffic to their posts and promote steemit at the same time.

What did you expect exactly?

Damn straight my dude. But with time I should be able to get up there without cheating! Hopefully!~

I'm a new user also. You are spot on about bigger wallets getting more returns but in fairness they should, they have hard earned money at risk here. It's no different than anything else in life the more you have at risk should mean greater rewards. From what I've seen so far it looks like the community will grow and develop and as it does so should your steem power. Be patient and let it organically develop. Get friends involved and help each other out. The more you put in the more you get out, that's life.

Let me indulge in a bit of vanity and quote myself :)

>I'm not hating on anyone who is leasing their steem power. I'm just ranting a bit for I've found that the article does not live up to its advertising :)

The advertising says:
>Your voice is worth something
Get paid for good content. Post and upvote articles on Steemit to get your share of the daily rewards pool.

What I've found almost immediately is that all the beginner's guides talk a lot about good content, but as I dug deeper I've found that the way to earn $$$ here is to invest money in buying steem, powering up and then leasing that power to the bot owners. Writing good content is not the way to do it.

I have been waiting ten days or so to get the account approved and in my mind I've built up steemit to be something more than it is. Now, I feel cheated :)

The site is very basic, finding interesting topics and people is hard, you can't send a direct message to anyone,... as a social platform steemit kinda sucks. Usability is low and there are a ton of missing functionality that would make it a modern social network.

You can send a PM buy transferring a small amount of steem, and attaching a msg to the transaction.

Your right tho the site is very basic and it needs a better search function.

I would also like to see some ads or another way to earn steem.

I often post my steemit posts on reddit or facebook and can generate alot of extra views.. but i don't earn any extra for doing so it seems.

So you aren't here to participate and interact with people like the rest of us, you're here simply to make money, why the heck do you care if a social media platform comes attached to that is my question at this point?

>So you aren't here to participate and interact with people like the rest of us, you're here simply to make money

Now, be honest and answer this: Who would join steemit.com if there was no monetary reward for doing so? What else does this platform offers that others don't? Why did you join in the first place? Did you somehow saw a group of people having an interesting discussion here and decided to jump in, or you did it for the reasons the rest of us did - to get something out of it?

Remove the monetary reward and see how long this platform will live. I give it a week.

WITHOUT A DOUBT bro, I value what steem offers, as opposed to all other competitors :

CENSORSHIP PROOF, TRANSPARENT LEDGER.

You could have made me PAY for it for all I care!
O yup, I expect you explain WHY are you still WRITING when you could be making bank of BOTS HERE?!, stop wasting your breath, stop SPAMMING the ledger with your useless, meaningless however comical ironic irony and start living the reality of Steemit, no?

Now be honest, why are you still here?

Maybe it's because I'm new here and don't understand how the system works, but self-upvoting does sound like cheating! Joined to share content that I believe is relevant to shape better future for us all. Now not so sure I'm in the right place. Thank you for sharing your concerns, @rfburton

I do hope that I am wrong.

Perhaps you will be one of those lucky people discovered by the whales and your message will be heard :)

@rfburton, you are fucking right my bro! It's about who you know and how much money you have to invest. But I don't necessarily see any bad in this. You can go to discord and get to talk to whales, you can just put more money. Some people will not survive. But just like in real life. People are dying and go bankrupt. That's just how it is. (wanted to quit steemit like 5 times, but carried on)

I have no problem with how things are, they are what they are. My problem is all the lies about it.

Write good content and you will be rewarded... NOT! Shakespeare can rise from the dead and publish his work here and still get nothing for it. So why all the lies?

What lies? The fact that people make bank, verifiably al the time from good work, does that guarantee that "everyone will make bank from their good work?" No.

You've lied to yourself, because you have nothing to look forward since others are making money another way than creating content, which because some people aren't getting rewarded what you believe they should, the promise that good content does and will get rewarded is evident day after day, by new people all the time.

And I will spread that message as opposed to being stuck in this obscure corner that nobody listens, after the whalecock has touched me. Nobody is discovering anyone bro, they aren't a publishing house, they are regular people that got some stake, they have no special powers, and their cock might be mighty but they still have only 24 hours in a day.

Having $20+ regular upvotes on any shit you write the minute you write it and because of it automatically getting on the trending page for the subject you write about is what I'm talking about when I say discovered, but you already knew that.

Sure, they are regular people, Buffet and Gates are regular people, too.

It looks like you are the only one here happy with how things are, the only thing that makes you angry are my rants. I'm guessing you are one the major stakeholders here and baah is just one of your accounts.

I might be because I can appreciate what Steem IS and not what steem should be for all the people that want it EASIER to make bank. facebook.com/bah.fucyou

Why are you still here then? The realy irony has only begun.

To annoy you, perhaps?

Why are you so upset about what I wrote? Is it because people are upvoting it and agreeing with me?

Why are you assuming things about me?

>To annoy you, perhaps?

How has that been going for you?

I think steemit will have some big changes maye even before this year ends. This is somehow necessary to adapt with the increasing number of users any of course possible abuse.

I can definitely say that this post is a real Relic. Because at once you can see in this article that you are very interested with social networks steemit and in this article it is clear that you work a lot on Steem and already know a lot About steemit

I've yet to witness any great socializing here.

Hoi! Did somebody say socializing? Well you can socialize with me if you want! I am always up for a good discussion!~

When you post to social media — such as Facebook, Reddit, Google+ and Twitter — when you upvote, like and favorite, you do not get paid. But that’s about to change.

Steemit is a blogging-centric social network where you DO get paid for creating and upvoting content. You can build a following, find patrons and grow your wealth, all while doing the thing you love: creating valuable content.

Take note: Steemit is not some fly-by-night Ponzi scheme. Steemit is about building a community of high-quality people and financing the production of the highest quality content.

Steemit requires no initial investment in order to participate. It’s free to use and you’re not spending your own money when you upvote content you like.

Steemit is just the first minimum viable product on Steem, a blockchain-based social economy. The Steem developers have bootstrapped an entire economy, complete with its own crypto-currencies. Steem is peer-to-peer, decentralized, uncensorable and therefore unstoppable.

So it’s a good idea for you get started with Steemit — and Steem — now.

Steemit is good for redditors, Facebook users, bloggers, videographers, teachers, YouTubers, artists, film-makers — anyone who is creating content and would like to be paid (more) for it. The Steemit community is supportive, helpful and constructive.

Do you want to work with intelligent, positive people who are building something meaningful for the future? Yes? Then Steemit is for you.

If you’re seeking a short-term payoff with low-quality content that you slap together with little effort, Steemit is not for you. You will be downvoted, ignored and frustrated. Your reputation will not grow and will likely decline. You will not earn any significant amount of money. You’ll be wasting your time.

You can earn a short-term payoff with quality content. Many people have already done this. But Steemit offers greater rewards to those with a long-term perspective.

There are also opportunities for developers to build apps rapidly on the Steem blockchain.

By the end of this post, you will know enough about Steemit to get started earning cryptocurrency — currency, like Bitcoin, that you can convert into US dollars, and other fiat currency, and spend on groceries, rent, travel and more.

The Steem system has a lot of moving parts, so keep reading to get a head start. It’s taken me several weeks to research this, get familiar with the community and to put it all into this easy-to-read guide you can master in less than an hour.

So it means, if you have no thousands of followers already which you can redirect to steemit, than it is wasted time to publish something here? Does steemcleaners work good here? I just want to be clear before , before I put my valuable content here :)

I want to introduce on Steem chat like on Facebook Messenger.

