With hardfork 21/22 came some changes to how voting works. The steembottracker website has been updated to show vote values in the new ecosystem where the author/curation split is now 50:50.
The reward curve is still separate from the calculation: if your post hasn't received much voting the bot will apply less. If the post has already earned decent rewards the bot will add more. That's part of the new curve, but that isn't taken into account when buying votes.
Free Downvotes
The other change is free downvotes for all users. If you didn't notice these were used rather rapidly on some posts in trending. A couple of trending post rewards essentially evaporated as the community disageed with the value.
This is extremely healthy for the ecosystem and we applaud the community for helping to determine reasonable values for posts based on their contributions to the ecosystem.
Did the pendulum swing too far already?
Right now lots of bots are sitting entirely unused. Some of you may be applauding that as you hate bid bots and all they stand for, but keep in mind the bid bots have people holding millions of steem. As you're cheering for their death it may lead to the exodus of people holding millions of Steem and drive down the price.
Rather than celebrate the complete death of all bidbots let's talk about a smart use for the voting service.
Vote Buying Terror
Right now it seems that people are terrified to use them. Some of that is probably pretty healthy for the system, but should vote buying be zero? Can there be legitmate use of purchasing post promotion? Can the community handle "good bot voting?"
Good bot use: Does this post add value to the ecosystem?
There are a handful of post types out there.
- Shitposts designed to milk rewards
- Posts that provide some value, but likely only to certain groups
- Things that help the whole chain ecosystem by providing value
Generally speaking, I'd suggest the following. Flag the crap out of shitposts clearly designed to milk rewards. Let moderate value posts collect some rewards and if they choose to use a reasonable amount of botting to help get noticed let it stand. If people are generally adding value to the chain and want to get noticed I'd encourage the community to use bidbots and let the votes stand.
How can one determine if it's adding value to the chain?
Value is subjective. We are actually looking to crowd source that value with the voting system we have here, but there are some general things that can help determine that.
- Is it facilitating businesses or communitites migrating or interacting on Steem?
- Is it helping to powerup or burn steem?
- Is it attracting new eyeballs to Steem?
- Is it providing unique perspective or content you can't find anywhere else?
- Is it providing a service to the community?
Posts can certainly have value that aren't those things. But before you use a bidbot or before you flag a post using a bidbotted post I'd suggest you ask yourself the question "Is this content providing value to the Steem ecosystem." If it is providing value go ahead and use a bidbot and promote yourself. Try not to flag posts that add value. If the post doesn't add value you should probably steer clear and flag if it has a lot of post rewards.
Post promotion can add value
By allowing posts that are clearly aiding the ecosystem to accept votes we can help them trend. A new project or service that doesn't have 1M steem to get on trending can now use it appropriately to get some eyeballs. That's good for the ecosystem!
It also allows Steem Investors to earn a passive return. That's good for the price of Steem.
Overall; good clean up, let's not obliterate the industry
My argument at it's heart is that post promotion can be ok when it's used to promote posts that add value to the ecosystem. If they provide a little value, it shouldn't be that big of a deal to promote it a little. If it provides a lot of value I would encourage people to bid bot and not flag the botted post. If it's a shitpost with tons of bidbots on it we as a community should nuke that biatch.
If you're a "good" user that doesn't typically use bid bots consider using them for a little bit of promotion on a good post. Help your account grow, get more eyes,and support some whales who hold stake here. Just try to make sure that the post is unique and providing value.
Overall, nice job Steemians! A+ cleanup work!
Here's the definition of 'trending':
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That tab is the organic content producer's turf.
For what? Two years? We've been handed the shitty end of the stick and had our work buried by bullshit. Our work was deemed UNPOPULAR by default. I have no problems downvoting ADVERTISEMENTS in the same way I'll want to skip an ad when I'm visiting Youtube, or get off my ass to get a drink while the hockey game is on commercial break.
If the UI could detect all forms of paid votes, then place those posts under the PROMOTED tab, instead of the trending tab, things would be one hell of a lot better. Change the name of the PROMOTED tab to 'ANNOUNCEMENTS' if you have to, so it doesn't scare people away.
What's so hard about creating a culture that isn't afraid to hit that promoted tab? Why don't people hit that promoted tab? What's wrong with it? They don't want to see ads, perhaps? Hence the reasons so many have been pissed off about that trending page for so long?
What is so fucking hard about sorting content and putting it in the right places? Where's the balance? Why are systems working against each other? ACTUAL CONTENT lures in eyes, and those eyes are distracted by ads, and some of those ads get hits. That's how the internet works. Why are we trying to do things ass backwards?
Look what you folks do with the tribes. Promoted posts mixed in with ACTUAL CONTENT, but not overpowering it. That's one good way. Why are we trying to maintain Steemit's shit-show?
Fuck advertisements on the goddamn trending page. They don't belong there unless you redefine the goddamn word.
Exactly. People want to see what they want to see, not what others tell them that they should see.
There's a reason why 0 popular social media sites and apps had any form of advertisement or paid promotion during the growth stage. Because it harms the user experience. All that stuff can wait until there is a mass adoption where being promoted is actually attractive because there are people who will see the stuff.
