Bidbot Experiment: The Good, The Bad, The Ugly
Readers who have been with me awhile know I ran a few Steemit bidbot experiments last year, but they were small experiments. Small bids, small amounts, and small rewards. A couple of times, I'm sure I lost money on the bots, though I didn't count too closely. The idea was to merely get familiar with them so I could understand what the issue was with the bots and get some perspective on why they've been disruptive to the platform. My curiosity satisfied, I quit playing with them after a week or so.
A recent controversy surrounding allegations of vote buying in another context piqued my interest again in the bidbots. What could be so wrong with the process of increasing one's rewards with a small investment intended for just that purpose? After all, isn't that what Wall Street investors do every day?
I think the situation is a bit more nuanced than that, and I hope this post illustrates just how.
Image from Pixabay.
My Latest Steembot Experiment
So I decided to run a new Steembot experiment. On Sunday, March 17, 2019, at approximately 9:44 p.m., I published a post titled Experimental Post. It has absolutely no value. It's a completely useless shitpost, published for one purpose only: To buy a bidbot vote.
Unlike the majority of my posts, I did not promote it in any way. I published it, tagged it with the #Steemit tag, and that's all I did until I placed my bid three days later. My hypothesis was this: That one post would earn me a greater return on investment (ROI) than an average post would earn me with my normal routine.
So I should pause right here and discuss my usual post publishing and promotion routine. First, I write the best post possible. I put 100% of my energy into writing the best damn post on whatever topic with every single post I write. No particular reason other than personal pride. Secondly, I tag each post with the five most appropriate tags I can think of based on the topic ensuring that one of those tags is #powerhousecreatives. After that, I share the link in more than 20 Discord servers, pausing to read, vote, resteem, and comment on the posts of others as per each server's rules and my personal interests. That process usually takes an hour to an hour-and-a-half and includes automated upvotes in those servers that offer it and for which I qualify. In other words, it's considerable work. When you factor in that I spend no less than an hour, and sometimes up to three (I've been known to spend six), crafting a post then spend an hour, and sometimes up to two, promoting it, I put in some serious time. I did none of that for my experimental post.
Nevertheless, within 14 minutes, I was able to garner 19 votes for a total of $.23 STU, an humble return. In nine hours, that number was 71 votes for a total of $1.03 STU. In 24 hours, I'd received 76 votes for a total of $1.05 STU. And 24 hours later, no extra votes.
So, within 48 hours, I'd received a potential payout of $1.05 STU with no promotion whatsoever, and I had not yet made my bidbot investment.
On March 20, 2019, at approximately 1:15 p.m., I placed a 40 STEEM bid on The Rising bidbot. You can see the value of that bid, in the image below, was $19.48 USD.
Interestingly, right about that time, I received three upvotes from @up1, @lereve, and @antonella. I have no idea if there is a connection, but it's an interesting correlation.
These three upvotes took my total upvotes, before the bidbot vote, to 82 for a total amount of $1.19 STU.
Within the hour, I'd say about 30 to 40 minutes later, I saw the return on my investment (ROI). After The Rising bot placed its vote, I had 83 upvotes for a total of $27.81 STU.
At first glance, it looks as if I've lost money, but these numbers don't tell the whole story. Let's calculate the ROI.
Steembot Lottery Winner
The way Steembots work is quite interesting. If you go to Steembot Tracker, you'll find a list of them.
It's a rolling list, which means the bot at the top of the list is the one that votes next. You have to get your bid in before the next vote. But the most important information is on the left side of that grid.
The vote value is how much a 100% upvote from that bot is valued at the time of the upvote. On the list above, the top bot on the list has a vote value of $42.81, but that's not the vote value that everyone who bids on the bot will get. Rather, the value of each upvote is based on how many people bid on that bot and the percentage of the total bid that each contains. Let me illustrate by example.
Let's say XYZ Bidbot offers an upvote value of $1.00. If one person bids $.25 and no one else bids on that bot, then that one person will get the full $1.00 upvote. That's a good investment. But let's say two people bid on that bot; one of them bids $.10 and the other one bids $.40. In that case, the total bid was $.50, however, the first bidder registered 20% of that bid while the other tallied 80%. Therefore, the first bidder receives a $.20 upvote while the second bidder receives a $.80 upvote, totallying $1.00.
To see how many other bids there are on a bot before you place your bid, you have to click on the orange Action button and then click on "Details." It's tricky figuring out how much is too much of a bid.
At any rate, how much ROI did my 40 STEEM bid net me?
At the time of my bid, STEEM was listed at $.490176 USD at CoinMarketCap. That means I effectively threw $19.60704 USD into my investment. At the time of the actual vote, the price of STEEM hadn't changed much, so I'll use these figures as I continue (This is a good reason, BTW, to cast your bid as close to time of the next vote as you can).
It's important to point out that the default reward ratio on payout is 50% Steem Power and 50% SBD, but the author only gets 75% of payout while all the upvoters (including the bot) splits the rest. Yesterday, this post paid out and I received $20.71 in author rewards.
Here it is in my wallet:
At the time of payout, SBD was at $1.05 USD. That's equivalent to $10.87485 USD. Since STEEM was valued at .475972 at that time, my Steem Power (SP) payout amounted to the equivalent of $10.629406704 USD. Add those two figures together and that comes to $21.504256704 USD.
Again, my initial investment was $19.60704 USD. Subtract that from my earnings, and my shitpost ROI was $1.897216704. Subtract the $1.19 STU in upvotes I got prior to my investment (valued at .58330944 USD) and my ROI from the bidbot turned out to be a measly $1.313907264. But imagine doing that five to ten times a day every day for a year. The potential return is enormous.
Contrast these earnings, however, with the next post I wrote, going through my normal routine, two hours before payout and I sit with $2.38 STU for payout. STEEM currently sits at .453335 USD and Steem Dollars at $1.02 at Coinmarketcap. Taking 75% of the STU and dividing it in half, multiplying both SP and STEEM projected payouts means my ROI for that post, with about two hours of time invested, comes to $1.314965875. Trust me, my time is worth a hell of a lot more than that.
What's Quality Got to Do With It?
It makes me wonder, if I can earn as much ROI from a single bidbot vote, which takes all of five minutes, as I can from a one hour investment in promotion, then why shouldn't I? So why didn't I experiment with my most recent post instead of creating a shitpost? The answer is, I needed a control, a stark contrast to my usual posting and promotion routine, in order to isolate the results.
From this experiment, I can ascertain that, had I invested in the bidbot vote for a normal, average post, my ROI would have been very similar. Posting the Steem Monsters post the very next day and waiting until payout to post again means other factors affecting payouts were limited, allowing me to get a realistic look at the bidbot effect. So why does that matter?
It matters because this very average post of mine has earned a total of $2.38 STU with only 47 upvotes in seven days.
I can assume that the people who voted for that post thought it worth their percentages. Otherwise, they would not have cast their votes. The exception to this would be those kind folks who auto-upvote every post of mine simply because I impressed them at some point in the past. Those people also voted for the shitpost, by the way. But if you examine all the upvotes on both posts, you'll find there are some voting accounts on each post that you won't find on the other. These are the manual human upvotes. These are the upvotes on which quality--actual post quality--ought to be measured. If we were to put these two posts side by side, we could judge the average power of manual upvotes for each of them. On that, we could ascertain the relative value that each post contributes to the blockchain.
As you can see, the experimental post has a higher total upvote value, due in large part to a single upvote by @Neoxian, an Orca with a stellar reputation on the blockchain, who gave it a very generous .56 upvote. For whatever reason. However, as I hypothesized, the Steem Monsters post garnered a higher average among the manual human upvotes.
How did I determine what is a manual human upvote? The process was simple, but it took a little time. There are some accounts that I know follow me and upvote every post, no matter what. Then there are accounts that upvote me based on a membership. Included in that category are curation trails and Discord channels such as Power House Creatives (aka @steemitbloggers), @qurator, and @steembasicincome. A few of the Discord channels have an upvote bot that will upvote specific types of posts or offer free upvotes based on other criteria; examples include @steemmonsters, which will upvote Steem Monsters-related posts, @esteemapp, which only upvotes posts made from the eSteem app, and PAL (Peace, Abundance, Liberty), whose criteria includes a 30-hour cooldown period. Finally, I compared the two posts and some other recent posts and removed those accounts that were common, assuming them to be auto-upvotes. I know I have quite a few of these because I usually can get more than $1.00 STU in upvotes before I can finish my normal routine of sharing in the various Discord channels I frequent.
All of this is to say that quality is a huge determining factor in what kind of rewards are to be expected. However, quality alone won't do it. One has to put forth the time and effort to promote one's posts no matter what kind of quality sits on the table. Without promotion, results will be meager at best.
NOTE: Using my normal posting and publishing routine, I have managed to attract many @curie votes in the past year, pushing those posts that receive such votes considerably higher in ROI. This further illustrates the importance of quality since Curie doesn't upvote posts promoted by bidbots.
What Bidbots Do to the Steemit Rewards Pool
There's just one more thing to evaluate with regard to Steemit bidbot voting. What does it do to the rewards pool?
Like bidbot payouts, the blockchain creates a fixed number of potential rewards each day. Those rewards are divvied up to all the parties with a vested interest in the blockchain. Without getting into the actual numbers involved, I'll illustrate the principle with an analogy.
Let's assume the blockchain creates 40,000 STEEM on any given day. 75% of that, or 30,000, goes to authors and curators. Let's assume that two-thirds (20,000 STEEM) of that goes to authors and the remaining one-third (10,000 STEEM) goes to curators, the category into which bidbots fall.
If we divvy up 10,000 STEEM among all the curators from redfish to whale, including bidbots, each curator will receive a proportion of those rewards based on the strength of their individual SP. An example of a bidbot with relative SP strength is @buildawhale, which currently has over 67,000 SP and another 1 million+ delegated to it. With a rank of Orca III, it's closing in on whale status pretty quickly.
