Visibility was one. At the time the top slot only cost about 20 cents. He overpaid. So that was pointless. A waste of money and resources. He also said it was a tip. So, let's say he tipped me 3 dollars. He wasted his money using a middleman. He could have sent me that 3 dollars directly. Instead, a middle man also earns 3 dollars because that's what the vote cost PLUS the bot earns curation rewards, meaning I got shortchanged on my so called TIP.
That's true unless someone feels that bot services are beneficial to the STEEM economy, in which case it's more efficient to use one to boost a comment because then you can give to the bot owners/delegators and to you at the same time. From which perspective there is essentially zero waste (not including the "stealing from the rewards pool" argument, which, again, I find quite spurious) because you're being rewarded for the comment, and the bots/bot-owners/delegators for their service. It also increases your reputation number very slightly, as you know (and also know that it doesn't mean too much. Thus: @steem-ua.)
If, however, he's just wanting to give you a gift, it would be more efficient to send to you directly, I agree. Renting delegations to have greater influence on allocating the rewards pool is also a decent option, and much more accessible to those of us that don't have six figures sitting around to pump into buying SP.
Too many people are paid to look away in an economy dependent on attention. There's no way anyone can convince me personally, these services are somehow beneficial.
I see content creators work, publish a post, walk away. They sell their votes. That means someone uses that content creators own SP against them. Their post gets buried under the paid promotions, and they've effectively sabotaged their own business and potential profits.
This place quite literally has it's head screwed on backwards.
Damn. I love that statement. Might steal in future.
Me neither, unless they are viewed as the neutral and inevitable outgrowth of a digital system: or as helpful indicators of underlying code being inherently flawed--or as a sign an enormous cultural uprising would be necessary to manually counter said services (which, I fear, given the nature of most modern humans is extremely unlikely to occur save some super-wealthy good-actor acquiring a massive stake)
Good insights. Things are rather dysfunctional here at present. I'm most interested to see what happens when the bull market returns to crypto and STEEM. I believe most will stop talking about any issues because of the massive amounts of money they're making. The bear market's been interesting because people are emotionally distraught and more willing to be genuine because of that. Suffering brings a strange sort of lucidity to life.
That's another one of the big myths floating around this platform. Once the bull returns, nobody will care. I call BS. I noticed issues long ago that remain problematic whether the value is high or low.
January 10, 2018. The value was high. I wrote:
https://steemit.com/steemit/@nonameslefttouse/the-trending-tab-on-steemit-is-becoming-paid-programming-and-should-be-labelled-accordingly
This one came shortly after:
https://steemit.com/life/@nonameslefttouse/how-to-cook-steemit-crack-and-destroy-the-neighborhood
Yeah. I know those that are genuinely passionate will still care. But will new users that know nothing of the past 2 years or nothing about crypto at all?
Only, I suppose, if we make them care: another reason why continuing to write about "the same things" from different angles is important. Thanks for the links. :-)