There are no ways to make bidbots work well with proof of brain and an inflation-based reward system that subsidizes the business by reimbursing the "customers". If you want to promote content then pay a UI or future community page to have your ad or announcement somewhere it makes sense, or even by burning STEEM. 1. Don't mix it in with the content-rating that is supposed to reflect the wisdom of the crowd. And 2. Don't have Steem pay back your promoters. That adds 0 value back.
You know what though? I had to step away for awhile. The absolute last thing I want to be doing these days is becoming frustrated again with the very same things I've been frustrated with for years. I had already said what I said up there, many times, over the years, plus so much more. Over the past while I had finally calmed down, got quiet, did my own thing, for the most part.
Everything you said, in my mind, is 100% accurate; truth.
What are we going to do though? I really don't want to spend another two years arguing with people. There must be something more productive but at the same time, problems can't be swept under the rug.
For so long, these issues have caused so much division. Everyone takes sides and all we do is bitch to one another. So there's another problem that we don't need. This doesn't need to happen again. I don't want to do this anymore.
If what you're doing isn't making you happy – do something else.
That is the stone cold, central axiom of life that everyone needs to live by and most people fail.
Now, there are real mechanical reasons that Trending is a steaming pile of crap and bid bots are inherent to the function of the Steem blockchain as designed. It falls out of the idea that all accounts are equal because determining the difference between a human making a decision about selling their vote or not and machine selling their vote or not is impossible. Ergo, there is a market in selling votes and influence. When there is a market in selling votes and influence, there is automation to optimize that market. When markets are optimized, often human interaction is only important in a greater, broader, strategic sense and the actual specific interactions are effectively meaningless.
Which is a really long-winded way of saying that the underlying proof of stake mechanism (and the fact that proof of brain is and always was a fiction) is the root of the problem, and as long as the root remains, the problem remains.
So what can you do?
Something else.
Determining what that "something else" is probably requires real careful thought about what it is that you want and that you want to achieve. Sometimes the things that we want our impossible so it doesn't matter what we do, they just aren't going to happen. Sometimes the things we want or only partially able to be accomplished. Sometimes the things we want are completely out of our control.
So what do you want? Odds are, if it's more involved, complicated, or limited than simply thinking of the Steem blockchain as a blogging platform, first and foremost, with no possibility of fiscal reimbursement for your work of creation, then what you've been doing is going to have to change. However, if you can shift what you want to just that, change the way that you frame what you're doing into what you are likely to get, then you can be not just satisfied but happy.
Therein lies the challenge.
I've given these things careful thought. Thoughts that evolved over time into something that would allow all of these things to work together and benefit everyone involved.
The reality is, mentioning these paid votes are a problem often gets converted into, "Ban paid votes!" But if they truly are meant to be a tool used for advertising purposes, I know there's demand and money to be made. But these systems only work when they're working together, like a team.
Actual content lures the eyes in, and those eyes might click ads. When they boost advertisements and dull announcements to the top, the actual content capable of creating a buzz is pushed aside. The act of placing the ads and paid programming on a trending page like this shrinks the potential market. How many businesses exist forever if every sale means they're just adding another bullet to their own foot they keep shooting? The more they do it, the less eyes and interest they'll get.
The proof was there for all to see. 20 posts and maybe ONE had a decent amount of engagement, when you remove the disingenuous comments left by members who've been misled to think the content was popular and the producer was wealthy (kissing butt and hoping for a vote someday). The real engagement was almost nonexistent. Nobody here can tell me they didn't see that. For years, people would say, "I don't look at the trending page." It was said so much one could have printed that line onto a shirt and sold thousands of units, while the one wearing it gets laughs at these community gatherings.
The business model eats itself to death. It can't scale up. The exact moment it becomes as successful as it possibly can is the same time it falls apart.
If this place was booming and 1000 people all wanted a top slot at the same time, your advertisement would get buried within seconds and whatever amount of rewards are placed next to the post would become the new starting point of ZERO. Everyone would blend back in to the crowd they were attempting to stand out from.
Now, on the other side of this world we have content producers. I can prove to you right now, as I have a post on the trending page that was pushed up there organically, how the paid votes will force me out and diminish my chances of receiving what are supposed to be the benefits of being there.
I will not purchase a vote to maintain that status. They're making a mess, and I'm not going to pay them to get out of the mess they're creating. I certainly don't mind getting bumped down by other organic content but that's not what's happening. And now to add insult to injury, people will assume my post is there because of bots and won't vote. The trending page has a bad reputation now, people haven't been able to trust it. Every content producer here hopes for that viral post. Now there's no real place for that. Unpopular by default.
I can't change any of this. The folks who made this mess will not even give my words one second of their attention. In the past, I've been told this is "whining."
What he said, x2 with the fucks.
I don't think it is a fair assumption to say that most/much/any of that stake will be dumped should bidbots vanish overnight. Many of the delegators held that Steem Power long before bidbots existed. So clearly they saw some point in Steem before it. Furthermore, many of the bots promote themselves as providing people with a "return on investment" for buying STEEM and delegating to their bot. It should be fairly obvious why that is a false promise, but let's say they're right. Then it will mean that a person who buys 1million to get this ROI will by definition dump for more than they've bought for, as they'll continue to dump 10,000 per month. This while contributing nothing of value and extracting rewards that instead could have gone to real users and thus improved the distribution of the token, or incentivsed growth. When satisfied, they'll still dump that 1million STEEM. So even if I were to grant you your concern, I would still prefer that person to just dump their 1 million STEEM today and be gone, rather than milking it until they've had their return on investment and then take profit, as it will just mean even more STEEM sold for nothing in return.