Thank's for this valuable post.

lol I lost my marbles at the "how mane active users" bit. I know that was a typo but I found it beautiful. We could make steam better by allowing people to list not just one of their websites but multiple. Also changing the profile pic uploading system to a click and drag system would be nice too.

Fixed 😁thanks

I am a newbie that have worked seriously to understand steemit!
I support your opinion so much but how do we get your points implemented?

great,,, do good and gave good

Interesting... Up vote :P

if anyone of you is interested in games from the series "Gothic" from the studio "Piranha Bytes", I invite you to my steemit.

of course, this post above resteem :)

Acctually, we should cooperate each other in any case either upvoting etc...or there are several ways to make it better but the best thing cooperation between people.Selfishness should be removed from people's mind.

great post. i like it :)

This Is true, nice writeup man, I hope steemit dwell more on it. Thanks

i agree with you
This is very useful.

NO!
After you've been here a year or so you might have enough experience.
but right now you're just whining.

No mate, I am not whining. I have enough money and with current system I can make more on Steemit. I am just thinking how we can make Steemit better and more useful for everybody :-)

Especially people like me who is new in the system

even so...you're wrong.
the question is NOT" is steemit too hard"
rather the question is "is steemit too easy.
Who do we want on Steemit?
Special snowflakes
or people who will work for what they get?

Special snow flakes. Salty snow flakes are my favorite.

Oh wait.. no we want workers.

stop making sense.

I hate to agree with the old man racist over here, but he's right.

Good post@cicbar

Love getting more viewpoints of all the different ways of using and promoting on here. I just started using steemit regularly (joined a while ago) and still figuring out all the angles here to be most effective with voting, lending, powering up, ect.

Hypocrite Much?

> BOTS are FIRST thing that I would CHANGE.

> If you have money, than even if you publish some bullshit, with tipping bots you can get upvotes for that and be rewarded.

>This is very bad for Steemit and it is destroying quality of network.

>BECAUSE OF SELFISHNESS LOT OF PEOPLE ONLY UPVOTE THEMSELVES.

> They are saving upvoting power for them and they don't upvote any posts.

[IMAGE: https://steemitimages.com/DQmfG62KUQSUNZ9U13kthtuwHbtNvNvZP6kiKHS2U25AYbW/hypocrite.png]

Your talk means little when you don't back that talk up with a accompanying walk. You upvote yourself and use bots to lift your post to trending and expect us to respect your opinion on how those things are bad?

But you want attention to your problems and think that you are the chosen one when it comes to changing the platform for the better. Brilliant!

You should run for political office. You would be pretty good at it.

Obviously you didn't read post carefully. I have wrote on my blog that I am using them because they are necessary to reach trending column but I don't like that and I would change that.

But you can't change anything if you don't practice the change you want to see. And plenty of other authors have made it to the trending page just to be ignored. Your post doesn't really solve anything. In fact, it's part of the problem. It simply serves as another overvalued piece of content on a network that simply doesn't value content and values funneling money from desperate people who want attention to the owners of bidding bots and their associated investors.

This is your opinion and that is OK. I just play by rules but I can say at least that I don't like them...

I agree 100%. It's not cheating unless they hack into the blockchain

I am personally not here to earn money so i care not if someone likes or dislikes my blogs. Steemit is a new paradigm social network where humam beings should be able to interact with each other and share their thoughts and jdeas unencumbered and unconditionally.

Nice Post

nice postI am in this media and like steemit

On Quora, you cannot upvote yourself, and I agree that Steemit would do well to adopt that same policy. To me, upvoting your own content is equivalent to voting for your soup in a potluck contest or voting yourself as the MVP of your softball team. I am glad Quora doesn't allow it. Contributors are upvoted only based on the value that they're providing the community.

Another really good way to do well in Steemit is to get involved especially going to conferences and making connections with other users in person. The simple physical presence and meeting others through the physical medium rather than the digital medium goes a long way to understanding others and cultivating relationships. Steemit is about relationships!

[IMAGE: https://steemitimages.com/DQmZ3792jMLmdBtXS5Chkw4eBWpnT3RsbyFSFMgwjvQLRZY/unnamed%20(8).jpg]

nice post,i like it

I have noticed that upvoting could be solved like in reddit. This amount could only have a role of a bumper i.e. if someone downvote you penalty for this vote could be reduced by your initial votepower of single vote.

Honestly for me everything looks like is concentrated around wales and people who try to pump up their accounts by self voting.

Right now everything is overwhelmed with weak quality content with trending whale posts. I do even wonder how may steemians are actually reading posts.

I'm very new here. It's just day 02.
But self upvoting.. really? Why?
I had no idea that it is possible at all, cause to me it does sound like cheating! It is counter productive and really not helpful if we want to have quality content here.

The problem is nothing would really be solved by any attempt to differentiate self-voting. If any restrictions were put in place, everybody with a significant stake would immediately spawn an alt account, delegate all their power and return to their old ways. I am pretty sure this hasn't been done because limit self-votes is simple to work around. At least now the self-voting is obvious and not obfuscated.

Your post has been trended.

This is a great post. I teally wish there are better way to get visible in this community rather than use of bot which ends up getting people with low quality content to that top and give them random vote. And the case of the selfish ones who willonly up vote theit post those are just not good for this community. I level this society needs more of people like you. 👍

you think ,? this is revolution of technology ?

your post is very important for all steemit users.. i can also like your post. This line is very attarctive for me.." u need to give then you will get.. thank's to ur post..

I'm new to Steemit. Can you give a quick/simple explanation of the bots?

https://steemit.com/steemit/@cerebralace/how-to-use-the-steemit-voting-bots

I am complete newbie in steemit, posted my first blog post and video today, I had some problems to get real DTUBE video in a post, so it is only link. VERY DISAPPOINTED. Now I am reading about bots and selfish people behavior. I can agree something is very very wrong here. I found great post today uploaded year ago with great content etc..., but he was earned only 1,60 USD. Is it really motivated to make good posts? I think idiocracy can take over this site like other social media, where stupid and artificially boosted followers generates celebrities. It is fake world, can we do something about it based on natural human flow and not to start a rat race? ADS about steemit was so great that I really though it will be something finally form people to people:) Naive enough to be happy share with people from heart not for money:)

1) Your title is wrong, you are talking about Steem, not Steemit. Making changes on Steemit ( which is just a website) is meaningless.

2) The Steem blockchain is open, so how would you get rid of bots? By making the blockchain operations only workable by Steemit? Steem is a diverse ecosystem. Doing so would kill the hundred of Steem Apps that exist such as Busy Drive Utopian eSteem, etc. So how would you do that?

3) Self voting is an issue. But if we implement your method, whales who want to selfvote will just create dummy accounts

Rather than imposing rules, I believe that with some time, the community will self regulate, more and more initiatives aim to punish the abuses and reward those who deserve it. Of course it will take time and that won't be easy but that s the only way IMO.

I wouldn't kill bots but there should be some criteria that will stop possibility of upvoting shitty posts.

Ok I don t disagree with the intention, but how do you plan to achieve that?
What does shitty post mean? Is that a concept that someone can code? Or every post should be reviewed manually? Then how do you verify that?

I think that people behind bots should do self regulation. In comment here from @ebargains which help I am using is nice explain.

