Hopefully your dream will be realized =D

Hey @acidyo, would you please consider checking out my proposal on post on the issue of Upvoting Servies and a my proposed solution? I really do believe it is in the best interest of Steemit. I wrote a long comment on the post as well, but I'll just quote it here for your convenience. 

>I like the idea very much! However, as Steemit continues to grow, these curation efforts will become harder and harder to keep up. Also, it seems, for the most part, your proposal would suggest to whales to take their delegation away from a **wildly** profitable endeavour, which is Upvote Services which I doubt they will. 

>I'd say that Upvote Services are a much larger problem than people realize. With each upvote that is shelled out, that amount is taken out of the rewards pool. It also completely ruins the sorting algorithm as a piece of content that organically earned $100 in upvotes from creating awesome content, would sit next to a piece of trash which upvoted themselves for $100. 

>Since **everybody** uses Upvote Services, the playing field is aritifically heightened. For your content to ever see the light of day is $10 earnings before anyone even sees your content. 

>You would have to first, spend money, which gets taken out of the reward pool, and paid to a whale. 

>I have created 2 in-depth posts, one, identifying the issue and how it is negatively impacting Steemit as a whole, and another, posted on utopian.io as a proposed solution. You can find them here : 

>[Growing Unhappiness with Upvote Bots on Steemit](https://steemit.com/steemit/@bitopia/growing-unhappiness-with-upvote-bots-on-steemit)
[Proposal for New 'Promoted' Function](https://steemit.com/utopian-io/@bitopia/proposal-for-new-promoted-function)

>I seriously think this is a major problem facing Steemit right now and will continue to make Steemit more and more toxic until somethings changes. I sincerely believe that the solution I have came up with will alleviate the issue as well as bring a positive impact to Steemit. As of right now, I am focusing on bringing more awareness onto the proposal in hopes of it ever being implemented. Please do check it out if you have the time.

Thanks ;)

seems to me, someone one, perhaps even me, should make a steemit blockchain based website that filters out the 'upvoted by bot' content value.  of course this does nothing for them leeching the system, but i think i'd enjoy the content more.

I don't have any dream that this would be a permanent solution regarding the size of steemit, but what we need right now is to clean up the platform, and this would be the quickest and easiest approach in my opinion. 

Vote selling yeah... well I haven't done the maths as to its profitability compared to my idea, but I don't think it's impossible that they could make just as much money from priority-selling. Using curation teams vastly spreads out that reward pool to a much larger field, and as more whales get on board, the bigger and more numerous curation teams become: more money for the many, but *including* the elites.

>  I think the solution to this is everyone's vote contains the same value, and no bots/ trails are permitted for voting

Totally unworkable. Bots will happen anyway, and stake-based voting works in favour of the platform. One identity per vote isn't something that can be solved all that easily.

Probably the best way is to google the right questions. Searching on here isn't that intuitive yet. 

I can summarize quickly for you though. Your account has a certain strength, depicted by money. 

If your wallet has $1,000 for example, you can put that into 'steem power' (check your wallet to see that), and that $1,000 will grant you about 8 cents of voting power. This means all your votes will give people 8 cents each time. 

If you make good stuff, more people and more powerful people with say, $500,000 dollars in their wallet upvote *you*. Your post makes $40 and 7 days later you can put that into your wallet to increase your voting power. Over time your vote becomes stronger and so on. 

The problem I talk about here is that the huge users with millions of dollars have votes worth $50-100 a pop. They can sell that as a service to individuals who can then upvote their own content for $50, even if it's just a single sentence or meme. It means only a few people are taking all the money that exists on the platform and it basically collapses, and everyone is looking for a solution. I think mine is the best!

Not really. The user still has to pass the requirements of quality, they still have to work for it. I suppose it would be like joining a golf tournament but you get to pay for the nicer golf club set. You still need to shoot straight at the end of the day, but your results might be better and more people will look at you. It's the only way I see that can interest the whales away from what they're doing now, short of programming an outright ban against their will - which will just cause people to find another way to abuse the system.

I'd still be more inclined to call it a P2W MMO hah. But yeah generally I just curate and post and have fun. The money isn't something I intend on even touching at any point in the future I see.  Just enjoy the community =)

The reason the premium service is there is for the benefit of the whales offering the delegation. They need to earn money in some way, otherwise they will continue renting it out for self-voters to abuse the reward pool. 

This way, they get money in a less abusive, more honest fashion, but people are also encouraged to post good stuff, or at least 'passable, non-stolen' stuff. It's important to pay attention to the whales, too, that's the crux of the issue

Yeah there's no denying that. I mean even Youtube, a place that at one point took up 2% of the entire internet, is STILL a hugely flawed place (right now perhaps more so than Steemit since the new direction), so we have to carry our ghosts of shame or whatever, but as long as they're manageable

For a start yes I think this definitely opens a book of master classes or workshops, and that is nothing but a good thing, but as I mentioned in another comment, I think if we simply make the criteria objective rather than subjective, there's a lot less pressure. For example with steemstem, you can probably get a worthy upvote if your content is original, references, credited images and more than say 100 words. 

If that kind of thing is clear, people won't feel robbed because it's laid out in front of them. For the most part people will more likely strive to work better for bigger upvotes. Kids at school who get a D- typically don't complain, they know they suck and they don't much care. 

Kids who get a B are typically good kids who will see that as a promising result with room to improve. Not many will storm out of the classroom demanding an A! Though I'm sure that happens...

Ha! Butthurts

Stake-holders would do well to realize that delegating SP without any strings attached will lead to a meritocratic curation ecosystem. That'll ultimately lead to a healthier Steem network, that may (given an informed market) increase their stake's worth by millions of dollars. Surely, that's worth a lot more than fishing for a few thousand here or there for selling delegations and votes.

Of course, the whales need to unite and take action to enhance content on Steem, and delegate to hundreds/thousands of the most engaged and loyal curators of the community. 

Yes, I know this is an utterly utopian idea, and will never happen, but thought I'd leave it out there. But then again, Curie and steemSTEM are still surviving, so it is not impossible. As far as I'm aware, neither pay for upvotes etc. The same might also be true of OCD, I think?

PS, to clarify: Projects that do not ask anything from curators or authors. They do not pay for voting power, but rely on altruistic whales. They return all revenues back to the community. This way, there's complete apolitical meritocracy with no scope for corruption.

As mentioned in the chat, that's not wrong, but I think if we limit subjective requiements and focus on objective, as in, referenced, credited images, original content, more than 25 words, then we can easily guarantee a minimum, and if they don't match those objective requirements then they can't complain.

Regarding Curie, at steemstem, we get paid via the curation rewards that are generated from our team's work in science. It's not huge (the people we upvote get substantially more than I ever will being one with the power), but it keeps me happy

We basically need more OCDs and curies and steemstems, and utopians. And for the whales to delegate power to them. How do we do that?