I was going to make this post a few days ago already but some personal problems came in the way. I'll try to keep it brief and explain my perspective and would love to hear the thoughts of others about this.
The EIP and bid bots.
As you know, compared to most other bid bots @ocdb was working on manually curated authors only, so the odds that they would get downvoted compared to 90% of garbage that bid bots sell their votes on usually, we would have had a good chance to operate without seeing much downvotes and possibly been one of the last bots standing while everyone was starting to downvote bid botted posts. The reason we did not continue selling votes is because it undermines the EIP and makes it unfair for the rest of stakeholders and authors.
As an author you get less rewards due to the curve if your post doesn't make it to 20 steem post rewards, same thing goes for the curators and they'll only make curation rewards from honest voting.
As an author using bid bots you get an unfair advantage because they return profitable votes to you no matter the content and at the same time delegators receive both the bids and curation rewards (such was the case with the non-profit @ocdb at least).
So as you can see, anyone buying ocdb votes was directly taking rewards from anyone who didn't, both authors and curators. This is because the rewardpool only consists of a certain amount of Steem daily/weekly.
Same thing is true today, those buying bids, if they don't get downvoted, are directly taking rewards from everyone else who didn't.
Since @ocdb went fully manual, we have been downvoting posts that receive purchased votes for this main reason. There are many others attempting to do the same, the psychology is changing fast with things such as even if your post is worthy of all the upvotes, it is still unfair to curators to get the majority of rewards from bid bots. Same thing with promoting your post, it can just be a cover to gain that ROI over everyone else so if it's mainly for promotion then you won't get flagged if you burn part of the rewards to not make it profitable for yourself.
Bid bots that we have been targetting have been: upmewhale, rocky1, sct.voter, steemmonsters, appreciator and bdvoter. The good news here is that most people with common sense have stopped using them, so much so that these bots have started curating seeing their voting power constantly idle. Most bids still going on are usually from posts older than 2-3 days on garbage content, but as I mentioned above, the content doesn't even matter at this point cause the bid bots, due to how little competition there is for votes, are always giving profitable votes to authors which directly means they are making more than their original bid, giving bid bot owners and their delegators more returns and undermining the EIP.
There is always a cost to pay when you stick your neck out to downvote these posts, I was fine with it and didn't make much noise when the first downvotes started occuring on my posts from a 1m sp+ korean account because we downvoted him due to very concentrated curation on himself and a couple other accounts only. I also didn't care much when some bid bot owners started retaliating on my posts because of the first ocdb downvotes on their customers.
Now they seem to have banded together though to downvote the compilation posts of @ocd which go 100% to the curators and that does not seem very fair to me. The reason I say banded together is because they all seem to be doing it around the same time:
Before you get all "it's their stake they can disagree on rewards like everyone else does", well, if that was the case that would be alright with us.
Matter of the fact is we noticed early on into the EIP that the @ocd posts were getting a lot of rewards and toned it down so we don't hog trending constantly. We used to give a 10% vote per nomination and decided to change it to a more focused and quality 6 posts per day compilation and once there is more worthy underrated and deserving authors over time we could branch out to more posts. Once we realized that certain bid bots (who are now downvoting us instead) were curation sniping the posts because they were forced to curate when the bids were running dry, we decided to stop self-voting as we were making around the same amount of rewards now to reward the curators for their efforts.
This is what the posts look like now, bear in mind I haven't been voting much on the @ocd posts myself until these attacks started occuring:
So here's what I'm wondering now.
Do these bid bot owners think that they can intimidate us with these downvotes? It's pretty obvious by now that if @ocdb wasn't downvoting them, many other accounts in favor of the EIP would instead. How would they retaliate towards them?
As I mentioned earlier, ocdb was in the beginning (when we were still a "bid bot") breaking off voting rings that were mainly rewarding eachother, even though we have plans on going back towards that in the near future, we figured bid bots were a much bigger issue for now.
We never downvoted these bid bot votes to 0, it is only meant to make them as profitable as curation is.
Bid bots need to change their ways, the time for easy rewards with others delegations while making this platform a mess is over and even if ocdb were to stop downvoting them, others wouldn't. They have to become a hybrid were idle vp is used for curation and if they want to sell votes for promotion they need to make sure the posts are burning some rewards or are young enough to actually affect hot/trending or don't give the authors a profit. Advertisement and promotion doesn't give you a direct ROI this way anywhere, it is not sustainable and it comes to a cost for everyone else on this platform. Promotion has been their main excuse for over two years now and it's pretty obvious by now that barely anyone uses them for promotion, most of the posts ocdb flags are older than 1 day.