Thanks @stoodkev for reminding everyone that there's a difference between wishing Steem would change in some way and having a technical proposal that could actually push the network in that direction. It turns out to be extremely challenging to engineer incentives without unintended consequences. And in a free market where upvotes have value, I don't see how you could successfully regulate vote selling.

Curation rewards are somewhat of a regulator... you have more incentive to vote for good content that others will subsequently upvote than bad content. But push the pendulum too far in this direction and people will start only voting based on what others like.

Totally agree. I think it is already generating this tendency of just liking what others like.

Hmm, I never thought of bots that way. Thanks for rhe insight.

I strongly agree with the self regulation comment. In fact, most bots already started to self regulate and imposed different new rules/restrictions on their voting processes, including and not limited to 3.5 days post age limit, blacklists for serial abusers/scammers, etc., limit of upvotes per user per round.

All in all, most stakeholders do realize that preserving the value of the network is the number one priority. Add features and efficiencies will come with time, but we must all make sure that the network itself is valuable and not corrupted.

Keep in mind that bots also have human operators behind them, and most of the operators are constantly on the lookout for up and coming new authors and curate/upvote/resteem content manually as well. At least I am :)

This is exactly what all people behind bots should do. Self regulation. To make Steemit better.

@stoodkev - agree with your points: Steemit will likely self-regulate. I would argue that it already is self-regulated. Many posts that are innately stupid or just contain a pic- might have a couple one-liner replies, i.e."cool pic man" and this type of post will rarely make it to the Trending page where the big money is made. Good comments! Upvoted & followed.

Mob justice? Social justice?

Sounds scary :P

>Making changes on Steemit ( which is just a website) is meaningless.

Steemit needs a better UI, so, I disagree with you.

I meant for the kind of changes he was mentionning, and that are at the blockchain level, nothing to do with UI.
For the UI, I couldn t agree more with you, as a matter of fact I created SteemPlus extension to solve these problems.

I saw it, personally I don't like it, needs better UX. ;) See if you can "steal" the UX from steemkr. Good luck. :)

I just have like a month in Steemit, but in that short time i have seen the wrong this you point out. I hope they could change for better. Everything in the world can improve and get better. Great post! thanks!!!

Very nice post. According to me, there must be some indications for new replies and comments like popping up notifications..

I think there are some technical, general UI "quality of life" changes that should be made as well. For example simple stuff like being able to see your history of upvotes, or hide posts. I think the feed could be improved with topics or interest categories as well instead of only following people. Changes like this are relatively easy to implement and go a long way towards improving the average user's (and especially newer peoples') experience.

Hey nice post can you help in support it also helps new users like me in my blog grow

nice :)

😝😝😝😝😝😝😝

it's very good my friend...
thanks for the info you shared...

I was not aware one can upvote his own posts. Lol. Still learning each day something new about Steemit. Your points are valid though I am not sure how things could be changed?!

@cicbar I agree with most of your points but changing the upvote system in such a way as you described will ultimately just result in more power to upvote sellers. But your right, the current vote system doesn't really give users a reason not to just upvote them selfs or even sell their upvote, as I sadly do. In my opinion, selling my vote, is the only way, without putting in a lot of money, to actually use for an upvote seller. Actually, Upvote bots as they exist right now are just poison for Steemit, in my opinion. As long as they exist in that way as they do right now, I don't think there is a way to improve the voting system. Gz @davsner

this is very useful my friend...
Thanks for sharing...
As long as I use the Steemit app, I get a lot of experience and my insights are greatly improved. I am proud to be able to use this application. Besides being very beneficial for all of us...

This post was resteemed and upvoted by @otobot and for Upvote and Resteem to 3100+ Send 0.05 SBD or STEEM with URL in Memo thanks to: @cicbar
[IMAGE: https://i.pinimg.com/originals/23/1a/7b/231a7b66c5080ccb37407be02999ac2b.gif]

Someone should change human nature.

AGREE

Congratulations @cicbar, this post is the most rewarded post (based on pending payouts) in the last 12 hours written by a Hero account holder (accounts that hold between 10 and 100 Mega Vests). The total number of posts by Hero account holders during this period was 439 and the total pending payments to posts in this category was $5470.22. To see the full list of highest paid posts across all accounts categories, click here.

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Great post! something that we as community should think about. the staking system could be unfair for new users, and the only way to get voting power is to invest in the platform itself and power up.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L9PWO8flSp4

I just watched this debate and hope this helps.

nothing is going to change lol

bots will never go. top 20 witnesses dont give a damn about any issues because they are makin' bank. they would get voted out by whales if they rocked the boat.

welcome to the wonderful mafia known as dpos

repeat after me: abandon all hope, steem will never improve

Post the best...
i will resteem your post 😊😊

hilarious how much we all go on and on about how we think the platform can change. meanwhile, witnesses just roll around in their steem dollars, sip their champagne and laugh at us. and the whales just keep printing money. it's a beautiful thing.

also calling people selfish for self-upvoting is absurd. it's like if someone was handing out free money and i went to take it and as i was walking away you told me i was selfish for not letting someone else have it

They are not selfish because of self upvoting, they are selfish if they do ONLY self upvoting...

fair enough

Good post my friend. Thanks for sharing...
this is very useful my friend, i will resteem your post!!!

I look for quality content to upvote, and this hit the nail on the head!
This post has been randomly upvoted by @crystalhuman

To have your post resteemed, make a minimum donation of 0.050 STEEM or SBD and leave a link in the memo!

[IMAGE: https://steemitimages.com/DQmZoZeaTNgcQiS9CxjjauYTxnjiZfHQmAkCENDsUGxrKqS/index.png]

Another unfair activity is, there are numbers of community in steemit who accessory to upvote each other eventhough they don't write quality contents. They don't contribute in steemit, just posting bullshit contents, They just give vote within the community then collect rewards. Its totally unfair, we should do something about it.

Well if you are not on Steemit to make money, people like me are here to make money and also read and post good content.
Making it fair is a good idea, especially those who kept upVoting themselves. Great post though.

Upvote is not the purpose, but try to make something to give happy feel for the world. And income will be come, surely.

I agree 100%

excelente post amigo me gustaria que vieras mis post porfa

The bot issue i do disagree with you a little. Some bots do have a purpose.
@crpytoempire is a crypto bid bot game.
jerrybanfield bid bot funds many steemit projects.
and I am sure they are more

I am not against bots. I would like that there is some kind of review that would stop promoting bad posts...

That is being worked on with blacklists but still the system is too inefficient :(
Idk if their is a better way some thought of yet.

Thank you for a very helpful post, helped me to better understand how steemit works, under the bonnet.
In my first week here i was wondering, why it sometimes felt quiet and on the other hand meaningless content get tons of upvotes. I agree with bots being counter-productive, and self-upvoting is really odd, why not remove it.
What makes me wonder, is why comments seem not the influence the weight of a post.

I really like that upvote idea ☑️

Excellent post! I have wondered what's the deal with bots, but it seems they add to dilution. What do you think of photo contests and such? I'm fairly new to steemit and feel I haven't uncovered all there is to explore here. Thanks for posting.

I think your way of thinking is right, all those who today are in high position little or nothing stop to look at those who are starting. That is not fair, at the time they also needed help ... and it would be reciprocal to give to receive. I liked your post.

What if nobody helped them and they are bitter because of that, do you think they should help you still?

I think that if they are in high category, it is because many helped them. Apart from posting, comment, vote and follow do not know another way to climb category. I only agree with the post of cicbar. and if you know another way to climb the category, let me know, so that I can win. and good if they are bitter, I do not see the reason, because if nobody helped them, how did they get on? and for me this page apart from benefits that I know and I do not know is a way to drain feelings, skills, pleasant moments and because not also penalties that we passed. It is my humble opinion.

