I made a post this morning. And it had under 20 votes after 30 minutes, and under $1 payout. What was going on?
As I checked other posts, there weren't very many made this morning. Those that were made, had low upvote counts as well.
What is really going on?
Many people use autovoting technology, like bots to vote on the same authors, or other sites to autovote based on criteria, like following the votes of others. One site that does this is streemian, which is down.
The saying is a play on "rise of the planet of the apes", where the autobots and autvotes are taking over instead of the apes :P
When streemian goes down it shows that 2/3 of people use autovoting and vote-trail following for their voting behavior.
Is that disturbing to you? That a large majority of the votes come not from people who upvote your content becaues they like it, but because they autovote it or follow others who might upvote it.
Do you think it's disturbing to people who might be thinking of investing in a so-called "social media platform"? Why are people going to invest in a "social media platform" that has over 1/2 of it's content not even evaluated by people? Is this what a "social media platform" is, where content isn't being evaluated or appreciated by the people/voters in order to rank how popular or desirable it is?
This makes content popularity not even really based on the upvotes received. Only a 1/3 proportion of upvoters are possibly voting for posts willingly because of the content, not with autobots, autovoting authors or following vote trails.
When looking for content, such as popular content, one would think that people would actually like the content in order for it to become popular. But that isn't the case on Steemit. The votes allocated to posts aren't coming from a majority of people who like the post, appreciate it, value it, etc. It seems the majority of votes are from autovoting and trail following.
Plus many votes, manual or autovoted, are for curation rewards too, again not even about the content being good, valued or appreciated by the person voting.
What do you think about all of this?
Thank you for your time and attention. Peace.
If you appreciate and value the content, please consider:
Upvoting 
, Sharing 
or Reblogging 
below.
me for more content to come!
It seems that no one has the time for reading posts - some might be "speed reading" articles but the vast majority are not even doing that.
This is the era of instant gratification and the rise of the bots is a reality already. Even people who read posts(the tiny few) may be using bots for upvoting - simply because they may not have the time to read all that they may want to and then upvote.
The thing is - there is a huge, mammoth amount of content being published every day, every hour, that it is impossible to go through even a small percentage of it. Hence the rise of the autovote, as you put it.
Hence this result, as most people rely on bots to do their voting.
Yep. I'm having to shorten my articles to the point where they barely have content to try and get anyone to read them. The ADD online is getting out of control.
I figure you have 4 sentences and a picture, if you are lucky, to hook someone.
We need more posts on fidget spinners!
Indeed. It's been like this for a while. I've always found it largely makes a mockery of pretending to be "social media" as a result when most of the upvotes don't come from actually evaluating content.
Sadly so...
Most people still read content and don't have the time to comment, they just upvote and move on.... Its all in one blender...
This is why I value thoughtful comments more than upvotes. Don't get me wrong, I love the upvote (automatic or otherwise) because getting paid for the work I do is a strong motivator to keep working!
A thoughtful comment WITH the upvote tells me you valued my content enough to read it, say something about it, and maybe even tell others about it.
Auto-upvotes or not, keep writing engaging posts and you will encourage more people to engage with them and give you more "human" upvotes!
Thanks for the feedback. The point was more about how much of a real audience we have, as the problem. When the autovote tools go down, then you really see how many people are actually voting within those first 30 minutes lol. It seems that 2/3 of those first 30 minutes of support come from tools that vote for you. This wasn't about how I'm "not getting enough upvotes", "not enough money", etc. ;)
Yeah ... that is disparaging ... my first $4 comes from auto-voters. So my last post hasn't even made $1 with whatever trail was following me being down :(
Well it could be the first post was ppl seeing your posts in a tag, and other posts they don't, or they don't interest them. How do you know it was bots or a trail?
Because when the trail is down, I make $0.11 and when it's up I instantly make $5
I suggest that payouts are based on the total value of comments more than the amount of votes on the content. This way auto-votes have less or no impact on payouts and thus there is no incentive to use them. It could be that votes on posts determine visibility and ranking, but votes on comments determine post payout.
