Dearest flock,
We are a fun and frivolous church. Being serious all the time is bad for the heart, no matter what one is up against.
But today, as temperatures are too high to be funny anyway, we would like your attention for the following serious note, or at least slightly more serious than usual.
We have heard an argument in favour of vote buying being bandied about, that goes something like this:
"Vote buying makes people buy Steem to buy votes with; this increases the demand for Steem; the increased demand raises the Steem price; therefore bidbots are a blessing."
To all those who have pushed this idea, we would like to reply thus:
The price of Steem is determined by speculation. The idea that buying Steem for buying votes has a noticeable impact on the demand side and thus on Steem price is a bit, let's be nice, naive.
Bidbots and delegating to them is frustrating manual curators and content providers to the point of driving them away, and it has emphasised the already scammy image Steemit has as a place where content and curation don't matter, but skulduggery is the way to go.
Those two things have a larger impact on Steem price than is dreamt of in your philosophy, not to mention that said speculation, the general state of the crypto markets, the advent of EOS, Ned powering down, marketing, etc. outweigh even that impact.
Your economic thinking is an oversimplification. We haven't noticed a positive relation between the advent of delegations and bidbots on the one hand and the price of Steem on the other, as your theorette would suggest.
If your economic thinking would be any good, it would be able to predict the price of Steem at least roughly; it doesn't, so it isn't. It is therefore not a good idea to rely on it in the defence of bidbots and the delegating to them.
We still feel that bidbots, and especially delegating to bidbots, as nice as the ROI for some may be, will strangle the platform, and the price of Steem with it, not to mention that it goes against the very concepts of stake, accountability, content-based curation, and active social participation Steemit was supposed to be about.
To end on a cheerier note: the idea that Steem and Steemit would somehow be lost without vote buying and the associated delegating to bidbots is hilarious enough for several good laughs.
Best regards,
The High Priest of the Church of Piglet, Holder of Truth, and Keeper of the Ivy Staff.
Image by Katharsisdrill
The vote sellers don't generally care much about quality, but I see some do have blacklists. It's just not possible for even dolphins to change much about what is on trending. That is important as it's what new users and visitors see first. It's supposed to be about quality, but that is lacking. I do worry that greed could trash this platform
I do worry that greed could trash this platform
I think you should be using present continuous tense here.
There's still a lot of good stuff going on, but this could drive those people away. I'm not giving up.
There is, but I can see it dwindling down after these first euphoric months of 2018, when it kinda peaked.
The biggest reason for this downturn is the price of steem IMO, which put the cap on minnows upvote power and without it other minnows and red fish are getting nothing, cause we all know too well nothing's trickling down from the top.
If this keeps going like that, only the strongest, the most established contributors will stay.
The price of STEEM is dictated by Korean whales who in all likelihood have never even heard of the site, let alone give two fucks about it.
I'm on the fence currently. I agree that the vote buying bots take this site further away from what I joined two years ago.
But they also seem to be the only way to get noticed.
I'm considering at least one big buy. For what, I'm not sure yet.
That's what I signed up for.
Ah, piglet, I love your commitment and idealism, but in focusing on business, you miss a deeper aspect of this whole shebang.
Belonging to a community motivates behavior that reaffirms that belonging. Reputation is the ultimate status report on whether you are a good community member or not.
Since bidbots corrupt the method by which reputation is gained in this community, this means that all good standing members must succumb to that corruption to maintain their status within it.
The best people in the community use bidbots, not because they want to disincentive growth (which is the unfortunate side-effect of bidbots, since they eat the rewards that would otherwise be used as bait to onboard active users), but because they want to be upstanding.
A realignment of reputation is required to realign the incentives of Steemit away from profit-taking towards investment and growth.
I agree that bidbots and vote buying are a way to bypass the normal reputation mechanism, but I don't believe the bulk of vote buyers is motivated by that when they buy votes, because:
While it may play a role for some, I strongly suspect money is the only motivator for a great majority of vote buyers, and not status. Wallet size determines who you are, what you can do, and what sort of votes you get on Steemit; it is the new reputation metric.
Another aspect is, that raising a few people's reputation numbers in an underhanded way has little ill effect on Steemit; at worst, it is annoying for those who got their reputation the old-fashioned way.
For these two reasons. reputation wasn't mentioned in the posting.
I take your point about the devaluing of reputation.
I could be wrong, but I suspect you underestimate the effect of it.
Whenever folks here achieve a reputation elevation, they celebrate it, and are congratulated on it more than any achievement in earning money. They are rewarded in expressions of love.
And since every extra nine points of reputation are TEN times harder to gain, than every single reputation point you EVER achieved before, the need to funnel immense amounts of money through bidbots becomes paramount to gaining those extra critical points.
The love a person gets for achieving grade 70, in particular, is IMMENSE. Surely, you, Sir, at rep 71, know that the birthday party for a 70 rep knows no more Steemit love than the whole Steemit universe can give.
A slowly enfolding, squeezing, snuggling, sentimental, Steemian embrace.
Here's are questions to which I don't know the answer: How did you achieve a 70 rep, how hard was it, how did it make you feel to achieve it, and were you loved and embraced by the community for achieving it? :)
I'm speechless!
And so you should be.
Carry on.
If I may be so bold as to encapsulate your post (many pro bid botters have the attention spans of gnats)
You're talking shite !
This wasn't pro bidbots.
....neither was my comment! lolol
Right, I misunderstood.
Why have you flagged my comment
Spamming and self-promoting in comments, without even leaving a comment that has anything to do with the posting.
A quick look at https://steemit.com/@steemwhalepower/comments will show everyone who cares to know that the flag was well deserved, and that, in fact, you deserve many more.
I have reported you for harassment
I run a upvote and resteem service so I leave comments on posts I upvote and resteem just like all the other services like @joeparys @ebargains @upmewhale and so on
You leave me no choice I have to report you
My account has been targeted by
@church-of-piglet I run a upvote and resteem service so I leave comments on posts I upvote and resteem just like all the other services like @joeparys @ebargains @upmewhale @upme @edansgarden @bodzila @dailyupvotes @whalepromobot @nado.bot @booster and so on so why are you not flagging then accounts why are you targeting my account don't make no sense
Boo. Hoo.