The solution is clearly to provide more attractive reasons to own and delegate Steem Power. And with the change to curation, it is very much possible to receive better STEEM-based earnings through good curation. So let's build good curation projects with a high percentage return on the delegation that also curates according to a Steem growth strategy. This way, investors can get their returns, contribute to increase the value of STEEM, and hopefully, also feel that they contribute to the growth of something worth building.
After all:
And
Perhaps its time to remind people of the importance of the price component to the first formula and the added value that smary curation can have to improve price on the second?
Anyways, there are for sure better things to flag these days than literally all bidbot posts. But seeing evolution and change in how we use our stake to provide something that the community at large think of as valuable should be the ultimate goal. And bidbots in their present state scores very low here.
So in summary
It is a fair assumption... The Steem price is close to a point of never return and there is real competition on the ETH and EOS Networks... Kill the Bots or enough big Stakeholders and Steem as business fails.
How do I come to this:
-> Steem needes Servers
-> Servers need Admins and Electricity
-> The costs for both aren't sufficient already
-> if those people change to other Networks NOW they will start making money instead of burning money - and that by tomorrow
-> So why do they stay? And why are you wrong?
Answer yourself, I'm curious to read it!
No, there is no evidence to suggest that many of the Stakeholders who delegates to bidbots would choose to dump STEEM at an ATL in BTC terms should the bidbots stop. They held STEEM for months/years prior to bidbots becoming popular at a much higher price (especially against BRC). So it is not a fair assumption at all.
Most who holds STEEM believe that there's still a chance (though perhaps just a small one) that it will become an attractive platform to build social apps. Then STEEM as a native currency across the many web apps and pages will be sought after both by people looking to participate and thus needing Steem Power, as well as people looking to buy and sell services on Steem with STEEM/SBD.
None of the other points here are relevant as far as I can tell.
You just don't get it
Yes I do.
mhm
We run a top witness ourselves and would continue doing so at a lower STEEM price.
All of what you say is true thst it takes money to do this. But none of that has anything to do with bidbots, or whether or not stakeholders who delegates to them would dump their STEEM if the bidbots were gone.
You assume ppl are independent and strong :))
That would be fantastic...
ahh you're from Norway.. so beautiful
If enough of the remaining Witnesses decides tomorrow, that they don't pay 200$ a moth and dozens of hours valid work time for maintaining a Server, what will happen? GG - Quit. With Steem at 0.15$, they can't pay the server costs and with Steem dropping, even more, they will just stop.
It is one thing to belive in Steem and Post/Create here and another to pay ~2.500,00€ Server costs a year. And we need those servers to run the Chain, because it is a DApp you know :D
Your profile tells me:
Economist and Entrepreneur with background in the space sector. @steempress co-founder and witness
So enlight me, what do I get wrong? It seems you should be right, because you're more experienced. But I must warn you, I did build up a few companies, too. Even if it is only as a consultant, I know how to roll.
This notion gets gets thrown around a lot. But then the valuation gets extremely distorted because:
The expectation is to tread lightly around the valuation of their bids, because it's the viewers responsibility to help prop up an industry with sunk costs, that happens to be helping to prop up the price of STEEM at the moment. How does this not break down over time?
The fork happened and downvotes are plentiful, the only party that needs to adjust now are the bots themselves. If they cannot adjust, they deserve to go the way of the dodo. I'm not going to adjust my behavior to help prop them up, because I know long term that isn't good for STEEM either.
I'm going to look at a post, value it, and downvote it if I feel it's over-rewarded. It just so happens that the most expensive stuff on trending happens to be mostly put there by bots. I am for sure NOT going to look at who voted it and say to myself, "oh this was a promotion bot, hands off".
Downvoting either exists to restore proportionality to rewards or it doesn't. The front ends should stop sitting on their hands in terms of providing solutions for self promotion. They are leaving potentially a lot of money on the table by not doing it, so I suspect they also fear the reprisal of this nascent vote buying industry, that's now so vital to the survival of STEEM, as we are led to believe.
Well said and please keep doing that. #newsteem
Not really that much for the simple reason that the audience is small. The time when this is compelling may come in the future but it isn't now.
I'm not afraid to use them. I pay for marketing off steem, why not on steem too. I have and will continue to use bots on my excelclub stuff because I need to build social proof and that's part of the strategy
Posted using Partiko Android
When you pay for marketing off Steem, the platform doesn't pay you back in rewards. The model for promotion on Steem that makes sense is probably some combination of burning Steem as is done on the promotion tab (which front ends then feature because it demonstrates their position as good community members) as well as paying front ends for what is ultimately their real estate, as well as their costs for operating the front end.
Bid bots could've still filled their 'promotional' role by declining rewards.
The post still trends, the true value of trending slots is determined, and the impact on the rest of us is zero.
But heaven forbid, I got kicked from 2 discord servers because of that idea.
While I have you, stake splitting doesn't make 10 accounts equal one big account when the reward curve is superlinear, yes?
If this is in fact the case, put me down on the side of bringing back the nsomething with a (negotiated) influence cap.
If the 10 accounts were to vote immediately after one another it would be equivalent to one larger vote. The superlinear curve is applied after adding all the votes together.