Let the value of the social interaction determine the value, not the cold calculations of bots.
Thanks again @krnel
Upvoted by a human and re-steemed!
Unfortunately that system would be unfair to authors, unless you mean curation rewards should come from comment upvotes ...
Automated non-human voting that works to maximize curation rewards is something to be expected keeping in mind how steem has been set up. I personally see it as more of a weakness and a door wide open for abuse, spam and a certain type of investors reaping rewards without providing value back to the community.
It's a free market and people are warranted to be looking out for their own interests and to exploit opportunities, but this situation and the severity of the practice keeping in mind what you have reported, are certainly not an asset for the platform and its premise as a social network. Bots redistributing the reward pool in this way is by no means a very social way of handling things.
Well said :) You're like Mr. Eloquent. Good communication from you always hehe.
Hehe :P Thanks! :) I do have a bit of tendency for word diarrhea sometimes, I hope you do find it tolerable :P
This is and will be an issue. This is and will be an issue in the future and needs to be looked at. This is part of the reason I wrote the post about the manual curators throwing quality into the whale pool as it may stimulate some big players to manually vote on what they wouldn't normally or at least vote on quality.
I understand that busy people can't only manually vote every time and the whale votes should be utilised and spread to what lifts the site reputation and gives long-term depth.
I tested streemian for two weeks as an experiment. I felt very awkward seeing my vote on posts i both didn't read and when i did, wouldn't have voted it up.
Side note: steemnow and steemviz are not connecting to the chain either it seems.what is going on?
Interesting and honest reflection about what occurred. Just goes to show...
Various sites use the default steem RPC node, and it had issues today it seems.
It is frustrating. Personally, I am struggling with feeling like the only ones reading anything are small accounts still trying to "make it".
When I know how many "base" votes I am going to get on any given post, it takes some of the enjoyment out of it.
Meanwhile, the trending page... blah will not even bother to say it.
I am hoping people who care about the future of the platform will begin to support those who are actually reading, commenting and using the platform. This is part of the reason I have been annoyed with the focus on comment votes. Seriously, let's reward those who provide POR. (proof of reading)
I know what you mean. It seems only a few small, well-meaning content creators are active and the rest is on auto-pilot. It's not hard to see why, after being here for a few months and treating it like a 60-hour-a-week job curating, commenting replying...it's hard work. And often thankless or outright retributive.
Slogging through the new section and all the porn reposts is like a tour of duty.
Yes, 3/4 of the comments I get are from newer accounts from the past few months, and very few old accounts.
I don't loo ;) No idea what's going on there, but I suspect more of the same types of stuff as last year.
Multiple problems can be addressed, self-voting is an issue. If a comment is valued by others they should learn to upvote it, even if it's only 1%. It's because of the monetary focus that acts as the primary motivator from curation. Posts get you money back, but comments don't much because no one else is voting them up either. Or do comments not have curation at all? lol People are drawn to the activities that can get them the most rewards. New people tend to comments more than post, as to have more exposure from saying something on many post with more views, than just their own unknown posts.
I like to just keep an eye on the new section, lots of stuff to sift through but it feels good bringing up a good post that was at 0.00 even if its just a meager $0.10 vote from me.
I find comments almost never get noticed or upvoted so I dont bother putting much time into commenting anymore.
I also like to sift through the mass comments on popular posts and upvote the good ones to move them to the top (rather than upvoting the post, since it is already doing well)
I love the new section also!
POR - I like that. It's the real appreciation - that adds value to one's post.
Exactly and if we want "Real People" using the site, the way to do that is to reward those who are using the site. lol
I call it quality - followship. Rather have 100 of those than 10,000 of crowd that doesn't appreciate/or engage.
I like that, "proof of reading." I spend more time on Steemit enjoying other people's work than putting up my own. But I don't always want to comment.
This is a great post. As a newb to Steemit, I genuinely had no idea this was a thing. I knew bots existed but if am honest even bots have their place. But this autvoting is a monstrosity.
What's next autoposting??
