RE: Steembot Experiment, Part 2: I Miscalculated

[quillfire]

@blockurator & @ecoinstant,

The contentiousness of Bidbots (the "Raping of the Reward Pool") is NOT predicated upon the effects Bidbots have upon a post's participants (the poster and the post's upvoters). It is, rather, predcated upon the effects they have upon all other non-involved Steemians (the system as a whole).

The Reward Pool is a LIMITED shared resource ... meaning that the amount of newly minted currency that is distributed each day is fixed.

Bidbots divert a HUGE percentage of upvotes (money) away from Distribution Based Upon Content Quality (as determined by the collective opinion of the audience) to Distribution Based Upon Vote-Buying.

The Second Order effects of this reality are even more pernicious. Because so much of Whale/Orca SP (approximately 85% of the total) is delegated to Bidbots (in order to generate an alternative source of Passive Income in lieu of the intended Curation Awards), "Professional Curators" are starved of the upvoting capital that is required to make such endeavor profitable.

Simply, Professional Curators (the first, and critical, actors in the process of discovery of quality content) require large stakeholders (attempting to generate legitimate Passive Income in the form of Curation Awards) to follow their Curation Trails so as to force-multiply their own upvotes. This bumps their curated posts into Hot & Trending, thusly garnering such posts additional exposure ... and financial remuneration.

The Curation Process was designed to trigger a Domino Effect.

Because of the MASSIVE diversion of upvoting SP to Bidbots, however, the entire Curation Process has been castrated. Hence, Professional Curators are all-but-non-existent ... and the few that do exist are all-but-impotent.

STEEM/Steemit is a SYSTEM ... and a system MUST be analyzed in its totality. A reductionist "analysis of its parts" misses the "emergent properties" that only become apparent when viewed as a whole.

Make no mistake ... BIDBOTS ARE CANCER and, absent reform, they and other game-rigging mechanisms WILL destroy the blockchain.

Merit or Manipulation (and their respective consequences) ... one cannot escape the fundamental dynamaics.

Quill

Comments

[ecoinstant]

I am travelling so please forgive any errors - I love interacting with you Quill because you make it so much fun! I am already tempted to hit you with a

!dramatoken

Depending on timing, I may successfully get a 'vote' from dramtoken for helping them identify drama on the chain (not quality).

Will this alternative use 'break the blockchain'?

(brb boarding a plane)

We made it! And I'm already voted (perhaps pre-quality because I'm just getting started)

There are other purposes for steem blockchain, it is as simple and as complicated as that - I want to write a book about it!

Think about Utopian, who use the power of steem to incentivize open source contributions. They distribute a growing part of the reward pool to that use case.

Have you gone to trending recently? I actually avoided it for a long time, so I was somewhat surprised to realize that there is much less 'any'-quality content and quite a bit more project posts announcements from new apps, businesses and groups.

I suppose how steemit was pitched is not what we are experiencing, but to my eyes the future is bright not bleak. These ever expanding use-cases will raise the value of the segment of the reward pool distributed to quality curation as well, even as more sp is locked up and voting.

To me, proof of voluntary should be important. The other option seems to be to dominate a shrinking ecosystem, lets see how 'only blogging' blockchains work out - more are coming online seemingly all the time!

But I suspect that 'get paid to blog' is a terrible business model - its a value suck from any ecosystem. For value to get paid (for that stake you are getting paid to retain value dispite consistent selling) we need value add use-cases. I'm working with a few groups to create that future, where what you get paid for your high quality is still worth something, not despite of bidbots, but because of them, and others.

[blockurator]

The more I learn of the blockchain and the different initiatives, the more excited I am, as well. I can certainly see a future where the blogging component is not dominant component. What creators have in mind when they create new technology is often not how that technology ends up being used. And that's okay.

[fionasfavourites]

@quillfire

Because of the MASSIVE diversion of upvoting SP to Bidbots, however, the entire Curation Process has been castrated. Hence, Professional Curators are all-but-non-existent ... and the few that do exist are all-but-impotent.

Graphic but apt.

Make no mistake ... BIDBOTS ARE CANCER and, absent reform, they and other game-rigging mechanisms WILL destroy the blockchain.

I fear so.

[dramatoken]

You've got DRAMA!

^{To view or trade DRAMA go to steem-engine.com.}

[blockurator]

The contentiousness of Bidbots (the "Raping of the Reward Pool") is NOT predicated upon the effects Bidbots have upon a post's participants (the poster and the post's upvoters). It is, rather, predcated upon the effects they have upon all other non-involved Steemians (the system as a whole).

We can say the same thing about curation trails. Send money to @qurator and you're redistributing rewards that could go to someone else. The quality of your post may not matter in the end.

STEEM/Steemit is a SYSTEM ... and a system MUST be analyzed in its totality. A reductionist "analysis of its parts" misses the "emergent properties" that only become apparent when viewed as a whole.

And yet, every system is an amalgamation of its component parts. You can't fix a transmission by standing on the curb looking at the car. ;-)

[quillfire]

@blockurator,

EDIT: "MANUAL" Curators.

Quill

[blockurator]

Duly noted.

My EDIT: ... looking yelling at the car.