I agree with you. As to what you said about having to pick why you're flagging someone. I made a post about that and Bernie Sanders flagged it and I lost everything. He probably did that because if Steemit took my criticism, he couldn't flag people for the hell of it because he will have to pick why the post should be flagged with a legit reason. The down vote pool is a horrible idea and people will abuse it.

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![](https://cdn.steemitimages.com/DQmUiQmej1AYYVYi2cWp7fwuwrEyZkiXNYhDJEVTr5boAFY/image.png)

I'm scared too, but let see what will happen.

I'm going to come back and read all of this. Incredibly thoughtful from what I did scan.

> ### If steemit really cared about stopping spam or shit posting with flagging, they would have added the long requested functionality to flagging, where a person has to select from a list the reason for flagging, and leave a comment with a min character count to say why.

That's kind of what we do with [@steemflagrewards](https://steemit.com/@steemflagrewards). Took it upon myself to create a system where users may properly moderate and receive rewards for legitimate flags (NO OPINION FLAGS). We've received a fair amount of community support and are approaching 100k SP but, unfortunately, Steemit Inc has not shown interest as of yet.

*Note: Opinion flags bases on idealogy. Technically we do flag based on our subjective evaluation of rewards specifically as it pertains to bid bots.*

With their support, we could go after bad whales, flag em, comment why,  vote that comment with an alt and burn the rewards.

...Or alternatively if they desire work out a community support curation initiative with the rewards. We have the bodies in our Discord of about 450-425 (fluctuates) strong and I'm sure we can easily find volunteers among them.

The great thing about our community is the culture and ethos we share. We aren't just trying to bring any jerk trying to make a quick buck but are full of people that really care about the platform and have higher integrity imho.

I'm off on a tangent. Sorry you are being targeted. I'll take a look at your blog, maybe create a post about your comment later. Check out [@steemflagrewards](https://steemit.com/@steemflagrewards) if you have time.

Really reasonable concerns there. But i do believe when content is flaged, the administration goes through the post before attributing a reward or reducing points. How ever, if the whole system is automatic then we have a big problem there.

Flagged because you're oblivious to the intent of Steem/Steemit and this sounds like nothing but a bunch of whining from someone who doesn't care to build up their own Steem Power.

I agree with you 100% have said this for over a year since ned offered us the BS of HF20 and RC/Mana and all the frauds that created.. Funny I hear he powered down and left steem after I called him out over 12 months ago for doing just that! (he flagged me with his insane power just to spite me for mentioning his name negatively)... Funny what you say is EXACTLY what I predicted over a year ago! Flagging should NOT EXIST! After getting rid of flagging we should not be creating a situation where if you do not know whales and/or have insane SP and self up vote that you are punished with lower rewards... It should be linear... You get 200SP in voting power at 100% it should be 1/10th if you got 2000SP in voting power up voted on your post at 100%... THAT IS A FAIR VOTING SYSTEM! Skewing rewards based on how much a post gets ONLY favors the big pay for up vote bots and adding a FREE downvote ensures people can just create lots and lots of fake bs accounts to flag you and destroy your reason for being here! These people who claim you are wrong... ARE THE EXACT people who flagged me and tried to say RC was a good thing and proved AGAIN AND AGAIN they are not into a free good platform but rather protecting self interest.

Witnesses should have been expanded to over 500 and frankly SCALE with active userbase... This is how electoral college works in America for the very said reason of protecting the individuals from a mob rule (democracy)...

Your comment is very insightful I recommend you contact me and discuss more privately as I have a lot to say and I know by reading your comment you do as well!

Some people earn very little. It DOES NOT MEAN that their content is WORTH less and NOT AS GOOD as someone who earns more. I am totally with you on that concern. I am trying not to let this dictate my internal state of being, but it's very difficult right now. Steemit is basically saying that those of us who earn less than 20 Steem, our content isn't good. Some of the stuff I share, like the fanfic or videos, HOURS of work, WEEKS of work, MONTHS of work.

It's as though they are trying to get rid of us.

Steemit is going to give more to people who earn more and give less to people who earn less. Not fair. Why not give equal. Not more to some and not less to others. Why should someone else gain more and someone else gain less? Just have it be they earn what they earn.

Hot take: The Whales want the minnows gone, but they are too much of COWARDS to actually tell us to GTFO. 

I am going to monitor closely how my posts do after this fork, but if this relationship becomes unhealthy for me, then I am out. Never thought I'd say it because I had a lot of hope for Steemit.

Time to look for a replacement platform. This sucks.

I agree absolutely. 
HF21 sounds like a pro-whale update at the expense of everybody else. Basically it sounds like the centralised government structures that we know and hate - and WHICH CRYPTO SHOULD BE TAKING DOWN, not mimicking!

Come check us out instead!  We forked Steem at HF 19 and created a mobile review platform for iOS/Android where users earn crypto for reviews of restaurants, hotels, movies, video games, coins, exchanges, dApps and more!  All 100% free!

Earn like you used to earn!

If you reply with your username, i'll even kick you 10 additional BRAVO!

