Down-votes: Steemit's Achilles' Heel?

remlaps in #blog • 8 years ago (edited)

Introduction

I see that our favorite flagging account has been sold and is back in business. It's currently not a big deal, but just an annoyance. There's already at least one other bot following it around and counter-voting to balance the scales. But, it occurs to me that this reveals a potentially serious competitive attack vector against the platform and its users. Sorry if this is rehashing old ground, but if this aspect of down-voting has been discussed here before, I missed the discussion.

[Image Source: Pixabay.com, License: CC0 Public Domain]

Attack Scenario 1
Imagine a year or two from now, steemit (or one of the other gateways to the steem blockchain) has made serious headway into the social media market, and one or more of the big competitors starts feeling threatened. What could be easier for them than to power up a couple anonymous accounts with a large war-chest and launch a strategic down-vote campaign in order to drive away users, and reduce/eliminate their competitive threat?

Attack Scenario 2
Imagine a time in the future when dissidents from a country with an oppressive regime begin using steem's censorship resistance to publish the details of the oppression on the Internet. How hard would it be for their oppressor to fund a sock-puppet account and use down-votes to mute the criticism? (Remember NedaNet?)

Attack Scenario 3
Imagine that artists and musicians posting on steemit start getting traction and taking away customers from the major media. How hard would it be for industry groups to power-up and anonymously use down-votes to shut down their competitors' funding streams, and drive those users away from the platform?

Possible outcomes:
(i) The down-vote campaign fails and the attacker's investment holds or gains value, in which case they can just continue the campaign indefinitely, and even expand it until it succeeds.
(ii) The down-vote campaign succeeds, and their investment loses its value, but they are rewarded by achieving the desired reduction in competition.

Conclusion
If we use our imaginations, I'm sure we could come up with numerous other scenarios where a well-funded adversary could use the downvote to harm or destroy the platform. Are any of the current steem whales prepared to launch a counter-voting bot against a multi-billion dollar corporation or a state actor? Will they be ready to do it when the time is at hand? Or maybe we can just count on the financial Goliaths around the world to play nice when faced with a new competitive threat?

One mitigating factor is that a well-funded actor would drive up by the price of steem by purchasing their war chest, which would also strengthen the existing whales. I have doubts about whether that's enough of an immune system, though.

I have been persuaded by discussions here that there are theoretical and rarely encountered situations where down-votes truly are helpful, such as the crab bucket scenario in the whitepaper, but does the up side of down-voting really outweigh the down side or does the down-vote give a well-funded adversary a convenient lever to implement a denial of service attack? I'm not so sure.

#competition #curation #flagging

8 years ago in #blog by remlaps

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ats-david 8 years ago

In any of those scenarios, the "bad" actor would need to purchase relatively large amounts of STEEM in order for their plan to "work" effectively. But purchasing that STEEM is actually beneficial to STEEM and its user base, so I don't think the damage would matter much, especially once their behavior is exposed. If there is a much larger user base and the platform is as popular as these scenarios assume, then there should be plenty of users to counter those single "bad" actors.

In other words - these scenarios don't seem plausible. Someone trying to harm the network would first need to support it with their own money. And if they did that, their plan would likely fail anyway.

Also - this assumes that a single blogging platform will be the most important element of the STEEM blockchain. I don't believe that this will be the case.

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2 votes

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remlaps 8 years ago

I'm curious, in light of "the experiment," do you still think those scenarios were implausible? ( I don't think abit and smooth are trying to harm the network, but they are providing a case-study of the attack vector that I highlighted, and there has already been some apparent user egress. In hind sight, the timing of this post was ironic.)

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1 vote

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remlaps 8 years ago

You may be right. I mentioned the price increase from the attacker purchasing steem as a mitigating factor in my post. I'm just not so confident that a high-value stakeholder would be unable to disrupt the network if they were willing to burn the value of their investment.

And you're definitely right that if steem takes off enough that people start using it for other purposes, then disruption to the social network might not matter any more. I shouldn't have ignored that point.

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justtryme90 8 years ago (edited)

In reality I think people get far too offended over receiving a downvote. This is something people need to get passed. Your posts value isnt decided until the end of the voting period. Are downvotes steemit's Achilles heel? Nope, they are a part of the mechanism of assigning value to a post. Personally I don't think we should have the flag in the top corner, that makes the flags seem like they are a significant action, they aren't.