@therising, the bidbot I used for this experiment, is in the same status - Orca III. It has over 59,000 STEEM in its wallet and an additional 3 million+ delegated to it. It also claims to share 100% of its bot earnings with delegators, which likely explains why it has so much in delegations. In my view, that's a plus.
All of that aside, however, taking another look at the rewards from my experimental post, curators earned $6.74 STU from that post. The lion's share of that went to the bot, which contributed $26.27 STU of the total upvotes for that post. Had I not bid on the bot, that would mean the other curators would have had to split $1.18 STU.
Let's do some more math: The bot's portion of the total upvote value for that post equates to 95.7%. If the bot received that percentage of the total curation rewards, then it took $6.45018 and left about .29 STU for everyone else, a paltry sum to divide between 25 accounts. On the other hand, those 25 accounts would have divided $1.18 STU without the bidbot vote, the lion's share of that going to @neoxian, a manual human voter.
So what do bidbots do to the rewards pool? They sink their teeth into it and rip it to shreds. And this is why you hear so many people, like @quillfire, constantly haranguing witnesses and whales for supporting the bots. It could also be a contributing factor to why there was such a precipitous decline in user activity last year (The decline in STEEM value during last year's bear market was also likely a contributing factor).
From @arcange: Steem Statistics – 2018.12.25
The Residual Effects of Bitbots on Steemit Post Quality
So far, I've shown that bidbot upvoting can lead to higher author rewards and lower curator rewards for individual posts, the effect of post quality and promotion on manual human upvotes, the difference in ROI between the two, and the negative effect that bidbots have on the rewards pool. But do they have any effect on post quality? I would answer in the affirmative.
Let's take a sample post:
This two-day-old promo post on EpicDice has garnered $263.09 STU from 682 upvotes. That's about the number of votes I've been known to receive from a @Curie upvote that earned me in the range of $40 to $60 STU. Granted, the post isn't nearly the shitpost that my experimental post was, but it isn't any better quality (and probably slightly less) than my Steem Monsters post either.
@EpicDice only has 69 followers and is barely one month old. I would wager that a good number of its manual human upvotes come from its Trending status as a result of its multiple bidbot investments. And the Trending page is full of such examples.
EpicDice is an account worth over $1,000 now. Not bad for only four published posts. Clearly, this account started with someone's personal investment, but it also sits with over 20,000 SP delegations. I won't claim it doesn't add value to the blockchain. There are people who love to gamble, though I'm not one of them, so providing a source of entertainment where gamblers can enjoy themselves over a game of chance does offer some value to some people. Nevertheless, new users should not visit the trending page only to find half of one account's published posts trending because that account bought its way there.
The Steem blockchain is based on a single principle: To reward participants based on the value they bring to the blockchain. We must realize this value is relative. It isn't objective. That's why rewards are determined in part on an upvote system. All participants have the opportunity to vote their subjective judgment on the value of others' contributions. The practice of bidbot upvoting, however, subverts that.
I'll state for the record that I've got no issue with the bidbots themselves, or for their existence. In a free market economy, and the Steem blockchain is a free market economy, one should expect some choices to devalue the community standard. Wall Street has its junk bonds, but it also has rules to regulate bad behavior.
I applaud those efforts to promote the blockchain and Steemit in order to attract new users. I also applaud the efforts of communities such as Power House Creatives and Qurator to promote quality above crass capitalism. But if the efforts of fine folks like @raj808 to get Steem listed on Coinbase and other exchanges is going to have any real long-term effect, it's going to require cleaning out the pool (and I don't mean the rewards pool). We can start with the trending page. What kind of effort would it take to create an algorithm that diminishes the influence of posts that rely heavily on bidbot upvotes? Not much.
Disclaimer: Any error in math is surely my fault. I do my best, but I'm a wordmith, not a mathematician. Also, my apologies to any curators negatively impacted by this experiment. I hope you can find it in your heart to forgive me.
Get your weird lit on:
| Garden of Eden | Sulfurings | Deluge |
|---|---|---|
 |  |  |
| At Amazon | At Amazon | At Amazon |
At Amazon
While you're here, check out the backside 5:
- Steem Monsters Cards Available for Delegation
- Experimental Post
- 14 Types of Authority Content
- Top 5 Projects I'm Working On Right Now
- 31 Social Networks Utilizing a Blockchain
Review Me, Please
Created by @EdibleCthulhu
Join me on Narrative
Thanks for mentioning eSteem app. Kindly join our Discord or Telegram channel for more benefits and offers on eSteem, don't miss our amazing updates.
Follow @esteemapp as well!
Excellent work!!
I too have been experimenting with these just to see what the fuss is about on a couple of posts, although not quite as ‘controlled’ experiment as you did.
What I’ve noticed more that posting less but ensuring the quality of the post (and yes, spending hours writing it) made more of a difference, attracting votes and resteems from curation teams.
For me the ROI was so minimal and there wasn’t the satisfaction that I was receiving kudos for the work, even if I was receiving meager rewards.
Will certainly be resteem if this, and hopefully many others have a read!!
Posted using Partiko iOS
Yes, there's nothing social about it at all. That's for sure. Thanks for stopping by.
I have a large response. This is a placeholder.
I'll be here when you get back. :-)
Congratulations! This post has been upvoted from the communal account, @minnowsupport, by blockurator from the Minnow Support Project. It's a witness project run by aggroed, ausbitbank, teamsteem, someguy123, neoxian, followbtcnews, and netuoso. The goal is to help Steemit grow by supporting Minnows. Please find us at the Peace, Abundance, and Liberty Network (PALnet) Discord Channel. It's a completely public and open space to all members of the Steemit community who voluntarily choose to be there.
If you would like to delegate to the Minnow Support Project you can do so by clicking on the following links: 50SP, 100SP, 250SP, 500SP, 1000SP, 5000SP.
Be sure to leave at least 50SP undelegated on your account.
Sorry for the delay, but thank you for showing your support to our #PowerHouseCreatives community in the 20K delegation dpoll contest last month. You were entered in my "Show @steemitbloggers your support in the 20K delegation contest, enter to win 1 Steem!" contest, and you've won a @Tipu tip on your most recent post (so, this one... 😂). Apologies again, and most importantly...
!Tip 0.2
Oh, thanks! That's awesome. :-)
I finally understand this BitBot thingy
Thank you
I now see why some flip over the use of it...
And for all that work you put into this post... I hope you get more than where it is at :)
Thanks. I just wanted to test for actual results. I'm glad I did this. It gave me some clarification, as well.
I looked at the bidbots a while ago and came to the conclusion that no matter how much I would make, I wanted no part of it.
I am happy with my $1.06 Stu because I earned it.
You are a unique specimen, @wolfhart. A gentleman, if not a scholar. :-)
I don’t know about all that. What I do know is right and wrong.
Just because you can do something (the code allows it) doesn’t make it right.
What is the essence of a man
@wolfhart,
You are not alone.
Quill
We have our few but most steemians are the same as me. That is what makes us so great.
Its nice being amount many
🎁 Hi @blockurator! You have received 0.2 STEEM tip from @traciyork!
Sending tips with @tipU - how to guide :)
@blockurator,
Hey Block.
Excellent article. Very well written.
I'm planning to do a post on this issue so I'll keep my comment short. As bad as your analysis makes it sound ... it's far, far worse.
STEEM/Steemit is a "system" and actions within it can be measured by their direct effects (which is what you did) and their indirect effects (which you did not).
Consider a simple example: The effects of bidbots upon new users. They arrive, look at Trending and say, "What, $400 for THAT. I can do way better ... I'll make a $1,000 per post." And then they discover that they'll be lucky to make $1.00 without buying votes.
And so, huge numbers of people show up, get discouraged and then leave (or at least become inactive).
But now they've had an extremely negative experience ... and now every time they mention STEEM/Steemit on other blockchains, how do they describe it?
A "scam."
How much would you have to pay in advertising to neutralize that effect?
And here's the thing: The system depends upon bringing in a flood of new users, especially in the early years. Why? Because STEEM is inflationary ... every payout from the Reward Pool increases the Money Supply. That's OK ... so long as there is someone to sop it all up, analogous to a country's increasing GDP (demand for money) in the real world.
But we now have the worst possible circumstance: A declining active user base with an increasing monetary supply. Irrespective of the economic model one employs, this has driven down the price of STEEM and will continue to do so.
Of course, a low price in-and-of-itself then sets off another series of negative feedback loops. The "A-Team Producers" finally get pissed off and leave for other blockchains where their high-quality content will be better compensated. They cash-out, depressing the price of STEEM yet further and the blockchain's overall quality of content drops yet again.
Common sense says that at some point you'll hit a "critical mass" beneath which the system simply cannot function, even minimally.
It's the positive or negative feedback loops that make you or break you.
So how does one value all this and add it to the "True Cost of Bidbots?" If you figure out a methodology, let me know. Despite the impossibility of actually calculating a meaningful number, can there be any doubt that such a cost exists ... and that it is substantial?
I spent 20 years in High Finance, most of that managing hedge funds. Without the slightest amount of exaggeration, STEEM/Steemit redefines the word "self-dealing" ... which is MASSIVELY illegal.
Indeed, as I've written elsewhere, if someone decided to file a lawsuit against the Top 20 Witnesses ... they'd be screwed. While under the law they are not "Company Directors," they are almost certainly "Trustees," and courts the world over have repeatedly ruled that Trustees have a "fiduciary duty" to the beneficiaries of a Trust.
Well, "There's no Trust," the Witnesses would retort.
Amateurs.
Law courts long ago invented the "Implied Trust," a legal fiction, to deal with financial actors who are, using common sense, "acting as Trustees" to people who are, using common sense, "acting as beneficiaries." Massive amounts of "Trust Law" and "Offshore Law" deal with this very issue as people have long tried to "technically distance themselves" from assets ... and hence tax liabilities ... using Trusts. There are countless "See-Through" provisions designed for this very purpose.
The Reward Pool is a "shared resource" and the financial interests of every Steemian is dependent upon how it operates ... and adversely effected by bidbots.
And yet many Top 20 Witnesses not only use and delegate to bidbots ... they own them. And, they are the only ones who have the power to regulate against their existence, which they don't because they are the ones profiting from their operation. This is the dictionary definition of "self-dealing."