Is Steemit going to devolve in to a social platform for bots, autovoting programs and no humans in sight?? I really hope that autovoting is removed otherwise the heart will be completely ripped out of Steemit and this is one of the last bastions left that has some heart.
Hehe, I feel ya, but the bots can't be removed since the blockchain is open for anyone to interact with, without a site needed.
I vote for your post because I like it. And I don't use bots. There are still people who make curation manually😉 Yes, it is not so profitable, but much more interesting...
Hip-hip-hooray for doing all your actions yourself, like it should be :D We are few and far between lol.
Comments mean more , when you interact with one another , you get to know the person better and their material , when you just upvote to a return in favor , it doesn't mean anything . Honestly that's greedy , when someone can make a useful comment and engage in a conversation, that's what's worth it
Yes, comments add value with information of relevance. But that was not the purpose of the post. It's about how your real audience isn't even representative by the upvotes we get. Most of that is just upvotes from automated tools, where people aren't even aware of the content or what it';s about to even judge if they like it or not :P When these tools go down, you really see who the real people supporters are, and how that differs from the normal automation of votes you get. It just shows how unreal the evaluations of content are. Only about 1/3 of the upvotes are really being done from people who evaluate the actual content. At least from the first 30 minutes anyways. If you take the whole post time into consideration, it's probably less, 1/4 or less?
I wish some posts were valued more then what they receive , so many good content that is unnoticed :/
What do you mean streemian is down? I'm following steemSTEM's trail with it and it's working fine. Or do you mean it occasionally goes down?
The general question is nuanced. If everyone had a substantial upvote, like say a dollar, 20 people voting on my post would make me happy. As it is, 20 people voting on my post gives me 20-40 cents (unless you're one of them! :P ). That means these small fish - these minnows - group together and upvote automatically in order to rise in SP. They look for ways to trick the system, in other words.
When we made @SteemDeepThink, we decided to use autovoting in order to promote authors, rather than content. So if we judge an author's content to be good, we vote him in, and automatically upvote his posts. We each read some of these posts, and if the quality drops, we reevaluate our vote (every new member can vote). The goal is to help the author rise in SP so that his vote will be worth something, giving him our votes when it matters, simultaneously, which might land in him in 'hot' territory. There are authors that I know will post good content without fail, and so I upvote some of these authors automatically, and then hope I'll read some or most of their stuff when I have time. Your posts have a certain consistency in their quality, and many of them are good earners, so I'm not surprised you're an auto-voting target! It's easy to be cynical and think they're after the curation reward, but I think many of the auto-voters might actually enjoy your content.
It was down when I originally made the note or early post.
Yes, true, many auto-voting is done because of trust in the authors content. But I'm more picking on the principle of autovoting, and how it undermines the principle of evaluating and valuing content to give it an upvote. Bots aren't going anywhere. I'm just pointing out how it looks to the outside when people notice this. Social media where a large part of the activity is automatically generated :P hehe.
I am very concerned about this actually. I don't think boting is generally a bad thing. If you think there is a User who is always writing undervalued posts it is OK to push him with auto-votes.
However I also don't use @randomwhale and @booster , because I believe this is not how the Steemit upvotes should work. An upvote should always mean "I like that content".
What is your opinion on payed-for votes @krnel? Is there something I do not see that explains why so many use the service? Many among them that I hold dear and that I would not unfollow because of it, btw.
Indeed. Upvotes are supposed to be a refection of an evaluation of the content that someone gives someone else. Buying upvotes from people is not an evaluation of the content. It betrays the purpose of votes to evaluate media and give rise to popularity of content.
Here's a positive use case for buying votes from bots like @booster.
Once every two weeks I create a newspaper-like post in which I choose a few posts that I liked the most from the previous two weeks. I set the rewards payout for that post at 1% for me and 99% for the authors that I choose to feature in that post. In that way I try to 'artificially' extend the reward payout for those posts so that authors can earn a little bit more.
