Some thoughts on voting and bots

I have a long train ride to read all posts by Hive account@dantheman and this post really struck me.

There is a lot of controversy about Hive account@berniesanders announcing to flag Hive account@minnowbooster. Some call him an abuser for flagging people who probably got into the crossfire undeserved. Some call him a dark knight and savior for saving steem from vote buying that he initiated with Hive account@randowhale.

My opinion is that vote buying is a symptom for a bigger issue of discovery. New users have a hard time getting noticed. Many don't care about content or the humans behind the screen. A few dictate most rewards.

There are many good discussions on how to solve these underlying problems and participating in the process of finding solutions is incredibly important.

Until this process comes to a solution, minnowbooster will be 'the better bot' with a team that cares. Sure, we earn money for the work we do and there is nothing wrong with that. And we will protect our customers at the best of our abilities.

The last week was rough and interesting. I talked with Hive account@berniesanders and he said that many complaints about buildteam were raised to him. And I think it is really sad that I got to hear none of them, so nothing can change. Most feedback we got was implemented as soon as possible, was completely unaware of reality or was something no solution exists for.

Some users expressed their disagreement with flags and we didn't retaliate. We respect the fact that others have different opinions and they have a right to express them. Just because some like to threaten others doesn't mean everyone will.

At first I was pretty angry at bernie and his lack of feedback, what his problem was. But I thought about it and he is just a human being like I am. He was not aware about rando abuse happening and about all the work minnowbooster does to combat abuse. And I see him making up for it by digging up a lot of abuse he will probably flag starting in the next few hours.

I don't think minnowbooster customers are part of the abuse and in the spirit of dans post I could probably offer a list of really bad guys. Should Hive account@berniesanders or someone else find abuse of minnowbooster then we can unvote it. I decided to ban Hive account@earthnation on their recent behavior and will leave the decision to others if their use of minnowbooster is justified.

So to summarize, my take on this matter and my suggestion:
• if you think, what I do sucks, tell me
• ‎if you dislike something, flag it
• ‎I won't flag you for disagreement (outside of rewards)
• ‎minnowbooster will exist as long as users need it. If you hate MB, try fixing steem.
• ‎If you hate me getting a few dollars for the work I do, I suggest you support Utopian.io as Systems like this could be an incentive for developers to get payed for doing things for free.
• ‎Stop crying reward pool rape and fucking do something. Should steem require witch hunts to survive then the system is flawed. Getting away from a linear curve and delegation could help, but more discussion is needed.

Get uncomfortable, buckle up, this will be a bumpy ride and there will be no heroes or villains, only humans.