FYI, this may end up being a controversial post to some people and I do hope for a lengthy discussion in the comments or elsewhere. This part of the post was influenced by another post I read earlier written by @brandyb called: Voting bots... A problem or a resource? Good post by the way Brandy, it really got me thinking. Are they detrimental to the platform? What use do they really have? Why do I even use them and which ones?
The 'BUILD-A-BOT' Fad
It seems there are more bots out now than there are genuine profiles. Ok, that's an exaggeration. But still, a new one seems to pop up on @yabapmatt's goldenchild site Steem Bot Tracker almost every day now. Small bots and big ones. I have respect for a few, and use several. I'll list some of those in a minute. The thing that pisses me off is the fact that they are raising prices on some of my favorites and putting them out of reach for the average Steempeep. Stop being so greedy guys. Raising the cost only makes those spammers spend more and get seen more while the people struggling to get their quality posts seen suffer. Greed will eat away at you, and devour your credibility as to whether you are here to help, or if this is just a business for you. Maybe @yabapmatt needs to classify the bid bots into 'premium' and 'regular'. Food for thought there buddy.
My List of Questionable Bots
Now, some people are going to leave this post with a bad taste in their mouth, and I hope it tastes really horrible. So horrible, that you take a serious look at what you really are doing to the rest of the platform and the new Steempeeps that are trying to get a grip. This particular list has left me scratching my head. Sure, there's little bots they could use, but it seems like a principle kind of thing. IMHO anyway. If you'll notice, EVERY SINGLE ONE OF THEM bowed their heads to the not-so-almighty @grumpycat by raising their minimum post age to at least 3.5 days. With the exception of one, they have all also RAISED their prices. In a time where STEEM and SBD are really starting to flourish? I'm sure the arguments are all the same, to keep new shitposters from accessing them. I don't really care about excuses. I'm just Shaking My Head.
I'm not sure if this is vanity at its best or maybe a joke on other bots to name it after himself. Just seems...off. I have never used this bot, but I made it number one as it has a slight edge on the others. This is the ONLY one that hasn't raised it's price. Good on ya Jerry.
He also pays interest (60% I believe) to his delegators. The reason I've never used it is, well, you named it after yourself.
This one comes in at number two because unlike the rest, it actually makes an effort via their Curation Digest to support other Steempeeps freely. But, it is also one of the most expensive bots on the list. I have to ask @themarkymark, is there some unwritten rule that says the more STEEM POWER you have, the higher you should charge for votes?
From what I can tell, this is run by @yabapmatt, though I may be wrong. Another that has raised its prices in a flourishing market and I was using quite frequently. Maybe he's trying to compete with the other big bots out there. Doing a good job so far.
I got love for ya @suggeelson, really I do, and this was my favorite bot for good chunk of last month and I still use it. But your prices keep going up? You have the strongest bot on the public market and I am questioning your motives my man. Talk to me.
Second in SP only to @buildawhale and @upme, they too, have raised their prices. This was also on my favorites list for quite a while, but I really don't take too kindly to the greedy image being portrayed. By raising prices like the others, they have ostracized a good chunk of Steempeeps that with great content, can no longer afford their services.
One I am actually shocked to see here raising their prices. They started with the lowest SP of any on this list and had tons of people buying votes. Lost my respect guys. Sorry.
Conclusion
IT'S JUST BUSINESS. Why else would they fold to some tyrant barking orders that isn't even staying on the platform? They lose curation rewards when their posts get downvoted. Plain and simple. Why raise the prices? Because they can. It's their bots and they're making a shit ton of money off of them. Why not make more? Steemit is all about making money right? I will use them when I think a post is important, but, almost not even worth the price anymore for some of those up there as they often get overused and abused - despite the changes. Maybe I need to have my own. Who wants to help with that? @inertia? @yabapmatt? Still Shaking My Head.
(Courtesy of @liberty-minded)
Witnessy Stuff
Has anyone else had to restart their feeds multiple times since @someguy123's update? I've seen quite a few in the 'red' and still see some. Maybe they haven't noticed. They were well (and are) out of the comfortable hour - 2 hour update range. But I have to thank @jatinhota for walking me through the process of correcting it. It was fairly easy, so no more hiccups. Feed is still strong and thankfully, I haven't missed a block!
More Witnessy Stuff
Some of you may or may not know, but my baby, #thealliance, has been going through some growing pains this past week. Some good suggestions came from the officers and concerns were addressed. It'll take a few weeks for everyone to get used to seeing so many new faces, but I'm sure it'll prove a good move. If you'd like to read about the changes, visit this post:🔄The New Framework 🏰 of #thealliance 👀 to learn more about our new structure.