What if they didn't? What if they didn't get helped and did it all by themselves?

If they did not receive help and that is why they are bitter, then they look for professional help to solve their problem. I am not a cause of your problems.
And if you do everything alone, then give me the techniques, and problem solved, nobody forces another to help. The one who does it is because he is generous and I value that.
And to end this discussion against me, give me or give me ways to win votes without depending on others. That way you do not bother.
Tranquility and calmness is my recommendation for you .. Hugs.

If they Don't NEED to look for professional help, what then?

Why should anyone make it easier FOR you in getting votes in other words, especially if they had Valued the act of Discovering it for yourself? ALL by yourself, as THEY have done.

I would agree on this one. The crab mentality is starting to grow in steemit.

really loved this🥇💡

"Bots are not profitable"

You are mistaken. I've had great ROI with @randowhale, @minnowbooster, and @smartmarket

by stopping bots

It is not easy to issue an opinion or recommendation for those of us who have little time on the platform and we do not really know how it works internally ... Is there a certain injustice or imbalance in the way in which the upvotes are allocated and the huge amounts that some low quality posts make? The answer is yes, that has no discussion. I think the only way to go looking for a natural balance of the upvotes based on the quality of the posts, is how you are doing now friend @cicbar: heavy users, with clear criteria regarding the importance of doing Steemit more fair to be able to strengthen their paw of support, that we are each one of the members of the community and that in many cases deserve a fair value If we have more people like you, friend @cicbar, surely the reward system will begin to change and Steemit will continue strengthened, but it is a matter of time for some kind of stagnation or degrowth to occur. Greetings @cicbar.

I like that you pointed directly out, that most steemians are joining the boat to earn easy money.
Instead of splitting up upvotes in 2 categories, i would just deactivate the ability of upvoting your own post and comments.
Actually in view, it will be pretty hard to detect well written bots. But i'll try to give you an other perspective on them:
A single person ( or a group of people) can create multiple accounts and try to upvote a specific post. This cost an amount of time and energy. Upvote bots generate a kind of equality depending on investing resources.

But like others said already, join discord groups and advertise your post on other social media channels, promote yourself as hard as you can

😭 Nice Post....; 😭

Totally agree, they needs to stop this bots to respect the people who create good content.

You bring up some ideas that I had never considered before. Need to meditate on some of these thoughts and return..

Finally, I see a post about it! I was thinking about this a long time ago and I see a lot of people who are selfish but the worst part is when they are selfish whales. Why I say Selfish whales? Because they seem to have this little business where they just not only vote for themselves but create like a small group who vote for them, and that’s it, they left a good post out, and don’t even gave them a chance. I feel because of this kinda things the Steemit platform can come to an end. And let’s talk about those users with a huge reputation who don’t contribute anything to the community... It is really unfair that many people put effort and love in their posts, and later notice that certain users upload a post with a simple image, for example: a meme (That does not even belong to the user and they don’t even give credits for it) and get lots of votes (I’m not saying that is wrong to upload a picture but the problem is that it seems that these group of whales don’t put any effort and have huge popularity) and the worst part is that they only receive a non-intelligent comments in their post or don’t even have one comment about it because their post it's not good content at all. I think that is the reason why many people have left the page, simply because they believe that the key to success in Steemit is to belong to a group of whales who vote just for their friends or “business partners”, and let me tell that when you are new in this community, that seems to be unreachable.

Yup! this wont make steemit sustainable and platform for common people...only for whales.

Yes you are correct sir.. Up-Voting power should be divided into 2 different parts. Self and other (50-50%)
Also this will not completely change the system, So there would be a monthly threshold of self up-voting. If you are doing frequent self voting rather helping other steemians your self up-voting power should decrease. "This is my thought, What's your's"

Plus if all whales sells their so called smart media token ( aka steem power and steem dollars) when price goes high and leave...Steemit is destined to collapse if they don't help to promote new comers and sustain them in long-term.

One way is to distribute STEEM POWER to all in balanced way based on the quality of the contents, and adjust its value by weighting the authors contribution and activity. It should not be based on much $$ initially one put to get these coin at cheap price or inherited them with the promise to promote this platform .

Great post tnx for sharing I just upvoted.
steemit all the way.
check out my new post.
UPVOTE COMMENT RESTEEM.
@gclipse

@cicbar - agree with a lot of your comments, especially the bots. Although they probably are a necessary evil; where if you want a post to really trend, one will have to buy some bots to help in voting.

Maybe there should be some sliding scale on how much bots cost: i.e. for a minnow, you pay X amount, but for a whale- they would pay X+ whatever additional amount based on their tier level. I am certainly not a socialist, but the votes and Steem Power a whale brings, would dwarf whatever a newbie could bring to the table. Allowing the whales to delegate their voting power & still get a nice chunk of income.

As a newbie, my vote on counts for a few cents the first vote or two ... then it trails off quickly as I upvote more folks' posts. I try to reward good content and informative posts. Upvoted!!

[IMAGE: https://steemitimages.com/DQmdeVcYicUXdx6vaDYxfxoeSji62b31y3H7D1KdGJPq3xG/Voting_Power_Gone.jpg]

If you think it was bad now with a linear reward curve for SP holders, you should have seen it when it was exponential, n^2.

Completely agree. Steemit should encourage and promote new users for quality posts.

I hope that the better the Steemit will get better

Great read @cicbar! As a newly verified user I'm feeling what you are saying. I see some original thoughts getting no upvotes and posts that clearly took no effort and don't really add any value being pumped. Interesting to see how will Steemit grow and change in near future.

I agree with your concern that Steemit Inc should be concerned with retaining Steemians who post good quality content. The activity rate of active Steemians who post quality content is too low. The algorithm needs to be tweaked.

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ya... I hate people who do that, they increase upvote by buying. we are here in indonesia tries to educate new users to upgrade their quality so the posts will be meaningful and beneficial to other users

You forget one crucial point, after one week posts don't get paid and are basically buried in the blockchain because you can't find them even over the tags, so steemit's so called quality content will never be better than that of a weekly newspaper which you throw away when you get the new one.

Help me please, vote my picture
@ajiera

There a definitely some valid concerns here. Maybe they can do a consensus voting on these ? Is there a governing body that can be approached about these very topics?

You are right. These changes should be made for better Network. Likes your post

Let's make Steemit great again!

Hey @cicbar, great post! I enjoyed your content. Keep up the good work! It's always nice to see good content here on Steemit! :)

yes content discovery on steemit is a bit bad. check out my steemit content:
https://steemit.com/@supernews

Yeah I don't agree with upvote bots, but find they are necessary to get noticed

I understand what you say 100%. We should educate newbies on the arts of networking and sharing!

Now let me add an improvement to your idea: Make the Self-voting Power (SVP) usable for others as well, while keeping Collaborative-voting Power (CVP) usable for such purpose only.

The risk of creating multiple accounts is not big. Because people will have to spread SP among all their accounts, and coordinating such operation is complicated.

Regarding SPAMMERS and abusers, we should improve bandwidth control a lot more! But that is part of a another discussion...

I like your idea :-) with more sharing Steemit would be better.

I love steemit
It’s like a book of knowledge

Great observation. I see many undervalued talented writers erveryday.

