I have zero issues with people getting on trending organically, I want great post up there. I am strictly saying if you want to promote on trending you need to pay. If google ad words was free, google would have failed.
Regardless if you think your content is good or not, trending space should never be free, ever. UNLESS Proof of Brain puts you on trending, it should never be free to ADVERTISERS, content creators that "earn" a spot on trending did not get it free, they got it by making content others wanted to see. Chicken and the egg, organic trending brings eyeballs which bring advertisers.
Related: https://steemit.com/bidbots/@theycallmedan/to-bot-or-not-to-bot-that-is-the-question
▶️ 3Speak
'Trending' literally means 'being the subject of a trend'. Trends involve multiple people supporting / doing something. If you put posts into the trending section yourself through payment, you are denying the real function of Trending. Vote buying, in that sense, to reach 'trending', is like designing a new hat and then paying people to wear it.. then saying that your hats are important as a result. If people are going to buy their way onto the front page of Steem sites then site designers need to do something to maintain the integrity of the system - maybe just renaming 'trending' to 'most rewarded' or similar is a good start. There are so many scams in crypto world, it's very important for upstanding projects to not lead people to think they are being misled.
Good point here. My goal would be to find a way to keep the integrity of the system while allowing people who want to advertise do so. As a community, it is our responsibility to make sure we are bringing in as much value as we can, this is a decentralized network run by volunteers. Content creators bring value to Steem by bringing in eyeballs, if we can capitalize on that by people needing to buy Steem to get space.
Maybe even a UI, the declined payouts + bot let me know that this is a promo post, so I could skip it if I wanted. For people who send funds to null, maybe we can make a little icon that shows on their post that they burned, maybe a fire emoji.
I have posted on this topic many times. One option is to remove the 'promoted' tab and integrate the built in promotion system that steemit has into the blockchain itself, so that promoted posts appear inline with the other posts - but are known by all to be promoted. UIs can then inform users of that situation. It would be up to the design of the promotion system to elegantly ensure that it is a superior option to using bid bots. I did previously suggest using some of Steemit's ninja mined steem to create a vote selling service that undercuts the bid bots and that sends profits to the reward pool - or something like that. I haven't done any hard maths on it but I think something like that could work.
Agreed, just put a red box around the post with a cartouche that says promoted. Inject them every few organic posts. Seems like you could scrape the post or an automated bot comment to determine if it's promoted. This also wouldn't require downvoting to blast the post off trending if it's abusive or rejected by the community, because you could just flip a switch on the front end, so it would conserve the DV pool. This would at least mean these posts would have some passive curation attached to them, and not simply be the pull-an-upvote and blast it later model of curation we are all so used to seeing.
It's not really possible to guarantee that all bid bot services are caught since they could just operate quietly without advertising to avoid being flagged as a bot.. Although they would definitely be less successful that way. As long as there are top witnesses who are getting rich from bots, you are unlikely to see much shift in a truly positive direction in this regard.
The bots have to advertise in order for the masses to use them. I don't think it would be difficult to heuristically identify them. Sure they might leak a few through after they go live.
You pretty much have to agree to build the solution, implement it, and blast the non-conforming posts, declined payouts or not. Assuming they are having a preventive influence on this sort of progress, that is an argument for blasting declined posts as well.
i can think of fairly elaborate ways that vote selling platforms could anonymise their activity and advertise in discord servers, for example - similar to the way that large pump and dump schemes work.
It would not be possible to track their activity in a totally automated way. This is part of why they are allowed to operate so freely currently.
What people don't seem to understand is that the longer the bots are allowed to run, the more steem gets centralised into the hands of a few bot operators. Those operators can then put more and more of their team into the top 20 witness positions, which then guarantees that the platform will not make any decisions that go against them financially. Currently, the perception that 'bots are good' has many people voting for these witnesses without understanding that it is hurting them.
Very good points! .. i would like to point out though that trending posts on any and every site out there is subjected to people manipulating and using their tricks to be popular. Youtube for example lets you advertise your videos, thereby raising its profile.. so with hf21 in place i think were pretty on par, if not better, at representing the community than most. Im happy to say my recent post hit #6 spot on trending 100% organically, no bid bots used. That never happened before in 2 and a half years!
Yeah... but every successful social network on earth places ‘promoted posts’ or ‘sponsored posts’ amidst trending or feed content. We need the feature to compete realistically for ad revenues and advertiser retention.
Posted using Partiko iOS
Typically other sites label the posts as sponsored or as 'ads' - Steem cannot do that so reliably because the 'advertising' is being powered by third parties. The intended design of Steem was for advertisers to hold their own steem power - pushing the price up. It wasn't really originally envisioned that the system would rely on ads or that people would sell votes. It was envisioned that the network would be populated by engaged, creative people rather than people just trying to look for loopholes to exploit.
I feel the only way to "police" it as a community is with are upvotes and downvotes. We have zero control with what people what to initially do with their stake, but as a community, we can DV stuff we feel is abusing the reward pool.
