Thanks for taking the time to explain this in clear language. When I started getting active here, Steem and SBD kept rising, so it was easy to win even if you lost. The lower prices are forcing us to learn more about how a lot of things work around here, including bidding bots. Lucky for me, people like you provide a chance for an education if people will just take the time to read. "Resteemed"
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Thanks for the resteem! That helps a lot. I've had good response on this from bot users, but I'm still hoping to reach some bot owners and get their thoughts.
I've realized the need to write a complete guide on how my bidding strategy works. I will probably publish that this weekend.
Thanks, I'll be looking for it in my feed.
As for getting the attention of the bot owners, how can you do that so long as they're making money? I mean, that's what @grumpycat was doing by flagging people who use bots that aren't compliant with his 3.5-day rule, but even so, most bots haven't changed yet.
That's a fair point. It's a cash cow, so why should they change?
I think I made some valid points in my post about the legal risks bot owners are taking, but the real question is 'how can we get them to actually read this?'
@grumpycat had no effect on bot owners because he targeted their customers, not their businesses. There is virtually unlimited demand for post promotion, so targeting the customers has no real impact. You have to call out the owners, establish industry standards, and punish the bots that continue to operate in unethical fashions.
If he targeted their update posts to strip the rewards... if he targeted the delegators, if he got @yabapmatt to remove them from the SteemBotTracker...
Those actions would have real impact on their businesses, and would give them much stronger incentives to fall in line. But if you're afraid to take on whale bot owners, by all means go after their unsophisticated customers that are new to Steem and have no f***ing clue why they were targeted...
It's like swinging a baseball bat in a rain storm to keep the rain drops away.
I'm not sure its as much of a cash cow as it seems. Only the SP delegation sellers are making big money I think. @themarkymark says @buildawhale has an 850 dollar upvote and he pays 8500 dollars per day for it, well that just happens to be right at 100% of the upvote (without taking SBD pricing into consideration).
Even if @themarkymark is paying out 100% of the SBD received to delegators, he is still making money. What happens to the curation rewards earned by @buildawhale?
The bot owners can set the payout % and announce what it will be. @themarkymark could set his payout at 85% and he might lose a little voting power but it wouldn't break his business at all. It would probably improve return for the investors that stayed because smaller voting power means your number of bids to service in each round would decrease and rounds would be closer to the intended 144 minutes.
(Point 3 above is actually to create a more stable operations environment for bot operators and investors, while improving predictability for customers)
Right, I felt sympathy with some of the posters he flagged because they didn't really do anything wrong and produced good content.