So, stake splitting end runs a per vote cap.
Looks like it will take a per human cap, and the skills to detect sock puppets.
This whack a mole game is going to take some dedicated abuse fighters.
What Smooth and Nonameslefttouse said.
Do you think you may be a bit biased toward bots considering you own/run several of them? How about turning steemmonsters into a bidbot despite promising us early investors that it would not be? What about the hundreds of "shitposts" it has upvoted? What about when you told us that it was scheduled to be shut down then you just converted it to "buy your vote with DEC tokens"? You encourage flagging "shitposts" in this article but you have been quite happy to use you bots upvoting them for a long time.
What you have is a market reaction.
The bidbots have allowed bullshit posts to be overly promoted.
I am not against the bidbots, but many are and frankly many of the bot owners have earned the bad reputation the bots currently have.
Create some standards or help deal with bad actors and the community will stop hating all the bots and focusing on your customers.
The community is tired of dealing with the lack of willingness to do curation and allow nearly all posts to be promoted.
It's a beautiful market response.
As I hinted at on your post the other day, the owners of the bots should be targeted, not just the users whose coin they take for shit posts. It seems odd to target the users of these services while giving the owners a free pass to profit profit profit off of it. I urge everyone, when these witchhunts begin forming to check the wallets to see who these vote bot machine owners are and begin downvoting them so they can enjoy this as much as the ones paying them. I won't go actively searching to give downvotes, but whenever I see the posse forming I am searching for the bot machine behind it.
In many cases it is the only indirect route to the owners. I'm not a fan of Blind downvote of promoted content.
However, haven't the bidbot owners gotten in the habit of blind upvoting content? And expecting the community to clean up behind them?
This is just a reaction, when they have a better business model and show more responsibility to the community the dislike of them will not be as strong.
We should target the users of the most offensive bots. Their customers (the good ones) Will use more responsible bots to support. Then we kill the worst and save those who hold value in the community.
In turn, the delegators will move their stake to the good bots that manage to find a way to do less damage.
I like to say, vote with your dollars, in this case... Vote with your vote. Do not support witnesses or bots that do not have a stated standard and a plan for removing bad votes.
The idea that because it is subjective it can't be done is lazy and bullshit.
The dislike the community has towards the bidbots is a direct response to the way they have conducted themselves.
They need to run some PR and clean up their act. Whining isn't going to help them
I can see this being the case at times, but I noticed the link on your post the other day the bot service had a post and comment in the last 7 days I threw my weak downvotes on. I figure if not for the greed of those running the service there would be very few posts to target. They get away unscathed and richer while the person using their service takes full brunt.
There is this going on with one of the vote services right now, with flexing going on. I used a downvote there as well for the bullying being used under a pretense of seeking dialogue with the writer of the post.
As you can see, the authors post has been greyed.
Will be interesting to see where all of this goes.
Fyrstikken spent 2 hours in my discord today talking to us about avoiding the war! He has created some standards.
Just read your post. Sorry no value to my vote anymore. Since the fork is went back to zero. Might as well vote at 1% on comments now. :)
You can only target the owners if they post. Do many of them post? I always imagined they didn't need to, because their earnings would come from the bots.
Posted using Partiko Android
yeah f*** off, you wanna 'taget' people? You're the police now? Get lost, you write like a fascist.
Bitter because your audience is mostly paid for bots? I'm sorry that you have to pay to get votes on your writing. Not everyone is that good that actual people will reward their work, just how it goes. At first I was surprised at the violent reaction you display as I was advocating for the stopping of targeting the likes of you and going after those who create this dynamic, but then it made sense when I realized they were your paid for friends.
Not to worry though, I still won't target the likes of you if and when I see a posse forming for you if it happens. I will look to the offending bot as I suggested here. :)
Blessings to you and yours
I just have 0 tolerance for intolerance. Freedom always comes with the price of defending it.
And just to be clear, the violent reaction is that one which causes damage to others. Intentions and meaning will never solve real problems unless they heal and help. Fit that in your downvotes and degrading thoughts towards different behaviors of HF20 and before.
And now, all my words, do they harm you - no?! :)) But deciding on systematic downvoting does decrease rewards, does damage people directly - right or wrong? For the sake of the better good.. pathetic.
And I have high expectations of content, you mostly won't hurt me. But I dislike anything that cuts freedom of choice and success, especially on STEEM. None needs that.
You are the offender, I do oppose you right here.
in the end, you talk about 'targeting people', and then call me 'violant'... tzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz funny you are, not worth my time I guess
Totally agree. Just suggesting we don't kill the bots entirely here and let people know it's ok to bot a post that actually ads value.
People know that already. I see good posts upvoted by bidbots which don't get downvoted.
No they don't Check out my post about Litecoin.
Why would you do that? It's mostly just going to be a waste of money because a post that adds value can get votes for free without buying them.
I disagree. Steem has always been about "who you know" and after HF21 it is even more so that way. One of the key reasons I have always been a supporter of bidbots is because of my understanding of how economic disparity happens.
Economic disparity is not a social challenge, its a feature of the laws of nature. Specifically, economic disparity is directly related to the power of networks. Human networks work in such a way that "who you know" makes all the difference in how many opportunities come your way. If your parent is a famous actor there is a good chance that you can get some acting role in your lifetime if you want one.
