Just a few weeks ago there have only be a few bid for vote bots on steem, while one may count more than 74 listed on steembottracker.com today. Including all the other voting bots we´re even exceeding 100 in the end...
It seems like pretty much everyone got into the bot business, which can as well be seen at the maximum upvote values those bid bots can distribute. Many of them don´t even reach a 10$ Upvote anymore with some voting as low as a few cents.
(Screenshot from steembottracker.com)
What happened to the original vision?
What happened to curating great content and true interaction?
It seems to me like true interaction got pretty rare on steemit these days. People post and boost themselves into the trending or hot sections through the use of bots, while their content might be of questionable quality in many cases. Therefore I think it´s important to think about this whole development ones again. Especially whenever you are a true believer into a bright future of steem.
What do you want steem to be known for?
A helping, open minded community that rewards quality content and interaction or rather as a place ruled by bots? I know for sure that I want it to be known by people according to the first alternative as it´s the only one I see it becoming successful in the end.
It´s not too late yet for a change, actually it never is.
You just got to take the first step!
The Future of Steem lies in our hands!
A Crypto Startup Revolutionizing Steem! |
|---|
 |
You said it all here sir
This is what it should be known for so we can make success
Success of a social media platform needs a strong community. Unfortunately we´re rather moving away from it these days than getting any closer.
Yeah you are correct
Even communities now seek for delegations but to no avail
I hope things will change soon
Voting 🗳 bots should be kicked out.
Andreas
They should operate with more responsibility. Not all voting bots are bad but many unfortunately are as they don´t care about spam or anything else...
Bots are here to stay for Steem, I'm afraid. This is such a hard economic/incentive problem to solve...
Thank you, @steembusiness. Upvoted!
I was so surprised by the number of voting bots available! However, I don't think this matter is easy to solve. The owners of those bots are the main source of value for Steem. So, we have a financial dilemma here.
I have explained it in detail in my recent post: The Ugly Truth About The Value Of Steem, Or The Steem Dilemma!. Please take a look.
I´ll definitely take a look. Though I´d upfront say that bots are not the main source of value for steem but maybe your post will make me think another way.
They are not the source of value for Steem the blockchain. That's for sure. It's value comes from the contributions of Steemians.
I meant that those bots and self voters are the source of value for Steem the token. I have explained the idea in more detail in my post.
I totally agree with you and it really is getting out of hand recently. I think that as we see more and more devoted steemians holding there SP, plus a return for SBD to the USD peg and Steem prices rise hopefully economic conditions change to make these bits less lucrative.
The Bid for vote bots are already leaving many minnows behind with a loss. Most just don´t recognize it probably as they are blinded by the huge post payouts they receive. Anyways many of those bots operate on leased SP, which will get hard to preveil with the current sinking prices and steem taking over the lead to SBD again.
This. There is no reward for quality content and the absolute bottom feeders who use the bots relentlessly are whats killing the platform.
But what can we do? The whole point of steemit is that it’s not censored. People can post what they want, how they want. What are your thoughts on how we can do it?
It´s a really good question and honestly as well one I can´t give any other answer on than to pursuade the whales to handle their Power more carefully. Most bid bots operate on leased SP, so with the whales stopping their delegations a big bunch of those bots would dissappear immediately.
In the end of the day personal profit always wins out over collective benefit.
I don't even think bid bots are profitable, they're more often than not over bid.
Steemit needs to improve content discoverability before the use of bots will decline. If it's more likely to make profit by just posting good content then we'll see more people focus on content. For now, quality content more often than not goes unrewarded as it often goes unseen, and even 100 upvotes can be pretty much worthless if they're from 100 minnows.
The users of bid bots mostly make a loss in the end but unfortunately that doesn´t stop em from using those services...
What do you propose?
All I can think of is blacklisting the bot accounts so that their vote can not influence the trending and hot pages.
But I don’t think the developers care about this. They are too busy with SMT, and of course making sure there is no aggrandizement on here...
Better filters got requested from steemit inc a long time ago already and in many posts since I´ve joined the platform. Unfortunately nothing happened so far...
Bots kind of ruin it. Once my own vote gets high enough I plan to stop using them
Hi there,
I don’t know what “bots” is, in fact i don’t really know much about how things are happening here, but i do understand your point of view and agree with it: it also seems to me that there are a lot of post here with no quality in them, but getting attention :)
i understand that there are ways of promoting yourself, but for me its like: i think my post are worth to bee seen, and i hope people will eventually see them :)
If you have the time, you can see my post and let me know what you think about them and the quality of the works that i present in them :)
I wish you a good day!
(drawing on a ipad pro, using a apple pencil - design for a t-shirt)
How about a feature where if you use upvote bots you cannot reach hot or trending? I wonder if that could be implemented.
It could be implemented for sure but that´d be up to steemit or the other frontends to do.
you are right....bot votes contents which have little or no value because of what
I am a developer and I get more than 2-3 messages on discord regarding bid bots. Even people with very little vote weight ( close to 0.001 dollars) also want to set up bid bots on their account, so that they can get steem delegation from others and make some money! This is ridiculous. I do not support any bid based voting system. It is against the Steem moral policy to reward the best content.
The original idea of steem isn´t the most important anymore these days. It´s all about money once again and I just hope that we can find a healthy compromise between those two objectives...
I agree with @farq As someone who takes a lot of time to write good content and who also believes that you have to put in the work, things are simply not "fair" on the platform, nor really set up to be that way. In other words good content will not definitely catapult you to the top ranks. It can but there is no given there. What will do it is understanding how things work and manipulating things in your favor. this is what the bots represent and nothing more. If they remove them people will find something else to do the same things. As you say they have to create a mechanism to locate and promote good content or they will have a bigger issues which is people leaving for competitor platforms that do this and Steemit devolving into drivel.
The only thing to do is change the trending and hot pages, not based on votes. 😮🤔
That might be a first step but would just tackle the tip of the iceberg after all...
It is really frustrating to see this happen, time and again, with every good concept out there. Marketing, in the broadest sense of the word, has been ruining the true value of the Internet as a place for people to exchange ideas and educate themselves, ever since the first Internet bubble. The large majority is only interested in a concept because of the monetisation potential, and bots and toe-curling, cringeworthy content are a direct result of that. I'm afraid it will get worse, let's just wait for the first ones to figure out how to get really good blog statistics and the AdSense clone will soon follow.
I don't see a real solution. The platform can block SP delegation but the vote bots like smartsteem can't be disabled that easy. They connect directly to you account.
I resented these bots until recently when I started to use smartsteem myself. I chose to vote only on verified accounts and when I check the upvoted content I only see quality posts. It's a good way to use my voting power when I'm not online to help support quality content publishers to jump out between all the spam that's begin published on steemit.
We have to take pro-active action, rather than complaining about steemit system shortcomings and bid bots.
We have to bring back steemians to manual voting. I agree that money rules and we have to beat them at their own game.
And that is exactly what we plan to do with "Steemit Newbies(Minnows) Support - Success For All Project" by offering them better monetary incentive than what the bid bots offer especially to vote sellers: https://steemit.com/steemit/@successforall/steemit-newbies-minnows-support-success-for-all-project
But, if we are to win this game, we, both vote buyers and sellers, have to get together and form small communities so both side can benefit.