[IMAGE: https://steemitimages.com/DQmZneF3HhB4jiMr8yK98te92fogenYnTpyxazjuH4iWLHQ/C-_Users_Hero-Rasseru_Desktop_steem-goku.gif]

"PLEASE EVERYONE, HELP STEEM GOKU GATHER ALL HIS ENERGY!!"

(secret; steem goku changes form as he grows)

Tokens like Steem acquire their power and new value from increasing network externalities. Unfortunately, the steep learning curve to the site and difficulty for new contributors to break into the system makes it impractical for a lot of new users from participating much at all. Steemit should be relentlessly focused on growing new users and nothing else, best achieved by:

-partnerships with existing social media sites;
-outreach to new users that focuses on the ability to basically get paid to do what they already do for free on reddit, Facebook, and their own blogs.

The potential is there but Steemit seems focused on protecting its existing power-users instead of trying to find one. I just joined and would never have heard of this place if not for my overzealous deep reading of every relevant cryptocurrecy subreddit. There is a lot of user engagement on this site for experienced users but the tutorials and FAQs are weak, new users like me are flailing in the dark, and there is no marketing investment from Steemit whatsoever as far as I can see.

Working on getting listed on new exchanges is of no value if nobody wants to buy the token. The token achieves its value and power not from its concentration in the hands of a small number of power-users, but by expanding the userbase to the point that you have lots of people who have a genuine use for the token. My two cents.

I see that this is your first post. Welcome and good luck on Steemit. I like your comment and agree with most of it :-)

>Tokens like Steem acquire their power and new value from increasing network externalities. Unfortunately, the steep learning curve to the site and difficulty for new contributors to break into the system makes it impractical for a lot of new users from participating much at all. Steemit should be relentlessly focused on growing new users and nothing else, best achieved by:

Tokens like anything of value is acquired by belief, and power is no different.

Steemit is a company that holds the hosting for the front end of the system, and when I say the front end I mean that they host noting else, you can create your own front end, youc an even right now FORK this, like GOLOS and make your own steemit that is focused SOLELY on growing new users through whatever whorish means available: such as contracting with the devil.

Steemit isn't about "basically get paid", the idea is economic freedom, read the whitepaper.

I am still waiting on a detractor of steem to fork it and I have challenged numerous people to do just that.

In other words, you might as well save your criticism and get hard at work because none of that is constructive if you understand the ethos behind steem, you're basically explaining how we can rape, murder and kill on the market when we aren't even remotely interested in inflating and blowing up steem as some kind of slut, what good is it gaining the whole world if you lose your spirit in the process? The spirit of steem and steemit has not been Hype, has not been Partnerships with the Devil, has not been masive onboarding, because all those things come from people that are simply and solely interested in profits, numbers and those are at odds with the values of quality. People will come, nobody is going to jump on the first wave, or the second or the 5th but eventually those that happen upon it will accrue, and this is a mathematical fact that as long as there is no better place than steem, more quality AND much more quantity of quality, steem will remain supreme, and I credit it mostly to the values and ethos and WHY behind steem.

I very much agree with this content, and you are very good, a lot of things that are making people selfish to uppvote post alone, but everyone will have to change if he wants to read this article, I will be posting the restim you.
Thanks you.

Steemit is awesome

as a newbie to this system (less than 4 month) I am facing what you said personally! I dedicate some of my upvoting power daily to NEW posts which I find interesting, but they make little money in the end so I don't get much Curation reward.
I try to write quality content, but no one ENGAGES and SEES them.

I even had post which a whale liked (as he commented) and confirmed it was useful for him, but didn't upvoted! :)

I had a post similar to yours, I described Steem has a great business Idea, but not a great business model. it's not sustainable.

sustainable business model needs:
1. value for new comers who are persistence in presence (they are like middle class to a society comparing to whales as the rich)
2. a way of making money for the system rather than speculating on crypto's value

I believe steemit can use parts of ORTHODOX business models like adwords and adsense to make these goals, combining them with the current model

no, we cannot, because we are decentralized and there is no consensus of introducing anything remotiely compromising to that, and as many are completely against whoring ourselves out or our abusing our attention by the very things that 90% will turn off one way or another, only so that people have it EASIER.

Steem is not a business.

Got your point and i do agree with part of it. But i cant stop thinking about the sustainability of the system.

Because sustainable growth is sustainable right? Or because insane growth is sustainable? I would beat people over the head with their favourite word like this for paragraphs.

I respect your opinion, and i have mine: sustainability matters and it will be possible with reasonable growth and benefit for hard working middle class

The only thing that matters is WHY you believe that.

Steemit cannot sustain in longer run without proper regulation

i dont see the bots as a problem. its just speeding up a process that humans do anyway. steemit has paid promoted posts anyway.

Thanks for your suggestions. I totally agree with what you are saying. In my first 3 days of being active here, I posted 7 blog posts, tweeted the better ones to about 15,000 people each and have still gotten almost zero views with zero comments and finally got 2 upvotes on the last one worth a whole $0.00. Maybe they were new signups. Clearly, the way steemit is functioning, it somehow discriminates against new members, hiding their posts for complete zero visibility. And I put a lot of hours into researching, writing and posting several of them, especially the last one, which I feel was really good. What an absolutely horrible experience here so far. Steemit will never even have a chance to succeed hiding it's new members like that. I'm very close to throwing in the towel on this site.

I tried to get one friend to join and when he got to steemit requiring a personal cell phone number, they decided not to join. Maybe that's why steemit doesn't allow anyone here to see my last post, given it is about "The key to all business is to remember first and foremost that CUSTOMERS are what all business is based upon." and that doesn't strike me so far as being very important to steemit from my experience thus far. I can't even begin to express just how horrible this experience has been so far. All the best

I really do appreciate this post, @cicbar. You got my follow, upvote and resteem

I agree with your points on bots and upvoting, despite the fact that I have used bots and do self upvote. I agree these are negative aspects of the platform. Additionally,having the vast majority of upvoting power in the hands of so few causes major issues, even if these individuals don’t self upvote. They basically decide what is good and gets rewarded and what is not and disappears unseen. A better distribution of power is needed, but I accept this is very difficult to achieve!

Google can ban all cryptocurrency-related advertising of every type in June 2018, in step with a recent update to their money Services policy.The news of a crypto ad ban comes simply days when crypto advertisers victimization Google Adwords noticed a forceful come by the amount of views of their advertisements, in step with posts on the Adwords support pages. However, Google Adwords had at that point denied any amendment in their money Services rules that may block cryptocurrency or Initial Coin providing (ICO) connected advertisements.Under Google’s fresh updated money product policy, no advertisements for “cryptocurrencies and connected content (including however not restricted to initial coin offerings, cryptocurrency exchanges, cryptocurrency wallets, and cryptocurrency commercialism advice),” are accepted.
The move affects all of Google's ad product, which means firms won't be ready to serve crypto-related ads on the computer programme giant’s own sites, likewise as third-party sites in its network.

I like that you consider the fact that many humans are selfish. In my opinion, the bots are the only factor here which equalises things at the moment. I think the real culprits are humans and the groups which purport to work according to ideals of merit. There is a lot of greed and pretence going on. It doesn't work in the interests of many of these established groups which are basically profit driven companies now, to genuinely search for good content. It is now in their interests to continue boosting those accounts which they have under their belts. Doing proper curation poses something of a risk, so they tend not to do that. The groups operate like farmers of geese which lay golden eggs. It's a comfort zone. So I anticipate they will be the first to attempt to reign in the power of upvote bots.