I like this girl :))

Completely agree with @calluna 
Especially with regards to "Hard work and good content does not mean a post will be worth anything."
I am lucky if I get 20 votes on a post. For example, here's a video that I had commissioned for a conference
6 months of work, dozens of fo people involved. Several tens of thousand views and likes on other platforms but only 7 votes here in Steemit:**We must Return: Building the Moon Base.** https://steemit.com/dtube/@epicdave/4858lgu0fgw
Same goes for news related text posts "The A.I Medical Revolution?💻: https://steemit.com/science/@epicdave/the-ai-medical-revolution-jg3cambh

No way in Hell are both posts combined close to 20 steem. 

It's difficult to grow here on Steem as it is, but these new changes are going to make it next to impossible. It seems like the whales are the priority with this update.

I wonder if these changes will cripple the likes of @actifit and similar projects?

I agree with @calluna. This will be very bad for people without money for buying promotion, bots or 
 steem power. People just like me will be working a lot for people that does not create new and original content. I think it is a terrible situation for a lot of little content creators. May be they should create new platforms based on contents and let Steemit just for programers and blockchane creators. Artists and writers like me does not have much opportunitties here. May be we should migrate.

agreed, it looks like it's completely gonna suck m*** a*s for the small fry :) ... we shall see, barelyh any post ever gets to 20 steem without putting money into it and the extra downvotes certainly wont help lose the policing culture ... or maybe rat-culture now, get paid to flag lol ... never mind and fuck it , the steem price will show what its worth in the end

> This terrifies me.

It shouldn't. :-)

(btw, I would recommend reading @timcliff's [Open Letter to all Steemians - Hardfork 21: Culture Change](/@timcliff/open-letter-to-all-steemians-hardfork-21-culture-change))

I'm sorry for a relatively short reply, it's way beyond my abilities to respond properly to such long comment on a Friday's late evening. ;-)

> Hard work and good content does not mean a post will be worth anything.

True.
But for original, high quality content there's a better chance to lure voters because it increase probability that ... it will lure even more voters.
Steem never promised people to pay for their hard work as if blogging were their full time job as successful professional writers.
Steem can pay **something** instead of **nothing** (see Facebook, Reddit, Instagram).
They are Steem users (Steem Power holders) who decide who gets paid more or less for their effort.
Think of Steem as decentralized publisher that splits their profit among all authors (well, that's exactly how it is), where authors are also members of the board.
Now we need to make sure that our Steem can generate profit and pay for good content.
HF21 is an attempt to solve some of issues that we have here.

> Steemit introducing free flagging, and letting people take for free what others worked hard for is like a gut punch.

Downvoting is an integral part of a post value e**STEEM**ation. 
Without free (relatively small) downvote pool, people had to sacrifice their potential rewards from upvoting in order to fight abuse.
Retaliation downvotes and downvotes from trolls & psychopaths would happen regardless of separate downvote pool.

> They, for free, can take away the steem power it has taken so long for me to gather, in a single click. 

No. Nobody can take away your Steem Power. All that downvote can do is affect your ***potential*** payout for post, and - in edge cases - reputation (if you was downvoted way below zero AND your reputation is lower than downvoter's)

IMHO using name "flag" for downvotes was a mistake. That created feeling that flag is something special.
It really isn't. In as same way as you are receiving random upvote from random user, you could receive random downvote from other random user who disagree with previous.

> steemit are asking their users to police the platform for them, and shrugging off the responsibility for managing the platform onto their users.

Steemit is not Steem. Steemit is just part of it. Steem is our platform. Users. It's us who decide.

> I am confident the bidbots will adapt

Agree. But they would have to adapt with behavior that's more in line with what's good for the platform.

> Seriously, I need a survival guide, I don’t know how to continue to share content.

Don't worry, @timcliff's post mentioned above could serve that purpose :-)

> a 50:50 split encourages curation at the top because you can earn so much more from it so it follows why waste curation on smaller users when you will get more back from upvoting someone big
quality is not reflected by post value at all

Not really. If all knows that `alice` produce original, high quality content, they can be lazy and vote for that instead of searching for more, but to really get good curation rewards they would have to vote earlier and earlier (before others that wants to do the same) that will make them enter 5-minute window and burn parts of their rewards, until it became more profitable to go and search for undiscovered content.

> flagging with no singular guide for users isn't good for the platform

As you said, that's subjective, but there are [some guidelines](https://steemit.com/faq.html#What_are_the_valid_reasons_for_downvoting) on what's a good or bad reason for downvote.

> the average post doesn't come near 20 STEEM, only the top few percent will benefit, at the expense of everyone else

That's out of context, all will have reduced author rewards, above is just estimate where curve shape will start to have more/less impact
in the end it's for the sake of the whole platform

> Posting is scary when you can lose everything you have built up with no warning just because someone didn't like your story, didn't like you personally, or doesn't think it is worth what it has compared to what their 
own post got

HF21 doesn't change much here. Disagreement on rewards was always one of the examples of valid reasons for downvotes. 

> we shouldn't be turning on each other with flags

Stop treating them personal. Most of them are not, only a very, very, small portion of them are (and downvotes are really very, very rare in nature)

> flagging other users shouldn't be explained as a way to earn more on your own posts

> reducing the payout for the average user whilst increasing the cut for curation takes from the user base and feeds the top

Gives incentive to Steem Power holders to actually... hold the Steem Power and vote
Otherwise, who you'd expect to vote for posts?