Hello,
if you are not familiar with the tool, here's the initial post : https://steemit.com/downvotes/@howo/introducing-downvote-control-tool-an-open-source-downvote-tool
Two weeks have passed and everything is going as planned. I have finished pretty much all of the biggest features.
You can already find all of the updates live on https://downvotecontrol.com
So here's the new features added this week :
Vote with your voting power
This one was heavily requested by @transisto. It allows you to set a threshold in order to limit the voting power you use when you do upvotes (if you counter downvotes). And it also allows you to use your voting power to downvote. It's very useful for those of you who use all of their downvoting power and want to keep downvoting.
Voting mechanism overhaul
This one was a big one, I basically reworked the whole way voting worked internally to approximate the new curve. This allows you to approximate as much as possible the vote you are either trailing or countering. This is a big advantage you have more steem power than the vote you want to counter because you will use almost exactly enough voting power to counter his vote instead of just voting with a ratio.
This means no more overdownvoting and more downvotes for you !
Here's a practical example :
Let's assume my vote is worth 1$. I am countering the upvotes another user which has a vote worth 10 cent with a ratio of 0.5.
Previously if the user upvoted with 100%, I would downvote with the same percentage * ratio, so 50%. which is way overkill since I would then send a 50 cent downvote to counter a 10 cent upvote. Now the system would calculate that I only need to downvote with 5% to counter half of his upvote (because of the 0.5 ratio). Leaving me with a ton of voting power that I can use for other things !
Preparation for a future history feature
I have started to store locally in a database all of the votes that were done through the tool in order to create a dashboard where people can see which votes the tool has done and easily unvote if you think something was a mistake.
Should I still do the bidbot percentage ?
In the original proposal I put this specific feature :
"In #newsteem culture, stacking bidbots is discouraged, this is an option that will allow you to set a ratio of bidboted rewards vs organic rewards when countering upvotes. And if the ratio of organic to bidboted is too high, you’ll downvote.
This option will be available for all of the current downvoting options (trail downvotes and counter upvotes)."
The issue is that there are two types of bidbots, transparent ones where you just delegate, those are easy to spot. And vote seller, ala smartsteem, minnowbooster etc. The issue with those is that finding out which voter is an organic vote and which one is a sold vote is near impossible. So this feature would most likely only harm the "transparent" bidbots, which will make them evolve into hidden bidbots like minnowbooster/smartsteem. Which will obviously not be positive for the ecosystem. Ultimately I think it's better to let you manually set which accounts you want to downvote (counter upvotes) without having this "bidbot percentage" feature which will basically always be unreliable. Which makes this feature useless. Same goes for the "clean trending" feature.
I will replace those features with other ones obviously.
That's it for this week. If you like what I do please consider voting for our witness @steempress and for the downvote control tool proposal : https://steemproposals.com/proposal/34
Whilst I'm not convinced downvote tools are the way to do things here (and I haven't tried out the tool, only going of some users of it that I know), I'm downvoting due to a disagreement with the rewards the post has (over $120 at time of writing comment).
I'd much rather we give feedback to the users of posts we downvote rather than having a "negative curation trail" where people are downvoting things they haven't read (and yes, same could be said for positive curation trails).
Still a long way to go with this change in mentality and education on the steem platform in terms of the rewards pool in my opinion.
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In most cases it's not about the content but the fact that they are using bid bots to boost their post into three-digit dollar rewards.
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OK but the behaviour is changing on that front from what I've seen over the last month with bid bot usage... Slowly but it's changing.
However, I've seen that some bid bot accounts are also switching to manual curation so how would that work? Having a black or white function of if a bid bot account votes on a post isn't accurate in these situations?
Post rewards should definitely be set to decline or @null beneficiary in my view if using a bid bot (I've never used one btw so don't know how they work, just the effect on the trending feed pretty HF 21)
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It's changing because of the flags. People don't use bid bots that much because they anticipate being flagged.
For example I flag only votes by bid bots (where I know that it is no manual curation)
Exactly
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First of all thank you for using your downvote ! I really believe it's very important that everyone uses downvotes and you using it is a great sign, you are definitely in the right to downvote me or anyone for any reason you see fit.
Now you make a great point on voting on things that you didn't see. But ultimately not everyone got the time to hunt for downvoteable content, and abuse fighting groups are always in the need for more sp.
Also the main idea is that abusers will often automate their farming operations (like haejin for instance). But regular people often don't know how to code so it's hard for them to fight it. This is what this tool is about, leveling the playing field.