I've had a number of people say, "Quill, why don't you become a Witness and clean up this place." Legal liability. The legal expenses that would be involved with defending against such a suit would be enormous ... and I'd be willing to bet that the brainiacs running the show have never heard of D&O Insurance or E&O Insurance (although I'd also bet that no insurance company on the planet would sell it to them, no matter the premium, given the blatantly obvious legal perils involved).
Even absent a lawsuit, the SEC could initiate an investigation any time they wished. The utterly asinine assertion that the SEC wouldn't have jurisdiction, so often mouthed by the so-called leaders of the blockchain, is prima facia evidence demonstrating just how out-of-their-depth they actually are.
Steemit Inc. is based in the US. Tens of thousands of STEEM/Steemit users are US Persons resident in the US. Countless STEEM nodes are physically located in the US. Countless daily transmissions occur via US-based telecommunication infrastructure just as boatloads of money entering and exiting the blockchain do so via US financial institutions. Any one of these alone would be a nexus that would establish "US Jurisdiction."
Quill
Quill, excellent analysis. You're right, I didn't get into the weeds on the indirect effects of the bots on the economy, but I did allude to it. I believe there is insufficient regulation to deal with the economics of blockchains such as Steemit. But it is coming. Rest assured, the SEC, FINRA, CFTC, and other financial regulators worldwide have their eyes on the various blockchains and studying them. I think we'll start seeing actual U.S. laws enacted within the next couple of years to empower current regulatory agencies to step in and begin influencing the systems. It's going to happen. And if it doesn't, blockchains will become history.
!dramatoken
for the bitter side.
And cheers for the will to keep working on it! :)
Okay, that's interesting. DRAMA token? I'm barely getting started.
You're upping the drama to new levels! Have a DRAMA.
To view or trade
DRAMAgo to steem-engine.com.$1.00 ? I would be thrilled beyond words to get $1.00 - my average post gets me $0.03 to $0.04
If I seem a tad bitter, it's because I am. But I'm not giving up. I have almost a year invested in this fucker, I'm not about to just walk away.
@redpossum,
Good for you, you should be. Your bitterness is an appropriate emotional reaction to "being cheated." It's one thing to make next-to-nothing because your post was unworthy ... it was "poor quality" in the collective opinion of the audience. It's quite another thing entirely when it makes next-to-nothing because the limited Reward Pool has been jury-rigged to only pay out to those gaming the system.
Shakespeare-returned-from-the -grave could not succeed on Steemit without buying votes. STEEM/Steemit has become the Venezuela of blockchains ... the very exemplar of how to destroy gargantuan potential with corruption.
"Bitterness" is the logical reaction when the situation is considered by anyone with an IQ over 2.
"Narrative" has it's Beta launch ... tomorrow. I have warned and warned the Whales and Witnesses that once a viable alternative arrives, they themselves will rapidly become Minnows if they don't fix what is obviously broken. We shall soon see whether Narrative provides such an alternative.
Quill
Shakespeare-returned-from-the -grave could not succeed on Steemit without buying votes.
Hah!
"Whether 'tis nobler in the mind to suffer the cruel slings and arrows of outrageous bidbots, or to take arms against a sea of whales, and by opposing end them"
edit
Oh, and with all due respect, @quillfire, I do think that your opinions on the situation in Venezuela seem to be overly shaped by the MSM narrative, without regard to what's actually happening on the ground. You seem to place all the blame upon the forces of the Bolivarian revolution, without considering 6 years of economic sabotage by the USG, even before the current blatant regime change operation actively began.
I like you, I respect you, and I'm not trying to be a dick, but I noticed the same thing with your comments about Argentina...
@redpossum,
One of my best friends on Steemit is @hlezama. He is a university professor who lives in Venezuela. His opinions are precisely my own ... and he and his family are living the nightmare. And, I have a number of other Steemit friends who are also Venezuelan who corroborate everything he says.
Yes, all of it. How many times do "Socialist Revolutions" have to fail (there's already been dozens), and how many more millions of people have to be murdered by the authoritarian regimes they ALWAYS produce, before people of the Left finally throw in the towel on the idea?
Marxism ... doesn't work.
The US is to blame (as it always is). Where the Hell is the evidence to support such an assertion? Not allegations and conspiracy theories ... EVIDENCE. The blackouts are caused by US sabotage. Evidence? Evidence? Evidence? Does Maduro saying something ... "make it so?"
There are 3.5 million Venezuelan refugees throughout South America ... and they are not blaming anything on the US. They're blaming Maduro. Are they all wrong too? There are millions more marching in the streets, while the remainder starve in the dark.
Are you denying that Maduro and his cronies are corrupt? That the generals are not, in fact, Mafiosos?
Almost every Central and South American country has forsaken Maduro. Are they all puppets of the US? And almost all of Europe as well? Ah, but Russia, China and Cuba are on his side. Do you honestly believe they have more credibility that the rest of the world combined? That their untold billions invested in Venezuelan oil fields has nothing to do with their support?
Sorry, mate ... but I'm a democratic capitalist and I do not look kindly upon ideological Utopias of one kind or another. They destroy too many lives.
Quill
Ahhh, there's nothing like the brisk and candid exchange of ideas in an atmosphere of mutual respect :)
Hi, @blockurator!
You just got a 0.7% upvote from SteemPlus!
To get higher upvotes, earn more SteemPlus Points (SPP). On your Steemit wallet, check your SPP balance and click on "How to earn SPP?" to find out all the ways to earn.
If you're not using SteemPlus yet, please check our last posts in here to see the many ways in which SteemPlus can improve your Steem experience on Steemit and Busy.
An excellent post. For me, the biggest issue with Steem/Steemit is that its rules are not designed to meet its stated goals of rewarding quality content and curation. I realize that Steem is also a crypto and that things like bidbots can encourage investment, which may help Steem as a crypto, but at the same time, as you show, that hurts Steem as a quality content platform. I think the Steem blockchain should decide which of these goals it wants to pursue and then change the rules to support that goal. I personally no longer have interest in spending massive amounts of time putting effort into a post here, because it simply isn't worth the time both because of the reward structure and because my audience, for visualization posts, simply isn't here. It also hurts that steemit does not support more content types, such as equations and embedding interactive web content. I introduced many people to Steemit and I am the only one still here. The others found its rules too confusing, the interface too poor, and were taken aback at people buying votes for themselves without any regard for quality.
Proud member of #powerhousecreatives
I think they've already made that decision. Their white paper doesn't say anything about rewarding quality content. It uses the phrase "add value." That's a convenient euphemism for unpopular methods of interaction on the blockchain that may not have anything to do with content creation. If you take a look, you'll find accounts that have hundreds of thousands, or millions, of STEEM and/or SP but that have no created posts. These are the financiers of the blockchain. In many cases, they delegate to other accounts (perhaps some they own) and fund initiatives that appear to benefit the blockchain. It would not surprise me to see Steem transition to a Dapp-development platform and for Steemit to disappear completely. It's already almost there. Steemit was intended to be the blockchain's first Dapp to illustrate what is possible for other Dapp developers. It's done that. Now, it's usefulness to the corporation has overextended itself. Now that it's proven it can take on a life of its own, they should let it. Unfortunately, they do not.
Dear wordmith great piece changes take time and blogs like this can only help to speed up the proces 💪
Thank you kindly.
You are very kindly Welcome
Well, there's a Promoted page and using bidbots to promote a post should at least send it there instead of hot or trending. That shouldn't be hard to code.
I agree. That's simply a flip of the switch. And who can argue that paying for a bidbot vote isn't promotion? That's precisely what it is. Thanks for weighing in @manoldonchev.
Lately I've been using bots to make my posts look as if they are worth something, and to keep me interested. But I'll have to stop soon as I don't know what I'm doing with them and am losing and not gaining. I'm just so tired of spending hours doing a great post and only getting 15 cents if I'm lucky.
It's frustrating, isn't it? You see all these mediocre posts getting hundreds of upvotes and hit the trending page with $100 to $300 STU in rewards, which they had to pay anywhere from 40% to 80% of the value of in order to receive. Steemit is almost at the place where it is a free-for-all. You pay or you can't play.
I am totally with you!
Just out of curiosity I tried bid bots and bought votes... looking at the average IRR - considering also the rip offs and overbidding encountered - you end up with an IRR of 0..
so yesterday I delegated the first time to a bid bot.. the IRR is 10%, this equals approx. the rate of steem inflation.. also BS..
and even if you have positive returns from bid bots - so what??? Are you targeting human readers with your work or are you happy sending your well written posts to nirvana, just to get some upvotes from bots?
BOTS MAKE NO SENSE FOR NOBODY
(even not for witnesses, whales and bot-owners their short term gain is their long term loss of the huge potential of steem lost because of this BS)
There are people who really could pump money into steem.. but why should they?
Maybe we should start a new curation initiative...
Great info.
I haven't indulged in bidbot plays (yet).
Namaste, JaiChai
If you want to increase your own rewards at the expense of everyone else, you have that opportunity.
Was thinking more about white-hat bounty stuff...
No code is perfect.
Namaste, JaiChai
True. There is no such thing as perfect code.
You worked HARD on that post and it really explains what goes on with bid bots. There are ways to be found by the greedy to exploit anything. Moderation and common sense don't play well with greed unfortunately.
Unfortunately. And, yes, it's greed. Plain and simple. It leads people to make a choice that benefits themselves at the expense of others in a system that rewards everyone for creating value for the benefit of others.
Good insight into bidbots, never used them since I do not feel it is ethical, nor right, one has to justify profit in utilizing them. To me it relates to a bone being thrown out to a pack of dogs all waiting in the wings to devour it, or each other.
If you so desire to make money online trade between crypto's, another ambition I feel is like walking over burning coals.
I will stick with projects that look to be promising going into the future on blockchain. Gambling has never been something I find comfort in coming from a financial background, too many loop holes as mentioned in comment made by @quill
Very sad to say, after some time here it is evident quality posts are sought out by very few communities, a strong supporter of #qurator and #powerhousecreatives where like minded work together.
