Amen to that. Selling and buying votes killed the heart of Steem. It's not an honest evaluation of content. And these bidbot coders have risen in witness rankings too. What a joke... Money rules the platform and minds of many. I stopped posting about bidbot issues a while ago. The community at large either doesnt care, or cant do anything because most of the SP holders support the vote selling and buying anyways. Having everyone "get it" is a dream it seems...
What about the endless circle-voting, done even before bid-bots were a thing?
When I joined Steem in August 2017, it was a nightmare getting any kind of visibility. The only reason I created a promotion service is for people to have the chance to have their content seen.
If you want to get rid of bid-bots, please fix the system. (Incentivized downvotes & higher curation rewards) - otherwise, I don't see a reason to talk about the same topic, over and over and over again.
Also, if you really want to solve the problems Steem has, feel free to participate here: https://steem.nolt.io/
Edit: I mean, honestly: do you want to force freedom out of delegating to bid-bots? That's not possible. He has 8.4 Million SP and if he'd believe that Steem would go to shit due to bid-bots, he'd stop it, I'm sure of it.
But other than that, the only way to stop bid-bots, is to make them unattractive to use. That means, either A.) Downvoting the use (incentivized downvotes) - either generally or when abused B.) Give other options for delegators that are far more superior. C.) Create closed communities, where bought votes are prohibited.
Honestly, I really wish there would be a place where promotion wasn't necessary and content would be rewarded fairly, but this dream scenario - it requires work, changes and adaption.
What if promoted content had 0-returns? What if you pay to only advertise and the bot vote rewards get sent to null? Then it would really be about promoting a post, and not getting ROI...
Fixing the system ideally would require no automating or botting behavior, where only people's real actions counted. One way is where only apps were granted access to the chain that upheld the proof-of-brain system, and users had to vote through an app. But that's not going to happen. Then only real mouse clicks would be allowed to vote. A blockchain has many issues where a "fix" is possible, but not desired by many because everyone wants "decentralized" everything to be able to do anything. So there is automated voting, auto this and that, bid bots, etc. But a responsible group could authorize apps, and if they allowed automated actions through an api their access would be revoked.
The top 19 witnesses are a group, so already we don't have everything simply decentralized to make decisions, like approve code changes for the chain. A blind focus on pure decentralization is hampering the resolution of problems. People are required to make things work, not simply "whatever the code allows",a s if the code can account for the complexity of human interactions and behavior. Decentralized code has its limits.
Incentivized downvotes and higher curation rewards won't change anything. All the bidbots need to do is change how much they charge for a % of vote, and everything is more in favor of 0-work automated curation and getting even more returns from curation rewards by selling votes, not going out to manually vote content. Paying people to flag would ruin shit big time, as then any abusive flagging would be promoted because your even being paid to do it, why stop and upvote when you can bully people and get paid to do it.
@edicted also points out some issues with those so-called "solutions".
If no one bought votes, no one would sell votes. And if no one offered vote selling mechanisms, no one could buy votes. There are ways to change things. But, when money is the goal, things won't likely change without code making it restricted. And those restrictive changes aren't desired because there goes the easy money train.
Flagging for rewards and more curation rewards won't solve it, sorry. And they aren't the only solutions, as I've pointed to above. They are just more ways to reward the broken system.
Rewarding content more fairly is possible, and not having bidbots is one way to promote that behavior again. Yes, the changes require work and adapting to them, but they would make Steem a more honest place with better content evaluation. No? Decentralized systems have more issues and less ability to fix things, because anyone can do anything. If that doesn't change, then not much is going to get better unless people want to make it better by not doing the crap that doesn't make it better.
I do want to fix the system, but my solutions aren't well desired by others because "Decentralization is ultimate" or something...
I guess if we stay in the decentralized-only mindset (but we aren't really anyways becuse the top 19 are a group that make decisions for the rest as well), then we're stuck with some crap because decentralized systems depend on people making them work. If money keeps being used as the measure to get people to do things, then there will always be ways devised to ruin shit because "anything goes" that the code allows. If the code changes to disallow things, then things can change when people don't want to. But not likely to happen. So we're stuck with this experiment that will fail because people will just do whatever is allowed to make money. Unless the code prevents them. Anything I've suggested would be to put the bot vote rewards into null, and not go to the voe buyer. Then you'll see how popular buying votes is really. It's not just for visibility.