Valentine's Fundraiser for @youarehope
We are getting behind @youarehope once again for a 3 week run to help raise funds for that fantastic and most noble cause. @sircork has some pretty amazing things going on here on Steemit. Read the You Are H.O.P.E. Valentine's Fundraiser #2 to hear about progress with the charity itself and other people that are actively invlolved.
#steemsilvergold?
I got the nomination and seconds and thirds and many more nods to join this group after I asked. Thank you guys and gals! Expect to see me touting this group a lot more as I feel they have a high integrity quotient much like #thealliance. I have a post coming soon too for you guys, I just bought my first ever 1 oz. silver bar so, it ought to be a nice shiny lust-filled addition to the fold.
Steem Poker League
The @spl has been a quiet but very interesting group here on Steemit. Initially, I wanted to sponsor a tournament, but didn't quite get the response I was hoping for so instead, we'll just support their efforts as many allies already do. They've been giving away SBD through their freeroll poker tournaments for quite some time. That's what has gained my respect. Similar to a contest where people have a chance to get some much appreciated free jingle in their jangles. They've even got livestream tournaments over there! So to @tuck-fheman, @bethalea, and @nicnas, I hope you don't mind me throwing you up for display here and there.
There is a reason many of us raised our prices. It isn't because of greed or to eliminate certain people. I've explained this so many times I feel like a broken record.
@buildawhale has 2 million steem power, and with the massive spike of SBD, it caused a dramatic increase in demand. This demand has manifested itself as far more bids per bidding window mostly at the minimum price.
We used to have 30-60 bids per window, when SBD spiked that went to 200-300 per window. Each vote takes 3 seconds, and every comment takes 20 seconds. These delays are due to rate limits on the Steem blockchain.
Our voting windows went from 10-20 minutes to almost 2 hours to complete. I turned off commenting for a while to help minimize this but the rate limits were not the real problem.
The real problem was the rounding error that exists on the Steem blockchain. When you have 2 million steam power even a 1% vote is pretty significant. With 200-300 bids in a single window, we were doing votes for as low as 0.33%, but these votes take up as much voting power as a 1% vote. They also reward just as just as much due to rounding errors.
Users figured this out pretty quickly and started to flood the bots with 1 SBD bids getting huge ROI in return but also causing the bid windows to draw as much voting power as two bidding windows.
I've said many times we should have a 5 SBD minimum bid for how much Steem Power we have, but I never raise it unless I absolutely have to. I initially tried 2 SBD but found the bidding windows still went on for over 3 hours compared to 2 hours and 14-minute norm. I raised the minimum to 2.5 SBD and kept it there for a while. I was still noticing too many bids per bidding window causing the windows to take longer and drain too much VP. I changed the minimum bid to 3 SBD which is still too low but it isn't as bad.
If I could keep it at 1 SBD, I would, but I can't due to technical limitations of the Steem blockchain.
That being said, I started a new smaller bot when this happened called @ipromote that has a 0.500 SBD minimum bid. It only has about $25 vote right now but doesn't suffer from this problem as the bid windows are typically 5-20 users.
As for @buildawhale, we spend countless hours digging through thousands of posts a week to find five a day we can promote in our daily Curation Digest. This is an enormous task that hasn't had a lot of support from voters but is loved by our users. We started to use a 10% vote daily so we can continue to offer this service for free to the community.
We are also the most active and public bot in fighting spam. When @grumpycat was flagging we were doing just as much antispam but we were passing it to SteemCleaners reporting on the website anonymously or sending it to @patrice. It was obvious I was being pinned as an enabler because I used the means designed to combat spam and abuse to deal with it. Because this wasn't public, it was thought I didn't care or didn't' do anything, it couldn't' be further from the truth but it didn't matter as perception is reality. I held off changing from 5 days (we were five days before anyone switched, and were the first to respond publically to @grumpycat to have an open discussion) as for a while. While I agreed with the idea, I didn't agree with the execution and the actions being done when not flagging for late voting. I eventually said fuck it and switched it to 3 days as I had more important fires to fight and I didn't want to see more innocent people harmed in the crossfire as @grumpycat made it clear he will do as much damage to the most responsible users to make the loudest noise.
Since then, I have added almost 400 people to our blacklist, and spend countless hours still finding and reporting abuse. It's a thankless job that very few seem to appreciate and I continuously question why do I even bother.
