And some of those who benefited the most from that little episode are also those who hate the current trending page and complain about the bots not being fair. Every time I hear it, I just think... You are sad you can't control trending anymore.
This was the number one reason I was FOR the bidbots although they create another set of problems I no longer have to watch that group dominate trending everyday... Such a relief.
I understand that, and that is a fair argument in support of the bid bots. The STEEM Guild days basically gave birth to the Trending Page Club - and if you weren't in the club, you were never going to be.
That said, a post from a nobody like me could sometimes slip through the cracks every now and again to the top of trending. Of course, never consistently.
These days, though, it's literally impossible.
There are not enough words in my pretentious fucking head to craft a post so perfect that it would make it to the top these days.
But I still get your argument.
Perhaps, but I think this particular cure is worse than the disease, and tends towards the same outcome anyway with some bonus problems thrown in.
It's not quite the same outcome, though, to be fair. To get in trending, one has to invest money in it. For The Trending Page Club, it was free money. For absolutely nothing. No risk, no nothing.
True, but the end result looks eerily similar to all others, those who just plod along with merely posting content. That outcome.
"Paying for votes by curating" is even more ridiculous than paying for votes by actually paying, I'll give you that, but both are, well, a bit off, and both are enabled by delegations in some form or other.
They both go against what I assumed this place was going to be about when I first joined. Now, assuming makes an ass of you and me, so it's probably just on us.
I've never denied that it creates a different set of problems. So, you point is well taken.
Here is where I go with it. If I want to buy a vote I can gain visibility. Prior to the voting bots I was strictly forced to accept what I got. My could be effectively quieted. So, yeah, I acknowledge they create a new set of problems, at least they favor investment on not cronyism. Those who want to use and abuse them have to have some steem. I also think they are good at pulling distribution away from the selected few.
Again, I don't think you are wrong it is just "Which set of problems do you prefer". I prefer the current set.
It all comes back to terrible distribution.
You say it like there is a choice only between a corrupt-ish Guild and bidbots. Isn't that a false dilemma? I mean, isn't there a third way? If there isn't, then there is something fundamentally wrong. Could be the (initial) distribution, could be delegations breaking the accountability and stake principle, could be cronyism always winning in a DPOS system.
It's all nice and dandy to choose the lesser of two evils as if there were no other options, but fighting both and ending up having neither is better. If that can't be achieved, Steemit will have failed to live up to at least my expectations.
Your point about choosing between the lesser evils is well made and extremely valid.
I don't define either as "evil", but the point holds the same.
I'm going to have to give that consideration to think what that would mean realistically from a call to action point of view.
So, I've thought about this a lot and I guess my opinion is nearly all of our problems are tied to Distribution. There are not enough active stakeholders to curate and create a consensus. So, we either get faulty results via curation guilds or we buy votes.
The bots win the tie of which set of problems because each user can decide whether or not to buy votes, flag, etc. In an unfair world it seems the best solution.
I don't know if we will ever get past the distribution problem without a huge drop in price. Time will tell.
Did you take into account that bidbots and delegating to them skew the distribution even further? It is yet another example of how making money with money trumps making money with content here. Such mechanisms tend to grow the bigger wallets the most and concentrate wealth into the hands of a few.
Also, guildies who upvote themselves beyond their worth can be flagged, but bidbots and their delegators don't leave many hooks that can be used to express disagreement with their actions.
Strangely, we think so too.
I don't see how there is a difference in flagging bots or guilds. Each person has the entire weight of their stake to flag with nothing less, nothing more.
Yes, I do not deny a negative impact to content from the bidbots and how they are pulling rewards away from the rest of the community. However, still each of us controls our own stake... Nothing less, Nothing More. So, they aren't misusing MY stake or YOURs. They are only using their own stake or stake that others have rented to them. Although I don't think it is the best business model or the best way this could have turned out. I can't deny their freedom to do that.
DPOS. I think it is always going to create these situations.
I do agree they skew the rewards and often not in a good way.
The problem, if you see it as a problem, is that guildies upvoting themselves can be flagged more directly; you can express disagreement with their upvoting behaviour by flagging their own posts, but you can't get at those who delegate by flagging; the same goes for bidbots that don't leave a comment. They are beyond accountability more than guildies.
I could probably write that down in a clearer way after another coffee.