As for visibility, that depends again on people voting content to make it visible. Are the bidbots that destroy proof of brain and the core of a system that's supposd to bebased on others evaluating content to reward it, really worth it? Just to get visibility? Make the rewards from bidbots go to null, then it's not about making money, and it's only about visibility. The "only reason" (as you say) you created a bidbot service was to help people get content seen? Do you then not take a percentage of the profits? If you do, then it's not "only" to help them get their content seen, is it?
Thanks for the link. How do the suggestions there get implemented?
I suggested that bots require rewards be declined and got booted from two discord servers, months ago.
Bring back the n2 and whales willing to flag abuse,...
Shouldn't the visibility of content be determined by the community of voters, and not be bought to achieve? Just like rewards? It's a perversion of the whole point of having a social network of evaluating content. That purpose is bastardized with vote selling/buying.
I Agree. What kind of business model is 75/25 split? It says: If you want to earn STEEM you have to be an author, so that's why people publishing 10 shitposts a day and using bidbots.
I know @krnel is totally against 50/50 split but the heart of the Steem blockchain is STEEM/SBD, not authors. We have to split produced crypto equally between authors and curators.
My proposal to stop own comments upvoting abuse: send 50% from every comment payout to @null (not sure if it's technically possible)
The current business model is:
Amen to that.
I'm really glad to see you, @therealwolf, admitting that the system needs fixing, really - it's about time. When I saw the birth of bid bots I guessed this would happen, the proof of brain was always a big part of why I myself invested in Steem a long time ago. That's where I saw the value and it's been really hard to stay here ever since that promise was killed with selling the votes to anyone with money and now with Ned and Steemit Inc acting the way they do being the last straw for me personally forcing me to think again if my investment here is wise with long term mindset (+5-10 years), I still think this ship can be turned around though but I'm unpowering to have my Steem liquid and ready to abandon the ship just in case I don't see any psotive progress. I do however consider people talking about this issue being one, first we have to admit there are problems rather than cheer we're the best in every case, when Ethereums one project, makerDao is more valuable than our whole blockchain.
I think this is a good start, but I'd also offer SP holders a way of gaining their rewards passively, without selling their votes and meddling with the proof-of-brain system. Some people actually want to make this place work and are willing to curate, even for lesser rewards, some don't. These two groups should be seperated rather than put together.
Implementing these 3 systems would be a strong start in making this place valuable again for both content creators and consumers.
Absolutely spot on wolfman, and its the circle jerkers and auto curators who moan the loudest.
Bid bots get used as scape goats time after time but the op gets it right when he says there has to be a switch in behaviour.
Steem should be for everyone, whatever intelligence level which is why I hate the 'proof of brain' tag. Its elitist. It should be about effort, hard work and sincerity.
The people who game the hardest are the ones who have the most to start with.
However, bidbot owners also have responsibility to help keep bad actors in check too.
Good post, great reply, as usual, it all comes down to personal responsibility from every single one of us but thats easy to say when, unlike many on Steem, Im not struggling to pay for my next meal. Many people are.
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More I think about bid-bots more I dislike and disapprove of them. You make great points though.
You create smart tools and care about Steem. So, I would like to share the following thoughts.
This Ned's video from Steemfest 2016:
He says this at 1:09 minutes into the video:
I might be wrong, but it seems to me, rewarding and incentivizing the content consumption is neglected on the platform. Not everybody can be a great blogger, vlogger, content creator. In my opinion, a majority are content consumers. But since content consumption doesn't get rewarded as much, many focus on becoming content creators.
Since bid-bots serves as providing visibility, promotion, and marketing for its users, maybe bit-bots can fill the gap of rewarding content consumers as a mechanism of incentivizing consumption of bid-bot voted posts.
Can Dtube model of curation reward distribution be implemented in bid-bots? For example, a bid-bot can share 50% percent of its curation rewards with those who voted on the posts, giving them additional curation reward.
Do you think something like this or other innovative methods can attract more people to view and consume promoted posts? Can this even be viable for bid-bots?
I think bid-bots have a potential of fixing they way content is promoted on the platform. But not at their current state. If they can't add value to content consumers, they are no different than traditional advertising. Maybe even worse, since in this case, the community pays the costs of the ads/promoting.