So in response to your post, I think it is far off base and not remotely accurate in my case.
Glad to have your attention and it does kind of answer my question about Steem Power reflecting the value of the minimum bids. So it's more about the speed of the rounds?
I did fail to mention that, I know many of you owners try hard to keep a list of abusers.
If you care to put it out there... for all the lovely people of Steemit, how much do you typically make on a round?
It is a combination of avoiding the rounding errors and having a consistent round duration. The design is to have 10 votes a day for 100% vote split between bidders. Due to the number of minimum bids and the rounding error, this became impossible. We are still off by a bit, but nowhere near where it was with 1 SBD minimum bid.
Not much as my delegator takes 95%. I have no idea as I don't track round to round or even daily, I just keep things running and work on stopping spam and abuse and work on my projects.
I don't understand the rounding errors. I get votes from people that are weird percentages and often when a bid is bought, it'll say (for example) bla bla bla a 2.37% upvote. Do the bots not actually vote with finite percentages based on the bids but rather round them off? Meaning it was actually only a 2% vote? Are manual votes treated the same way?
This GitHub Entry explains it well:
https://github.com/steemit/steem/issues/1808
So based in that equation, and given the amount of your SP, people were able to 'cheat' your bot? Makes more sense now. Am glad you talked to me. Thanks for putting things in perspective 😎
I love you two guys. I am SO glad to see this end well, as I was reading down through it with a bit of a knot in my stomach. Because I know you are both on the same side on #TeamGood <3
Hello my love! We have so much to talk about, lol!! First, thank you for your support of @SPL. That's where we met! It's an amazing community of diverse Steemians, and even though we're totally competitive, we look out for each other like family. I'll DM you again about that tournament in a little bit. 😉
I don't know if you know this, however I'm intimately involved with @buildawhale as well. I consider @themarkymark a close friend, one who has supported me personally and on Steemit countless times. I am listed as Co-Chief Curator of the @buildawhale Curation Digest, but the truth is that @nicnas does 99% of the work, lol. I appreciate your concerns and am glad that you and he are able to have further discussion, because what I know about @themarkymark is this; he is here to improve Steemit above and beyond anything else. As you are, as I hope to!
Anyway, I appreciate your work and your self and you know I think you're amazing. 😉
Chat soon!
xoxoxo, b.
Hey sweetness! I don't doubt @themarkymark's intentions in the least. He's on my list for witnesses. Not just for @buildawhale and what he's doing over there, but he's also a strong contributor to another group I am a part of. #steemusa. I'm no where near as active there as I am other places, but I do keep somewhat decent tabs on my peoples. 😋 My fear is a bellyrub repeat so I'm just wading out here to make sure people's hearts are in the right place 🤗
I'm just here to regulate the funkiness. But I will do my damndest to make sure witty and marky stay buddy buddy, only they did it themselves already, which is ~exactly~ why I would have tried for both of them. ;)
It's a hot topic, and one close to my heart because really I have been using the bid bots since they pretty much first started coming available - and they made a massive boost to my account. I do however appreciated how many people refuse to use them on principal - rewards for good content should be just that - a reward for the work you have done in your post - not rewards because you paid to get bigger upvotes. But getting your post seen just keeps getting more difficult - and the upvote boost from the bots will always give more visibility to a post and further upvotes. Right now the bot's are not great for ROI, mostly my rewards payout just about covers the spend cost on bots - with a tiny bit over. For reliability and hassle free upvoting posts I use https://smartsteem.com/ it accepts any bid range so you can do tiny mounts, guarantees double back on investment or you get the difference refunded - and it does not currently leave a calling comment on the post so is silent - which is ideal if you are looking to help people out but don't want them to know.
#thealliance
My main point behind that part of the post is what you touched on. Getting to the trending and hot pages. With the prices getting more 'competitive', it's hard for real good content to even get seen anymore. I have tried using smartsteem a few times and the bids were returned, similar to minnowbooster - nobody available to fill the order :/
Smartsteem like Minnowbooster works by vote sellers setting a Vote Power level that they will not vote when they go under that amount. So all you can do is sit and keep refreshing the pages until the available bid goes up - then put your bid in and hope you grab available sellers before they get all used up. The nice thing about both is you don't loose money - they always refund if they can't supply. Getting the good content seen is a big problem, but you are by far and away doing a far better job of getting people to see quality content then any bot has or ever will.
moar bots
Right? How many have you written and run? Should call you Bot-God. LMAO
Yep, a lot.
