I am new to this debate today. All I have read is this post, so I definitely don’t have the full story. It’s too early for me to take sides.
In response to the last comment:
I don’t see how a “scammer” could do the same thing? Wouldn’t the “scammer” need about $5 million of capital. Ok, the 25% to 40% return would be enticing but I don’t quite see how a good investment is a scam.
On reflection, maybe he is breaking some rule? I think I read once that you are not allowed to post more than 4 times a day? Not sure why that rule exists?
I am not defending or attacking anyone here. I am just trying to get clarity on whether this is a scam (“fraudulent or deceitful behaviour designed to trick innocent victims into handing over their cash”), or cheating, (not following the rules), or just bad social etiquette (like not picking up your dog-poo).
I would answer that like this:
It is a little of cheating and a lot of bad etiquitte.
Steem, like every crypto can be bought in speculation for a rise in the market price of Steem. The platform however, is to be used to reward quality content. The whale that is providing 90% of haejins Rewards is not voting on quality content, but only voting on Haejin. No doubt some of haejins content is ok. Some maybe decent. And occasionally a post or two may be exceptional. But RR is not upvoting it in that way. Instead, RR is upvoting each of Haejins posts at 100%. If Haejin posted once a day he would get 1 100% upvote. If he posts 10 times then he gets 10 100% upvotes. Quality is not being used to determine the upvote.
This flies in the face of the intent of the platform, and it is not sustainable.
Steem IS unique in that you can hold a crypto AND that crypto can be leveraged with original content production to produce a reward. So speculating and being rewarded for participation on the platform. But it is not meant to be used as a "money machine."
That is the probable justification for having "Reason #1" for flagging is "disagreement on rewards". So that quality can be rewarded 'fairly.'
There is a lot of flexibility in the interpretation of 'a fair amount of rewards' and I and everyone that is flagging Haejin believe that his rewards are very FAR EXCEDING their worth.
If 10 whales were rewarding him about $150/post....and sometimes far less...othertimes far more, and they testified that his technical analysis was earning them thousands or millions in crypto trades....then it would be a harder debate.
Even still, in the above "10 whale" scenario, it would be more appropriate to do half or so of their "rewarding" of Haejin for his technical wizardry through direct crypto gifts, not by taking out huge sums from the community reward pool. The reward pool is for everyone and must be managed like a communal water supply.....not all redirected by one or 5 farmers.
That is my understanding and opinion.
Maybe @public-eye will see it or explain it differently!!
No, I think you said it correctly. The problem for most people is they see blockchain and Steem as a "programmed system" and so if you can do something, it must be okay. But it isn't that simple. Just because you can find a way to "work the system" doesn't mean that it is "okay" or permissable or beneficial.
Just like corporate tax codes. Many big companies paid lobbyists to write complicated tax codes that they could navigate and benefit from. And it got passed or adopted as law or federal code. This doesn't mean that it is fine for them to pay 50% less tax that a small business, but that is normally the case! They worked the system.
In Steemit, it isn't affected by this lobbyist situation, but Steemit is clearly a community system. And a consensus based system. The upvotes are supposed to show consensus. But when 90% of the posts upvote comes from two accounts, that can't be counted as consensus.
And in fact, it is a common complaint about more whales than these in question. Many times an account or the posts of an account are heavily upvoted by only one or two whales, and some then think that what is happening is wrong. But if it wasn't done this way, then few "rich" people would ever invest in Steem for the purpose of Powering Up. They do it for the increased value or strength of their upvote.
Thanks so much for clarifying this for me. If he is going to be downvoted anyway, what is the point of him producing long and complicated posts? He could just write “I like pasta” and vote that, as I think was done by one of his enemies.
In this case the “self-voting” seems blatant, but where dies one draw the line? How much is too much?
Do we have the right to say “Big investors must behave differently from what is very common practice by the small guy”? Isn’t it a dangerous path towards communism?
I think this is the last time I wrote such a long comment. It is nearly a Post itself.