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RE: Steem Experience Hangout: Let's Talk about Paid Voting Bots...
advertisement is what it is.
If "Time Magazine" established themselves on STEEM blockchain, they would have to advertise just like any other magazine, video-channel and etc... It is what it is.
I've seen this argument time and time again and find it to be lacking. The problem is at first glance users don't know the difference between an advertisement and an actual post that has been upvoted organically. The payout number on the post is misleading indeed. Furthermore, there are more nuances concerning curation.
If I wanted to "game the system" as many profiteers have no scruple doing, I could just set up a bot with an algorithm that would monitor paid votes and undercut the bid bots with the highest bids for pure curation rewards. I, unlike many of the "leaders" of this platform, have a little thing called ethics that deter me from such a course and understand it is not viable for the long term. I'm sure some greedy asshole is already doing it and it is indeed tempting for the sake of fighting fire with fire but I am playing Steem the long game. I want it to succeed and am not thinking about lining my pockets from a short sighted perspective. We truly need to make it meritocratic in terms of rewards and get as far away from "pay to play" as possible. No, I don't want Coca-Cola, Deja-Blue and Gatorade circle jerking each other up to Trending. People are going to bail when that shit happens. If you want a corporate echo chamber, go for it but I will power down long before that shit becomes a reality.
Your equivocating bid bots to simple advertisement is an analogy that is sorely lacking. It's a tired anology that need to be laid to rest. If you want a commercial, there is a place for that. It's called the promoted tab.
I say as I have said before. Do we want to increase the value of Steem? We create art. We create beauty. We don't create a GLORIFIED BLOCKCHAIN BILLBOARD.
Nobody looks at the promoted tab, what's wrong in advertising our own content?
Exactly, because we don't want to see paid ads.
Believe me, if there was an option that I could use to filter all paid content out, I would click that checkbox in a second.
Nothing wrong with advertising but paying for votes is another matter entirely. Not the same thing.
In that case, I believe you always ignore hot, trending and promoted tabs and just read posts on your feed?
Not really. But I do ambition to create a front end that will do as I have said. It's on my todo list. People just might go for that sort of thing. I know I would.
Total agreement! Bots will kill steemit! I am here for 14 days... there is no way that the valuable (at least in my eyes) content I want to share with the steem community will get more than 10 views as it will just disappear in nirvana covered by voting bots, voting pools and funny cat clips... I am starting to believe that even FB would be better in delivering my words to the world...
The initial free market quality system based on monetization is great but its put upside down by abuse of bots...
Welc9me to our world
Thx for your reply.. I hope that at the end the big whales and developers will have the same view and change either the system or their behavior for the better win win situation style
Yep, thats why we discussed marking them as ads like google does.
I thought that is what the promoted tab's purpose was. Guess they are ok with Steem becoming a billboard. Whatever.
The thing is, if steemit really becomes that big, trending and hot pages will be filled with adds from cocoacola, johnon n johnson, etc. here good content is anyways being screwed by the rich with 100000 SP, imagine these brands coming with a Million or 10 million+ SP? todays whales will be tomorrows minnows.. we need to do something about this..
Yeah, there needs to be a major change to the "Promoted" tab. No one uses it. It's the space that these posts are supposed to go. If you want to pay to get exposure, burn the STEEM for everyone's benefit. Voting bots are just a way to circumvent the established procedure for the sake of saving money.
The reason no one uses it, is the same reason we should have categorically rejected the use of voting bots, it doesn't lead to quality through consensus. We knew it would be stuff that didn't get any attention through regular channels.
The problem is many shit posts are trending. posts with just 2 lines or a photo are sometimes found on trending page. here are some of the points that needs to be done:
a) We need good content on trending page, and no 2 liners or only specific content related or of specific members only or just a dinner shot.
b) Bots should review the posts before upvoting.
c) Need genuine Meritocracy, not fake (Give Fair chance to everyone, not just the rich)
d) Meetups/Programmer related posts should be funded privately, and not by trending, This is not called good content. Need a separate page for it like an UPDATE or ANNOUNCEMENT page without votes.
e) Or You can remove Trending and Hot page, so people will only look for content they are intrested in, using search bar or tags, & not upvote only for rewards.
f) We also need Reward limits and Posts limit. I guess if we keep max 200$ per post and max 5 posts, that comes to 1000$ per day means 30000$ per month. Which is morethan enough for any one to live life in any part of the world. and obviously you can invest in steem/SBD or other cryptos. This will also limit greed.
g) Also a minimum reward like 50 cents to 1$ (more or less i leave to experts) for every post with a minimum content (bots can handle this im sure) will give a boost to minnows, and will also lead to genuine wealth distribution.
All the above points will eliminate the "Central Banking System for the Rich only" type scenario that going on on steemit.
If that happens, steem will be the medium of exchange, not a mere token as it is now.