OCD has always been rewarding it's curators with these post rewards, they aren't just a list of "what we have done today", they consist of descriptions of the posts and authors and we have a lot of followers that follow our accounts to find these new authors we highlight. We are not going to negotiate with threats of bid bot owners. We have not countered these downvotes with the @ocdb account as we want to keep them separate, but I figured this is something the community should know as many have been asking me lately why the @ocd posts are getting downvoted.
OCD is not the only curation project that rewards their curators with post rewards, just because @cervantes and other curation projects aren't using their downvotes to assist the platform and the EIP it seems very unfair for our curators to face these retaliations and threats. Even if we were to adapt to another form of rewarding our curators, do you think this is where it ends? It wouldn't take long until they would instead retaliate on our manual curation just to get us to stop downvoting their bid votes they are double dipping with.
If any of the bid bot owners are reading this, I want you to know that every downvote cast from @ocdb has been on my order, so if you want someone to retaliate on, feel free to do it on my posts. Doing so to curators who work hard to find these posts and have nothing to do with this sounds like some collateral damage you don't want hanging over you.
I mean, come on, it's getting pretty ridiculous when bid bots are selling their votes through other bid bots cause that's how desperate they are to earn more rewards than everyone else and undermine the EIP and proof of brain.
100% of the rewards on this post going to @ocd for the team of manual curators that have been affected by these downvotes.
Theres nothing to be alright here about. Its obvious, slimy retaliation.
Haha. Wolfie is a sneaky puppy. I mean, all this is expected. They need to maintain their ROI or they lose the delegators and investors. When that happens they lose their influence on the platform.
Without Smartsteem Wolfie is just a Orca with dev skills. In old Steem he was a powerhouse.
You just have to push through and yes, i think they should be downvoted far beyond the threshold of profitability. If you prick them a bit and the loss over what they would get from curation is lets say 10%, they can live with that and try to retaliate. They can sustain the retaliation longer. But if the loss is 70% then you cut their time in which they can do business by a much greater degree.
They are businesses after all, with responsibility to their investors, and they cant keep it up as long as OCD can.
Here, have a little upvote.
The only continued proof of brain that I really see in some of these ongoing circles is proof of nepotism.
That's ridiculous. Regardless of possible disagreement of rewards on those OCD posts, downvoting them for retaliation purposes is a very low act.
Now, regarding upmewhale and other bid-bots using vote-selling services. I'm not exactly sure whether that's actually worse than his try at manual voting: https://steemit.com/quotes/@anhvu/quotes-134-sin-1569077304
Nevertheless, I've been very transparent about my stance on vote-selling/buying-votes after EiP and what I've done so far should display that I'm not just spitting empty words. And in retrospect, I would have appreciated getting a positive word out about the @smartsteem manual curation movement, as we started manually curating even before ocdb (the previous bid-bot).
And to be absolutely clear: vote-selling of Smartsteem will not be supported for that much longer. It's just a matter of weeks until I've completed the re-design and the era of vote-buying will come to an end.
Also, I really hope that more curation projects like @curangel, @curie & @ocd are starting to pop up and that @freedom decides to shift his delegations towards those. At this point, those should be on par (and most likely even exceeding them) with profitability than delegating to bid-bots; and far more healthy for the ecosystem.
So with that said: keep on doing what you do with @ocdb and @ocd, @acidyo!
I wasn't trying to throw dirt at smartsteem in this post, I appreciate what you guys do and are planning on doing in the near future. I just happened to notice that while finishing the post and had to throw in the screenshot as it seemed pretty funny.
Yep their manual voting has not been great, goes to show why that is not easy either and deserves it's rewards.
This is amazing to hear, hopefully we will also be able to have eachothers backs as curation projects vs the abusive downvotes from retaliation because these bid bots are trying to fight eachother over ROI cause they're afraid a whale that's enabling them who's been afk most of the year may undelegate. They don't seem to understand it's about the very case of selling profitable bids and delegators earning more than curators.
lols.
Very proud to be an @ocd curator since day 1. We will continue to curate original content creators no matter what. A few flags don't scare us! :)
If you didn't do it, I was already thinking of doing it myself even though my account was going to be affected as soon as possible. I've been watching everything, I like to have tests and analyze the behavior of certain things, I only see here envy and resentment, that's all I can say. It seems that people do not understand that we are in the #newsteem and that we must all adapt and accept certain changes, it is unfair that a team like ocd have to be paying for doing things right.
