I personally wish that there were no upvote bots. The way I look at it is, it double or triple gouges the reward pool. I personally don't use them, because a for mentioned reason. I understand why people do use them, and I have no ill will against them. I just wish that they didn't exist.
I'm to new to know all the ins and outs of all of this so I try not to take sides. Please try to be careful when down voting people. :) Also please don't hate me for commenting this. I do believe that you are doing what you feel is best. Have a lovely day.
Another way to look at it is that whales are going to claim the most from the reward pool no matter what. Voting bots are a way that they allow minnows access to what they normally wouldn't. 2 years ago, the reward pool was available to everyone one. There weren't whales yet, so it was more open. Now that there are whales, they claim the most. Also, there's inflation on top of that. Minnows don't have a chance at the reward pool. Bots allow the the chance people had 2 years ago. Here's another way to look at it
Whale A and whale B could just self-vote and take money from the pool that way. Instead, they delegate SP to a voting bot and minnows are allowed access to it. Further, the voting bot is backed by a community of curators that blacklist bad content and promote good content the way whales A and B wouldn't have before. Which do you think is better now? Bots or no bots?
Without bots it's just self-voting whales like @grumpycat abusing the pool. With bots, we have some people allowing minnows access to the pool and curation communities.
You could say, why not the whales build curation communities? Do you see @grumpycat building any communities? LOL
I just did a post on this subject Here. If you are interested in my thoughts on the matter it would cover much more than I am able to write now. Sadly It took me two nights to complete it. Because I kept getting distracted with comments lol. :)
I see your point but I just disagree, the cost to the reward pool is far to high, leaving little for everyone else. Have a read and let me know what you think on it, or don't. Either way have a lovely day. It's one in the morning here and I've just spent the last few hours completing it.
Right. Inflation is a factor. However, rewards were more available 2 years ago. That's a fact. Inflation + whales may impact why rewards are so low right now; however, bots do return awards comparable to what people were getting 2 years ago. That's also a fact.
Regardless of why rewards are low, bots aren't the problem. They bring rewards back to users. You can call it pay-to-play, but it's the same as what happens in any economy. Early-adopters become the big winners and they grow large. There are a lot of examples in history of this happening. They can hoard it making things worse (classism) or they can recirculate.
Just consider what things would be like without bots for a second. Suppose all the bots were gone tomorrow. Do you think everyone suddenly has more of the reward pool? Nope. The whales still have it. Here's what changes.
Sorry it's late I don't have the time to respond in more detail but here is a quick synapses of my response.
1-Spam sucks, but i don't read it so it doesn't bother me. (If I was a whale that would not change)
2-They can do whatever they want. This would be good because it would give minnows an opportunity to communicate with the whales, the non spammers just might catch their eye and give them some upvotes.
3-Spam should be downvoted.
4-Only spammers would get downvoted, and I would hope that they would leave because I'd rather not have them on the site. Because they are no good spammers.
5-(This is actually what's happening now, because so many spammers and trash posters are buying upvotes.) The spammers need to go, after this it's only trash, poor, moderate, and quality posters left. Trash posters would be the next to go. Once things got so grim that the poor to moderate posters were to begin to leave, the price of steem would begin to fall. Whales accounts would start to shrink. They would begin to panic and start paying people to curate or do it themselves in hopes to not lose their investment.
6- Most of the spam and trash would be gone now and the whales would be forced to either sell of their steem or find human curators. What's the point of self upvotes if the value of Steem in dropping.
7-If the whales have not learned their lesson by now they are not living in elysium, they have lost their entire investment because they allowed the site to go to poo. most would sell off their steem for pennies. Then those of us who want to make a good go at the sight will buy it for next to nothing and we will try to build it back into greatness. If it's not to late.
The way the bots work now the whales get at least 125% of what they auto vote with their SP(through the money people pay and curation). This just allows the system to spam and trash post on. Removing the bots would force them to invest in human curation or risk losing everything. That is why I like human curation, it doesn't reward trash. It's also why I see danger in "Pay to Play." I would rather not have a system that allows the whales to just sit back and make money without putting back into the community. Steemit is what gives Steem value, once it no longer generates value, the crypto is worthless.
