A possible downside you don't mention with using bots is that you might just be assisting in the process of 'sucking wealth upwards' to the people who delegate to bots - clearly from your massive reputation gain, this is mainly going to the early adopters.
You've clearly gained from using them, but I think the people who run them and delegate to them benefit even more.
Everyone else who doesn't use them, however, loses, which means that if individuals are going to act rationally they must use also use them - this basically empowers the wealthy.
Surely it's a strategy that just increases inequality, distorts the reputation system and basically just puts people off joining, thus undermining the whole platform?
Isn't it basically a WIN (bot owners/ leasers) win (bot users) LOSE (everyone else) situation.
I'm aware that fryst who runs one of the bots has a severely individualistic outlook on life so literally couldn't give a toss about the consequences of his actions for everyone else, but I had the feeling you two were a bit more 'socialist' in nature, and had some kind of ethical break that prevented you from engaging in activities that undermined the broader social base?
Maybe I was wrong, or maybe you've turned? It is hard to support the commons when it's economically irrational to do so at an individual level after all.
At some point I might just say fuck it all and just delegate all of my stake to bots for return, might be the only way to become and real steem WINNER, it's certainly the easiest!
Thanks for the comment, you make some good points, especially the one about distorting the reputation system.
I personally view the bid bots as just another Steem experiment, Steemit could put an end to the bid bots any time they want, but they are letting it play out. I personally like their hands-off approach. I don't think any individual can know how Steem/Steemit is supposed to evolve, blockchains are just a dance between code and human self-interests.
I think it's important to assume that the whales who are profiting from the bid bots, are the same whales who were previously engaged in less transparent self-voting schemes, in order to maximize their ROI. To me, bid bots are just the lesser of the two evils, since at least now people can promote their content in a meaningful way. That wasn't the case before. What would be great is a blockchain based bid bot system that burns all the STEEM received. Obviously this would have to be permanently backed by a massive benevolent whale... @steemit (cough).
Personally I think the most obvious way to fix Steemit's underlying distribution problem is to move to an account based voting system with oracles. Then bid bots would no longer function. I think this may be on the roadmap but I'm not sure it's possible.
Everyone can and should run or use bid bots right now if they want to. That's currently the way the game is being played. It would be like playing baseball and not stealing bases cause you think the game would be better without stealing. Meanwhile, everyone else is stealing bases.
To me, bid bods seem to have way more pros than cons given the current and past states of Steem, so I think it's an experiment worth seeing though. And the more people that use them, the more accurate the experiment results will be.
Hi,
Thanks for the detailed reply,
The sociological term, which also incorporates the 'hardware element' into its definition is 'transhuman assembalge'.
I'm kind of with you on using bid-bots in the sense that if everyone (or at least the vast majority) used bots as much as they could then IF they are detrimental to the platform then it would just make their negative effects more obvious, and reveal the results more quickly.
Of course weird things might happen with scaling up the use, you never know!
I'm also for trying these things out... I did try out bots a while back, but with only a few $ each time, I made a positive ROI for the most part, but just didn't really like the feel of it very much.
I agree about oracles, I mean what's the point of competing with everyone to hit the trending pages when writing about different things, it doesn't make any sense.
The burn option is something I hadn't thought about... Way to techno-socialist to be considered I think.
I personally won't be using them to promote my own posts, it doesn't make sense for me, as I said, increasing delegation to vote buying services is a possibility though, which is effectively the same as using them to promote yourself were ethics are concerned!
Nice baseball analogy.
thanks for the detailed and educational discourse you two!!