Thanks for stopping by. It wouldn't be so bad if the bots didn't take away from the other curators. As I have shown, they create profit for the bot and the bidder, but only at the expense of manual human upvoters.
Exactly the reason I do not support, there are those who are trying to earn an honest living, rather delegate/support people helping each other.
Minimal use of auto upvoting, use some platforms to share content further.
Everyone at the end of the day wishes to earn something! Enjoy reading opinions, discussions, fresh new ideas, this cannot be done via a bot!
Very true. The bidbots also diminish the interaction between participants. You can argue the same thing about curation trails. They might increase rewards, but at the end of the day, they decrease the social interaction.
Wow, excellent experiment here! It's crazy to see how deep you can get into the analysis of the reward pool and the impact to the steem sphere as a whole. I have a hard enough time reading all of the great posts and supporting them as is, so I'm definitely never going to be one to try to figure out bots, haha. Let alone use any to try to get more rewards. I appreciate the work you and other folks like Quill do to share this impact and hopefully (fingers crossed) impact some positive changes so we can all continue to put out and reward actual quality work! You've got my manually curated vote on this one! ;)
Thanks. I'm glad you found it useful.
Am new at all this and wasn't aware of the fact that there were bots voting too - tx for this clear post :)
You're very welcome. Keep your chin up. :-)
Until this day I never used bitbots or auto curation
One of the reasons we not moving forward is Bitbots killing the organic interaction
Amen to that!
When I first joined and read the White papers, it said: NO BOTS. Well, that went out the window fast...
I think that they are very bad for Steem and While I take advantage of a few that are designed to help the little guys and there will be not negative return, I am not in favor of the big money bots at all.
The white paper said no bots initially? It certainly doesn't say that now.
Excellent post and analysis m8. It's a shame curie don't look at, or reward, steem related posts because this surely deserves higher payout.... and in a steem world without bidbots this level of analytical post would have garnered much bigger reward simply because there would be much more manual curation. Lol, the irony being that you wouldn't have had to write this post in that hypothetical steem world 😂
So many have said it right in the comments here and particularly quillfire who obviously has massive experience and understanding of financial law. I haven't a clue about that type of stuff.
Here's a crazy thing though. I've been massively vocal about how bidbots have destroyed the reputation of steem. It's something I'm 100% sure about. Another thing I'm sure about us that people who run bidbots are watching! They hide in plain sight as 'so called' respected leaders of some communities. As has been pointed out in your article, they are some of the top witnesses, and they make a lot of money through what they do while depleting the value of steem both in reputation but also in regards to the reward pool. Some of them run legit curation bots, I assume to try and give back in some small way. But I would posit that it is more likely just pure PR. I have worked in marketing and PR in the past so I know exactly what reputational management is and what it looks like in action. Strangely, I have only ever been hit with one of these 'legit curation bots' once. But they are voting on some of my fellow twitter promotors every post. Hmnnn kinda seems like I was sent a message, 'here's what you could have if you just shut up'. Ha ha, maybe that's a little far fetched but ya get where I'm coming from.
Thing is, I've started using OCDB which is a none profit bidbot run by the ocd curation initiative. It promises a garunted small % ROI for the bidder after curation, I think it might be 9%. So why am I using it and going back on what I've been saying all this time? It's partly because this bot will only vote whitelisted authors, who've had an ocd vote/curation in the past. Each post is checked before the account votes it, so this garuntees no shit post will make it through. But the main reason is that I'm simply tired.
Tired of fighting and telling people what they are doing is destroying the promise of what has been advertised (steem as a platform that rewards quality engagement and content). Steem.com have changed there wording recently but the old strapline on the steem landing page said words to that effect for a long time. I'm tired of not having that extra few dollars reward on my post that OCDB will give me. Tired of not seeing my posts, which are all well crafted, on trending. I also see OCDB as the least damaging so I thought fck it.
Does it sit well with me? No, not really but that's just the way the cookie crumbles for me at the moment. If I somehow gain the notice of a friendly whale long term, so that my posts are hitting $10+ each time, I'll stop putting ocdb on my posts as I'm not greedy and I honestly don't think ocdb are the answer. I do know that the owner acidyo is trying to offer a better option than other bidbots which often return negative ROI. It is a genuine attempt by a decent community minded whale to make headway on solving the issue. But it also kind of legitimises the whole process of vote buying, which for me could be a can of worms. Imo, the only solution to end vote buying is to change the mechanism of delegation so that bots can't function... But that would cause a mass sell off of steem by the people who only want to delegate for passive income. So, I'll be the first to admit it is a very complex problem.
For me, at the moment, I am maximizing my rewards using this method while steem is so cheap as I want to get something substantial out of this when the market turns around again. Nearly 2 years and well over 500000 words written on steem and I've powered up at least 90% of what I've earned here.... I need to start taking some earnings into fiat soon to pay off debts etc. I guess this is why my shift in attitude a little.
Anyway, gr8 post as it makes people think and your maths is one hell of a lot better than mine m8 🤣
Thanks for the lengthy response, Rowan. I, like you, make an humble living with my craft. I came to Steemit with a hope, but that hope dwindles with each bidbot that grows another 1,000 SP. It's not problem of ability. The issue is will. There simply isn't a will to fix the issue, and when you can increase your own purse by taking the easy way out, why not? Especially if the alternative is more time intensive, slower, and with less of a guarantee. Get a little now vs. hold out for a lot later--most people will opt for the bird in the bush. Human nature, I guess. But it doesn't make it right. We have to make a concerted effort to overcome our nature.
I think Steem has two paths forward. Full steam ahead (no pun intended) and let the bots rule, in which case it will just become a passive income vehicle for those who see it as such, or become yesteryear's experiment.
@raj808,
Another very well written comment. Between the two of us, I think we could publish a book comprised of nothing but our comments and replies on this subject. :-)
Me too. I've even received DM's to that effect, "Quill, you're pissing people off. You can't change it ... so just go with the flow."
There's a well-known curation group to which I've been invited to join a half-dozen times by its various members. Over and over, its members would enthusiastically drop the group's Discord Channel Invitation link in a comment or DM message. Over and over, I'd try to join.
"Invalid Invite."
I'd inquire of the person who made the Invite. "Really? You'll have to talk to the moderator. Here's their DM." And so, off went my DM messages. "Oh, we'll have that fixed up in a jiffy. Just let me contact xxx."
And then ... radio silence. Every time. No further response.
Once it goes up the ladder, QuillFire suddenly becomes persona non grata. I've won more Curies (including the little ones) than I can remember. Same thing with ComedyOpenMic. Same thing with poetry (when PoetsUnited was still thriving). The salutatory nature of the comments on my posts are, quite frequently, embarrassing.
But, I openly write about the abuses perpetuated by Whales and Witnesses and call for reform. Hell, I even dared to propose the precise reforms required. But NO ONE is allowed to, publicly, criticize the Whales and Witnesses for what everyone, privately, agrees is blatant cheating.
And, if you do, you'll get "frozen out" ... from Discord Channels, curation support and upvotes.
But here's the thing. The more I continue to write, the more Followers I get ... and the more furious my Followers become. Many are now speaking out publicly ... and damn the consequences. More posts. More comments. More replies.
Courage is contagious. And so is honor. And so in outrage.
This is how it has ALWAYS been amongst human beings. The Silent Majority is so-called because of its Silence. But, sooner or later, they ALWAYS find their voice. It takes a frustratingly long time but when they do ... watch out. Rebellions and revolutions ... and guillotines. The pressure builds and builds ... and then, seemingly out of nowhere and seemingly for no particular reason ... BOOM!
You and I should talk privately on DM. I have a couple of ideas.
BTW ... there ARE Whales and Witnesses who agree with all we're saying.
Quill
Hi Quill
Ha ha, yes I do think between us there is at least a novellas worth of material in comments on this subject. Add blockurator and nick havey in mix and it could be a big ass hardback 😂
That is crazy, but it doesn't surprise me. The whole story you tell about your experiences with that discord group in the rest of the comment also is crazy that people would go to such an extent to basically fck with someone who expresses something they don't like.
I don't mind chatting at all buddy. But, at the moment I have made a conscious decision to basically drive positive things forward in ways I know how to do well, away from the problems that I wish I had the mental fortitude to go up against. I've had issues with depression/anxiety in my life and part of the reason why is that I find it pretty much impossible to separate my emotions from these types of things. A lot of people can compartmentalize this type of stuff, so they simply put it out of their mind at the times when they're not in a group chat arguing the case or online in comments etc. I can't, and it causes me missive stress and contributes to the chronic stomach illness from which I suffer. This is why I stopped highlighting these issues as much, I wasn't giving up per se, I just needed to look after my personal mind-state and health.
This is why I started the tweet blast on twitter on Brian Armstrong's tweet to get steem listed on coinbase. Theycallmedan quickly brought his support and hefty following, and rewards he can give, to further incentivise people to get on it and between us we've really made it happen that steem is now in first place on that tweet. At the moment, I have to focus my energy and thought into positive acts like that rather than trying to solve address the negative on steem. I hope you understand and I'm articulating this well enough to get it across. It's not that I give up on those issues, it's just that I can't cope with how much they eat at me emotionally on a day to day even when I'm not actively involved in trying to address the problem.
I'm exactly the same with this twitter marketing thing. I've been on it 24/7 for the last 4 days. Emotionally engaged pretty much morning noon and night lol. The difference is that this is a positive thing I have some control over at least to the extent that I, and others, can reward people for helping. I'm one of these people who can achieve quite impressive things when I pinpoint my focus but when I try to multitask more than one project it all sort of falls apart.
Yep, for sure. I think I might know one or two of them.
Keep fighting the good fight brother! I'm not saying I won't join in again at some point in the future. But at the moment I can't for the reasons stated above.
@raj808,
Fair enough, mate. The team needs people playing all positions. And don't worry, I can piss off enough people for the both of us. :-)
Quill
total agreement.. same with me.. I outlined this voting bot BS many times... no reaction by no one... it is very simple.. either there is change / mitigation.. or someone will open up a new platform that can handel this bot BS.. maybe on EOS and guys like you and me will move on.. and the witnesses and bot owners can spam themselves here in circles until hell freezes over...