For the last two such posts I created, I bought a few upvotes from @booster, @discordia or @worldclassplayer in order to increase the author reward for those two posts so that the authors featured in those two posts will be awarded a little more beyond the upvotes that are naturally received from normal Steemians and beyond my upvote which is worth only 3 cents.
You can check the posts here and here.
Because upvotes are monetized for the one voting, there is an underlying fear of not maximizing your investment. Your voting power sits at 100% while you sleep or are indisposed, preventing you from making the most of your stake.
I've thought of a couple remedies:
Upvotes are worth nothing for the one voting, and only support the content creator. I think voting would occur more naturally, and people would be less fearful of "squandering" votes or not getting in enough. I know though that breaks down the whole concept of curation, that those with the most stake have the most input on content that benefits the community.
I wonder if dynamically adjusted voting could help. Let people vote as much as they want, and then distribute their daily curation allotment proportionally to all upvotes. (This would only work though if you couldn't self-vote, as many would take advantage of this feature.) This would also fix people fearful of "wasting" votes or trying to get in a certain number each day.
In the meantime, I use auto-voting - but only for individuals and communities I believe in. I support @curie and @minnowsupport. I'm also part of a group that just started - @steemdeepthink - and we use autovoting to support content writers.
I feel it isn't ideal, but until Steemit starts making more frequent functional updates, the community is really just left on their own to make something work.
Yup, removing curation rewards has been tossed around before, but not gained traction yet. It would curb autovoting a decent amount.
What is your ideal?
My ideal is that people would upvote what they like without concern for the financial side. This would get rid of the mentality of trying to pick a "winning horse" before anyone else does. Original posts and comments receive payouts proportional to the number of votes, and still proportional to the size of the account. People will still give value representative of their investment in the site overall, but original posters would receive 100% of the profits, instead of the 75%/25% split.
Incentivizing curation may have been necessary in Steemit's infancy, but we have over 45,000 weekly active users now. (According to @penguinpablo - "Weekly Steem Stats Report - July 31, 2017"). We may not have the numbers of Facebook or Reddit, but we definitely have interest. I don't think people need as much financial incentive to curate - it will happen regardless.
I think it's exactly the opposite which is true. Now more than ever people should be incentivized to curate. It will be harder and harder, as the number of users and posts grow, to actually find good quality content.
Now, how the curation process is done, that's a completely different thing.
Definitely too much auto-voting going on and I think something should be done before it destroys this platform. If you're sure you're getting upvoted because you use a bot or you're in a support group or whatever, why even bother writing some even remotely interesting? You might just as well upload an empty post, just write Post, upload and get all the upvotes.
Well you will get some autovotes, but after a few times the human will notice lol and remove you from their list. It's the principle of the issue about the meaning an value of a vote for the content. But bots aren't going anywhere.
I upvote and comment on posts and comments that I choose, not some bot.
Being small and actually enjoying finding good content and stimulating conversations, I noticed the auto votes a long time ago.
They only frustrate me when I think about it. ;-)
as already mentioned I think comments (real comments though) is really the sign of appreciation for the authors work. I usually upvote the posts I comment on as I think most people do.
I use steemvoter myself for a couple of days now and I am not sure what to think about it. It saves me time, it upvotes authors I think are good and make quality posts every time and of course it auto curates for me.
On the other hand it makes me engage in their content less then before.
In my first week on steemit I did some follow4follow and upvote4upvote stuff and I did not enjoy my steemit experience at all. My feed was full of stuff I was not interested in.
As I stopped doing that and hunt for good content it started to be fun and even educational.
The auto voting seems to have a similar effect.
Most people can feel the wrongness of things, either by thinking beforehand and they can know it without doing it, or they need to do it in order to know it. I didn't need to do autovoting to know it's bad for the intention of social media and evaluating content, nor did I need to do follow4follow or vote4vote when I got here. I already knew they were not optimal behavioral models, and I didn't need to do it. I wanted to mention that because of your previous comment int he other post ;) You don't need to do and experience things to really know if they are optimal, better or right to do. That's a fallacy. Consciousness is powerful, we can avoid doing things because we have the foresight and providence to see what it will do, without doing it.