I believe this will all lead to a Hierarchy of Engagement for the platform, which is a good thing.
Some people talk about Network Effects but don't really know what they really are. The incorrect view is that Network Effects are just "churn." As in, money going from one wallet to the other, then back again. But in reality, a true Network Effect is when there's utility for a product that leads to more utility (amplification).
I see these bots leading to a real Network Effect.
Good article, can't believe you only got a buck fifty on it. You think then, that their brands are being built effectively and that ultimately, their massive votes are good for Steemit collectively?
by raising prices, do you mean that people aren't getting as good of an ROI for the purchase? if so, I think that's a good thing, but I guess I just am not aware of the price increase or what it's effected.
my concern about bots, is that people just use them as an investment tool, rather than a promotional tool. it sucks to see absolutely shitty posts that make it up to $300, for what? anyways... I have a lot of thoughts on the matter, I think I'll let them float in my head for a while so I can express myself properly
I don't use bots that often, but I find it incredibly difficult to actually make a profit on the bidding bots, especially when SBD is higher than a dollar. Now this doesn't take into account the effect of getting to trending and the effect on reputation, but I'd consider those promotion byproducts.
You see that's how I use them is for promo purposes or even to reward someone for a good post. And I know there are a lot of spammers with multiple accounts that abuse the system, but there are just as many-if not more-great young 'plankton & minnows' that could really benefit from affordable hits by the 'bigger' bots. There's no way @curie catches them all, or any other curation groups. I know I go to some friends' blog pages and am like, how in the world did I miss that? And yes, shitty posts making 300+ is despicable.
Great post my friend. I also get a bad taste in my mouth with so many bots and so many charging to get their votes? I especially hate how they target newcomers. Some of these are barely getting by and then are asked to pay to get their amazing post seen. Kudos to you for speaking out.
One of the reasons I hope groups like #thealliance can have a counter effect. And thank you, one thing I've never been afraid to do ;)
Well keep it up my friend! Our number one battle during this time is fighting the fear! Keep you in fear, keep you under control. I can surly see where #thealliance can have a strong impact and a loud voice in this community. Just keep uncovering and broadcasting the truths to the masses. Lift up, vs tearing down, encourage and support each other vs threatening action against the non-conforming. Reach down and lift up the tired and weary and penniless instead of pouring it all back into the hands of the greedy.
Yup. So glad you see that sweetheart. Think I like you :)
Hey buddy, think I like you too..LOL. This is what it is all about. Getting to really know each other and share and sometimes even agree to disagree. I am just here to share and help in any way I can and hopefully make a few steem in the process. God only knows just how much healing is needed in this community alone. People are scared and allowing the fear to poison their own existence. It is up to people like us to do all we can to open their eyes and hearts to the truths and help them realize that life is indeed worth living and that more can be accomplished with love than with hate and fear. @enginewitty, I honestly appreciate having you as a friend. I thrive being around people of like mind. As you probably have discovered by now, I do not have the need to be in the limelight. I work much better one on one.
What your are saying is not far from the truth. Its glaring. I share in your view @enginewitty. Our opinion and views count despite the critique.
Hi @enginewitty, I just stopped back to let you know your post was one of my favourite reads and I included it in my Steemit Ramble. You can read what I wrote about your post here.
Join us on Thursdays for Pimp Your Post Thursday at 11am EST or 7PM EST in the Steemit Ramble Discord or:
If you’d like to nominate someone’s post just visit the Steemit Ramble Discord
this one is not so bad ;) tipuvote! 0.3
Hi @enginewitty! You have received 0.75 SBD @tipU upvote
from @cardboard :)
You can now delegate SP to @tipU for daily profit :)
That is a lot to chew on and I am out the door to work, but I will revisit this tonight. Thanks!
You got a 9.98% upvote from @upmyvote courtesy of @enginewitty!
If you believe this post is spam or abuse, please report it to our Discord #abuse channel.
If you want to support our Curation Digest or our Spam & Abuse prevention efforts, please vote @themarkymark as witness.
You got a 2.12% upvote from @buildawhale courtesy of @enginewitty!
If you believe this post is spam or abuse, please report it to our Discord #abuse channel.
If you want to support our Curation Digest or our Spam & Abuse prevention efforts, please vote @themarkymark as witness.
Sneaky Ninja Attack! You have been defended with a 13.33% vote... I was summoned by @enginewitty! I have done their bidding and now I will vanish...Whoosh