Well, I understand where you're coming from but I mention in this post and comment about censorship through consensus, and a big part of that is the fear of having your account blasted by people with high stake. This is how the system prevents people from speaking their concerns, opinions and the truth they see. Crazy thing is, there is only one or two people who take advantage of that fear, the rest of the large stake holders don't use terrorist tactics.

No more for me! No more fear. I'll leave steem tomorrow rather than keep fckn silent on what I see on here. People can listen, argue or ignore. That's all fine. 

But things are only ever 

> out of our hands

When we fear to speak. You always have a choice. If I've made the choice of steem suicide, so be it :)

> if THEY don't like what the witnesses are doing, they can just change a bit of code and wipe their accounts out?

I don't think that's true... but with stake wieghted voting on witnesses, the massive stake stinc has could rearrange who are in the consensus group; the people who vote for hardforks etc. Also, it's only the top 100 who make any decent profit from running a node as I understand it. There is a lot stinc could do to change the playing field. 

> I thought it was quite telling when they put in one of their blogs "if you don't like the direction of steem, change your witness votes"

Ha ha, yes... more smoke and mirrors. The accounts that matter in choosing the consensus witnesses are the ones with millions of SP, not the steem masses 🤣

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Ha ha, yes I woke up this morning with my butt in tact. It's a nice surprise to see that many agree with the content of the comment.

Maybe things will improve, I sincerely want to see that happen :)

I'm saying lots of things in this post. But to simplify it to a proposal of sorts (this post is from a comment I put on stinc's latest post as a hypothetical of what I'd try if I had steemit.incs stake), basically large stake need to combat other large stake who are leeching value. Whether through shit posting (circle jerks) or vote selling. It wouldn't be pretty, and it would need to be a continuous battle, especially as you say people would continue to move stake to multiple accounts. But in the case of bidbots, the users and the owners could still be downvoted easily enough. Why is this a worthwhile pursuit for large stake? Because the price of the steem token would increase with steem fulfilling its value proposition. Why not try and do something about what the vast majority of people know is a huge problem? Isn't that what everyone was saying the EIP might address? Pushing manual curation over automation and vote selling. 

I have a big issue (and I'm not the only one) with people who run the mechanisms that destroy steems value proposition being in the consensus witness group. Why would they ever pass any proposals that they can't get around? A group of large stake holders cleaning up the coruption amoung the witnesses might help matters. Stake weighted voting means thousands of minnows voting ethical witnesses doesn't make a dent in who gets into consensus positions  One thing is for certain, ain't nothing going to change with people doing nothing.

> Self-serving posting and voting practices would continue unabated.

This statement is partially true, but the word 'unabated' is what's key. Yes, some negative behaviour would continue, but only unabated if everyone continues to ignore it. I'd also argue that it only applies to the shit post circle jerking. Make bidbots unprofitable for both the owners and users, and they would stop. All this is hypothetical though as it hasn't been tried. Just as hypothetical as your statement that nothing would change with a 'brute force approach'. Like I said, it hasn't been tried so neither of us can know for sure.

Fair enough @wales

It really is a thorny issue, but I know what I'd do if I had steemit.incs stake and it wouldn't make me any money 'short term'. I personally think if the bidbots were taken care of, everyone would benefit by a steady increase in steem's price as people came back and new people joined.

Hi Julian

> a "trickle up" economy. I see little chance of the price recovering at the current state of it, but maybe that can be said for many alts, though steem is one of the worst performing.

Yeah, it is a trickle up economy for sure. I still think it can be saved... but hard chioces need to be made and large stake have to use that stake in a way that won't benefit them short term, but will long term as I think the price would increase if the platform worked as stated in the whitepaper. 

Only time will tell lol

One thing is for sure, I'm no longer powering up 100% of what I earn as I have for the last 2 years. D'you know that my account was worth over $4000 at one point when I only had around 2000 SP. On a personal level that is seriously disappointing to look at when I put so much faith in the future of steem when I should have just been cashing out like 90% of people were.... ya gotta laugh.... or you'd cry 😂

Thanks Mike. 

I was convinced when I wrote the comment that I'd have the dogs of war rain down on me.... but the comment didn't get down voted and many people actually voted it to the top of the thread. I'm still metaphorically looking over my shoulder though for the possibility of the censoring flags. 

Fingers crossed that won't happen as the comment has too much support :-)

Hey blueeyes8960

I did get a response from andrachy but it was a three line none answer to the many points I raised. 

> The potential is still here if only we could limit at least all the corrupt practices.

I agree 100%. It will only take a steem functioning as envisioned in the whitepaper and another bull run for steem to recover. As I said to andrachy in my response to his three sentence comment. 