I don't think you got where I was going with spam and whale downvotes. I meant the whales would downvote anything whether it was spam or not because of the memo spamming.
Yeah, that's not true. The bots actually are responsible for curation communities. Those would go away. You'd actually have less curation because most people would curate solo instead of through a group vetting process. This would lead to less curation, not more.
Without which, whales would just self-vote and "sit back and make money ..."
I think you don't trust what I'm saying, but it's not speculation. A world without bots is what we used to have. I don't have to speculate on what it would be like without bots. Steemit has already been there.
As I said before, bots are a symptom, not a problem. It's simply what has come out naturally from an inflated economy and a reward pool run by whales. If you get rid of bots, it doesn't get rid of the problem. It may get worse because it's the community's answer to the problem.
What person would start flagging someone for making a nice or thought provoking comment on their post? It's simple don't send unsolicited stuff to people and you won't get flagged.
Curation is merely a fancy world for upvoting something. So without votes people would suddenly stop upvoting? I have a hard time believing that that's what you meant, but it is what you are saying. People would just vote on what they like, and since the trending page wouldn't be full of rubbish aside possible from whale self/circle upvotes people would easly be able to see what other people were voting on if they wanted to jump on the bandwagon.
Have you looked at the trending pages lately? I've seen rubbish that was getting $900 because they paid like 15 upvote bots to upvote them. It wasn't plagiarized, but at most the post was worth $5-10 and that's being super generous. This is happening all the time if that was to go away I'd be happy.
There have been whales since the beginning of Steemit. All of the "big whales" like ned, dan, Johl and the likes have been here since early 2016. If they wanted to flag some small whale investor for self voting then they would and many of them have at times. But you are allowed to vote yourself, how is self upvoting any different than paying for someone to vote for you? Just turns out others are able to flag you for the self upvote or paid vote. or really any other reason.
The truth of the situation is many Investors bought steem because like jerry bansfield did YT videos on how you can invest in steem and just self upvote( I just watched the video last night. This brought in a lot of money, raising the value of steem. So if the real whales started downvoting the investors heavily it would stop others from investing. So to compensate for this voting bots were introduced. But where exactly does the voting bot's SP come from? The same would be self upvoters.
As My post said I'm not apposed to the use of bots, They can be very useful. but I am apposed to AUTO upvote bots. Because of all the reasons I mentioned. That being said I don't think they are going anywhere and If the day came that I decided that I would want to use them, I would probably just use the ones that certain investors don't Flag.
I've seen some of your posts and I don't think that you post garbage and I'm sorry that you got flagged on them. There are other voting bots that don't get you flagged maybe you should just use those. Or fight your fight. It's a free Steemit, that comes with some very good and very negative consequences. I just believe that it would be better if it was human curation(up and down votes) I don't think we will convinces each other differently. But thanks for the convo. Feel free to respond. To be frank I don't care that you or anyone uses auto upvote bots. I just really don't like garbage being so highly rewarded. (I do not think that you post garbage, FYI.)
Did you actually read my post? I sorta laid my case out. I would like to see human curated upvote platforms, where you pay a fee to be read and they decided if and what it's worth. It would just feel better. I don't think I'm the only one who would appreciate something like that.
To clarify:
Both of the above factors affect the amount of rewards users get and has increased over 2 years creating our current economy. That and the whales.
Again, bot's may not be the solution, but they're not the problem either. They're a symptom.
To Clarify:
My biggest issue is that it would appear that the biggest "winners" of paid auto upvote bots are the owners and SP donators. It just bothers me when people view them as some sort of community service. It's just not. It's about money.
As My original comment stated.
When the operators of these machines take in near the value of your upvote and then get curation rewards ontop of it. That results in a double dip, with them getting the larger portion. Plus it's a bit like crack once you have that first taste nothing just seems as good without it. I wish there was a better way for people to get more notoriety and rewards for quality posts, I just personally would rather not give these rich guys any more money.
If others want to, go hard.