Just some food for thought and interested in hearing other people's perspective on this. So many people dislike the use of bots on Steemit. Many people say it allows whales to earn without having to be active and engaged on the platform. It causes garbage content to consume the Trending and Hot pages, etc, etc, etc.
I was curious of a couple questions...
Could bots be stopped through a hard fork? Is it even possible for a hard fork to stop people from being able to use bots?
What effect would stopping the use of bots have on Steemit?
If Bots Weren't Allowed Would the Price of Steemit Tank?
I thought this was something interesting to think about. While I personally am not a huge fan of bots, I think blocking the use of bots, if that's even possible, could potentially cause the price of Steem and SBD to tank and could suck a lot of money out of the market.
As @brianphobos had alluded to in his post about @yallapapi this morning, he said many whales are just passive users. They use voting bots to keep a passive income comming in but don't really post, rarely actively vote, and aren't really engaged in the day to day drama of the platform.
While many of us may initially think getting rid of bots could be a positive thing, myself included, I also could see it hurting the platform, at least temporarily.
Here's how. So if through a hard fork bots could no longer be used, again if that's even possible, all the sudden you have all these whale accounts with lots of money with no incentive to stay on the platform. They don't want to be actively engaged, they've already made a lot of money, why let it sit here in Steemit if its not passively earning for them so I would forsee a lot of them cashing out.
We also have all these bot accounts whether it be upvote bots, resteem bots, etc, etc, etc. All these accounts would no longer serve a purpose either so I would see them cashing out as well. Now I think the whales have a lot more Steem than voting bots but none the less there's a lot of voting bots.
Bots have become such a large part of Steemit that if we were to cut them off I think we would see a lot of money exit the platform. As is the way supply and demand works when supply goes up and demand goes down prices go down, when supply goes down and demand goes up prices rise.
Now if we were to see whale accounts and bot accounts start dumping huge sums of Steem on the Steemit Marketplace as well as theopen market that would cause the price to tank. When the price tanks people on the platform become less engaged andspend less time on the platform so there's less users, less content and less quality content. That's another thing I notice is when earnings goes down so does the quality of posts...people are like yeah if I'm only going to earn XYZ I'll post some memes instead of long form or quality content. When less users come on and quality of posts go down there's less reason to be on here.
Anyhow, as you can see it could potentially cause a chain effect of less users, less quality content and a further slide in price.
Just curious your thoughts on this issue? Drop a comment below
Remember, those bots still made investments into Steem, so they have skin in the game one way or another.
Quality is a subjective term. We really have no way to measure what is 'high quality' and what is 'low quality.'
Good points. IMHO while quality is somewhat subjective, I do think its somewhat measurable.
There are posts on here that I don't personally like, but I consider them quality as you can tell when thought goes into a post, you can tell when someone took time to make a post, and then you can tell the shit that's just been slapped up here. It's not a matter of do I like the post or the subject matter, but is this ia halfass post or something someone put some effort into.
As far as having skin in the game, totally agree with you that people with big money on here are invested in the platform but I guess the bigger question is are they giving something to the platform, are they adding to it or are they just taking from it?
I see some people criticize some of the big youtubers as comming on here, taking rewards but not interacting with the community, not upvoting other people and not telling their Youtube audience or social media following about Steemit. Basically peoplle are saying they take take take and don't give much back. I think to some extent the same thing could be said about some whales, not all but some
I've noticed that people tend to vote on a post, not on quality and length of content, but on how much they care about the topic itself.
Bots will be useful for the operation of Steem now that there isn't a central authority. They can be used to detect spam, phishing attempts, notice high quality content, etc. There is a bot named @trufflepig that has a certain algorithm that detects whether a post is high quality or not and it works pretty well.
Before bots, people complained about only whales showing up on the trending page. Bots can remedy that issue but now we have crap content made my minnows too. I think it is a normal part of the evolution of Steem. People are continuously trying to solve/adapt to whatever problems we have at the moment. I experimented with upvote bots and TBH they aren't that useful unless you can get yourself to the trending page.
@rulesforrebels, let me suggest something to you. Every post you make, try to think of how you can improve your post from your last one. Yes, Steem still has issues, but it is crucial to have fun and make due with what it currently is. If you just wait until Steem becomes a certain way, you are doomed to stay frustrated and new users won't want to join because they see everyone just talking about problems instead of having fun here. People want to join whatever platform is fun and entertaining for them. Even if it has problems, people won't mind if they feel people are being creative. If not, the site may function optimally, but the spirit is dead.
For example, you could create your own custom footer at the end of your posts. This is what I put at the end of my posts.
You could also create your own custom page breaks, add more photos (with custom frames), etc. You mentioned before that you first post on YouTube and then repost on Steem. Why don't you do the opposite? Instead, post your videos and writings on DTube/Steemit and then maybe a few days later post it on YouTube. I am finding success with that.
These things all make your blog look more presentable and helps you to create your own "look" on the site. Without a custom look to your blog, it just looks like a casual post of someone's thoughts. The content on your blogs is good, but I think you could make it more polished and presentable. I'm saying this because I am finding more success on this platform by thinking about what I can do better or improve on instead of what other people should fix.
Hope that helps! Thanks for the mention, I really appreciate talking to real people like you on this site.