Economic disparity is correlated with your human network effect. On Steem, this is especially true for people. You might toss an upvote here or there to a stranger with a nice post, but in all likelihood you have a circle, and the members of that circle experience upvotes from you far more often.
Now, as newcomers arrive their network effect is 0, so they have to build it up. Commenting helps, but still, you will have to do a lot of commenting and a lot of posting quality content before your network effect is of much value. People simply need to know that you exist and that you are likeable, which is not all that easy to do quickly.
The upvote services provided people with the opportunity to grow their human network rapidly, putting their posts/ideas before many eyes right away. That is a good thing, and now that is gone.
If people want equality, they need to understand that economic disparity is directly related to human networks. The more people that know you the more opportunities will come your way. Thus, an upvote service increases the odds of people making new connections with other people and widening their human network, which can improve equality among the community members of Steem.
But hey, the bot services are doomed now, so whatevs...
You are right about the value in promotional services. It is misusing the reward pool mechanism for that purpose which is the real problem.
We have the promotion tab, but the problem is that no one looks at it. Maybe it would be a good idea for more of the user base to try to encourage Steemit to start showing some of the promoted posts on more visible pages such as Trending, feed, etc. I know this suggestion has been made before but it has fallen on deaf ears.
If there was a way for people to use bidbots without it ever being directly profitable to do so, that would be the ideal scenario.
There isn't such a way, without declining rewards or burning a large portion of the rewards, possibly all of them (or strong downvotes which accomplish similarly). The problem is that you have to look at both sides of the transaction (vote buyer and vote seller). If the only variable is the vote price then making it less profitable for the buyer makes it more profitable for the seller and vice-versa.
I do agree with this.
I completely agree. Perhaps we should get this message on trending. I think if every bidbot had a slight cost to use it, then we could strike a balance of promotion and content. It was a great feature, but when it becomes directly profitable, over the long run, it likely undermines the price of steem.
How do we turn this ship around?
But who would get to decide which posts adds value and are approved for an upvote by the bot?? And wouldn't that destroy the whole ideal behind a decentralized platform? Now your going to censor posts and refuse to upvote them if you don't like their material? That is somehow worse because you are acting like google, youtube and fb shadow banning people.. lol.. just admit it, bidbots are a huge money maker for you and you don't want to loose out on that income. Unfortunately all of steemit suffered so you few whales could clean house.. you sold votes which cost you nothing and then cashed that out, how does that help support a system?
Who decides what has value? Shall we choose a value Judge now? Ridiculous, I thought you're a person of freedom and personal rights... now you use "value" in a cultural sense of the word. What do you mean with that, your vision of value right?
That is the question isn't it? How people value determines markets. Social media is information shared between people, and various platforms exist that enable people to indicate how they relatively value information by voting. Only on Steem is that value purchasable overtly by buying votes.
Clearly that isn't other people setting the value, or curation.
So, are you claiming the power to buy what society values? Because that's what you're defending.
You might feel cool to call me out and act as I'd be a bad person for my opinions. But you should stick to the facts. I don't claim anything here, I'm just thinking over real consequences in an open-minded way.
So now talking about reality, barely a single word you wrote down makes any sense when really thought through.
Social Media is just the name we gave platforms, where people can create media for one another. Facebook and Google value upvotes and downvotes often the very same way because they just care about engagement.
No - just total nonsense. Where is that coming from? There is not a single big Media Outlet (including Social Media) where you can't get featured for money. Where is that even coming from?
I want you to remember Newtons first law:
"Every body persists in its state of being at rest or of moving uniformly straight forward, except insofar as it is compelled to change its state by force impressed."
Yes. I want people to be able to spend FIAT money (value) to push their content on STEEM to higher value. Bid bots are a way to do that, nothing wrong with that part of the system. If STEEM would be a place on an island with no connection to the outer world, then you'd maybe be right. But it isn't, and if it would be - we both might not be here anyway, so let's not be hypocritical.
I think beyond your nonsense, I get what you really wanna say and I just disagree - it's fine.
Why not limit the use of bidbots to (for example):
This is the best suggestion among all the comments here. I always thought if we will limit posts in steem in term of earning, it will be good. For example not more than $100 a post. For regular people who join steem and see those big numbers, they just don't believe that earning is possible at all. Also we will have less inflation that way. And if someone want to spend some money to promote his things, he will do his best to write quality post. Because if the earning will be limited, when he/she lose something from downvotes, he will not be able to add more money to that post. In this situation, all who are using bots, they will do their best to promote only quality posts.
I hope in the next hard fork, they will do something about that. We need to care a lot about the trending page. You can say, that's the face of steem. When someone outside of steem, take a look at steemit or any application, he/she should see our best content, but not the content that's promoted. We have so many good content creators who are not visible to the community at all.
Only this way steem price will grow and everyone will be happy about it !
Some time ago I proposed the Huey Long algorithm: posts should attain a minimum of 3% of the median payout, and none should exceed 300% of the median. Prior to HF21 the average payout was over 15 times the median, mostly due to botting versus organic.
The median seems to encourage creators, but is far too low to attract profiteers, at .04 SBD presently. As massively overpaid posts decline, the median will rise, until presumably the median and average approach parity. In the process, profiteering is essentially demonetized, enabling curation for qualitative reasons to overwhelm curation for financial reward.
Huey Long was assassinated when his proposals began to generate great interest during the Great Depression. I'd rather just be flagged, so if folks wanna silence me, flag away.