> Do something about all this... with your stake! It is not too late to salvage a nugget of gold out of this shit pile. doing nothing to stop the original development (steem) from being further damaged is counterintuitive. All of these new developments are just things to hope for; hypotheticals' for tomorrow. Sorting out how the steem ecosystem works right now is not a hypothetical, it's something that can be done to improve things now, and for the future.

Hi @paradigmprospect

Yeah, that comment and this subsequent post were born out of nearly 2 years frustration, and fear of speaking my mind for the ever present implied threat of downvotes that some who run these vote selling <strike>'services'</strike> have proven to do to people who speak up.

>  a diplomatic approach that the originators of this malignant behavior hardly deserve and still it's admirable that people who believe in Steem's original prospect stay professional if the core shapers won't.

I honestly thought I was being diplomatic, it's nice to have that recognized. I could have said a lot more and in a much more combative tone, but I believe that constructive criticism is the only way forward. 

I also manually curate around 75% of what I vote, and as you say, that is the best way to get around the negatives on steem. After all, when you read, vote and comment on a quality post it's a positive interaction for both sides 🙂 I still buzz off that feeling of reading an amazing story, blog, poem or even watching a video that tells a story. When you actually get a glimpse into some else's reality, or are inspired to wonder by a fiction that you identify with, that is the gold at the heart of steem. When I used to actively curate for curie that was the joy of it, even though it was a hard job as you had to sift through so much low, or mediocre, quality content to find those gems. It's a strange thing now on steem, as there is so much less of those gems, but they are concentrated into a smaller space so easier to find, especially if you've found a tribe of like minded people.

I appreciate the vote support and shall reciprocate by reading more of your articles as well. I just glanced at one entitled <i>Plants Are Conscious Beings</i>, which is something I believe myself. It's super interesting to learn that there is

> a machine - a translation if you will - that turns a plant's electric impulses into midi data, notes in a way, becoming available and audible for the human ear. 

Have you ever read a book called [The Magic of Findhorn](https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/228239.The_Magic_Of_Findhorn)(that is a link to goodreads.com) which describes people communicating with plants through vibrational energy. I personally think that there are many forms of consciousness, more than the human mind can envision. The prevalent western view on plant and animal consciousness comes from a dogmatic religious lean that pushed our society to see other living beings as resources. The world opens up so much when you can see the varying consciousness in the environment around you.

Anyway, I'll leave this comment here before it turns into a novel... plus I've got to do the washing up 😂

Thanks again for adding your voice in support over these steem governance issues. They are things that could be solved, but for some reason continue to go unresolved.

> To be honest, if anyone downvotes this or your comment, it is flag abuse and censorship in my opinion.

Cheers for the moral support. Yeah, I agree, but I've seen others censored on here by whale flagging. 

> Most important is voices like yours need to be freely expressed and people should at least listen.

This 100%. There is a certain amount of sheep like behavior on steem due to the incentive of following the company line. I don't expect everyone to agree with me, and I'm humble enough to realize that I may well be wrong on some points with the whole steem governance things, but as you say:

> even if these are not the intentions of the would be in powers, it is what a lot of people think their intentions are and definitely the impression they give to some people.

Impression means a lot. It's bad impressions of what is happening on steem that drives quality content creators away. Anyway, I said my piece on Stincs post and now I can get back to the more important job of writing ;-)

Hi @bengy

>  I saw that you were actually picked up by some crypto news outlet! I can't remember which one.... but that is what brought me here!

That's crazy, I would be interested to know which one? I guess that any traffic to my blog from outside steem is a good thing :) Everything about this comment was meant as constructive, I honestly wish steemit.inc would do something about these issues... and the only way I see it happening at this point is if they start using their stake in some regulatory way. I know it kinda goes against decentralization, but the truth is that if they followed my suggestions they'd be attempting to combat the massive centralization that has happened on steem because of early adopters pre-mining and also problems I see within the governance of the consensus group being far too small.  

Anyway, that's all just my opinion but I think it's worth a shot. Inaction on the corruption in the governance isn't going to progress things at all.

Creating "quality" content is hard and difficult work. This is a space where anyone like me can get on with absolutely no clue what we are doing and start posting (I still do this to some extend [shame on me - lol]). Most will not work on getting better to any degree without an incentive to do so. To that point, @curie has been awesome in helping me to produce the very best content that I can at my current stage of the game. Where are more people like them? Why is curie seemingly the only one that gives a fuck?

I'm guilty in the manual curation part. I've got a very small stake in the voting bots because I do want to support all those people that I may never upvote otherwise because I'm not spending a whole lot of time here in steemit.

🤣

> Free for all, baby. No leaders. Everyone is equal and blah, blah, blah.

It's a free for all if you have 100000 SP or more. Have a look at those guys and you'll see the vast majority of them only cute each other... strange that 🤣 

there are exceptions though, theycallmedan is one, and there's a few others that randomly seem to start supporting people.

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