This terrifies me.

Steemit have defended it saying it will help support the quality content, and the good posts currently earn over 20 steem so they will earn more. The idea that steemit would reply to people’s concerns here to say, yes hundreds of tiny users upvoted your post, but the votes you get are worth less than 20 steem so you need to “work harder” is gutting - because we know it isn’t true. A story can be 10-20 hours of work, in some cases considerably more, and going to go out on a limb and say that is probably more time and effort than went into some of the stuff that does well.

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

I could cite examples of really talented artists who worked more than hard enough on their creations, and never did well compared to other artists who were more of a personality. I am sure most users reading this have experienced creating something they are actually proud of, something that was hard and took a lot of their time/effort, and it just falling by the wayside unnoticed. Instead of supporting them, I feel like this will just lead the more things like big users holding contests just to win an upvote from them, more people to curate at the top where people will get the most back, and make the current "gaming" of upvotes for curation worse.

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

I have been here nearly 2 years, and have just about built up enough steem power for my vote to have value. I currently get bully flagged by a person who doesn’t like me, on the grounds of they don’t think I deserve the upvote due to personal reasons completely unrelated to the content I produce. Once I found out steemit have endorsed that behavior to the degree of making it easier in the HF, I began to experience anxiety about posting. What if one person thinks it’s good and upvotes it, and someone else disagrees or doesn’t like the content I chose to write about, or that my ending wasn’t happy, or they plain just doesn’t like me, and having seen that steemit is now encouraging this in their explanation of the payout curve - flags me. They, for free, can take away the steem power it has taken so long for me to gather, in a single click. No comment, no justification. And I have no control over how much other people upvote me, so I don’t understand why it is okay for me to punished for that?

It feels like steemit is endorsing all the nastiness and bullying that ruins the experience for too many people.

In that vein, I disagree with indiscriminately flagging things upvoted by a bidbot when you can’t stop someone else using one of your content. A person can deliberately trigger a whole load of flags by using a bot on someone else’s comment. You can click to reveal examples in the comments section of the other posts steemit has released on this so far. There is no distinction made between bidbots used by the author and bid bots sent by users who wanted to upvote with more than their vote was worth/sent by a user who is actively hoping to trigger flags. But, if people really didn’t agree with bidbots, they would be flag the bots directly, not the possibly naïve user who used them. Unless these same people are investing in the bot they are condemning the use of, to me it seems more logical to address the cause of the problem and flag the bot. But that isn’t what is being encouraged here and I can’t help but wonder why.

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.

Right now people jump on the flag wagon and half the time, a person gets all their posts and comments flagged for leaving just one comment with an unpopular opinion. How can anyone argue it isn’t censorship? One unpopular opinion and an account get pushed into negative reputation. I have seen it happen without anyone even responding to an unpopular opinion or spampost (that would have been fine on another platform), just a tirade of flags all over a persons other posts that end up crippling them, and they have no idea what they did wrong. That was what created the upset and hurt that led to the Steemit Defense League, a person buying vast amount of accounts purely to flag users to impersonate a group with the intention of damaging the platform. That is how much flagging can hurt a person on a human level, that they will dedicate months, their own money, their own time, to lashing back. Flags for normal users are pretty rare, so when they are suddenly hit with a mountain of them across all their posts and comments without a warning they need to not engage in a certain behavior, or just for expressing their opinion and being noticed by the wrong person, it affects people on an emotional level, and they respond emotionally. Flags should be limited to the offending content, and not targeted at a content creator in general, and a person should be told why they have been flagged and given a chance to address it before they are mass flagged into the dust.

But ultimately, the flagging system is a cop out, steemit are asking their users to police the platform for them, and shrugging off the responsibility for managing the platform onto their users.

I am not alone here in saying this feels like it only benefits those at the top. Their earnings will go up, they get free flags worth enough to destroy even a mid level users who says something they don’t like. At no cost to themselves, they can take away from what people worked hard for. This is framed like it will help people combat bidbots, but what do flagged people do to try and get their rep back up…? They use bid bots. Steemit could easily shut down or cripple bidbots, but it doesn’t, instead it’s giving out free flags and slashing rewards for those who earn below the average payout. You only have to look at the average post pay out from the trending tags to see that the average user doesn’t come near 20 steem. Most average platform users would agree vote value doesn’t directly correlate to quality. I personally believe people who have voiced concerns, like @viking-ventures, are creating high quality content, but it doesn't reach the 20 steem threshold. I know myself, it's easy to put 10-20 + hours into a story, to say try harder is just missing the point. To say that flagging is an appropriate way to police users is insanity. There is no one guide we are all upholding, and what is okay and what isn’t is subjective, how is a new user supposed to know they were committing a flaggable offense? There are bidbots, nothing says you can’t use them, a new user sees a post doing well because of bidbots, and thinks, oh that’s what you need to do, okay, and spends the real money they invested in the platform to promote a post. Other users see this, and flag them. That new user lost the money they invested and chances are we just lost a user who was buying into steem.

The new payout curve + free flags feels like something that will lead to more bidbot use.

Given that quality doesn’t equate to the value of a post and the value of the average post is going to drop, the main thing people currently do to increase their earnings is use bidbots, the current most popular way to recover from flagging is bid bots. I am confident the bidbots will adapt, they are run by people who endorse this, I am sure they have a new pricing structure ready to roll that accounts for the 50:50 split.

The suggestion in the explanation from steemit that by flagging someone it reduces what they will earn and could potentially increase what you earn feels dangerous.

People already seem to comparatively judge, they declare their work better than someone else and want to know why haven't they earned as much as that person. Steemit suggesting that feeling is justified and should result in flagging is misguided. Especially given things like curie, which have other factors to qualify for them, meaning a person may not get a curie on an amazing story because they got one 9 days ago, and see a curie on a less polished story but feel like their own story is worth more. Flagging isn't the way to deal with that.

It isn’t censorship in the normal sense, because yes, you can click to show a hidden comment, but it’s creating an atmosphere of self-censorship being necessary for survival.

There is so much hate and anger on here, and so much disagreement, most people would think its okay to buy shares in @steembasicincome, but some people don’t and compare it to a subscription bidbot, with so many opposing opinions, and a free weapon being put in the hands of every user, how can a person survive? Seriously, I need a survival guide, I don’t know how to continue to share content. TL:DR - 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 - flagging with no singular guide for users isn't good for the platform - the average post doesn't come near 20 STEEM, only the top few percent will benefit, at the expense of everyone else - 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 - we shouldn't be turning on each other with flags - 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 _#sbi-skip