Lately, I've been trying to read more on the concerns a lot of people have aired as regards vote buying services and I've realized there's a common ground; it takes money away from people and could be used to promote spam or mediocre content.
When you read some of these arguments against vote buying, you're easily tempted to join the camp as all that is painted for you is doom and gloom but it's always a safe bet to view both sides of the coin before making decisions.
Whatever the origins of these services might have been, it is clear they meet some type of needs in the community and this is why they're being used in the first place. Now agreed there are flaws and all because come on, no system is perfect, do we then throw the baby out with the bath water?
The Big Issue
The fact is, people tend to leave when rewards aren't forthcoming. When you come for the rewards and decide to stay for the community, could your staying be tied to the fact that the community began to reward you more or say there was some light at the end of the tunnel for you?
Services like Curie were created to combat something; people leaving due to low rewards. Yes it is said that they reward authors who have hitherto not been discovered by the community at large but the main issue at hand is that users leave when rewards aren't forthcoming. It's this reward Curie has attempted to dole out and has been doing a good job of it.
Now will everyone go down the Curie route? I absolutely doubt it.
Curation is a very noble cause and there's no reason why it can't be properly married to vote buying. The thing with curation is that the thousands of new accounts coming on board daily aren't being (or can't be) properly catered for by the select few with all the Steem Power.
Anyone who then goes out of their way to secure some Steem Power should be allowed to use it the way they want? I'm not super clear on that.
Something Broken
In my early days on Steemit, I came across the "promote" feature where I could pay any amount of SBD I wanted in order to get my post on the promoted page. I bet many of you either don't know this page exists or don't understand what exactly it exists for.
This is where to find it. On top of the social icons at the bottom of any post.
What I soon discovered was that using this promoted feature adds nothing to your potential payout and doesn't give you any added visibility anywhere. Why then does this feature exist? I have been unable to find a suitable answer to that question and I've also been unable to find posts complaining about that feature. Why is this the case?
The Case For Beta
The promoted feature was probably thought out to be great but turned out to be implemented very poorly. Or maybe it's a secret sauce for something yet to come. It's very easy to quickly run under the beta umbrella and claim that everything on here is still experimental. So well we can easily say that Steemit is still in beta and so it is probably an experimental feature. Agreed, but is Steemit the only entity allowed to experiment with features? I doubt that.
A Quick Trip Down Promoted Land
As at the time of writing, this is the first post on the promoted category and as you can see, a whooping $85 had been spent to promote it. With two days left till post payout, it has hardly even gotten half of that back as potential payout. Yet this is an official feature allowed to remain for so long.
Whereas if that amount had been spent on @booster or @randowhale, the returns would definitely have been a lot higher. So I guess if we are going to claim to fight for what's good for the entire community, then we could as well take out this promoted feature. Personally, I'd rather pay for an upvote service than pay to use Steemit's promote feature.
Some Quotes Found
Yup agreeable that vote buying services can be put to good use. We should be free to trade as long as there's mutual consent. It's just that it can equally be abused, affecting the network. So I guess vote service providers just have to make sure its a net positive for the platform. - @kevinwong here
I would much rather see good content get curated and rewarded for its merits rather than votes being sold and rented to anyone, but everyone deserves a chance and not everyone has been getting it, absent those services. So they do fill a need. That probably results in some lower quality content, but I also feel that we need to move beyond the expectation of only long posts getting rewarded. - @donkeypong here
I don't believe vote buying services have any long term benefit for the community, and they don't solve any alleged shortcomings with the Steem network. - @liberosist here
We create content for our blog posts and if other's like the content, it's rewarded with votes. From my understanding, the better and original your content is, the more likely you're rewarded on a post. With the creation of these vote buying projects, does this cause content creators to really focus on creating original good content or does it create the mentality to post whatever they can and just buy upvotes? - @bitcoinparadise here
As you can see, I probably have way more questions than answers in this post and that's because I'm only just beginning to study this. I would love to read your opinions and answers to the questions below.
Do you think vote buying is evil and bad for Steem?
Should businesses even be allowed to be built on Steem?
Would it make any difference to marry vote buying with quality curation?
What do you think is a solution and the answer to retaining users?
Hi @fisteganos,
Thousands of people are coming in to this platform and curation services can't reach them all, so i support vote buying system, so that quality posts can be curated. However, we can't control the actions of people abusing the service and we can't call vote buying bad because of other people's actions
I think businesses should be allowed to be built on steemit because it's a social media platform. If Businesses are built on Facebook and Instagram that do not have rewards, then it should be done on steemit.