Yes I have started using the downvote/rewards redistribution tool a lot more since HF 21 and have been in heavy discussions this past weekend about it all.
On one hand you have "easy cases" such as massively over rewarded posts (I mean let's face it, on the whole, is any post really worth that much more than $50 around here?) that have a couple of lines of text and maybe a picture - this used to be prevalent pre HF21 - and plagiarising, spam, things like this where the downvote tool can be easily applied.
If that's what the tool is for, these "easy cases", then yes I think we all agree that it will be a good thing.
The grey area is based around perception of quality content if the downvote tool comes in to effect. For example (and this is just a fictitious one for argument's sake) - Someone may write something they have put a lot of effort in to (e.g. travel post in not their mother language) but it doesn't come across as high effort to someone who has their downvote trail set up and then the author gets hit with several flags from 20 random folks. No one has read it other than the trail owner and so this author is subject to a horrendous experience for something they may have spent hours writing.
Add to that the people following the down vote trail may have actually appreciated the post if they read it and the effort put in from the author for writing something in a different language that isn't their native one (in this example).
Don't get me wrong, I can see the advantages of having this tool and not poopooing the effort that must have been put in to make it. I'm just trying to see all angles here
I doubt it will help me. I am not even downvoting twice a week. I will not start hunting for it either. By now I see people downvote for all kind of reasons.
It would be great if you start your post with a short introduction so new readers like me also know what you are talking bout.
Happy Saturday. 💕
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Yeah, agree with "people downvote for all kind of reasons". I've been downvoted for few posts not because the content (I always post only my organic works) but because I use bidbots. And the guild kindly asks me not to use bidbots it's better to join their guild. That's a bullshit for me....
Yep force to get me to join isn't cool.
3speak hit me too.
And now these people? Attacking the customer base of the bidbots?
Seems like some haters got some traction and are waging war on the little people.
Seeing all these really big groups bully the platform and little people. That's my opinion.
See the comment I wrote one post below yours ;)
Oh really? So you better join them which will bring you? I noticed the tribe SteemCoinpan has been attacked too.because they uaed bidbots for their posts and now you get downvotes too if your comment is considered as spam and spam is if you leave the same message more as one time.
Strange the downvotes do not attack the bots.
Nevertheless I wish you a great Sunday. Let's hope the downvote maffia will use it for what it was meant to for. 💕
Downvotes on bid botted posts directly hurt the bots, as they receive less curation rewards. Making their customers understand that this behaviour is not profitable any more ultimately makes them stop buying, and without customers there is no base for bots any more.
And seems like some of the owners are flagging their customers.
And kinda killed any chance at being independent. Like me.
I use smartmarket and they got hit. Tipu as well. Ocdb is sending out warnings.. that's cool but yeah no warnings just slapping flags around.
I'll be honest. If you are with a big group you get more rewards. And this kills the little people or small groups.
Now more personal malicious flags will come out.
Well this place is looking like decentralization is getting centralized in the group owners.
And attacking bidbots hurts the community.
Not profitable? So it's just that we should join groups and pay with delegations to earn votes?
Now why isn't the real abuse being stopped and more work being put into rewarding real content creators....
That's a big one... Why isn't the real abuse being stopped?
I agree with you that owners flagging their customers is crazy, I couldn't believe when I saw that happening recently. Way to get rid of customers yourself, but the honest way would be to just undo the deal.
The honest way to get votes is consistency and networking. Like on any other social media platform. Of course luck plays a role too.
Any kind of buying, be it with liquid steem or with delegation, is a form of abuse and shifts the playing field towards those who can afford that.
There are a lot of people fighting real abuse, and the amount of manual curation has risen too. We're not at a point where everything would be great yet, but we got a bit closer.
Regarding decentalization, in my view we could be a lot further with that if the big userbase understood earlier that paying middle men to boost their short term profits doesn't help, and the good way would be investing in their own SP instead. Every buy from a bot, every rented delegation, filled the pockets of a few who now have disproportionate power without having done anything for that.
It's far from being centralized, as different groups have different goals, but I too would wish for a much better distribution. Doing my part, as everyone else should see what they can do. Complaining about not being able to feed the giants any more is certainly not the way.
Well, from the other side - I noticed that this anti-bot groups have their own bots for downvoting. And this is? What? Normal? Decentralized?