I disagree to a certain point here. Yes you are right I knew beforehand I did upvote 4 upvote or follow 4 follow this was not really the way, my greed got the better of me.
The emotional and intellectual understanding/ intelligence I have learned about on a Vipassana retreat. I mgiht used it wrong or a bad example. They used it as an example for the meditation. On an intellectual level you might understand meditation is good for you on an emotinal level you have to learn it since meditating for 12 hours a day doesnt feel very good at first.
But it was the first thing which came to my mind when I read your article.
Auto upvoting should not be placed at the first place. It is as similiar to plagiarism. If they don't allow copy and paste. They should not allow auto upvote too.
Yeah, I get what you mean. It's not a "real" upvote from a person, it's pretending to be a vote someone gives because they like the post :P
Is it not a choice we make, with regard to engaging our followers, building relationships? Sure - I only have a handful of followers who regularly engage and vice versa, and it is those comments/upvotes I value most.
Where people do not use Steemit regularly - (Streemian) trails are an acceptable choice, if they want to make most of their otherwise unused voting power, but in general, that doesn't lead to building a value followship.
I have, however, myself created a Curation-trail today. An announcement post will follow.
It's for a specific group of people and I hope that many will make use of the trail. More later....
Valid and timely concerns though. We should only ever give our votes to follow someone who we know and trust.
PS:// There are four accounts which I give an autovote, because I value their submission/mission. But I always check the votes and their content every other day, in case I missed them. So, it's helping but not replacing the manual curation/engagement.
Sure - if there is whalepower not used because the account holder has little time, a delegation with profit share or curation trail would be a valid choice in my view.
-ch
This phenomenon is totally in sync with the incentives provided by steemit.
People almost always react most strongly to incentives and try to game the system for maximum profit.
This happens in nearly all systems (schools, companies, etc.).
The current curation-reward system absolutely encourages auto-upvotes, upvote-snipers, upvote-trailing etc.
If this behavior is unacceptable for the steemit community, imho the only way is to change the curation-reward system (with a lot of prior thinking as to what behavior the new system could incentivise)...
just my 2 cents
Change the curation system how? It has been suggested to remove it, but the large holders didn't like that since that's how they make more SP.
I don't know how, didn't think about it yet, but the way it is built currently it is a magnet for gaming the system, don't you think? And that's why it's totally understandable that large holders do not wanna change it, because as you said "that's how they make more SP"
I have spent the past two years developing the tiny bit of content I have thus far presented to this platform. I am a little "put-off" by all the shenanigans being perpetrated on this platform for the benefit of making outrageously small amounts of money, but by the same token I have started seeking ways to increase my yield as well. I think that Autoupvotebots, for the exception of minnowbooster should not be allowed.
Bots are going to be around, and more probably. We have to influence others so that they understand how more beneficial an honest evaluative behavior would be to the platform and its success. There would be less votes going around though compared to now, but people would be more picky maybe. But I don't see the bots gong away. Just raising awareness on the issues, as I do from time to time. Thanks for the feedback.
It's disturbing, as it always has been. Maybe a bot free day once a month could be a start?
I have a bot running in Golos....i like bots, but I disabled my bot in here a while back.
LOL. Good consistency ;) If you don't support it in one place, don't support it in others too, no? ;)
I've noticed this on some comments I've made, I'll sometimes get 8-10 upvotes in the first minute after posting the comment.
The only thing I could figure was I was using keywords some how. This happened once when I was having a conversation with someone and I got nearly $3 in that debate, more than I get on my posts.
I've also had a couple posts that had a "school" swim by and those posts made $100-$200. At least with those one person may have read the article originally because the votes came a while after posting.
I admit appreciating the rewards, but it's so random you don't know how to actually build something, and you question if you can really develop an upvoting readership.
(That was not an autovote, by the way)
@richq11 LOL !!!
Neither was that... thanks!
Steemit is social media but the glitter of making money is still king in this realm.