At the same time you (ocd) create new initiatives of participation for the community and new opportunities for growth, and at the same time they attack abuse, that is masterful. I say again, ocd you always make me feel good, I'm proud of everything I've seen about your project. I hope other projects did just a little bit of what you do, valuing the community and also your team.
I feel like your curators would be understanding of this decrease in rewards for a bit, until things settle down. After all, the first reason to choose to help find work for curation is because they want to help undervalued content creators, surely? Getting reward for it is icing on the cake. I drop posts at c-squared because I want to see them better rewarded. That's entirely voluntary. I drop them into the curangel queue for the same reason and I get little rewards for that, but that's not why I do it. Heck, the other curators beat me to most of them anyway! 😆
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They are crabs in a bucket. This is their final death throws manifesting. Some of them are also upvoting anti-bidbot people to try and create a dilemma for them. It hurts in the meantime, but keep powering through it, they will be on the wrong side of history. They continue to expose themselves for what they actually are, exploiters.
Ah yes the upvote bribes.
They rekt golos when golos did what steem should've done, imo.
Golos didn't have the user base steem does.
The sooner they dump and leave, the better.
They call for war on us to continue their profits, they force us to war on them for our survival.
This war won't end until vote buying/selling, exclusive circle jerking, and majority self voting are universally condemned by the community.
Profiteers are the reason we can't have a better price.
They are a cancer on our commons.
How did golos change their blockchain? I'm afraid I missed out on that when the price went up as I sold for Steem, much like I plan on doing with most other diversifications I got right now.
I didn't get the full drama report, but the snippet I did get says they forked out the bad actors, locked their stake, and moved forward.
The chain was then forked by the bad actors who currently are trying to make a go of their fork.
I can't find a source in english to keep me up to date on what is happening in russian, or I would spend more time there.
Why you would dump golos for steem doesn't seem optimal, to me.
We all do better in a cooperative world, imo.
Golos could have been a back up in case of sec, or other bullies, taking action on us.
Now, not not so much.
Those of us who have been downvoting are also getting downvotes. I'm getting them also.
I guess there is a cost in trying to protect the value of Steem.
As bad as I feel that this is happening to those who are doing what they think is best for the value of Steem, I think it is a phase we have to go through.
Really sorry though
In the world of blockchain social media, bit bots are the biggest turn off that keep many away from steem, I’ve heard it too many times.
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Well put. That is what inspired me to start working on Native Ads.
We're going through changes and a few negative reactions like these are expected. The silver lining is that since intentions and incentives are more aligned now, the community will find its way to healthy ground.
yes. i wasnt in the know who are this rocky1 or appreciator. now I know them better.
Downvoting have really been a big change here. Don’t know if it was for the best or worst. But never seeing in my short stay such a open 'witch-hunt' in a social network...
You still like the addition of downvoting @acidyo after all what you have seen now and experienced as well?
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Firstly I was confused about why you were specifically going against posts of your direct competitors. Thanks for clearing my doubt about it because you were thinking about roi only. Nobody will go against curated posts but since you guys are sitting at 4.5 M SP, you should be more careful about % of your upvote and use it more carefully. For example, do you really think following post deserved $39 upvote from ocdb and making it $67 by using your wise authority upvote?
https://steemit.com/webcomic/@northwestnomad/nerd-by-northwest-121-ranch-to-the-rescue
?
@ocdb doesn't use wise, @ocd does and I don't see the ocd upvote on there so I'm guessing the blocktrades vote is by following someone else through @wise. This may be a post that got curated through our efforts to aid smaller curation projects, anyway. Rewards are quite subjective, is it really that bad that an author who makes <$1 post rewards gets a bigger vote every once in a while? come on.
It's funny your one complaint is about a post we may have overrewarded by voting last on it with @ocdb while at the same time you're saying the only thing we care about is ROI. :D
If you can tell me an easier way to spot bid bots sold through steem engine tokens then we'll surely focus just as much on them too. This is not personal but I can see why you might think that.
Isn't ocd and ocdb is operated mainly by same team (you and anomadsoul)?
ocdb was not the last one to upvote, BT vote came after.
What I was trying to say about earlier was: should not you guys reward max number of people rather giving it to few only.
You already mentioned that other bid bots were not on your list, there are plenty more other than your competitors. It is not that difficult to spot bids for SE bots.
Ah you're right, not sure how the BT vote landed there. :shrug:
We do and we're trying to do that, some content getting bigger rewards every now and then and getting onto trending is not that bad considering what you guys have done to it in the past 2 years.