And what about staking tokens? Just for example: I'm staking CCC tokens and get the value (CCC token) for my posts from the CCC tribe, regarding the my stake and some other parameters probably. But what they use for delegating the power (read CCC tokens)? Probably some alghorhitms...(read bots...).. and I'll be again downvoted from some maniac/psycho/ botmaybe?...
It's not that easy, I think this downvoting will give us very strange community and it's not the right direction for Steem ecosystem.
^This. You should check out my comment thread with ocdb in my most recent post over him and his cronie downvoting bs. This attitude will kill this platform if it isn't put in check right now. Of course, as a content creator, it seems we have no say in these downvote orgies. I lost more than half of what I made from my post but they claim their curation is worth more? Wake the fuck up.
Correction: half of what you hoped to make by buying votes ;) These rewards aren't gone, they're just not assigned to you any more. Others who don't buy votes will get them now, by being curated organically. The times to buy yourself into trending are over, you need to live with that and adapt.
Didn't know it hurt the bit. You leave a comment too why you downvote? I thought it was to fight plagiarism and bad content
Nothing of that is going against the authors. They're just the battlefield when it comes to fighting the business model of selling votes, there is no other way to make the bid bots unprofitable. And they bring this upon themselves by continuously using these "services".
The whitepaper states as the reason for why we need downvotes:
People selling votes as a business which is profitable for both the seller and the buyer are a prime example for defecting stakeholders, as they only benefit two parties instead of the whole platform. Stake should be used to vote, and the profits should come from curation rewards. Asking people to pay for votes is one of the main forms of abuse, and with the free downvotes it's finally possible to do something against it.
I usually don't comment when I downvote, as I expect most people to know why that happens already. I'm always answering to questions when they don't though.
Downvoting for bidbot use is okay, downvoting you to force you to join their guild sucks though, what's the name of the guild ?
ocdb or ocd don't know exactly. And today I have another downvote on the post posted via busy. Busy interface also have bot. What to do now? Use only steemit? esteem also have bot? I mean this have no sense...
This is precisely the use case for this tool, you can just trail abuse fighting groups and not have to hunt for votes.
Great point, I didn't think this post would get top trending so I didn't really bother.
Okay I resteem and check it out. Thanks for taking the time to answer me. Great Monday 👍💕
Awesomeness, @howo! Thanks for the update. 😊
Thanks :)
Thanks for your work. Do you have an ETA for the hit list? (posts/comments)
Next week :)
Hit list... Wow... Sounds great! Who are we attacking with a flag war now?
Anyone actually, the point of this tool is that anyone can do whatever you want with it.
This post has been included in the latest edition of The Steem News - a compilation of the key news stories on the Steem blockchain.
yep, downvotes work
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..thank you for your continuous work, glad to be a part of this awesome project...talking about downvoting it still makes sense, but I don’t use it..before I would downvote, real dirty things have to happen..and I m still learning every day, so many details..anyway, will vote for witness for you..thx again, steem on..
Attacking regular people... That's all I've seen and forcing people to join thier groups to survive...
..that’s your experience?..Hasn’t happened to me..or?..
Yep. Anyone buying votes is flagged unless you join these groups and delegation for them...
I can attest to this. Happened to me with ocdb in my comments of my latest post.
..ooook..thx for Info..follow you..
Great work you just did. Bravo 👏
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Thanks for the update.
I'm interested on the counter to downvotes. Because some are abusing downvotes. I encountered it once... I earned .45$ from my original content but it was downvoted by someone which reduce the amount to 0.05$.
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How isn't this being considered abuse?
The guy is coding stuff that help every stakeholders curate more efficiently, It's normal the blockchain would want to pay for that.
Also if you disagree with it you are completely free to downvote it and convince others to do so.
Chek.. Sir, Y given me, Down vote, my All post is my original, but This not Right
Thanks for the post.
What????
I'd love to understand this but this is just wow.... Not sure I want to try to understand this
But just oh well if you are not paying with a big delegation to a group you don't get the right to do what you want with your money?
Wow.
These proposals suck. Counter this with that... Why?
Why all the attacks and flags...
Honestly just some bullshit to me. Running off real people trying to grow.
And the real issues with bidbots being abused? You totally ignore those people.
But hey if you got enough stake just sit back and earn curation....
Sigh this isn't going well newsteem is just a flagwar.
Power is something that needs to be dealt with carefully.
It's not clear to me if for example I need to set the first number to 0 to be able to use downvotes with the remainder part of the primary pool.
Ah, that's my bad, you shold the the first number to 0 and then the second one to whatever amount of voting power you want to use.