I honestly hate bidbots but I could live with that compromise... Great idea friend!
Hi Aggy
I'm certainly not scared to use the occasional bot, although it will likely be OCDB only.
I think the lack of desire right now shows who was using the bots in the main. Also, as Marky points out, users are taking a massive loss off the bat with many as they have not updated in line with 50/50.
If accounts who have stake locked up in bots for the last couple of years choose to powerdown and leave, so be it. I suspect though, that some will take the 20%+ (got a % on this?) that curation can bring on investment each year and be happy with that.
"If accounts who have stake locked up in bots for the last couple of years choose to powerdown and leave, so be it'
Totally agree! Then they were here for all the wrong reason(s) in the first place. But at least not to make Steem bigger and more valuable ...
Exactly.
I don't know what you can make as a manual curator with stake these days, but I bet it craps on what any bank has to offer.
Offer????? All they do is TAKE!!! hahaha.
True that :)
More good news
https://steemit.com/busy/@anomadsoul/ocdb-and-downvotes-or-a-newsteem-approach
Just have read it (comments as well).
Did some sweet(sssj)"work" again this morning, This, and other abuse has to be restricted. In a way that it (at least) demotivates others to start something similar.
Like everyone else they will just have to adapt. They could I don’t know manually curate content from time to time when they are having issues using SP. I'm sure in a few weeks when everyone has gotten some pent-up aggression out on how they been feeling regarding certain posts they put into trending. Things will return to cleaner and still profitable environment.
The issue is everyone is going disagree with what should or should not be used to bid bot. I also rather not see trending with only community and developer posts. That be boring and it just be the same people over and over.
I myself have tried them a little here or there in small amounts in the past. They simply don’t provided enough of value to me for taking such a risk of using them in the first place. I’m also not a community leader or developer so I guess I’d rule myself out on using them based on that alone.
A lot of the bid bots are idle because they didn't change their price. They are charging the same amount even with 50/50 rewards. Why would anyone use them.
There is also a fear of using them as well because there a blind downvote spree on bid bot users regardless of quality and content.
I don't buy it. There are have been posts at the very top of trending with bid bot votes with minimal downvotes. It isn't blind at all, it is in response to perceived value mismatch.
And when it comes down to it why would you pay for votes for high value content when you can get votes for free? Okay, maybe a small amount of votes to get the post to the point where someone sees it. But once the magnitude goes beyond that i.e. all those posts maxing out a whole bunch of bought bot votes? Those are all low value.
The whole model is nonsense. People are tying to rationalize an exploit into a feature.
Haven't many of the bot owners allowed blind upvotes? Turn around is fair play
Good.
Lrn 2 curate. Promote humanity, rather than profiteers. Live up to your avatar.
@aggroed,
Downvote pool, 50% Curation and every thing that came with HF21 is a preparation for the business model that might come with SMT!
$trdo
Cheers~
Congratulations @theguruasia, you are successfuly trended the post that shared by @aggroed!
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Downvoting everything that has some promotion on it is a bit over the top and will most likely result in whales having the upper hand in what gets seen. When I started here 2 years ago, it was pretty horrible to have any kind of engagement on my posts, because nobody saw them. Promotion services then gave me the power to change that.
Between then and now, most certainly the pendulum was way too much in the promotion region and many people went overboard with it. However, that's what we're able to change now. Making sure that only valuable content finds a place for eyeballs. And instead of shooting down everything that moves, focusing our efforts on low-quality abuse should be the way to go.
When the bidbot owners step up and curate what they promote the community will stop targeting your customers, it's a shame your businesses allowed this situation and it's just a market reaction.
If you want to have a better rep do better things.
I'm not suggesting you have to review every post. Reviewing some, a few or reversing bad votes will go a long way.
I see the beginning of this happening, but you can't be butthurt over a Market reaction.
I don't believe in curation being the magic bullet for everything, at least not in its current form. There is a place for promotion and I'm working on making it better, but this is not an overnight thing, it will take some more time.
If I had done it pre HF21, my "business" would have been swallowed by the rest, simply because 90% of bid-bots didn't give a flying **** about blacklists or anything else, and nothing could be done about it. This is much different now with HF21. Of course, this only matters if you actually care about how the situation unfolded.
Butthurt? Me? Never! I'm simply arguing that shooting everything that moves, is not the way to go.
And I am saying it is a backlash, and it will calm down. It's day 4.
That's not happened. The very top Trending post recently had bot votes and did not draw (significant) downvotes. Because it was a high value post that actually deserved to be there.
You're seeing mass downvotes on a lot of (not all) botted content because a lot of the botted content is way overrewarded.
I expect that you and other bot owners will evolve (some may not, and may shut down, while new ones start up, but that's how markets work). I can think of any number of ways to make the best how things have changed and are changing, and I'm sure you can too.
You mean attract panderers.
You make a great point, hopefully many will take note.
It is hard for some to understand that there is such a thing as good use of bid bots aka post promotion. This is similar to paying for advertisement.
With all the headlines of how bots are ruining the ecosystem, I can see how it is difficult for some to see the other side of things. Hopefully this post, and posts like this one will help people understand the good and the bad.
We have the promoted tab. Bidbots need to die, the sooner the better.
Does "promoted" work? I thought it had been disabled and never restored.