Whatever you said about bots is correct, I am a new user here, posted some blogs, and MY GOD was I not surprised by that fact that almost all upvotes I am getting are by bots.

Completely agreed with ya, steem is has so much potential but the developers need to push hard to fix it. Solve the hard problems!

Fantastic thinking u have!!! :)

You have shred a grate information post. I m a new person start additionally. You are spot on about bigger wallets getting greater returns however in fairness they ought to, they have got hard earned cash at danger right here. it is no specific than something else in lifestyles the more you have got at hazard must suggest greater rewards to new user..like your post and resteem

I believe Steemit is a long term investment process and I am getting used to it...

Rightly said about tipping bots, the rewards can be given regardless of the quality

How many active people are now on Steemit anyways? Is there any way you can see the total number of active accounts?

look at @penguinpablo

True talk, i agree with you.

I am a new user on Steemit, reading your post gave me some insight on what is happening on Steemit. I do like the points you are making on this post.

Splitting the upvoting is a great idea and would really help Steemit grow!!

Dear, I fully support you in this. I myself blogged about how to develop in @STEEMIT.

I ask you to read my posts and appreciate my work. I need an opinion for my self-development in General

helooo

I'm so furious watching some users use bots to upvote their posts. They with many money can easily defeat who not using bots.

Sometimes, high quality posts underestimated as the bots gives advantages to users who have money and the new posts always appear every time so that the high posts visibility reduces over time.

You just planted 1.13 tree(s)!
Thanks to @cicbar

We have planted already 3897.92 trees
out of 1,000,000

Let's save and restore Abongphen Highland Forest
in Cameroonian village Kedjom-Keku!
Plant trees with @treeplanter and get paid for it!
My Steem Power = 20745.00
Thanks a lot!
@martin.mikes coordinator of @kedjom-keku
[IMAGE: https://steemitimages.com/DQmdeFhTevmcmLvubxMMDoYBoNSaz4ftt7PxktmLDmF2WGg/treeplantermessage_ok.png]

Unfortunately, for newbies, there is no other way to be recognized other than using the BOTS. The system only rewards you if you are willing to invest $'s first, regardless of your talent.
Personally, I think its not bad in a real sense since by spending money at least you give yourself a chance to grow. And, if you are really talented this investment will definitely pay you in future. Upvoted.

Interesting post and point of discussion. Steemit generally is a good platform for the community (Steemians) to showcase or share be it their talents, interest and also their everyday life and get recognition and rewards. In order to reap rewards(votes) from the community, for a newbie like myself it is a challenging feat. Hence, tipping bots is they only way that I could think of to start in getting audience/viewship to my post. It’s the act of being visible but I know now by doing so it doesn’t mean you have people reading your posts. An YES @cicbar, I earn SBD and had my rating increased but my view count stays the same. I felt cheated as I was expecting exposure… it only bots voting you not real people. Now, I am using it just to get SBD so that I could read other posting and vote for articles that really deserved it just to pay it forward. For that reason, earning is just an afterthought.

If only everyone start to pay attention to their feed and read posts from people we follow and give honest comments, we don’t really need all these bots or whales. I have around 20 "real" followers but I can tell you only 5 of them would take the trouble to drop-by or read my post. Yes again, its a selfish world. I think we could finally be independent or have enough followers or following upon reaching >45 reputation number. Perhaps, I maybe wrong... I just hope things would get better soon as it might damper the spirits of New Steemians.

I like your idea on Upvoting.
Great article
CSGO highlights

I totaly agree with that post . Congratulations @cicbar

"BOTS are FIRST thing that I would CHANGE."

How? Or are you just navel gazing into a fake utopia?

"I WOULD SPLIT UPVOTING POWER IN TWO SEPARATE PARTS"

I more or less suggested this, but the problem you get is that it does nothing to stop vote trading/vote rings. They just vote each other for their "other" stake.

But, it would help reward generous voters who don't participate in such methods.

Bots can only be changed by self regulation. In their interest is also that Steemit is successful and with better content Steemit will be better. Two separate voting is not perfect but is better then current situation. If we all together improve and act less selfish then we would have much better Steemit. I am fully upvoting every good post, some of them are yours, and I don't care if I am gonna have less voting power for me. But truth is that lot of people are not like that...

I don't see it, why is two votes better than 1 vote? It's not, it's only another hoop that the people intent on exploiting it will inevitably go through by upvoting in between themselves like @lexiconical said. It then makes everything more complicated and gives more obscure places for people to hide in and abuse.

Some of them will manipulate for sure but not all will do that. It is not perfect and nothing can be perfect bit I think that is at least little bit better than now.

It's not, it's more complicated, therefore that's no benefit, then it doesn't solve what it sets out to solve or improve considerably on what it set out to improve so as to justify the change, and in doing that it creates only more crevices and nuances and therefore more possibility for abuse, which a lot of little abuses is the same as a few big ones but a lot of little ones makes abuse look much worse than compared to a few big ones.

Dwinblood made a nice gesture, which should be extended to everyone and it's a shame that it's not obvious enough: try to put yourself in the abusers' shoes so you can evaluate your proposal.

Opinios can be different and maybe you are right and I am wrong. What is your opinion how we can improve Steemit?

Steemit is a private company, you mean Steem. Steem is improved by little things or huge things, which usually are a lot of little things in disguise. The best one would be to have some integrity in what you believe in and how you act, which means that good intentions aren't ok if it goes against what you believe. If you believe bots are a problem then mean that with your actions. There's no end to hypocrites that complain about being forced to use bots. They are an option that is there, they aren't forced upon any in any way. They delude themselves to believe that earning upvotes should be effortless and not gruelling and getting engagement should always be positive and agreeable. Everything comes in time, ask and you shall receive, seek and you shall find.

@hiroyamagishi - you mentioned some groups this actually exists here and how it would be done to be in them

@lalira I know you can join channels in an app called discord...like @dobartim has a link to a group called "steem school" on there...it would be good for new users I think

Bitcoin has the right balance of pros and cons. That's why it's so popular.

Congratulations @cicbar!
Your post was mentioned in the Steemit Hit Parade in the following categories:

• Comments - Ranked 3 with 273 comments
• Pending payout - Ranked 5 with $ 277,66

First part would be for self upvoting and second part would be for upvoting posts of other people that you like.

That wouldn't help as many users are having multiple accounts which are upvoting each other.

'Diminishing returns' for upvoting the same accounts (own ones and others) several times would be more useful.

Apart from that one should think about changing the reward curve.

Agreed. Self voting is not an important issue. A user with 2 accounts would end up in the same result..

I'm new here, and I like your ideas.

nice post

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A great post that has a lot of truth. I am a new Steemit user and I have showed all these problems. I hope that my blog will be good content and without using bots (if it is possible). Regards!

totally agree with your arguments.. I see a lot of idiots here who are interested in some easy money without contributing any quality content. We all know that it's impossible to build a successful social platform if the outreach of a post can be manipulated with money rather than its content and if such junk content overshadow good contents then this platform will be nothing but a big pile of shit.

The best option is to ban upvoting your own posts, so there is no chance to be selfish! :D

Great viewpoint. I have yet to upvote myself and hoping that a great repore will give my channel future recognition. It may take longer but I see far greater rewards to it. Secondly, about the bots.... If cheating is the only way is it forgiveable in the future when algorithms are put in place? The answer is NO. When the bots stop, so does your unnatrual algortihm. Unless a system of compensation is put in place. Be careful everyone. If anyone could let me know if blockchain technology works differently. I would really appreciate being told I'm wrong and I will be excited about it!

