To Bot or not to Bot...seriously, that is my question
Today's sketch which also fit's my question, am I meant to use Bots?
Here is the fuller version of the sketch (which fittingly will go into my Singularity series)
Now, I am serious, dear Steem: Am I meant to use BOTS or not? I have to confess I don't entirely understand what they are. I had not tried them (and still not sure I did it right) until this past week.
What lead to me 'giving it a go' was that I noticed some of the people I like to frequent had, in their list of upvotes, bot names. I would follow it to the link and it would exclaim "Send X amount of SBD or STEEM and use post link". So, I did a couple that were around .7 SBD. And I did get an increase and thought, "well,that seems cool."
Then I noticed another bot someone used and they wanted around 4SBD and so I thought about it and said, "Well, you can't win for losing and nothing ventured nothing gained". I mean, in some ways I consider a portion of my crypto as investments and with that you have to take a gamble upon which you sometime lose or win.
For example, back in the first dotcom boom @winstonalden and I had bought some land to build a house before prices shot up, long story short we decided to sell the land and we took all the profits and put it into dotcom stocks...well, we all know how that turned out. SO that lesson learned was don't put ALL your EGGS in one BASKET.
When I told @winstonalden I had put in 4SBD but my post was at 25 I thought that good. Then he explained to me that the 25 I see is NOT just SBD, so basically, I most likely just made my money back? Still not 100% certain on how STeem and SBD is divided on our posts. @winstonalden has explained it to me a few times, but I can feel my eyes glaze over as he goes on about it.
But, back to bots. I don't even truly understand what it is. I saw another person had used one that linked me to this site that has all the bots updating constantly and then you are meant to bid or some such? Again, blind faith just testing the waters: I chose one under 1 SBD and bid. I noticed on my posts I would get messages that read "You have received X% of upvote from @donnadavisart. And I thought, "Hmm, well, that's me?!"
When I was sitting at my drawing desk this morning considering the day's sketch, my first thought of course went to an android lady. My new obsession with my Singularity series often has them uppermost in my mind. Then I thought about how I was attempting to use a bot, of which I do not understand, to get a result in this new burgeoning digital world of Steemit. I rather felt like one of my hybrid Singularity women: waking up to a world devoid of total understanding, but with an odd desire to attempt actions that might seem appropriate in the world and then judge the response.
Thus, I stand before you, Steemit, semi plugged in, semi human, wondering, am I meant to use Bots, to plug in this way? I don't know? Can you help an android out? ;)
I would honestly like to know what bots are and if you use them. Are they a boon to your posts to get your items out there or are they some odd hidden virus set to take away the humanity of Steem? Please let me know if you use them and if I should or should not.
I hope your day is filled with answers to your questions and upvotes to your posts :)
If you like my work please upvote and feel free to resteem and by all means leave comments.
Check out my other posts:
- New sketch inspired by an old unfinished painting
- Pandora Singularity Progress
- Sunday in the Garden
- Painting of my cat: Puss inspired by her snoring
- My Art Explosion37 Entry
My bitcoin wallet as per the @slothicorn request to provide it with your artwork.
Hi, first, love your art :)
The only bot I've found to actually be worth investing in/buying from is minnowbooster.
The others, I've found to be a lottery - which you will rarely win (some of the returns from the other bots are actually terrible when you figure in curation payouts).
At least with Minnow booster, you seem to make back your SBD payment, or very close to it, and then "make money" with the SP you earn from the post.
I don't see these bid bots as a way of making money (the only people who do that are the whales who run them, unfortunately). Rather, I see them as a way to get exposure - both for an individual post, and your channel as a whole.
If I invest $10SBD and get $10SBD back, a little SP, and reach a few more people in the process, I think that's a good trade-off.
But to really make a difference, you have to bid enough that your post hits the Trending, or Hot page for whichever category you're posting in (for Art, it's quite expensive) - then you can get a lot of exposure - which if your work is good (and I think yours is), using bots CAN be worth it.
Get to the trending page, you can get a lot of "non-paid" attention on your work, and on your channel.
This approach is fine for high quality work/posts, but is unfortunately abused by spammers too often on Steem. But that's another story for another day :)
Hope all this makes sense - and good luck :)
Thank you for liking my artwork. And also, what a wonderful comment. So much good advice thus far. I think I will try to take some of the advice from some of you and try to work bots into my steemit life sometimes, but selectively so and not all the time maybe. A bit of give and take, maybe.
I have always asked the same question, despite reading several posts, I think I found a clearer answer here, at least for me, however I wonder, I make public with the intention that many people are encouraged to support me with a vote or comment, people who act as curators to see that the publication already has a payment associated with it, simply do not vote, I imagine they are dedicated to looking for quality publications and have no rewards, then I ask myself, why do I want recognition? If I like to grow up with organic vows, but apparently it's already a tendency to use them, so I'll use them more often.
AAAAaaahahahha I burst out laughing reading this:
Been there lol!
In my honest opinion, I don't think you need to use bots. You are growing your blog organically and producing excellent quality posts. This is what I believe other like-minded steemians will want to follow and vote you for.
But hey, if you feel like using 1 or 2 every now and then, it's ok-ish. Just blame it on the androids 😉 (not your fault, they called their friends over)
edit: you could also use artzone as a tag (I think it helps get more exposure and votes - if you haven't tried already)
I'm thinking, based on responses thus far, that I will use some sometimes, that seems to be the best fair use.