If people think that length = quality, they're sorely mistaken. I've lost track of the number of times I've read multi-thousand-word blog posts that should have been 400 words. Also, I've published multi-thousand-word series on here, and they barely got any attention. When I see people post vlogs on here and get high rewards, it has me rethinking my whole strategy. Maybe I should write less and vlog more.
As far as the original question in your title, I think Steemit's promote feature is an utter waste. I used it when I first started, thinking that it'd be a smart move. But then I kept seeing that nobody actually checks that tab. And as you noted, you get better returns on a voting bot than you do w/the promote feature hands down.
The other side of your question is "How is vote buying different from curation trails?" On the one hand, you're bidding for a portion of a vote, and on the other, you're paying your trail (or participating in a trail) for a share of the payout. Different methods; similar outcomes.
I know that I create good content. I've been doing it professionally for over a decade, and even longer if you count my time while I was growing up. But w/o voting bots, getting to the hot or trending pages feels like a snowball's chance in Hell for a minnow like me. W/voting bots, I at least feel like I have a shot to implement a repeatable strategy and give my content a fighting chance.
I've only been on Steemit since August, so I only know the platform post-HF19. My bet is that the people leading the charge against voting bots were already opposed to them before the fork because it eliminated whatever advantages they enjoyed under the old system.
Thanks for this interesting comment.
What if vote bots were like marketing techniques on Steem? What if it was a way to get more eyeballs on your content?
You're welcome. Thank you for an interesting post. :)
That's exactly how I feel about the voting bots. It's like paying for ads on FB or Instagram, but it has the added benefit of resulting in added rewards. That in and of itself makes it way more sustainable. If you do it right, you can essentially grow your own self-sustaining ad budget from scratch.
Also, Happy New Year!
It takes time and dedication to create great and valuable contents on this platform and to be honest people are doing it basically for the money.
So here is my opinion
Vote buying is a last resort for such persons who have low upvotes and rewards and I don't see anything wrong with it. If it gives them what they crave for, so be it.
It could also be used to get high enough rewards to hit the trending page 😊.
Do you see yourself ever using one?
I think Vote buying has more cons then pros.
Pros:
Give an unknown author a boost and jumpstart their articles because they lack the influence in the community.
Cons:
Some voting bots are controlled by people who use the Voting-bots power after curating from "bought votes" to flag articles that they don't like.
Then there is another con job where a Voting-Bot developed enough trust from the community just to trick people in buying higher premium votes AND cashed out on the SBD.
Voting-bots votes are fake. So articles being upvoted are NOT really good articles but paid for to upvote.
We are better off without Voting-bots IMO. The solution is to have more curators. Then there is gentleman known as @Fulltimegeek that is actually designating his Steem Powers to curators to support the community effort to upvote good articles.
Ok so if all these concerns listed were addressed (i.e
i) they are not bot controlled to begin with,
ii) no flagging of articles is involved
iii) no con job :)
iv) only good articles are upvoted as there are actual humans who read these posts and vote only those that pass a certain standard,
but you were still required to pay for the "service", would it make it any better or more of the same?
It would make it better
Developing good content is a skill that is learned. It involves both having useful information and knowing how to get people to want to click that link. On this platform where reputation is everything I believe that as a newbie you have to work extra hard. You have to grind to get to that point where people will click your link just just from seeing your reputation. I know I do this. People who buy votes are missing the point, or maybe they are not really interested in blogging, in which case their buying votes is very rational.
A few months of work, you'll be reaping the rewards. That's how it works. I think it is better to belong to groups of steemians where you can get other writers to know you and learn from them. I am learning to elevate my stuff just from interacting with them. Staying motivated is another benefit of belonging to a group.
If everyone starts buying votes, good content would be hard to find and being here would no longer be intellectually rewarding.
Yes building relationships is another angle that could be explored and one that many people don’t really do. So if you had the opportunity to use a vote bot, would you?
I don't want to. I want things to happen "organically". I know we have to connect with other people to get votes but I still want to know that a big reason for why I am growing is because I provide good stuff. In a year from now, I want to have become a much better writer.
Interesting 👏🏽
your post is good, sya like
Helpful informations thanks
The Promote feature when compared with the bots only offer you more oportunitys to be followed. By investing in bots you are going for the HOT section and probably to the Trending too... witch means that a lot of people will see and be able to follow your work.
As such, it does not look very promising the feature Promoted.
I have seen ridiculously garbage content worth a crap ton because of this system but it is available to everyone so if people don't like it then maybe they should try it.