It's only a HF away from being done right.
hey, daltono!! Greetings!!!
A response bot owner who wants to move with the times might, set guidelines, create white lists, monitor the users, and update their pricing. I agree with Asher I expect to see some delegators remove bid bot delegation and choose to earn through curation albeit perhaps it will be lazy curation. Looks like the hard forks have worked really well to me!
Posted using Partiko iOS
In this new environment, I am not sure if it is even safe to trade tokens (such as PALcoin) for an upvote. Perhaps all these community-tokens were created, needlessly? I suppose time will tell.
Probably not at this point to be honest. The audience is just too small. Who are you promoting to?
If the issue is just getting some early votes to lift the post out of the noise floor of unrewarded (or minimally) content, we have curation rewards for that, and I fully expect that with curation rewards being doubled there will be a surge in both active curation and delegation to curation initiatives (absorbing some of that delegation you were concerned may no longer want to support unused bots).
Overall the ecosystem is still evolving after these changes and we shouldn't expect everything to happen overnight. In time, yes, I do think there is a role for "promotion" broadly defined, although I'm still not really sure what is the ideal structure for that will turn out to be. Assuming it looks just like it did in pre-HF21 is probably a mistake.
Well, on one hand, Bots do Stake huge amounts of Steem. On the other hand, newer users do have to buy liquid Steem to upvote/promote their posts. What are the real negative impacts of the Bots to the market?
What happens to that liquid Steem after it is used to promote? It is probably sold. So the effect on the market is probably around neutral.
That would be the case if the bot is working with a negative yield, who would use that? You're clearly off the rails with that argument.
I did not understand that sentence.
The way I see it, customer buys a vote from the bot, bot gets the fee as a liquid payment, passes it on to the delegators who will often, though not always, sell it as a source of passive income. (It is certainly possible in an individual case that they aren't selling and are accumulating Steem, but if that were happening on a broad scale, we'd see a very different Steem price.)
Bot services act as a sink for STEEM. They are technically good for the short-term value of STEEM. The negative impact is related to the quality of content on Steem. Ideally, Steem should be a place to accumulate high quality content which would result in the value of STEEM going up over time. Kind of like Youtube, the better the content the more people will come and be attracted.
Bot services do not concern themselves with the quality of the content, just collecting fees. So the quality could be poor, which does not draw in viewers.
This is my opinion as classical Marketing/Information Tech Person:
No you're wrong... Users have different values of which they feast in content.
Your view is:
"I read/watch it and it gives me good perspective and information."
That is right for you and for your use of Steem, but not a general approach.
You have to admit, life is not a news magazine!
A lot of people search for something, something they just miss in their daily lives. That includes beauty, passion, inspiration, crazy Stuff, awsome Stunts... you see where this is going.
Your approach is as discriminating as it is common for the Steem community at the moment. So you can now pet yourself on the shoulder because you understood the spirit of the moment, your Mainstream - that is good for you. But in order to grow to an wide audience, Steem content has fulfilled all the needs of different people, not only the higher once. With the Tribes and the SMTs we're on the way there, but with your very brief vision of what is good or bad, well... another year like this and STEEM is worth 0.01$ - and then it dies. You want that?
This something that you can learn for your life out of this short conversation:
Your turn now, who said that?
I do not disagree with your point. I think that HF21 made Steem a little more like Youtube though, unprofitable for most content producers, very profitable for the extremely popular ones. There are drawbacks and benefits from that system.
wich feature on steem remindes you of youtube? And how did it get empowered by HF20/21?
Often in life, we know what we like or hate even before we tried it. I bet you experience that very often.
It was the penalty/bonus threshold. Steemit said that it would be around 20 STEEM, but it turns out that the bonus/penalty begins somewhere around $10 in post rewards, which is quite a bit more than 20 STEEM.
This would be a great idea, in my opinion, but only if community voting was equal between all people. I believe this threshold concept doesn't work because of the disparity of vote values.
it is at 10$ you say? mhm, I see
Thanks for the balanced post, there will be those for an against bidbots it seems, depending on their perspective.
the issue i see in bidbots is that they get overused by either shitposters, people who over value their work, or people with the spare change to use a bot, giving smaller, risk adverse users less of the pool. wouldnt it be nice if there was a bid bot that took some of their profit and funneled it in to upvoting the most undervalued posters?
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Downvotes are only healthy if they are used for what it was meant for. Now it is used for all kind of reasons and that stops me from using it.
Author/duration split can not be 50/50 if posts less as 20 STEEM get less and 20+ get more or is there a bonus.
As I understand from the "new steem" post written by @stermblog a vote counts if the crowd voted much for it... To me this means the amount of votes no matter if the vote is worth anything. In reality it means the earning (big vote of someone will do).
Can you please explain this to me plus where I can find a list "you earn unless... and all the exceptions when not". That seems to be quiet a lot.
I thank you in.advance.
💕
Posted using Partiko Android
=> can never be healthy
Color me shocked, but glad of it. I reckon the bot wars have begun, and hopefully ended with a victory for people. If we keep letting bots vote, it won't be long until they outvote us. It's us or them.
As @nonameslefttouse points out, promoted posts belong on the promoted tab, as well. Unmingle them with actual human discourse, and I won't object. They're larping as people, with the same societal roles as people, and that ain't right.