😉
The problem I see with bots is where it will lead to in the end. We already see the crap that makes trending, damaging how Steemit is perceived by new visitors.
Why produce any good content on this platform when you can just buy your way to the top. It is also creating a new class of Whales that dont seem to have the health of this 'social media' experiment in mind.
I made a concsious decision to not vote for posts that use these sevices, prefering instead to support users who are trying to use steemit as it was intended. And not just a pay to play service.
That seems fair. I guess I thought bots were a way to spend a bit of the crypto you earned to show your things in the hopes of becoming larger to help support others that are also good content providers, but maybe that's not how they are meant to be used. That's what I would do, but I'm not 100% certain of them.As I said, I think I'll not use them on the next few posts (I Mean I only used them on about 4 or 5 as an experiemnt I didn't even know what they were until recently because of how I use steemit) and if I decide to use one I might seriously just say in the post (I'm gonna use a bot on this one) and that way if anyone is sensitive to it, the will know not to click on it or like or support it. That seems a sort of happy medium? I'm not sure.
I am loving the debate though, That is one of the things I LOVE about Steemit!
I am also loving the debate and It is great that people are so respectful of each others opinions. I supposed this whole Steem thing is an experiment and being so decentralised We , as users have a chance to try and steer it in whatever direction we would like. Hopefully we are all heading for a destination we can be proud of. Only time will tell.
Like you, I don't understand boys very well, but it seems like the best use of them is to spend enough to get you onto trending or hot tabs.
If that happens then your post can see some organic exposure. Also, there are accounts that seem to follow regular big bot users who upvote their posts to ride in some easy curation rewards.
The downside, in my opinion, is how it would change ME. I know I can be a little obsessive, and it would be easy for me to become dependent on bots and facilitate a feedback loop. It also would not feel good to know that my post values weren't representing actual support for my content.
It's a precarious thing to me so for this point in time I'm personally avoiding them.
I AM going to follow you for your work, though. So there's that.
Yeah, it's such a conundrum. I mean if I look at it as a way to say 'hey look at my post what do you think' to get to trending I think that is a positive thing. I mean, don't we all like to share our stuff. For me it would be for exposure to garner followers who LIKE my stuff, not just a way to generate some random money (Even though I don't think you really earn it back) So, it's tough because maybe just seeing more grey in life I think, why not give every shot you got, but it seems some people see it differently or see bots differently.
I think I will go back to not using them for a few posts then decide if there is a good one and give it a shot. I could always star that post with TRIGGER WARNING: Bot's might be used on this post! ;) Who knows?
It's a great silly wonderful world full of arbitrary rules and we are all just fumbling along trying not to run over one another :)
Well.... using bots reduces the dependency on gracious orcas and whales ...
@winstonalden was right. You basically get your money back, plus increase your steem power.
I honestly don't see why not to use them.
I have heard the arguments against it, but, at the moment, the dependency on the "big fish" (etc.) in much too big... and this does things to people..... some people anyway.
It seems to be about half and half in my comments here as well. I'll have to think on it some more.
I just made a post about it too a few days ago... did you read that by chance? :-)
I use smartsteem for upvote buying. Lately I’ve been getting upvotes worth almost or aproximatley 150% of what I sent to them. 20SBD was getting me an upvote worth around +40SBD so if we just do the math roughly, with a 50/50 payout then it’s 20 sbd reward plus the corresponding SP (I guess I lied about the math part)
Also see below comment and related post for some food for thought.
https://steemit.com/steemit/@motoengineer/steem-is-stuck-in-a-underleveraged-state#@hrissm/re-motoengineer-steem-is-stuck-in-a-underleveraged-state-20180502t010830591z
Thanks, this really is helpful information. I'm going to keep some of these bookmarked for referral.
Well, I just did a bid on smartsteem, so we shall see the result. I like that it's an experiment and am excited to see the result :)
Good luck!! :)
First of all, awesome art as usual. :)
Next, I have written about this topic extensively and I'm quite involved. I really think you should take a look at this article I wrote a while back. It will clear up many of your questions.
https://steemit.com/steem/@artopium/i-admit-i-use-the-upvote-bots-and-here-s-why
Also, note that I currently use bots to promote my posts but I don't think it's the best way to do things so I'm currently programming a new app called SteemAX that hopefully provides an alternative to using bots. Check out this article I wrote introducing SteemAX.
https://steemit.com/steemit/@artopium/proposal-for-a-possible-human-to-human-upvote-exchange-program
ALSO, I currently run an upvote bot called @ArtTurtle. It's not a bid bot so no need to send it money. Instead it just upvotes every post made by anyone it's following. I'll have it follow you for a while. You'll notice ArtTurtle's upvotes starting today. Just give me (@artopium) an upvote here and there in return and I'll be happy. ;)
Wow, thank you. Of course I'll upvote in kind. We are a community after all :)
Hi, I started following you! I'll upvote your art!
Given that Steemit is rapidly turning into mostly bots, I suppose it doesn't matter at this point.
I used to think there were more humans here - but now its obvious its multiple accounts doing their best to drain the Reward Pool at the expense of everyone else.
That's why I think Steemit is flawed. People take advantage of any system, and Steemit is too easy to take advantage of. Shame really, but the developers haven't done much to address it.
Well, humans are flawed too, so maybe it makes it more human? :) Thanks for your comment to. It seems to be an interesting mix thus far in my comments.
talk about eyes glazing over!! ...??... it's all Greek to me.
More like all GEEK you mean ;)