@solarwarrior,
This is actually how I suspect it will end. If memory serves, "Narrative" launches April 2nd ... and a ton of Steemians have accounts, myself included. I've warned and warned about this for almost a year. Once a viable alternative appears ... watch out Whales ... you're about to become Minnows. The computer code means nothing without the genetic code ... and the genetic code is hardwired against being cheated. Technology changes. People don't.
Let's keep in contact.
Quill
Thx..
Ohoh.. sounds if we could be in trouble soon... thx you BS terminator voting bots..
totally agree.. no one ever could explain me any economic reason why a bid bot is of any use for this platform / blockchain...
people are writing for people to read.. not bots to vote and not read!
Great analysis and write up... however, (unless I missed it), you also run the risk with bitbotting of get LESS than your investment, and collecting a hefty negative ROI... so essentially it is gambling, as sometimes people just plonk down a huge bid without checking to see if it is worthwhile or not!
Yes, you're right. It is a gamble. You have to figure out how to bid on them. That's a part of the game. If you bid too high, or you bid when there are a lot of other bidders, then you could get a negative ROI. Someone could come in after you and bid high enough that they take the reward and leave you in the hole. So you have to time it right. It's a big game.
Kudos for your experiment and reporting the results in such a detailed way! I had suspected some of this, but never did such a test. This is a fantastic post! 👍
Thank you. I'm glad you got something out of it.
@blockurator
I found this post fascinating and I learned a great deal - thank you. I dabble, when I was mere plankton with a bot or 2 and have absolutely no idea of the return. I probably lost - I had so little to throw at them by way of Steem and was not going to actually pay. That was probably more than 18 monts ago: I will have been on the platform 2 years in July. Since then, I've not and I've had the same questions as so many have, and which you have tried - so eloquently - to answer. I think, in the main you have succeeded.
You have also articulated my (and many others') frustration at spending time on well-crafted posts which, as you, and on comments like this, for little return. Recognising that one needs to maintain a 'presence" to build up a reputation when time is "of the essence" with apologies to old Sherlock, I've resorted to superficial cooking, cats and posts of a similar nature. If I could make more from less frequent, longer posts, I would certainly invest the time.
I have read and understood the gist of @quillfire's comment and think that his concerns are not just valid, but should be heeded. What he suggests for those not paying attention, is terrifying - for them and for others on this (and other) blockchains. We seem to share the same value system and as I recall, it was on one of your posts that we "met". Anyhow, back to the bot thing: I have also dabbled with auto curate trails and stopped. The only dapp where I continue that is @share2steem where there is some transparency with the return). What also strikes me, talking of where value gets frittered away, is that folk don't realise that voting from dapps like Partiko also dilute the value of votes. They tempt one with points, but the value of the points when redeemed are not commensurate. That said, one could argue that if one has not paid, technically, one is paying for the convenience (of "steeming" from one's phone).
I sense that with Quill and people like @raj808 there is a groundswell for cleaning things up and as I have indicated to Quillington elsewhere, I'm in and all for it.
Thanks again for the very useful explanation and analysis.
Fiona
Thanks. I hadn't considered that. It does make sense, however. I make most of my posts from either @esteemapp or @steempress and the rewards, just for using those apps, are HUGE. But that's not why I do it. If Steemit would fix its user interface and make posting from its own website easier and more intuitive, that would be my preferred method. I got so frustrated the first month of being here that I figured there has to be easier ways to craft a post than trying to fight with the Steemit posting feature. That's when I found Busy, which was a little better. But then I came across eSteem, and that was A LOT better. SteemPress allows me to post to my website and see it on Steemit, so there's an added benefit there. What didn't occur to me is that these apps are diluting the rewards pool, just like the bidbots. If I did the math, I'm sure I'd discover that in a real sense. But I would claim that there is a difference, philosophically.
When I started this experiment, I operated on a few hypotheses. Only one of them turned out to be wrong. I thought that curators would get more rewards because the bidbots made the rewards pool for individual posts larger. I was wrong, as I (hopefully) clearly illustrated.
As the bidbots grow stronger and more people who post quality content discover other platforms and migrate to those, Steemit will, more and more, become a pay-to-play scheme. You'll HAVE TO PAY for bidbot votes if you want to stick around. And you better know what you're doing or you'll lose. In that case, it will become nothing more than a fancy investment scheme for which the SEC, FINRA, and CFTC will have ogling eyes (as if they don't already).
After one year I have to say that I not only feel cheated for the the rewards a good post should get but doesn't get due to the above mentioned.. actually the fact that high quality posts are buried under a mountain of garbage and nobody that does not yet follow you will ever read it, is even worse for me..
in this perspective even FB could be better..
.. add to this flag and spam wars.. and its just a wonder the steem ship has not sunk yet...
something has to change!
I remember the days when you'd conduct a search for information on Google and get a results page full of useless content because website owners could just pay content providers to write them keyword-based content that got them respectable search engine rankings. I was fortunate, and unfortunate, to be in the content marketing business at the time. I tried to sell useful content services where people would pay me to actually write decent content for decent money, but I got so many requests for cheap SEO articles. Eventually, Google changed its search algorithms and got rid of the trash pages, aka spam. Really good SEO writers can still push a page to the top of the search rankings, but it is harder, and it's even harder to stay there.
Where there is money involved, people are going to figure out how to game the system and tilt the odds in their favor. The reason we have government regulators is to reel those people in when they get out of control. We can bitch about regulation, and sometimes I do, but it does discourage bad behavior and cleans it up when it gets too out of hand. I don't think Steem Inc. has figured out yet that being in control of the governance mechanism means they can influence the outcome. Or maybe they have figured it out and just don't have the will.
Great analysis on the ROI side of things here and appreciate all the effort you have put in.
@Quillfire couldn't have said it any better in my opinion adding that the indirect consequences of bidbots are the bulk of the story here.
I dare say your graph with dwindling user base numbers would mostly come from new users seeing how things work after diving a little deeper on the platform and checking out a week or two later.
I gave my own account of this in my 1 year review a couple of weeks back as you don't have to look very far to see how things are going on down here. Drop in market has also had an impact I'm sure but the dwindling number of active users has only increased the concentration of bid bot accounts, making it more visible than before.
It really would be ace if the trending page was a true trending page based on manual curation initiatives like the ones you mentioned and a separate section for promoted content that uses bidbots. I doubt that will happen though.
Posted using Partiko Android
Thanks.
That is the ultimate condequence, yes. But I'd wager that most of the people leaving the platform for this reason have no idea really how bidbots work. They look at the trending page and huff and puff. Some of that is laziness. They wonder why their posts aren't going anywhere when these mediocre posts rise to the top of the trending page. But they also don't stop to think that their own posting habits are keeping them from earning more. If you treat Steemit like Facebook, you'll get Facebook results. How much does Facebook pay, again?
That's not to say the bidbots aren't causing issues, but you can earn on Steemit even with the bidbot presence (I've proven that). In the real world, there are bad actors, hooligans, ne'er-do-wells, sucking up economic benefits like sponges and taking from those who produce, but that doesn't stop (even with so much entitlement going around) hard workers from migrating upward through the classes. Those who do have figured out how in spite of the obstacles. So if someone gets discouraged and leaves without bothering to investigate the playing field, it's partly because they had unrealistic expectations to begin with. You won't earn $100 for any post if you only have 20 followers and you post nothing but cat memes--unless you pay a bidbot.
There's no way to test this, but I wonder what it would look like in a bull market.
Unfortunately, true. And if it keeps going this direction, Steemit will become a pay-to-play game where only bidbot voters are making anything. If you don't pay the bidbots, you'll be left in the dust.
Me too.
@blockurator,
Just a couple of additional thoughts:
1.) Scale Matters. At the end of the Civil War, it is estimated that 50% of the "Greenbacks" in circulation were counterfeit. Such massive diminishment in the trust of a currency was not sustainable and WOULD HAVE CAUSED a collapse of the entire economic system. And so, extremely draconian laws were passed making counterfeiting akin to murder. And, new hard-to-replicate designs were adopted and the Secret Service created to enforce the law ... viciously.
Today, there is still currency counterfeiting and the Secret Service is still throwing counterfeiters' asses into prison for sentences often longer than those for rapists. But the damage such counterfeiting can do to the overall system has plummeted and it is no where near sufficient to risk the health of the overall economic system.
2.) Behavior Modification
This, of course, is true. Crappy posts ought to receive crappy compensation irrespective of the wallet size of their creators. Indeed, extraordinary compensation ought to be reserved for extraordinary quality, as determined by the collective opinions of a wide swath of the overall audience.
This is a First Principle Truth.
Imagine you're an aspiring musician under two scenarios:
Scenario 1 (Steemit as an honest marketplace with no vote-buying/selling or other forms of game-rigging).
You're making a pittance on your posts. And so, you go to Trending (music) to see who is making money. This guy consistently has amongst the highest payouts:
.
.
If you're smart, you'll STUDY what he's doing. His lyrics, his chord transitions and ... his sideburns. What can you learn? How does he use falsetto? What are people's reactions when he does?
In any event, you at least have the opportunity to change the way you make music so as to become more appealing to a larger audience, and thereby make enough money to do things like ... eating.
Scenario 2 (Steemit as it is today, replete with every kind of cheating and vote manipulation one could imagine).
You're making a pittance on your posts. And so, you go to Trending (music) to see who is making money. This guy consistently has amongst the highest payouts:
.
.
Perhaps "quality really is THAT subjective."
Or, perhaps this talentless douche is buying all his upvotes. Further investigation reveals the presence of numerous other such vocally-challenged Trenders.
What can you do?
It's obvious that getting into Trending (music) has got nothing to do with "singing beautifully." Rather, it's all about how much money you're willing to spend buying upvotes. You can't even "do your own thing" and "build your own legitimate audience" (of any size) because everybody with money is leasing their upvotes to bidbots so that douches and dufuses can make a fortune for making people wince.