Why on Earth do we need a blockchain?

digital Double spend, immutable ledger...

Without that what's published could be changed at any time.
The reward system would not be able to be provably fair. We'd have to trust that one entity maintaining the records is not changing numbers behind the scenes, etc

it will be very nice

🗅

I wrote in post that I am using bots because you need to do this if you want that your post is in trending column but I don't like that. I would like that I don't need to use them.

Yes we understand the need to force your way into the trending. You would like to be in trending without bots, but you cannot so you need bots.

Right, because other columns nobody look.

fantasic Ideas, I sure hope development team can get to see this if I upvote it lol

Bots are all over this platform.

My girlfriend and I are trying steemit together. The most frustrating thing is that it feels like a very unfair playing field.

Even if you put a great amount of effort into producing quality content, you simply won't even get a chance to be noticed, compared to someone who has paid for popularity.

Sir plz follow me, i'll follow you. Great article you've got!

Great points, here is my solution to this problem on nano level scale here on steemit...Steemit Bond Market

People have made many suggestions.

There is always a major problem with them. All it takes is using multiple accounts, so the people that seem unfair would be unimpacted by any such changes.

The solutions are not easy or we'd have already implemented them. :(

The problem is this is a very new thing, and the problems we need to try to fix have never actually been seen exactly in this format before because this is a totally new paradigm.

This means there likely are solutions, but they are likely to be difficult, and require some seriously out of the box thinking.

So keep thinking...

Yet to save yourself some time in the future try to play devil's advocate to your idea.

If you can figure out how to get around your idea then the unfair people will be able to as well. Multiple accounts can get them around pretty much anything you propose.

Also we shouldn't EVER do things just so we can say "We did something".

We should do it if we can't figure out how to exploit it, and we see that it doesn't negatively impact people that are not being unfair.

We must also realize that reality is not FAIR. It is impossible to make something completely fair.

We can try to get closer to fair though. :)

I agree with you that two voting is not perfect and can be easily manipulated with multiple accounts but I am sure at some degree it will be better because not all people would do that. Beside that, if they have multiple accounts then they need to spread SP across them so their rating would be lower on some of that accounts and maybe they will be dolphins instead of whales :-)
Reality is not fair but we can at least try to make it fair as much as possible...

>but I am sure at some degree it will be better because not all people would do that

That is a big problem with today. People often think they should do something because it MIGHT stop human nature. Sometimes they even propose doing things just so they can say they did something. You are not doing that, yet. Yet it is a risk.

I've seen people say "at least we did something" when what they did they knew wouldn't work before they did it. So in truth all they accomplished was virtue signalling.

Now my concern whenever we propose changing systems here:

1. Can it be gotten around by the people that are already abusing it and that inspired you to write this post.
2. If it can be gotten around does implementing it penalize people that were not doing anything wrong while not actually stopping the people that did wrong.
3. In some cases things can actually make things worse and open new exploits, but you might not see them if you don't make LOOKING for them part of your process. Even if you do look there is always a risk we won't see them, so this is not a perfect step but is one that should be attempted.
4. I despise socialism, communism, etc so as such I do not and never will support artificially redistributing the property, wealth, power of someone else with the sick notion that there can ever be such a thing as equality of outcome. I support equality of opportunity 100%. Give everyone the opportunities with the understanding that each of us are different and just because the opportunity is presented some of us are going to have different outcomes. It can be luck, it can be natural skill at whatever they are attempting, it can be hard work, it can be someone simply not being interested in pursuing it. Artificially trying to enforce equality is ultimately a pretty evil path as it can't be accomplished without people deciding they have the right to dictate what other people do. I won't support that... ever. Though I will support trying to equalize opportunity. And yeah I am vocal about it because I see a large sickness in society at the moment of people that seem to think equality of outcome is possible. It is not. That is not how reality functions at any level, with any animal, with physics, etc. Far too many variables, far too many differences. I actually find differences beautiful. Yet, I might walk out my front door, trip, fall, and die. Freedom has risks. Freedom can be uncomfortable. I don't believe in trying to hide the truth. We must face it even when uncomfortable. With steemit there are some problems we may not overcome... these problems will likely always leave elements of the problem you are trying to solve here.

The true problem on steemit is there is a big power imbalance. People that were in the right place at the right time before steemit even existed accumulated quite a lot of steem power. When steemit was launched they were instant whales and the way it is designed it tends to give them ever increasing power. Now they are not at FAULT or GREEDY or did anything wrong. They happened to be in the right place at the right time. Yet they didn't get there by writing great posts people wanted, etc. Some of them actually spent money to get that power and we need that too as that is how the project is ultimately funded and a big part of why we can do this at all.

This means just like reality there are going to be people that have more, earn more, etc. For different reasons. That doesn't mean they are bad guys, and that there is a magic fix for it.

Yet it does mean it will be easier for some than others. I am doing better than a lot of people, but I busted my ass to get here. I wrote many of my early posts that received $0. Often a post I loved and spent hours on would receive $0. During that time you might see a makeup tutorial get $36,000.

I learned early to write what I want to write and quit comparing myself to other people. If a person fixates too much on the money that seems to lead to frustration. This is true even of the people making a lot. I've seen people that got used to $1000 payouts and the price of steem goes down so payouts drop to $100 and they stop posting. That $100 was way more than myself and other people were making, but the change was enough to discourage them.

My point is people can be discouraged by a lot of things. We haven't found the magic bullet to fix this in life, and a lot of the attempts that keep getting recycled usually end in a lot of deaths. So I wouldn't expect it to be different here.

By the way I am big on equality of opportunity. I've been very anti-flag/down vote and have debated the topics a lot.

It just took me awhile to realize that this is something never seen before in history, and the problems we're seeing are therefore new. It is much like a market, but then at the same time it is like a board room and shareholders meeting. How voting works is very different in those two situations, but they tried to slam them together here.

A lot of the conflicts tend to come from people viewing it from a market point of view, which is where I personally tend to view it versus those who view it like shareholders and voting in a board meeting.

In a board meeting a down vote exists and matters.

In a market it doesn't. There is no such thing as a down vote. There are only up votes, and no votes. If you want something you buy it (vote on it). If you are not interested in something you walk past it and ignore it while you go find what you are interested in. No down vote exists in such a place. You don't walk into a store with a black sharpy putting Xs on the things you don't like.

That is my perspective and as such the down votes and the perception of stealing money from people would piss me off, and it wasn't even happening to me.

I'd encounter the people saying:
"It is my power to vote with how I want"
which is true...
yet
"These are my hands to use how I want"
doesn't mean it is a good idea that I choke or hit people with them.

Now that is a bit off subject, but I mentioned it because it is another problem we struggle with here on steemit. We don't have a solution for it, for the same reason we don't have a solution for your problem you pointed out.

Yet at least in your case I'd say we don't have a solution to that even OUTSIDE of steemit.

Who's strangling people on steemit? lol :D

I didn't say they were.

Read it again.

Basically indicating just because something is yours and you can use it the way you want, doesn't mean there cannot be ways that are not something you should do.

As far as being strangled. A number of people have been financially strangled and their posts perpetually kept at $0 earnings even though there were people up voting their stuff that wanted to reward them.

Strangling? No. Metaphor/Analogy.... sure

>Beside that, if they have multiple accounts then they need to spread SP across them so their rating would be lower on some of that accounts and maybe they will be dolphins instead of whales :-)

Doesn't work that way.