We'll try downvoting more bid bots but because that was our initial plan, not because of your retaliation downvotes.
It is really interesting to read your perspective on this and then to read the bot owners (and their masters) discussions in the comments.
Whatever the outcome, this is a conversation that desperately needs to take place.
It seems like you were winning the early battles, but the bot owners have now rallied. I think if you want to start winning the good fight again, you need a strategy and a coordinated effort. I'm sure you are trying this, but is it enough?
From what I'm reading, bot owners are saying go after circles voters and vote traders, too. Also, maybe instead of attacking several bots at the same time, it would be easy to focus on one at a time. Start with the most despised.
In other words, team up with the bot owners who are willing to help take out the other parties you can both agree on disliking. Divide and conquer the bot owners. They are already in competition and surely would like to see each other fail, too. Don't let them team up against you, find a common enemy.
This is how a handful of Europeans destroyed vast empires all over the world, while simultaneously hating on each other. If it worked for them it can work for you.
Oh we aren't worried about that at all, this post is not because I'm actually worried or panicking like they may think and pointed out. I'm sure curators can live without some rewards for some time, most do it for the effect it has on the authors that get curation anyway.
Taking them on one by one would have been an idea, and something some people are doing but we have a lot of stake and downvotes so we can manage more at a time, maybe even more soon. :)
I understood this post to be an update about the situation and a place for discussion about the downvotes that are happening.
I just get the impression that you want to see the EIP and newsteem succeed and the trending page fixed. I didn't get the impression that you are worried or concerned.
I'm not too keen on following downvote trails. I actually am only trying to follow upvote trails of smaller curation projects, but I am sticking with OCD trail for now even though it's not small because I liked ocdb and I've been upvoting ocd posts for awhile.
I also downvote, but I don't really want to take on the big guys for obvious reasons, however, I would be willing to help out more targeted abuse.
It's a tough job and I admire your courage. Ignore the haters, you have much more support than opposition.
They won't have the same sp when Freedom undelegates.
So no worries. As once the daily revenue will fall as compared to what freedom expcted.
Don't worry about these cartoons.
Those are some huge downvotes... Power is all, indeed also at Steem. But bonding together and act like a community. So we make a fist against the abuse..
Im alive! Also LoL. It's like we were online simultaneously.
Welcome back!
Being offline for more than 2-months, i just checked boosta's account and damn! Why did he invested more steem if he hates steemit so much? Also bid-bots! Hmm i just checked wut they are and ohh my, trying one for myself seems enticing.
But the part that they use most of their voting power for the highest possible yields, instead of curating manually.
So far i only know of 2-groups who are fighting against these problems OCD and Steemcleaners. At the very least the steemit developers are not handling this like tumbler or twitter, where the folks who are in-charge are not banning and deleting post without the authors consent.
I really hope you guys find a way!
Good quality needs manual curating so seeing this project stick to it is quite amazing. Bots are everywhere and there are not AI, so manual review and reward is the only way to appreciate those bringing quality to the platform.
Drama token coming!
Hey, @acidyo. Still loving Splinterlands and looking forward to the next set of cards coming out. I used to have DEC until you added the ability to buy packs with DEC. Now I have packs. Ha ha.
I know the rules after HF21 have changed and people are trying to figure out the best approach to take. I mostly agree with keeping posts from using bid bots to over-reward posts that don't provide value to the Steem ecosystem.
I was hoping that you would remove OCDB's downvote from @ssg-community's post promoting the annual Steem Silver Coin. This is a project that has been going for 3 years now and we're trying to include as much of the whole Steem community as possible. Someone estimated that over 85% of active accounts haven't even heard of the Steem Silver Coin. We feel that more exposure to Steem in various arenas can only help the platform, including by having Steem-branded physical precious metals.
It's unfortunately difficult to get more exposure without buying votes. SSG isn't trying to abuse bidbots for profit, just trying to let more people know about the newest Steem coin.
Thanks for you time and your consideration!
I think you are confusing Acidyo for Aggroed. :)
Yup. Another example of why not to stay up so late without sleep. ;)
Place some beneficiaries to null or steem.dao so the votes don't become profitable and you won't get downvoted.
You got my few cents to help offset the losses of the manual curators. Really like the switch to manual curation and hope that this continues. Am pretty excited to see @therealwolf saying that the same is happening with Smartsteem. A whole lot of VP has been moving towards manual curation and that gives me hope for where things are going!