No, sorry, all of these ideas are poor. The only way to get what you're suggesting IS A CENTRALIZED BANK and that's not what this is. It's not about those posts getting too much, or even the quality of those posts, it's that the community is not involved in the decision. I think the only solution is to begin labeling posts that have purchased votes and downvoting them. Then you'll see backlash from the whales, they'll suddenly have time to be back on the platform doing the work they should be doing now.
so what do u suggest? i feel money should not be the power on steemit, good content should..
I just told you my solution. It's at the end of my last comment.
Very true.
COMMUNITIES SOLVES ALL OF THIS.
Just how reddit is really.
When the elections were on sure the front page was littered with politics but you still had your selected communities where you were free to continue with the topics and discussions which you cared about.
ONLY when reddit went feral with the net neutrality crap did every community get bombarded with the same crap. So steemit DESPERATELY needs communities so everyone can congregate with their respective niche groups.
MAKE MANY POSTS ABOUT COMMUNITIES...
and the maggots sitting on their hands might get a light switch moment and go..
"Oh yeah... we DID PROMISE communities to these fucken fools didn't we... and we PROMISED TO HAVE THEM OUT BY LATE 2017... maybe we should.... DO... THAT ! "
I think communities could be helpful, but the devil is in the detail. Is there somewhere in particular that explains how they are supposed to work? Because if they are just like the specific tags we have at present, that won't work - many tags are also dominated by bot-upvoted content, e.g.: @pinacle in #philosophy. If communites are just goign to replicate that, I'd wonder why anyone would bother.
Well we can't predict the future but we can try with some applied pattern processing.
I do agree with you that communities will work similar to tags. The popular ones like SCIENCE and PHOTOGRAPHY will no doubt become popular communities. The one thing which I anticipate happening, apart from the usual whoring of rewards.. is that as each community will have an appointed (self or voted) leader, there will be WAY MORE responsibility for maintaining an honest community. In effect, this will work to clean up steemit somewhat.
The bad actors and actions will be easier to realize. So it will be an incentive for communities to become "THE GEMS" so to speak of steemit. As the communities with the most positive effect on say: sign ups, buzz generated, in-the-news, etc.. will no doubt become places of congregation for members of the platform that still hold on to the vision of a steemit where QUALITY & VALUE (voted organically) IS REWARDED.
As, some communities might not even want any bot-voted content. Giving those who detest their use a place to exist and develop without that element. Many ways in which the simple act of creating pockets within the system will give a real place for many who feel lost in a sea of chaos which is steemit. There is good here but it's all hidden under the giant pile of waste.
Spanish communities and Korean communities for instance will have an official place within the system where they can exist united and seek each other out easier to help with their growth. Communities will not be a magical transformation though. So it's important to note that it's THE PEOPLE that will determine their utilization. If the masses choose to continue with the same broken system then shiit.. can't do much about that. The ones who are whoring the rewards though will stand out like dogs balls and they might find themselves isolated if the majority of the communities are working to a more sustainable and "fairer" system of rewarding content.
BUT!.. Communities don't exist and may never!... so this was all just my opinion.
It gets worse: If Steemit gets big enough, during US presidential election campaigns it'll be filled with advertising from candidates and their associated super pacs. So yes, we do need to do something about this.
I will disagree with you on one point - if they play it smart, today's whales will probably still be tomorrow's whales - they will be the one's making a profit from the paid advertising after all.
we could create our own superpacs or maybe a SUper bot that downvotes those corporations to oblivion.
the thing is that i see one of those institutions taking the idea and building their own platform eventually. steemit is just a prototype and will likely go the way of myspace and blackplanet.
from my observation its not the first that survives but one of the startups that address the problms of the first platform.
google killed yahoo
facebook killed myspace
apple killed motorola/nokia
But people didn't have crypto locked into yahoo, myspace, and nokia either. That locked SP keeps a lot of people here.
^ i concur
i doubt, as it will only increase the price of steeem/sbd
This is not advertising. The promotion tab is advertising. In order for this to equate to advertising, you're saying the whales own that spot at the top of trending, it's theirs to sell, like a radio station's airwaves, or a newspapers column inches. That's not true at all.
Bingo. The bid bots = advertisement is a excuse for bid bots. Notice the one making such an argument. We've heard it before and the discerning reject the false equivalency.
Yep, I think so too, but until that idea reaches witness level and they decide to take action, it's not going to change.
ye marketing is a great idea same as a referral program, word of mouth is a great and powerful tool. I think not having ads on steem is amazing however allowing them could create money to promote the blockchain and share the profits.
nice.
Yep, and it gives you train wrecks like Top 40 music & Reality TV. The quality of content is now moot with paid votes. It just doesn't matter. Just because it's advertised doesn't mean it's good. The trending page is evidence of this. There's not really one thing on the trending page I care to read. #rewardpoolrape