Bottom line: If you don't have a pile of money sufficient to buy upvotes yourself, what's the point in continuing on Steemit? The "reality" is that you'll be a "guaranteed loser" and that there will be no way to improve your odds of success.
Which Steemit do you think would attract and retain aspiring musicians? Which would inspire legitimate long-term investors?
No matter how one tortures logic and contorts the arguments, if Elvis is earning $1.00 while The Douche is earning $400 ... the system will fail.
Quill
That's a great analogy. Unfortunately, here in the real world, there are countless examples of mediocrity that have achieved levels of success while shining examples of brilliance die unrecognized. Welcome to capitalism. Money may not buy happiness, but it can certainly buy a veneer of legitimacy.
@bluckurator,
Block, that almost sounds like nihilism ... and I know you well enough to know you don't believe in the nihilistic.
95% is, by definition, "imperfect" but it still gets you into Harvard. All systems involving human beings are imperfect ... but that's no excuse not to try to improve them.
Good is not Great ... but it's Better than Bad.
Capitalism DOES NOT condone corruption. Indeed, capitalism REQUIRES Rules of Conduct so that it does not become cannibalism.
There has NEVER been a single example of Laissez-Faire in history ... for a reason: Wherever you have a concentration of capital, you'll have a concentration of crooks. Common sense Rules of Conduct do not kill capitalism, they enable it. Tumors must be excised before they metastasize and destroy the whole.
Quill
You missed my point.
@blockurator,
... You were being sardonic, weren't you?
Well, my comment still sounds pretty pithy and I'm sure anyone who reads it will read this too.
Mea culpa ... sorry, mate.
Quill
Sardonic? Of course. But not just sardonic.
I'm thinking up a post to go deeper into this, but think about it. How many people have you known in your life who were average, maybe even below average, in almost every way? Yet, they succeeded. And how many scoundrels have you known to succeed? It doesn't matter how many rules you put into place, or what kind of rules, there are people who will learn to play within the boundaries and win, and there are those who can give it everything they have and continue to spin their wheels.
This isn't simply a matter of capitalism. There are many things that contribute to the outcome. Human nature, differences in personality and temperament, whether your capitalism (an economic system) exists within a culture of democracy, monarchy, or oligarchy (all political systems), and more.
When the crowd determines the winner, expect strange things.
I used bid bots like crazy in my earlier days here but I stopped using them. I realized it wouldn't be real in terms of knowing if you created something exceptional. If I didn't get any upvotes I took it as a challenge to improve and turn up the volume a notch higher. The feeling is ecstatic and rewarding seeing people truly enjoying your content.
Yes, that is true.
Last year, when I played with them, I wasn't tracking results. I assumed that rewards would be greater for those who voted earliest, so I waited for three days before I bought a vote. What that likely did, in reality, was increase my manual human votes but, as I show, those voters got fewer rewards. There is a reason that these bidbots have a three-day limit on placing bids. After that three-day limit, the rewards for bidders goes down. They'll make less and the other curators will make more as per percentage of post (don't quote me, but I think I read that in the white paper).
When I started this experiment, I thought those who were saying it dilutes the rewards pool were just making a lot of noise because they didn't like the bots. That's why I decided to perform this experiment. To my surprise, that was the only thing I was wrong about.
You do feel a lot better about your posts when you know that actual humans are upvoting them and that you're getting a better-than-average return on account it. I remember the first @curie vote I got. I couldn't believe it. It was for a poem. It knocked me out of my chair.
I saw your post after a resteem from @arcange and it's exactly the kind of post that tells the situation as it is. Too bad a lot of newcomers or old members of the chain still don't get the long term effects bidbots bring. It really doesn't give greater value compared to manual curation. It's more on the short term gains that just keeps getting the trending page a bad image.
I didn't realize @arcange resteemed this. Thanks for letting me know. It will take some witnesses addressing this to make a real change. @lukestokes has written about this very topic, as well. When I was researching bidbots last year, and playing around for about a week, I read this post and was immediately impressed with his philosophy of long-term rational self-interest. I totally agree, and was encouraged to see a witness running against the grain. There needs to be more of this in the future. Otherwise, Steemit will become nothing but a bidbot farm.
Great post. This detailed look at the whole process is probably very enlightening to a lot of Steemians.
I use my feed as a starting point for everything. That way I have a good chance to see good posts. If a post is promoted or bid up doesn't matter that much to me.
My opinion towards bots fluctuates in a narrow band around undecided...
Posted using Partiko Android
I think it has educated some people and opened up some eyes. Thanks for driving by. :-)
This post was shared in the Curation Collective Discord community for curators, and upvoted and resteemed by the @c-squared community account after manual review.
@c-squared runs a community witness. Please consider using one of your witness votes on us here
Thanks for the expirement. I decided to stay away from the bidbots at the moment. I did some tests a year ago and decided that it was nothing for me.
The votes you got just after placing the bid are normal. People do have bots running to see which post will be upvoted. So if they do place an upvote before the bidbot upvotes the post, they will get a nice curation reward.
Imaging doing this 10 to 100 times a day and you will understand that they will probably make enough steem to continue to do this.
Cheers,
Peter
Good for you.
That makes sense. Thanks.
Passive income. So tempting.
Thanks for reading. :-)
Regarding the curation rewards. There are voting bots, like @boomerang or @tipu, that power down and send the curation rewards to investors. Cheers, a lot of work went into all the research in this post :)
Thanks. If you take a look, @tipu tipped me on this post. Thanks for the heads up about @boomerang. Awesome times.
I agree with this:
Though honestly, human greed and inability to look at the long term ramifications (how it actually hurts in the long run) is and will be present in other systems too, albeit in different forms.
I'm thinking that if and only if this bidbot issue cannot be resolved, whether Steem can provide other attractive reasons for Steemians to continue using the platform regardless.
Because the bidbots won't go away so easily, and we should perhaps focus on making Steem more attractive in other ways (maybe as a way to effect micro-payments)?
Micropayments is an awesome idea. There is a lot going on in that arena, but one area where micropayments can stand to see massive improvements is in the area of content syndication. And Steemit is in a good position to influence that.
Thanks for responding.
Really good post @blockurator
Comprehensive and easy to follow. I have never used a bidbot because I have a suspicious nature and it seems to go against everything that Steemit should be about. Adding quality to the blockchain and convincing the mainstream that it is the future of social media platforms.
The longer things have gone on the more I an entertaining the idea of using them. I am nervous every time I put in a post with some effort behind it that it's just going to bomb. My run of curie posts have dried up too. I've looked at steembot tracker a few times and decided against it but your post has made me move a step closer to going for it.
It does worry me that the trending page does not reflect well or positively promote Steemit to new users. I have some really close friends who are perfect for Steemit. She is an illustrator and he is a photographer and their work would really add some value. I was getting there in my quest to recruit them; in fact they have signed up but have never used the account, but Vanessa took one look at the trending page and said that it is full of garbage and that she wouldn't be posting her stuff there! Can't argue with that observation even though I know different. This is damaging to our growth.
I am torn. On one hand my selfish view is to 'get mine' and on the other it is to hate the 'free market' because all that does is force the drone workers down by the elite putting their foot on our heads
I appreciate your post though and thanks for your efforts.
Gaz
Gaz, excellent comment. I wouldn't blame you if you decided to join the crowd. The worst that can happen is that good content actually makes its way on the trending page, even if paid for to get there. Right now, it's mostly garbage, as your friend says. And that's why a lot of people won't stick around Steemit. Unfortunately.
My view is this: Despite the "garbage," there is still a lot of opportunity here. It isn't dead. It may be an uphill battle if you're here only for the social networking, or for the rewards, but where else can you go to earn one iota of similar rewards for doing what you're likely going to do anyway? Very few sites offer payment for writers to create the content they enjoy creating. Steemit is a leader in that regard.
I've been playing around on another, however. Have you heard of Narrative? Based on the NEO blockchain. It launches into beta on April 2, 2019. There's no fee to join. I'd recommend joining and watching for a few days before you start creating. See what's going on, who the early adopters are, and what they're doing. Post some posts to your personal journal. You can buy a niche as an investment, but you might want to wait until you are familiar enough with the platform to be comfortable. My hope is that it will become a real contender.
Hey @blockurator
Thanks for your compliments.
I still have faith that steem and steemit will be a success and will continue to believe. I will hold off on bidbots for now but I do think it is inevitable that I will eventually try.
I remember your post (i think it was yours) a while back introducing Narrative and the pros and cons. I was intrigued then and may sign up and see for myself.
Cheers, Gaz
Narrative launches into beta tomorrow. Good time to get on board.
I have new data on the bidbots. Expect a follow-up post.
Excellent. I will be checking that out.
Well there isnt much more I can say that isnt already said in your post and in the comments here. You have the brightest of the brightest commenting. I can say that I appreciate your post and the time it took for you to write it. For people like me, that don't understand bid bots so much, it brings a lot to light. I am still quite comfortable to not be using them as I see the damages it causes.
So we put our work in the hands of others to decide whether what we write up, no matter the time and effort it takes. It is up to the people to decide what is worth their upvote and the amount of their upvote like if it is money that they own to give away (yet it is not.)
It does and it is one of the reasons why I choose not to go with bid bots no matter how sweet the money may be.
When I write, I write in the hopes that someone reads it. Otherwise, why write at all. Just put a picture and throw in some bot votes.
It really does take away what the platform is about. It's not just a reward system, but of also connections. The people are not robots. The people are real, their time is real and their skills are real. If we leave it in the hands of bid bots, then what is all this for? Let's just make more robots, make them right for us (if its not done already) and sit on our fat asses to watch our wallets get just as fat while we waste away whatever passion, emotion, and heart we have, as we become less human in this robotic world. We are already losing jobs to these mechanics. Why make it the same in a blogging, vlogging platform? Then what does it mean to be human in the end?
In a way, it is. It costs Resource Credits, which is a type of currency. The economics of Steemit are complicated, but if you pay in resource credits to upvote, comment, and resteem, then you find that you can't do those things because you have exhausted you resource credits, you lose out on rewards until your resource credits are regenerated. That makes it currency.