The closet we can come to a sponsored label would be the declined payout, or an icon if they choose to burn, or even an icon that relies on the poster to say it is promoted if they lie the community can retaliate with DVs.
I agree with your view though, I believe it will be harder to have legit promotions on Steem because it is decentralized and the SP is controlled by private parties that will do what they will. I am just shooting from the hip my idea on the situation and how to maybe turn something that is perceived as bad to a positive for Steem. We are not getting rid of promotion IMO, nor do I believe we should. But finding the best way to go about it will require our collective Proof of Brain.
I also put out a design for a feature that the Steempeak team were thinking of creating - I'm not sure I've seen that they have though. The idea is to give each user a 'voter mute' list, so that we can all create custom trending lists that remove the effects of specific upvoters. So if there are upvoters who continually annoy us, we can just remove them from our experience. I think that's a pretty empowering feature in general, but it also has the effect of minimising the power of the more visible bidbots since people can easily stop their effectiveness on a personal level. It's not perfect, but I think it would have a similar or even bigger effect than free downvotes if widely adopted.
I'm all about empowerment rather than control of others. We have the ability to empower, but don't seem to be using it in a fully imaginative way yet. All that said, I just realised that I now run a Steem powered site at ureka.org - which I didn't when I first though of this idea.. So maybe I'll integrate it in there and see how it works out :)
And I agree, advertising investing and powering up Steem to then upvote their post is a good use case. Right now 150k USD worth of Steem gives about 20$ upvote. That is a tough sell for someone trying to promote a product that may be cost them 5k to make in the first place. I do feel we need a "hit and run" type ad space where people can put 100$ up if they want to get more exposure to their post.
Yeah, it really shouldn't be too tough to build a decent advertising system into the blockchain - I suspect that part of why we haven't seen it is that without it certain parties can become very fat from the bid bot marketplace.
I like the idea of promoted by burning making into the trending. You are right nobody visits promoted tab. There is no incentive to do so. Rework on promoted would be great for #newsteem. Maybe similar logic can be applied to comments. Burn steem to move your comments up?
If somehow burning steem could add similar rshares weight on a post or a comment as upvoting, I can see many start burning steem.
Make tons of sense to me! #NewSteem 🙋🏼♂️
💯 on this, bitbots have their use if done right and controlled with DVs and forced to either burn or deny rewards. Definitely a good problem if trending gets dominated by advertisers buying Steem for that method.
What’s you thoughts on bringing back the old hit counter? That way promoters/influencers/adverts can attain clients without relying on vote and follower metrics alone. ie... a $1 post can have a 10k reach when promoted on other platforms like reddit, twitter, Facebook etc. but we have no analytics to show that.
I saw a botted post with declined payments on Trending and wondered if it had been a mistake. Now I get it. This could even be a kind of decentralised way of advertising on here.
If people were to do that, bid-bots would make literary 0 profit due to decline-reward posts giving no curation rewards.
You are right. But there must be another way out to get more profit.
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I don't know if it's a good analogy . There are many services on main stream social media offering autolike service, follower plans, etc. But much much more are organic growth. Steem is small compared to those, the SP bidbots control are too high, so it's not gonna work out.
We are just a few days after the fork, nice to see the use of bidbots reduces a lot already.
Bid bots do soak up a ton of SP. I must say I am happy with what I am seeing, this post was in no way a rant I am actually thrilled with how things are going so far. I was just getting asked a lot about bid bots. I don't think we will ever stop bid bots aka private SP hodlers who become ad agents in a way for advertisers on STeem. But we can hold them accountable as a community, as we have been with the new EIP.
You are right, in any ways much better than micro farming. I'm really happy to see even bidbot like smartsteem started curating.
@theycallmedan, That's the way for sure. People should choose what they want to Consume and it should not be an forceful visibility for them. Bid Bots will play great role but at first users 👥 should take the responsibility and let's hope that after this #Newsteem we will going to see the Culture Change. Keep adding value brother and stay blessed.
Posted using Partiko Android
OK. I was sceptical, even cynical about this whole #NewSteem thing but I think you've just convinced me. I think you're right about decline payouts being a great way for advertisers to get eyeballs on trending and yet also help support the platform without turning us all into whores and shitposters.
Not so convinced about the idea of setting beneficiaries to null as it's a bit grey and not so overt. I don't think it should be up to curators to check beneficiaries when deciding whether to flag. It should be black and white. Organic = Payout Reward. Advertisement = Payout Declined.
Just keep it up. No exceptions. As i said in your last post. Declined payouts arent ideal but theyre much better then what we had and theyre a really good step in the right direction.
There are some people like Fyrst and Aggroed most recently that think their reputation or their stake gives them a pass.
We cant make exceptions for guys like that.
👍
~Smartsteem Curation Team
Paying for bots is not a problem only quality matters there :)
Advertising is necessary and bidbots has proven to damage the intended PoB consensus in the Steem rewards system... We have to find a common ground instead of taking one side blindly neglecting the arguments of the other.