We had a whale who was #7 in power. He likes to flag stuff he doesn't like. I've seen posts go from $200 to $0 on this person's whim.

Eventually he broke into many accounts. Spread his power around.

Created some voting bots that people like to send money to so he made a fortune off of giving people up votes with other accounts people didn't know were his.

Yet it was still the same guy that was okay with "voting however he wanted" even if it crushed someone else.

He has many such accounts and several voting bots. I personally think at this point he may be the single most powerful person on the steem platform. He is very smart when it comes to these things.

In his defense he has supported some good causes too. He is human. We all have good things and bad things.

My only problem really with him was the "It's my power and I vote how I want" and the fact he couldn't make the leap to "these are my hands and I use them how I want" doesn't mean I should be choking and attacking people.

I figured it was better to just ignore stuff you don't like, and up vote what you do like.

He disagreed.

And like I said I suspect he is the most powerful person on the platform. It is simply spread across multiple accounts.

Spreading across multiple accounts does not decrease how much you can do with power. All it does is make it a little more tedious to login an vote with each of them, but most people just use a bot to do that.

I can't say that you are wrong but at least we can try to make Steemit better. All my life I have tried to make thing better. Even here, I am nobody, with no power to change anything and maybe my suggestions are wrong, but at least I am trying the way I can to make Steemit better. If you have some suggestion, you should say them loud and maybe somebody ho have power to change things will like that.
Easiest way is to say thing are like that and we can't do nothing with that...

Trying isn't good enough. That's why you need to polish your suggestions, maybe when they are good enough, will trying again work at making it better, but trying to make things better by offering suggestions that won't make it better, is not "at least" something you ought to be mildly proud of. It's indeed quite easy to say anything, even that things are like that and you have to accept them, it is harder to accept them and use the tool for what it is though, and a lot of times you have to know the difference between what you can change and what you cannot because trying to change some things isn't "at least I'm trying to make it better".

Just criticism whithout any suggestion is obviously only thing that you do...

I didn't have any suggestions, to me the problem is not yet a problem or rampant flagging.

Interesting observations, to be sure.

There are no guarantees of fairness here. Just look at your own post: It was extensively upvoted by paid bots. That's not a criticism, just a supportive observation that it's all but impossible to get a post "organically" into Trending.

I've only had that happen ONCE. And that was almost 8 months ago, before most bots.

Can we make Steemit better? Increase the rewards for actual curation. Strip the curation rewards for "automated" upvotes so all the curation funds go only to manual curators.

Put a big label on anything (like they have on twitter, Facebook and elsewhere) that it's "promoted content" if it has purchased upvotes.

Nice ideas. I wrote in article that I am using bots but I don't like that. Beside trending column, other columns nobody look and without bots is hard to reach it. Look at this article, without using bots I am sure that it would be seen from 100 people with 5 comments and with bots, 1800 people saw this, 300 comments and I got 150 followers. I play bu rules but I don't like them.

Great article @cicbar! Scary to actually publicly point out problems sometimes. I agree with everything you said.

But I thought of one more thing to add to this! Maybe change the algorithm? Honestly I don't know how that would work or what it would look like.

What I mean is, right now, if you get a lot of comments on a post...you might not go higher on the trending page because those comments were only worth .01, whereas one vote from a bigger wallet= more visibility.

I think engagement should play a role in getting your stuff seen more. But hey, if people are commenting then I guess it means you already are getting seen a little bit.

I live for comments lol they keep me going.

But the other thing is incentives to vote for minnows aren't there. I think you said that actually... so maybe I don't need to add.

Curation rewards...you should still get a good reward for curating quality minnow content. But, how it is now, you get bigger payouts for upvoting a whale or dolphin...so that incentivizes minnows to be ignored because like you said, human nature is selfish!

Not me either. I don't upvote myself and I always try to upvote at least 40-50% of people who leave me good comments, if not more. But I remember seeing someone woh was feeding homeless with steem earnings and her posts only got a few cents.

So that was lame, because it was GREAT quality content but she couldn't afford to promote her posts.

I was going to support/try to promote for her, but I accidentally closed out of it and couldn't find it again. I can't remember her username!! :(

The success of any social network is directly proportional to the number of accounts. The more the pipularity of a network, the more the number of users. And steemit is doing wonders. Every passing day more and more people turn to steemit. Thank you steemit for bringing the world a little more closer.

Very important observations and you've raised..

Interesting analysis of ways to improve Steemit.

nice post

There's a lot of truth in some of the comments. If there's a better way to get noticed, that is to promote your post in groups and communicate with good whales on Discord. Without the use of bots or self-upvotes, it might seem fair but people will find another way to get ahead. If you have good content, 'make the most out of it', I think is a good term. Nobody is cheating unless they hack into the blockchain.[IMAGE: https://steemitimages.com/DQmPNvmpfuvKHB6hjGGw1fGVT7ySoGtgw9H1eYUVfUvbocV/DQmPNvmpfuvKHB6hjGGw1fGVT7ySoGtgw9H1eYUVfUvbocV.png]

History shows us that whatever Humans create, Humans will destroy, or abuse, or use to their own profit. The Human nature is always the same. New Technology won't change that. New Currencies won't change that. New Rules won't change that. New Systems won't change that.

The Internet works because its a never ending Dopamine Feedback Loop. No matter what System you create, once you give Humans Power, it will be used to advantage. There is not one System of Wealth in the World which is fair. There will never be one.

And that exactly is the Problem: People like to believe what they want to believe. If you came to this Platform thinking you will get rich, well it ain't gonna happen.

The Truth is: Making a lot of Money is hard work. No matter what Road you choose to achieve it.

Another great post Cicbar! well done bro :)

Thanks mate :-)

gran publicacion nos ayudarian muchos estas mejoras. @cicbar

Excelente publicación necesariamente convendrían estas mejoras para todos. Gracias @cicbar

so nice logo of steemit....good..😃

Some great points made in this.

I upvote anything that I like and also peoples comments on my blog as much as possible.

I try to keep my voting power above 60% so when I do upvote it is at least worth $01.

Getting noticed on Steemit is the same as getting noticed on Youtube/Instagram etc.

Be consistent and provide decent quality article/insights.

Also learn to be patient, too many people quit without really trying and by that I don't mean 3 months.

Just enjoy the process and learn as much as possible and the $ will follow.

Good luck everyone :-)

Very Good Suggestions.... Maybe they could have your Upvote Voting Power decrease by only 1 % with each vote that way we could upVote our posts to earn Steem to increase our Voting $$ and 10 votes for other Great Content.

The more I read, the more I realize that basically we all agree voting bots and self-voting are bad (or very bad) for steemit. That's a good thing. Now we need to persuade Steemit inc to implement changes that witnesses will approve

Agree. I am using bots a lot to gain more visibility because without them is almost impossible that somebody see your post if you are new on network. This current system is bad but until developers change something, I will continue to use them.

Well, apparently the "Operation Clean Trending" I'm talking about in my newest post has already started, as you have received some downvotes on this post. In case you want to learn more and reflect on this, here is my latest post :

https://busy.org/@sorin.cristescu/steemit-and-the-fractal-society

I am OK with Clean Trending totally but it can't be done the way they want. I am just following the rules of Steemit. They should put pressure at bots to control what they are upvoting, not users. But bid bots have power and they can't do nothing to them so OK, than we gonna press users. Like this, they just use their whale power to press users without it...

Totally agree with you.