Some people do that.
This is excellent.
Steemit could transform into nothing more than a clever auto-investing scheme. Create a garbage post, pay for some bidbot votes, watch your account increase in value. It could potentially be better than a 401k. But, as you noted, it's also about connections. That's why you have curation trails and groups like Power House Creatives fostering those connections. If you take the social out of social media, it isn't social media any more. Call it techno-media, or auto-media, maybe even robo-media. We need to work together to keep the social in the social media.
The resource credits stuff confuse me. Feels like I need to go to class and take notes to fully understand it.
I know some people do just that with the pictures, but by helping some of them understand a little more, perhaps things can get better. For those that care to care anyways.
You are absolutely right with what you are saying here. That is why I am very thankful for these awesome communities.
Thanks. I'm glad you find value in it.
Hello!
This post has been manually curated, resteemed
and gifted with some virtually delicious cake
from the @helpiecake curation team!
Much love to you from all of us at @helpie!
Keep up the great work!
manually chosen for curation by foxyspirit
Awesome. I love cake. Thanks a lot!
You are very welcome! Much deserved ^_^
I still don't use bidbots and manually curate. Time is not on my side, but, I do like to know who I am voting for and what they are writing.
I learned a lot more than bargained for reading all the comments, but, I definitely walk away a little bit (read A LOT) smarter about it all.
Get out of the weeds, Quill!
!tip
Thank you very kindly.
The pleasure is mine!
🎁 Hi @blockurator! You have received 0.1 SBD tip from @dswigle!
@dswigle wrote lately about: Market Friday Visits The Baltimore Aquarium Feel free to follow @dswigle if you like it :)
Sending tips with @tipU - how to guide :)
Thank you!
You've got a whole lot of patience. I experimented with a bidbot once. After about 30 minutes I was over it. I did see higher votes than typical for my posts at the time, but I didn't analyze it in quite this way. Or anything close to this way for that matter. :-)
Anyway, good times!
Thanks for stopping by. I think it's important to get a realistic view of how things work. I was curious about a few things, namely, whether or not author and curator rewards would be higher or lower. But, the biggest problem with the bots, as others keep saying, is the perception it leaves to new users when they visit the trending page. I noticed early on, but I'm stubborn. I just went on blogging and never visited the trending page. Most people won't do that.
I tend to stay away from the trending page as well. Maybe we could petition for a separate trending page - one that screens out the bid bots.
I think it's been mentioned numerous times, but there doesn't seem to be a will to address the situation.
There is plenty of analysis going on here for sure.
Thanks for noticing. :-)
@blockurator
A brilliant analysis here and unfortunately I am one of those that believe in hard and honest work. Don't get me wrong, as we need every cent that we can get for the charity and I have been tempted a few times in the past, simply by looking at the amounts on the "Trending" page.
Seeing some posts in there that I know I can beat with my eyes closed, but and there's always a but.
This coming June, we will be here for two years now without ever withdrawing one cent and always hoping that we can build the amount to really help the charity. In the meantime, while doing this, I enjoy the other posts and the company of some good friends. But bid bots are a no no, as it would make me feel unethical.
There is always an easy way out, but I don't believe in short cuts, as sooner or later they backfire. Call it old school or by any other name, but I have seen many efforts fail due to short cuts. and instant riches.
Blessings!
Awesome testimony. Thanks for dropping in and commenting. And great luck with your charity.
Very interesting. I'm leaving all the little ins and outs to you guys. I think to try to see the individual effect explains why they are popular. Content doesn't matter, pay the fee, hopefully get a decent ROI and move on. I think that's more the 'get rich quick' or the 'no personal effort' type of person.
On the larger scale, I completely get where the others are coming from. A simple version, I think this is why we belong to groups like PHC, because we believe in good honest work and having a system supports that.
I do admit, appreciate breakdowns like this, Quill's small comment and so the others it puts things into another perspective and helps someone like me.
I'm glad you got value out of this. I'm not sure what the thinking is behind bidding on the Steembots. It's probably, "Let's do this the easy way." There's a saying: "Work smarter, not harder." I see the wisdom in that, but I also value hard work. I don't think the saying was meant to imply take the easy way out, but it's often used that way. The idea is to do the hard work, but use wise means of making hard work easier by using your brain to accomplish the task rather than pure muscle.
Technology is not evil. It's neutral. What makes it good or evil is how we use it. I've shown here, hopefully, that using bidbots can be profitable for the individual, but it hurts the collective. In that vein, I'd say the aggregate outcome is bad.
Very well said 😊 You definitely channeled what I was thinking. So many things in recent years have been twisted out of context or have taken on new meaning. Like 'Work smarter, not harder' It's one of my favorite quotes. As you mention people have given it another meaning.
If you have the money and SP and you can and it's a good ROI then by all means. To use it as a sole means? Seems to me you're working to pay yourself. As all of this goes it's all in the ROI.
I think you have a great 'argument' for both sides. It's very balanced. The biggest issue, is this is not something one dives into. You have to do your homework.
Stay tuned. There's more to come. I've uncovered some extra data that gives me new insight on this.
Hi again. Maybe one day I will write a post but suffice it to say I am not going to have the time to dedicate to the full reply I was dreaming of when I first left the comment (its still pretty long but its the wee hours now, so my quality might not be up to snuff). I will try to keep my points direct, and will be more than happy to engage on anyone of them in follow-up. I will check this comment in the morning for tone, as no part of this is meant to be offensive or an attack on you. I like you - you roleplay with me and also write pretty cool stuff.
There are some minor points that I am tempted to argue. Profitability, for example. I have made money and lost money on bidbots, so it is not a money printing machine. Also, some of your argument structure shows that you have your mind made up before you started. You might be right but compare these two passages:
My time is worth more than both of those scenarios too Blockurator. Neither one is enormous, no matter how many times any of us do them. And bidding on the margin (each additional bid) results in increasing unprofitability. Its basically a futures contract, betting on the price of steem whenever the post pays out, and the only way to be sure you'll make money is if the price of steem rises (and sbd is printing). Its really a form of speculation, and carries risk.
Is it good, is it bad? Yo.
My main point is this: We are sitting on a piece of infrastructure and people want to talk about whether a picture is better than a poem or how much better a poem with a picture is than a guitar riff with no thumbnail.
There has been a mistake. None of our content is worth anything. Quality is not the purpose of steem. Yes it probably was sold that way but its not that, and it never was even in the beginning. There is no commensurate compensation, just stake weighted votes. Want to do a pension plan? Put together a group of friends, buy some SP and vote yourselves until you're all dead. Want to take advantage of 3 second blocks and zero transactions fees for your trading card game app? Use the custom json features! Want to reward people for taking worthless steps they do anyway? Use our reward pool function by locking up Steem Power!
Want to complain about how one thing that's voted to 1 dollar is really better than some other thing voted to 2 dollars or 35 or 500 dollars? You can do that too - and you can even get votes for it. And yes, these votes give steem rewards. And yes, these steem rewards can be sold for money.
But don't get confused! You are not being paid for your content! And you are especially not being paid because it is 'valuable'. You are being released 'stake' in the platform that you are using, stake that just so happens someone else will pay for. Maybe one day no one will buy it. Maybe one day they'll pay $100 dollars. I don't know.
What steem is - a blockchain. That blockchain has a lot of uses, in my humble opinion most of the best ones haven't even been thought of yet. There are other blockchains, and some of them are trying to do cool things too. I suspect the smart ones are learning lessons from our steem experience.
Some cool things you can do with this blockchain -
Instead of paying transaction fees in $$$, your 'stake' generates resource credits. That basically means a wonky type of 'free hosting'. (I say free because if I buy 50 SP, use the RC to host my material, I can still sell my 50 SP at the end).
Great SEO for google and other search engines for your hosted content.
Multi-level permissioned keys for extra security.
One of the only blockchain with password recovery features.
Delegation (hands free staking)
Free transactions. I've probably only saved ~$32 dollars from this feature so far doing remittances, but I suspect over the next 10 years it will really start to add up. (as compared to $8 usd per transaction with Walmart2World, my next best option)
be social with your friends (or enemies)! Try being social on litecoin, you'll end on telegram, reddit, or maybe even steem ;p
Anyways, I suppose too long, didn't read: Steem does some stuff good. It is not a place to reward quality content. It is a place where some people try to reward quality content, and that's okay. But that is not the purpose nor the principle reason nor even a very high priority of this place.
Thanks for weighing in. I've been waiting for someone to come along and defend the bidbots. You're not doing that here, but I'll address your concerns by the point.
I absolutely did not have my mind made up before I started. I had three hypotheses in mind when I started this experiment:
I was right on the first two hypotheses. I was wrong on the third.
I absolutely agree with this.
I have said all along that quality is subjective. I've argued with @quillfire over this a number of times. So, you're right again. There is simply no way to compare the apples, oranges, and lemons on the blockchain. One of the reasons payout is determined by upvotes, and why upvotes are not all a fixed value, is because of this very truth. I may think a picture of a man playing the banjo with his feet is awesome and give it a 100% upvote. On a good day, that amounts to $.02 STU. Someone else may think it's stupid and not vote for it at all. On the other hand, they may think the video of a guy picking his teeth with a pitchfork is totally rad and give it a 50% upvote worth $.05 STU while I give it a measly 10% upvote when my full vote value is down to $.01 STU. At the end of the day, the aggregate value of all the upvotes represents the relative value of the post to the blockchain regardless of the content. My main point in all of this is that bidbots have a negative effect on that process. That is not simply my opinion formed in a vacuum. I think that's what the data shows. My opinion is based on the data. Feel free to disagree.
Again, I don't disagree, but my post is not about Steem, the blockchain. It's about #Steemit the social networking Dapp that sits on the blockchain. According to the white paper, the point is to reward contributors for their contributions assigning value to upvotes by the members of the community. The purpose of this post was nothing more than to get a sense of how bidbots affect that process.