You are so right about bid bot ecosystem actually locking a lot of value. But the way some people are nuking posts with bidbots and are having their conceptions of "over rewarded" is not going to help the ecosystem at all. In a way, if u see, using bidbots locks more value. You send X amount of steem/sbd to bidbot. Bidbot either power up with that or maybe sell it. But the user now gets only 50% of the rewards after post expiry. And even from that 50% is locked in SP. So if someone had 10 steem at hand, they probably just have 3-5 in hand after using bidbot.
Plus we have to realize that most people in crypto are for profits. And when they not get that profit, then they simply sell off their cryptos. You may say that it is good for the ecosystem, but not if there is majority of people like that.
Between, which category would u put this post in: https://steemit.com/gaming/@siddartha/claim-your-free-hero-in-an-upcoming-blockbuster-crypto-game
I certainly didn't use bidbots to milk rewards for it, but to get more eyeballs. It might not necessarily provide direct value to steem, but can bring some traffic via google search etc.
Not always the case. There are some services out there that some bid bot users among many other types of individuals use that allow them to set beneficiaries of the post to the service. In return when the post pays out they charge a small fee and send the payout as if it where liquid to the author. The service than down power it themselves. If someone is turning a profit that 10 soon turns into more and it snowballs till they get flagged or cash it out.
Well, they'd still have to take out 50% curation rewards now. And bidbots are not always profitable unless steem prices increase that week. I have in past many times used bid bots to trend my post but it almost never made any profits. But then my intention was never to make profits but to get more eyeballs to the content which I created with hard work. Of course, not all people use bidbots for that purpose.
This post has been included in the latest edition of The Steem News - a compilation of the key news stories on the Steem blockchain.
Make a system that actually can let bit bots be a promotion tool then..
but for right now this is not the case so yes, we should ALL cheer in crowd while seeing bit bots hitting the dust. Really, fuck those things.
People shouldn't EARN on promoting their content, it should be a cost. So if people are willing to sacrifice to get more attention so be it. But it shouldn't be a thing in the first place that every person can earn ROI the moment they promote. That should come from the audience.
Posted using Partiko Android
That feature was the coolest thing about Steem. Where else could you profit from promoting your work? That to me, was the best value Steem ever provided, and now it has been killed.
Aggy, seriously, fuck your bot. Use it to curate Steemmonster posts. Go get the curation payouts. Its a bit annoying how youre trying to normalize bots now that the community told them to fuck off just to keep yours afloat.
Most people that follow these things arent brain dead morons that they will be sold on your rhetoric and not realize what youre doing.
Use the SP you have and curate. Get the blond girl (cant remember her name) to do it for you. I bet she will do it for free and you can take the credit for thinking of Steem Monsters curation service.
I was here prior to bidbots and post bidbots and I promise you that bidbots completely ruined my steemit experience! I understand that you and other whales have a lot of steem invested in bidbots so you don't want to see them die but the truth is they were killing steemit regardless of how much money you and your whale buddies were making. Half or more of the bidbots were actually ripping people off, but people are so confused by numbers that they didn't understand that with all the variables (author rewards, curation rewards and volatile exchange rate) they were actually loosing money. There are better ways to make money off your steem investment that doesn't include ruining the steemit platform, sorry if they aren't as profitable..
Bidbots were the single worst idea that steemit.inc allowed to happen.. It not only ruined the trending section but it also ruined ranking and made it incredibly hard to find anything but spam on the blockchain for well over a year! It even made me completely change my habbits to continue earning post rewards because writing articles was no longer profitable for me even though I poured my heart into them. Basically anyone with a real post was just passed by and all their hard work went unnoticed.
There are a couple of reasons that I have never bought into the steem ecosystem, first and foremost is bidbots! Reason being is that they constantly sucked any kinds of profit and sustainability away from the steem blockchain ultimately driving the prices into oblivion during this last bear market, while simultaneously promoting terrible posts that no-one wanted to read completely ruining everything unique about the platform.
So if you really want to help steem and not just own wallet you would be happy that bidbots are being destroyed.. We can figure out a better way to promote posts that doesn't destroy the steem ecosystem... So as upset as I am about the new rewards system, I am ecstatic that bidbots are going to be a thing of the past. Let's make the #newsteem about the community again, not the fucking bidbots! Just sayin..
I'm for obliterating the industry. I was cool with the industry when it was not as easy for vote buyers to get screwed over. People cannot effectively calculate their ROI, which is a big no-no. Businesses like being able to quantify their returns. Steem is a big gamble of whatever becomes viral, and account network effect has become ever increasingly more important now.
To me, one of the coolest features of Steem was a promotion service that did not actually cost any money but was mutually profitable as well as helpful to content producers in building awareness of their content. Then y'all fucked that up. The only damn viable utility of the STEEM coin went down the shitter and the only witness with the wisdom to protest was matt.
Using bidbots is not safe. You gave everybody that hates the idea of free market services because of their marxist ideals a big fat red button to blow up our rewards. The upvote services will at least get the fee they charge, but the buyer can have their posts demonetized by flags. For the content producer, that means no profit, time wasted, money lost, working for free.
Want bidbot services to continue to exist? Then offer BUYER PROTECTION for the customers. They need some kind of guarantee, either that you will retaliate against flaggers, or that you will compensate losses.
Until I see anti-flag buyer protection guarantees, no vote service purchases for me...