I don't have a problem with it, and while it is nice to interact with people here, most of the time the replies to my posts are from folks that I interact with on their posts.
While I am still very new to steemit, I also noticed a downward trend today. Not sure how many bots are out there in the wild.
When things like this happens it shed light on how the platform works. We don't really have as many people as we might think who are supporting us in the first 30 minutes because they like the content, the majority is autovotes where they don't even know the content to be able to decide if they like it and upvote it, or not :P
As a new user that plans to provide some well written article over a subject that I am passionate about, this is quite disturbing. My son, his wife, and myself have recently gotten steemit accounts and we're planning on having it become a "family" thing that got us discussing our personal interests along with, what we hoped, would be a community conversation. Finding out that most of the exchange of "ideas" is nothing more than bots manuvering for position is disheartening to say the least. Im hoping that it at least does not distract us from our original goal of intelligent discussions amongst ourselves. Thank you for the post, and keep up the great work.
You can still achieve your goal, just don't expect many people to find you out of the blue, and certainly not right away. The best strategy is to find people with your own interests and interact with them and you'll find they do the same with you.
Yeah you will be fine with your own community :)
He seems happy.
You are right. It is an autovoting technology which is voting same authors. You can match it with votes number and views.
I played with an autovoter to vote up close friends for a while - but I have disabled it now. Autovoters completely remove the intended design function of Steemit to create an environment where ideas that solve problems are seen and rewarded.
I do use the paid upvote services just because so many others are and if I don't then the chances of my posts getting in hot or trending lists is minimal :/
no, not really - if i don't do it then the posts have artificial competition that i need to somehow overcome.
You don't need to do it, you choose to do it. Earn the votes from time to gain an audience and get visibility, or buy them. Pretty clear how it works.
I do choose to do it, yes - I don't NEED to use Steemit or do a lot of things. I am saying that if I don't do it then my posts get less exposure due to the way that steemit's UI is currently designed. I spent 6 months making posts that got pennies and almost no upvotes. Since using techniques such as using randowhale to gain a boost, the same posts (reposted) get decent organic levels of engagement and upvotes. I am fairly sure that a high percentage of top paying posts are only at the top of the lists due to the high SP of the poster and/or the use of bot networks etc.
In short, steemit is not a level playing field and so it is that attempting to be 'morally upright' by not using randowhale is only going to result in less followers, upvotes and engagement for me. If someone comes up with good ideas to achieve the same without using services like randowhale, then I'll use them. I continue to research and think on the subject.
Bots on Steemit is an issue, I just made a comment on a post yesterday but I know these issues will just come and go and people do nothing https://steemit.com/abuse/@stellabelle/how-to-destroy-steemit-in-3-easy-steps#@cryplectibles/re-stellabelle-how-to-destroy-steemit-in-3-easy-steps-20170731t060539021z
I have gone in weird waves over the past near year of using Steemit where people must be adding my users name to some autovote thing and just wish people would take my name off all bots, I do not want non-genuine votes or views.
Yeah it sucks, but bots are here to stay.
Yeah I guess it's kinda sad that majority of the votes are autovotes and it doesn't even matter what you're posting, the autovotes are always going to come in if you're popular. As steemit is a social media, I think it should have more interaction.
That's exactly why I say it's so-called "social media platform", because 2/3 of the "soclail meida" is automated... and therefore not people engaging in activity, but bots. Social media needs people, not bots, to be social media. Otherwise it's more bot than social people making social, and it's not social much at all... more of a joke lol.
It seems like views overall are down since the latest HF, but I don't have numbers to back it up!
I noticed this same thing this morning! Many of the authors who have hundreds of votes in the first 45 minutes had very few.
This is a little concerning that some people are just here for the autovote bots and collect their curation rewards.
Yes, it is concerning, I said disturbing but that probably wasn;t the right word lol.
What is the solution to this problem of lack of reading, curating, and just autovoting? Some of the bots are useful, but others not so much.