Absolutely. I've interview @ned and I've read the white paper and much of the other documentation that lays out his and @dan's intentions. They've said all along that the purpose of #Steem was to give developers a cool platform on which to build Dapps. Steemit was the first Dapp, built by themselves, just to show what else is possible. Most of the Dapps that followed have been front-end interfaces intended to improve upon the Steemit experience. That's why they interact with Steemit. We're talking about Busy, eSteem, DTube, DLIve, and so on. I think there is certainly much more potential for the blockchain. @steemmonsters proves that.
Interesting. I hadn't thought of that.
Some of my @SteemPresss posts get better rankings on Steem than on my professional blog. I'm probably going to start delaying the publishing on Steem so I can change that.
A great value.
Awesome feature.
I've been paid money for articles with Steem. The problem is, if you want to retain the value of your remittance, in my case, an invoice, you've got to convert it to SBD because STEEM is too volatile. And if you want to buy bread, then you've got convert that to other currency, which comes with a transaction cost. I would love to see a STEEM debit card that allows me to buy over the counter anywhere in the world that accepts credit and debit cards. That would truly incorporate a component of lower-fee transactions at the very least, and if that debit card was issued by Steem Inc., it could be done with no fees.
This is what we're discussing. If people who are here for the social aspect of Steemit and the other Dapps that provide it, and they're here because doing so offers them rewards for their content and interactions, the bidbots eat that.
On the one hand, I could get upset about that, and some people do. I'm not all that upset because I believe we all have the ability to make choices. But if you create a post and I upvote your post thinking I'll get a small reward for that 100% upvote, then you decide to upvote your own post with a bidbot, now you've ensured that my reward is smaller than it would have been without the bidbot. I could get upset about that or I could be grateful that at least I'll get what I'm going to get. $.01 STU is better than $.005 STU. There are some people who would get upset that your bidbot reduced their potential $.01 STU down to $.005 STU. My take is, if there was not blockchain, and therefore no Steemit, I wouldn't even get the $.005 STU, so I've got no real basis for complaining. I can take advantage of the opportunity that I have. Others see it as taking something away from them, which I think comes from a sense of privilege or entitlement. I certainly don't fall into that category.
That's true of Steem. But Steemit was built precisely for the purpose of rewarding content. That's what the white paper says. I think it's important to separate Steem, the blockchain, from Steemit, the social media Dapp. You can have the blockchain without the Dapp, but you can't have the Dapp without the blockchain. They are separate. Here's a passage from the Steem white paper:
The bold part is mine, for effect. Some people are much more vocal about this than I am (up to the point of being annoying), but bidbots could be considered "intentional manipulation for profit." And I believe, as do others, that seeing a trending page full of content propped up by multiple bidbot votes is causing members to "lose faith in the perceived fairness of the economic system." Just talk to anyone who has left the platform and you'll hear this topic come up.
So, while I agree the blockchain is much bigger and more expansive than Steemit, as a writer who is more interested in Steemit as a platform for sharing and showcasing my work, it's an important part of the blockchain. I hate seeing people leave because they perceive that the reward system is unfair due to the economic manipulation of the bidbots. I don't necessarily want to do away with the bidbots, but I never consult the trending page simply because I know that the content there is content propped up by bidbot votes. I'd like to see another trending page that shows me content not propped up by the bidbots.
Again, thanks for weighing in. I think a good and honest discussion on this is healthy.
This is great - and I have many more thoughts. Be back later 😂
Ok, I am not going to be able to address everything in one comment. Its just too much, but I want to say off the top I do enjoy talking about things like this.
So - your curation math is off. Way off. All of your votees benefited mightily from your experiment. Here's a sample:
Columns:
account, time, vote value, amount lost due to early vote, curation earnings, CE/VV
Your auto supporters earned multiple times their vote size from you. Accelerator, for example, earned a whopping 337.7% - meaning it earned 3.3x in curation what it added to the value of the post.
When you calculate curation, you are just 'averaging' based on total size. That's not the way it works, and its a good reason to add your bids last after all your followers get a chance to curate. People say the bid bots are for visibility, but that myth just plays to the bot's favor. They are future's contracts that a lot of people don't know how to use. There are perhaps some addon benefits of increased reputation score and maybe there are still people looking at trending, but I doubt it.
Ok, now check this out:
Those voters you noticed at the last minute, they are running 'curation' scripts. They see your bid and put in a vote before the round ends. They know how curation works. Notice they are earning 72% of their vote size back in curation rewards. Given that the site wide cap is 25%, its not a bad strategy!
The rising itself earns mediocre curation, of 20.8% of its vote size. Now, its a big vote so its still a large number, but everyone else's outsized curation came from it's share (you calculated $6.45018, but looks like its closer to $5.353 if the price of steem hadn't changed). Except Jaichai. Poor jaichai, not enough time in the day and came late to the party. 9.1% or 0.02 SP. Still, its interesting to note that even he got something.
Ok, that's part one, respond if you like, but I hope to be back for part two - Steem vs Steemit.
I'll probably end up recommending @steeveapp - seems like it was made with your complaints in mind!
Okay. It's late and I'm heading off to bed. I'd like to know where the screenshots came from. Is that Steemd?
No, unfortunately its a private tool currently, but I am working to make this and other great tools available to everyone with @steemlogs at steemlogs.info
Okay, I have searched and searched for a tool that would provide more detailed information on actual payouts after payout date and have come up blank. This would be useful. I'm limited, of course, to my own understanding of how the rewards pool works and my own math skills. I'm a good researcher and can analyze data well enough to hold my own, but a conclusion is only as good as the data on which it is based. So I'd love to see a tool like this.
Are you a developer?
I suppose 'I play one on TV' wouldn't be far from the truth. I am learning. I have worked with developers quite a bit 'in real life', I'm the guy that bridges the communication gap between clients and such wizards.
I'd like to publish a follow-up post with real numbers, if they can be verified. If I'm wrong on the math, I want to set the record straight. Would you willing to give me an "inside look?" I'll commit to keeping trade secrets a secret, of course.
Thank you for putting in the time and energy to do and write about your bidbot experiment.
I’m a bit ambivalent to these things in general and just kind of plug away at my own thing. But your report certainly makes me think about the nefarious effect bidbots have on quality posts.
It certainly seems that just not allowing posts that used bidbots to be on trending would be an effective start in evening the playing field and simultaneously showing the world a better face of what steemit is. Everyone I know thinks the trending page is pathetic and rarely goes there.
Imagine if it was where you could actually find trending quality posts, wow, that would actually be useful and would show any newbies a level to aspire too.
Thanks again, I enjoyed that laymen’s breakdown.
Thanks. I'm glad you found value in it. Like you, and a lot of other people, I think the trending page is a terrible PR tool for Steemit. It doesn't take a genius to figure out that someone is gaming the system if they're at the top of that page. People are leaving the platform over it. A lot of people have left the platform over it. I can't think of a better reason to change things based on that fact alone. And all it would take is changing the algorithm to reduce the weight of posts propped up by bidbot votes. They don't even have to exclude them from the page, just tweak the algorithm so that votes by bidbots count for less than votes by real human accounts, or manually curated accounts. That alone would re-order the page. No one actually things that the posts on that page are the best posts Steemit has to offer.
Again, thanks for stopping by.
Yeah, I don’t get the hold up in switching that one, there seems like several workable solutions, Ie. Your suggestion. I’ve also heard the idea of it bidbot’d posts heading to the promoted section... as that is what it is.. using bidbots to promote the content. Then trending could just be known to be bid bot free and instead allow us to head there to find great actually trending content.
Lol, dreaming of perfect solutions and imagining how something would or wouldn’t work is always hilarious to me. Cause eventual dreams hit reality and become something most could never foresee.
And you are welcome by the way. I see your effort and engagement all over here on steemit, I sincerely appreciate it!
Posted using Partiko iOS
I like to interact with the natives. ;-)
Excellent work. Well explained and well written.
Personally, my position is far less moderate than yours. I hate all bots with a burning passion; they are abomination, a cheat, a con, an insult to human dignity and creativity.
More to come. I've uncovered some new data.
The solution is to have so many people want visibility that the bidbots are a cost not an ROI.
This is the model that every content creation site I've ever heard of uses.
Including youtube, twitter and even facebook provide ways to promote content.
If people are unhappy with the results they should flag.
Also, your review misses a couple important points.
People often BUY steem to promote. I've done it many times.
No matter what the ROI is, 1/2 of the value is powered up for 13 weeks.
Have a great day!
I'm not quite sure what you're saying here, but I've got more data so there will be another post soon.
I'll look forward to it.
Stinc, et al, hijacked the chain to change it from proof of brain to proof of wallet.
If you weren't here to understand proof of brain, especially during the whale experiement, then proof of wallet is all you've known.
Proof of wallet rewards those with stake, those that brown nose them, and the ego of the tyrant that forced them on us.
Proof of brain rewards good content by crowdsourcing stake weighted ratings.
It rewards curators that find good content before those with stake vote on it.
It works to keep stake in fewer accounts.
It is what steem was launched as.
Bid bots break proof of brain.
@dan left to start eos after getting pushed out over his lack of support for proof of wallet.
All Hail, Stinc!
We pushed the tyrant that chose proof of wallet over pob off his throne.
It is time to give proof of brain a chance, imo.
The newbs have no idea what it does, they just swallow the Kool-Aid that gets rewarded on the trending page.
To repair the damage the tyrant did with the hijackening.
Restore the n2, put the 4 post soft cap on rewards so that post #5 gets less than it would otherwise, cut vote power in half to require 20 votes a day @100% to fully use vote power, and let the little accounts have some, too.
We win against the bots when they shut down due to lack of customers.
Using them breaks proof of brain.
It supports proof of wallet.
The blockchain records who is on which side, and with how much influence.
#m2c
I don't see newbs eating it up. A lot of them are leaving.
Yep, that was foretold by a number of folks.
Why would the masses join here to get fat wallets shoved in their face when they get plenty of that irl?
!dramatoken
Such drama, you've earned a DRAMA!
To view or trade
DRAMAgo to steem-engine.com.