Yes, you are right man.
I saw the declined post by Hatu as well and I thought man this guy is balls to the wall and good on him his actually brought about some real discussion!
I think the trending will become premium space but I’d like to see sub premium space! When you hit top of trending you also top trending for all the hashtags you used so that’s up to 11 top trending spots you max out your tags!
Which can even be maximized even more if you’re using tribes! That’s a lot of real estate for a few $100 spend! Which is more added value
I see eSteem also launched post boosting which sees you burn their token for your post to be repeated in their feed!
Pretty sure more front ends will do this too as attention online becomes more competitive on this space!
If people have to buy and burn for attention that’s alright with em 😬
If the rich choose to invest their riches in bidbots, all the power to them.
Organic trending page appearances would have to be one hell of a popular subject from an author with the eyes of some pretty big stakeholders.
Trending holds no value for me personally and I know a payout of 20$ cost them $30 so I am not really envious st all. I would rather power that 30 up myself or donate it to a steem cause I support.
Posted using Partiko iOS
This is well said, but I guess the platform now is just about how connected you are and not what you are able to offer, so for some of us who even try to write well and stay active on the platform gets nothing.
Well, I haven't been going through the trending page. It's sort of hard navigating the blogging sphere without a mobile app. Not so comfortable using partiko, now I'm adjusting to the steempeak interface which is pretty awesome but...well nevermind
Speaking about organic content making it to the trending page. Very possible at this point. Not one of the advantages of the hardfork I have considered and maybe it's time to give it some thought because one of the major reasons I'm branching out, using different social platforms is to have more eyes on my content which I believe will force me to put in my best, not the normal expectancy of earning because you posted something. Where I might struggle is the networking thing. I feel it's necessary and unnecessary at the same time. Finding the right mix would do.
My experience post hardcore hasn't necessarily been great, it is expected. I'm leaning towards steemmonster now as get a better ROI, and I don't have to bid to earn which I strongly feel adds little value to the system. So it's better I put that steel elsewhere. I also want people to understand that posting alone isn't the only way. There are different ways to utilize the blockchain. Hopefully, more interesting dapps might be crates in the coming months. I actually saw an ad on steer it regarding an idea I had which has to do with a sporting bet. I believe there is a huge market for that, people are already doing that and hopefully, it would be something we have on steem.
Let's see how things go. Still skeptical but it's too early to make any calls now.
If you're lefting partiko you should try esteem, it's a great option and it has many cool characteristics. You can promete your posts within the platform, you can boost your posts expending ESTM (the equivalent to partiko points)
What about even going for a 75% curation reward (or more)? Maybe the way to make holding Steem worth something was having the ability to curate content on the platform you are invested in?
Authors:
but only there are know the system from the past. In a year it can be normal 75% curation and nobody remember this times.
Exactly. Imagine it would have been 75/25 from the start. People would be thrilled to have 50/50. Everything is relative.
This post earned a total payout of 14.303$ and 10.754$ worth of author reward which was liquified using @likwid. To learn more.
Here is a detailed summary article on the key topics discussed in the episode:
Bid Bots and the Trending Page on Steem
In this episode, TheyCallMeDan shared his thoughts on the ongoing debate around bid bots and their use on the Steem blockchain. He began by explaining that he was inspired to share his perspective after seeing two trending posts have their payouts declined.
The Value of the Trending Page
Dan believes the trending page on Steem is a valuable and limited resource that should be earned organically through quality content that the community upvotes. However, he acknowledges that promotion and advertising on the trending page also has value, and should not be free. He draws a comparison to Google AdWords, noting that if that platform was free, it would be overrun with low-quality content.
Declining Payouts as a "Burn"
Dan sees the practice of bid bot users declining their payout rewards as a form of "burning" those tokens, as the funds go back into the overall Steem reward pool rather than being recouped by the bid bot owner. He views this as beneficial for the Steem ecosystem, as it creates buy pressure on the Steem token.
Promoting on Trending
Dan is in favor of allowing promotion on the Steem trending page, but believes it should come at a cost. He suggests ideas like forcing a promoted post into the trending tab periodically, or allowing bid bot users to "burn" a portion of their rewards as a way to pay for the promotion.
Balancing Organic and Promoted Content
Dan believes the trending page should maintain a balance between organic, community-driven content and promoted/paid content. He argues that the free market will naturally regulate this, as too much promotional content will diminish the value of the trending page. He is confident that quality content creators will continue to thrive on the trending page, even with the introduction of paid promotion.
Conclusion
Overall, Dan takes a pragmatic view on bid bots and promotion on Steem. He sees value in allowing paid promotion, as long as it comes with a cost that benefits the Steem ecosystem, such as burning Steem tokens. He is optimistic that the Steem community can find the right balance between organic and promoted content on the trending page.
Notice: This is an AI-generated summary based on a transcript of the video. The summarization of the videos in this channel was requested/approved by the channel owner.