The solution is correcting individual behavior. Either educating them with knowledge to understand why its better to do things another way, Or with pressure to apply force and make them comply with what the community standards of behavior are. That requires a majority to adopt a behavioral model,apply it, and enforce it, as any society does.
Yes...that's a bit depressing...wow...had no clue it was that many. Ffs.....
I love upvotes, but yes would prefer they were real people.
Thanks
I think that these easy to use auto-vote sites should be closed down, people making their own bots can still do it, but it should be made much harder for the average joe to do so. This is a quite tyrannical way to fix this, but as we see, too much freedom will end up in abuse.
Like self voting comments ;)
Haha.
Well they will only close down if people stop using them.
Sorry, newbie question; if I mention @bullishmoney here will it give him a notification? I'm looking for a way to share this article with my friend.
@bullishmoney if you see this, what do you think of the auto-voting and had you used it before (streemian)?
You should use steemit.chat, as there is no message feature in the site/chain itself.
thanks; well can we still message via sending $ to steemit users right?
Yes.
One of the current concern are discussed in some group of stemian.
As the other already said , I also prefer someone to read my post and comment accordingly..
A lot of users would kill to be on these autovote lists even if they didn't pay out, just so they could get some exposure among the thousands of fidget spinner and vacation photo posts. I know it is upsetting to see this platform degrade, but it is degrading because the protocol doesn't prevent it.
I use an autovote bot to vote for you to help make up for the fact that I can get almost no exposure for my own posts let alone payouts. If you like I would be happy to remove you from my vote list. Unfortunately nothing is going to change unless the protocol finds a way to change it. Tragedy of the commons is a bitch.
The "idealized" intent was for people to "lead", yet everyone has different ideas and wants to just make money any way they can, and most don't agree on the actual direction for the platform.
The blockchain can't prevent bots, because it's a open access blockchain. A regular site can have closed DB so no one can API to it.
I'm pointing out how our actual supporters that value the content to upvote it, aren't so high. When tool outages happen we can see the effects. Will it change? No. It will probably increase. It's up to individuals to be influenced and change their behavior, that's how this will be halted.
I understand the point you were trying to make. The point I am trying to make as a crypto-veteran of 2011, is that any weakness with ability for profit will be exploited no matter what. Can it be stopped completely? No. Can it be mitigated? Absolutely. The fact is the idealists are a very small portion of any of these communities, even one as robust as Steem's. The majority of all of the user base in crypto is there for profit first and foremost, even if it means collapsing the system that provides it. One of the primary concepts of cryptocurrency that allows it to function well is trustless systems. That means the protocol needs to redirect greed in a productive way and protect the system from its destructive effects. If this is not done it is just a matter of time before it fails.
What do you suggest can be done on the blockchain level to prevent or redirect it as you say?
I would limit self voting payouts for one since it is seriously draining the payout pool. This will again reestablish the ability for people to earn more legitimate payouts. People will still use socks and voting bots to self vote but this requires more effort and potentially more content creation to support those accounts. It won't stop self voting but will at least raise the barrier of difficulty.
Increase the depletion of voting power for comments. A lot of the abuse is being funneled thru comments, and they require comparatively little effort compared to posts. If people still find comments very useful they can still vote for them but they will do so more selectively, and this will also make it more difficult to funnel money out of the payout pool to ones own accounts, and leave more for people creating the main content.
A scaling increased voting power cost could be implemented for voting for the same user from the same account multiple times within a set period of time. This would increase the burden of using bot voting significantly, reduce self voting, and force users to diversify their votes in order to earn curation rewards.
A reduced cost of voting power for voting for accounts you have never voted for would encourage people to find and vote for posters they never voted for before encouraging more distribution of votes.
An account stats page that displays the centralization of a users voting patters to allow users to easily see who is voting for the same users over and over again. This could be done by a 3rd party. I have seen some users compile lists like this manually. Public shaming of such activity and making them more visible so users can take action would be useful.
Some kind of balancing system that would reduce the reputation of a user if they continually voted for the same users over and over without voting for other users they vote on less. In essence every time they vote for user A without voting for users B-Z, it would start reducing their rep. The same could also be applied to voting power rather than reputation.