Hey buddy, I appreciate your tips, all very good tips. I really don't mean to be negative, sometimes I'm frustrated but honestly today it was more in good fun than anything else. I've really been enjoying @yallapapi posts which are funny and critical of Steemit and that has been kind of an inspiration for some of these posts. Oddly enough the more I critique Steemit the more engagement my posts get and honeslty from the very start its been that way. I'm never going to make big money doing it because these posts don't cater to whales but I think as the upvotes and comments show I'm expressing the frustations of the masses and to some extent at the end of the day without us the whales have no power if the platform is dead so they should keep that in mind.
I completely understand I could put a lot more effort into Steemit, learning the inner workings, making more connections, spending more time on formatting and like you said having kind of my own custom page break like you and @stackin and many others have.
I also realize it's not impossible for someone to make their mark on here. @stackin started around the same time as me and has just killed it on here. You've always been great but especially recently have been making a ton of traction on here so to some extent it is whining and the people who really make their mark on here can and do have succeess like you @kenanqhd and @stackin. That said there is some legitimacy to the complaints.
Anyhow, always thoughtful commentary from you I really do appreciate it and I am going to go ahead and make my own custom page break. What did you do to make yours?
@yallapapi can be critical of Steemit, but to me the novelty has worn off. I do like to read his posts, but I don't pay as much attention to him like before.
I made my footer just using canva. You can choose the dimensions you want and then try and and see what layouts you like. Once you make it and it looks nice when you post it on Steemit/Busy, then you can save the URL link for the picture in a text file on your computer so that whenever you make a post, you can open the text file, copy and paste the link again and voila.
@amritadeva wrote a post here about making a logo, footer and page break. This is her page break and I think it is really nice. It suits her style.
You could probably make it on Canva. I haven't made my own page break yet but I will probably make one today.
I agree with you that it will hurt the platform for a while if all the players take their money out, but on the long run it will help it become a true blogging platform where people would be motivated to post. There are some whales that upvote good content without delegating their power to bid bots. Maybe I am too much of a dreamer but I believe much more in the organic growth of the platform rather the artificial one. Maybe that's why I make posts about bid bots, self upvotes and other things I would change about Steemit like the one I did today with the weird title of "great ideas you only get in the shower". I believe also in creating your own community of sharing comments and upvotes that will help all its participants.
Bots are OK, but you should not overuse them. And only use bots to boost quality contents, max. for 3 posts a day. I use them and i'm quite satisfied.
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I myself being a minnow need the services of the bots, it helps a lot.
Another way of thinking about it is if bots weren't such a large part of Steemit maybe you wouldn't need the bots and your content could rise organically????
I believe without bots many things could happen, a good point of view would be questioning if steemit can ''work'' without humans, I do not know if it's too crazy to think about that degree of automation.
What's the point of Steemit working without humans? I think most of us come here for a human connection I like talking to @brianphobos @kenanqhd @rawpride @tolkatore @emmyem84 @bradlovesbeer @mitchyb @reseller @robertandrew @harleymechanix @lundgreenman @prince121 @techwizardry @masteranibal @offgridlife and many many others. I don't think I would see much of a point to comming on here if there weren't humans.
I agree, bots are here to do repetative tasks. Steem price may actually be suppressed by bots...
I'm not saying that would be good, I come here looking for a human connection as well, I was just thinking if it'll be possible, because I also believe that many come looking for money without caring about anything else.
There are a lot of other cryptos to put money into that are not part of a social media platform.
I know, but I'm not talking about them, there are also better ways to get rich than being a politician and that doesn't stop many people.
Yeah that is kind of what I was thinking is if bots weren't a viable way to earn passive income on here the money would probably exit Steem and go into staking Nav or NEO or ARK.
I don't like bots. But I think that will no productive result to stop bots.
that is actually a really good question.
without bots, people would not be able to make a passive income as easily as now so in that regard it might tank.
but on the other hand people might engage even more with the platform and therefore the price might increase.
I would not be able to say anything for certain.
Personally I don't think anything about Steemit is passive, at least not for the average user.
I question whether bots are good or bad. I like automation, I like passive income but at the same time it seems like the only people who really benefit from this are super techy people who know how to build bots or people who spend a lot of time studying Steemit and what bots are more effective.
Since I don't fall into either category my view is probably a little bias admittedly, however I personally would rather see people spending time engaging with one another and creating quality content as opposed to figuring out how to best game the system.
I also don't like bot but in this stage steemit should allow bot because if they don't allow bot then people don't have more interest to invest here. When steemit will be more popular and get more investor then they can reject the bots.
I'm not sure if it would be good for Steemit or bad. In the short term I think we would see some people leave the platform and take their money with them which IMHO inevidbly would cause a price decline.
That said you could also say the peopl who are just using Steemit as passive income aren't really benefitting the platform in any way. They aren't sharing their votes with the community they are just usingthem to benefit themselves and many of them aren't engaging with the community or creating content.
From that perspective I wonder if getting rid of them would be a good thing?
I almost view bot users like the "Youtubers" many people claim about who come on here and reap the rewards but don't really give back to the community.
The whole situation is some interestin food for thought.
Ironically I'm using bot services to boost this post as we speak lol
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