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1 vote

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dwinblood 8 years ago

The problem with this statement is that EVERYONE has their own perceptions. Telling people they need to "get past" something isn't usually too well received. In fact if we try to tell someone that they may just think we're an arrogant ass. In addition, if it does start to get popular there would be a lot of people and there would also likely be a lot of people that are not as reasonable as our community is now. Telling people to "get past" something likely would be ineffective and might actually make it worse. In addition, if there are posts out there talking about this there is no way to make sure new people have seen them. Even if they have, people have their own perceptions, and their own opinions so trying to push your perception and opinion as the correct one is not realistic. So what can we do?

I've said it would be nice if there was an introductory video people could watch when they create a new account that tells them some of our communal values such as "if you get flagged, don't let it bother you, etc." Try to introduce them to these concepts rather than just expecting everyone to "get past" something.

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2 votes

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justtryme90 8 years ago

Well down-votes are a part of the internet. The only reason getting flagged is so poorly received here is because we have made a downvote into something which is like a negative badge a post has to wear. You are reading too much into the term "get past." What was intended there is that we have to as a community get back to the mindset that a downvote is a normal thing, because it is everywhere else on the internet, and if and when the community grows huge, people will use them as such.

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2 votes

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dwinblood 8 years ago (edited)

Well down-votes are a part of the internet.

This is called an Appeal to Tradition. It is a logical fallacy that doesn't prove anything. It is the fallacy that "because, a thing has been a certain way we should continue or it is true". In reality, they have not been "part of the internet" for that long. I remember a time not long ago when the up vote/down vote didn't exist. They are actually a fairly recent thing in terms of the internet.

In addition, they are really only a THING on certain sites like youtube, and reddit. In fact, I wonder which one of those was first. I suspect youtube.

My issue with "get past" is you like many people before you are assuming because you know a thing everyone else should know a thing. You are assuming because YOU can get past a thing that everyone else will be okay with getting past it. You are also assuming that because you use down votes so will the people that come here.

As far as down votes and the appeal to tradition. As far as I know no where else has it so the down vote impacts any monetary gains. This makes it a force multiplier.

I don't ASSUME people are going to be of a certain behavior, and certain perception on down votes. If this place takes off like we want it to we are going to have a lot of people. We have a pretty reasonable group of people now, and down votes are an issue. What happens when/if the masses come here. I am not anti-down vote for myself. I've only ever had the asshole bot down vote my stuff. I've seen how it has impacted other people though and it is likely an issue.

because it is everywhere else on the internet,

This is absolutely not true. It is in a few places on the internet.

EDIT: I am also not saying get rid of the down vote. I simply think we need to find a way to help new people GET whatever way we end up with, without ASSUMING they will get it. That assumption is already proving to often be false with some of the existing people that come here, and even some that are here for awhile.

EDIT 2: Out of curiosity I did a quick google search. Not comprehensive, but it did remind me of a few other sites that have the up vote/down vote. It is not EVERYWHERE on the internet by a long shot. It is mostly youtube, and reddit. It is spreading to other places. Imgur is another place that has it. I didn't check Pinterest, but possibly it has it as well.

I know facebook doesn't have it now. I can't remember if they once did, as I stopped using facebook long ago.

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1 vote

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remlaps 8 years ago

Yeah, I agree about the drama that's been going on recently. But here I'm talking about the potential for abuse by well funded adversaries (like multibillion dollar competitors or state actors).

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1 vote

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justtryme90 8 years ago (edited)

How would they compete against all of the other large holders? Sure someone could buy a ton of steem power, but their downvote could easily be nullified by another large account. Were they to purchase and downvote content like that, it would look terribly for their business (or what ever organization they work for), and those they are promoting. I don't think that sort of behavior would end well for the multi billion dollar 'company/entity'. It's likely very complex, but I do not suspect it is steemit's downfall, any more than a multibillion dollar adversary buying a ton of reddit accounts and voting with them has been reddit's downfall.

I will add that this is an interesting thought experiment to consider.

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1 vote

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remlaps 8 years ago

They could do it anonymously. The difference between steemit and reddit is that on steemit, a downvote from a high value account hits the recipient's bottom line. For example, if you're trying to launch a start-up music business on the blockchain, how long can you survive high-stake downvotes from the recording industry? They don't seem to mind the bad publicity that comes from takedown notices.

I hope you're right about the ability (and willingness) for another large stakeholder to nullify abusive downvotes.

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1 vote

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justtryme90 8 years ago

We will have to see how it all plays out in the long run. :)

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1 vote