Create an alternative vote that would be the same in all ways except without a payout, and costing less voting power. This would incentivize users to upvote content they like to increase its visibility rather than to produce a payout for either party. This would free up more funds to be distributed in the voting pool. I think a lot of users here would be happy with just having their content read even if it didn't pay much, but it is hard to get noticed being drown out by all the auto voted content.
Anyways this isn't an easy problem to solve, and none of my suggestions are fool proof but simply ideas to raise the barriers of difficulty for autovoting and self voting via proxies. Nonetheless you get the idea of what I am suggesting with this list, a protocol enforced system of incentivizing organic voting over bot voting or self voting by creating a cost to those voting patterns.
Great suggestions. Thanks!
If you look at even 'Facebook' there income stream is advertisement space from companies right?
Some major companies (I forgot which one from the article) did an experiment by investing (x) amount of dollars into Facebook advertising. They managed to figure out that the 'clicks' coming from facebookians was false as it was almost entirely clicked by 'bots' and not read or seen by humans. Which is sounding similar to this story on Steem. They realised it was not human clicks because the Facebook advertising had absolutely NO EFFECT on sales or public awareness of new products/offers.
Rise of the bots!
@alhoppo
Interesting. Can you find that article? Thanks.
I actually think it was a mentioned in the x22 report.
@x22report
One of his videos in the last few days mentioned it, i will try to find it but if I cant please bear with me.
Here we go, link below. it was the @x22report ! Listen to the video.
https://steemit.com/economy/@x22report/the-economic-euphoria-has-reached-new-heights-when-it-crashes-episode-1345a
I think it's a bit inevitable when you create a social media site where people can make money in the way you can on Steemit, especially with the curation rewards.
Yes, especially with curation rewards :P
from 10 upvoters:
6 - use autoupvotes
3 - they are curators
1 - really like the content.
I think this happens on facebook but in other forms. people liking others posts so they will receive a like back and things like that, others buy likes...so...
I like to read post on steemit whenever i get time can't say much about bots as many people are hear only for money its their wish.
Great post - I agree with everything in your post. It does get frustrating as a post can be new, I open to read it, and by the time I am done, there are 10+ votes but only like 4 views? You are not the only frustrated Steemit Fan :) Have a GREAT start to your week and know that SUNSHINE247 loves you!!!!
No auto-vote here!
It has it's own positives and negatives, more negatives I guess!
You can tell by the HOT feed, its like 90% down from typical voting. WOW.
On another side note, if bots were canned, it would be interesting to see how affected the big earners are.
Very little, see my comment for statistical analysis.
https://steemit.com/steemit/@krnel/steemit-rise-of-the-autovote-an-autovote-majority#@leoplaw/re-krnel-steemit-rise-of-the-autovote-an-autovote-majority-20170731t223402093z
The bots are just damn annoying. Although, there is one upvote bot operator who is earning a mint from his minnows and sending it off to the exchanges. Checking the wallets and following the cryptomoney trails will tell you who it is.
I agree and that's one of the reasons I proposed a Steem makeover - that will imo bring to steem's growth and adoption. You can read it here: https://steemit.com/steemit/@emble/will-steem-succeed-or-commit-suicide
@paulag has actually done the number crunching and here are the facts about voting trends on Steemit. The results are not what most people assume.
Voting habits of the top 200 Whales - SteemitSQL Analysis
https://steemit.com/steemit/@paulag/voting-habits-of-the-top-200-whales-steemitsql-analysis
How well do Blog Posts Really do on Steemit – Analysis SteemitSQL Database
https://steemit.com/steemit/@paulag/how-well-do-blog-posts-really-do-on-steemit-analysis-steemitsql-database
Great content @krnel. I upvote someone because I see the good content first and then still have low reputation (like me) and of course to make some people proud if we can also comment to them post.
@krnel i know most people are here for the profit of Steemit.. Likewise myself, but I tale my time to read posts, for sole purpose of knowledge...