@freedom has a large share in STEEM, and there is no doubt his delegations to bid-bots are hurting his total stake value. Most likely he hasn't realized it, or just doesn't care, or does it on purpose.
the solution is: Dan buys part of Ned's shares of Steemit Corporation (even if he needs to pay a high value for it), he gets the control of Steemit Corporation and, with their SP, starts flagging posts promoted by bid bots.(with prior warning of course)....Steem was well designed, perfectly planned but Ned decided to hear the crowd to do what is popular and not what is right, and screwed the system.
Ok, but in any case, do you really think, you can persuade someone like this author (https://steemit.com/steem/@ammar0344/why-steem-is-lossing-its-ranking) to stop using bid-bots?
Nobody in their right mind would probably read his posts and he knows it, so he would continue to buy votes.
The only way I see, is to change the system in that way, where human curators would have a far superior reward than those buying votes, selling votes or self-voting.
What if I couldn't vote on my own post or any account I delegate to or receive a delegation from? What if the rules for bid bots were the same?
I really like your idea of the 50% curation rule. I'd like for it to work for bidbots in favour of the bidder too. Like if I upvote this other user's post, I'd receive close to a half of what I spent. That could happen if there is only one bidbot and Steem manages it.
The People of Steem needs to become more generous.
everything here is built on generosity, having a singular bot's a bad idea, but you wouldn't understand, having more rules doesn't make things better or simpler, it complicates and destroys free enterprise.
The people are quite generous, they run servers, make apps, produce content, vote, distribute content, make bots that do all of that, ... it seems like you aren't appreciating the good work, want more and therefore we keep having problems.
My point is that if you create just to get monetary value, you are missing the point, @valued-customer said it best
Ahem, can you be more condescending?
I am appreciating "good work" but "good work" doesn't directly correlates to "good for the platform".
But I wouldn't understand. /s
Keep wearing your pink glasses.
fair point, I'm sorry, with some hindsight and without the same emotional state I was in last week, I can say it would foster some generosity, if you were getting back 50% of what you gave, you might be more willing to give rather than keep and "reinvest" because you have to pay for your delegation.
I just don't like bidbots in general, in technical terms there can't be a single bid-bot unless we vote for that and make a fork which has never happened. I think it over-complicates the platform if money is just going left and right, that's what curation is supposed to be, but people are lazy to do it by hand, technically curation projects are a better way to reward content than direct payments for votes, that just brings a chasm between the people that don't want to use them and the people that want the benefits, mainly inflated numbers...
I'm sure I can be more condescending, so thanks for pointing it out. I'm not trying it's just me lacking experience in communicating properly.
Thanks for coming back to write this. It's appreciated and shows you're human.
We'll just keep flagging him...
for fun. lolAs it stands, the lack of flagging makes the entire platform look scammy. It makes everything looks like "give me a dollar, get two back".
Agree that we need more flags in here.
of course individual shareholders will do what is better for them individually......we can only hope for good actions for players that, with their actions, can change the game and that cannot put their steem power easily in the market without screwing the price of it(Steemit Corporation)
It's been free money for Freedom, I'm sure he's gotten more out of here than he ever dreamed.
There are other tweaks with equal potential to affect these issues, such as zero curation rewards, 1a1v, and many more. While I am not accusing you of some disingenuity, I don't agree with your assessment and proposed solutions.
Promotion isn't necessary to succeed on Steem social media. I have never done it, and reckon I have achieved considerable success, but I don't measure success financially. Society is vastly more - and more important - than money, and simply considering monetary aspects of society limits society to it's economy.
SOC (SMTs, Oracles, and Communities) has the potential to solve the problems for all concerned by enabling the full panoply of potential platforms and the code they are driven by to eventuate, and allowing the market to sort them out. Those which aren't actually social media, being limited to actual people (society) have a place, but social media does too.
We can hope good code and a diversity of options will enable real social media to form out of the extant chaos, and I do.
Do you think bidbots helped more people get "any kind of visibility" now that most of the high visiblity things are bought for? Do you think bidbots are a solution to not getting the visibility you deserve and yu don't think that the visibility you think you deserve is a problem itself, the only problem being that you didn't receive the visibility you think you deserve, to you and the rest of the entitled ones?
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So you are not making a profit? Breaking even? Running at a loss? 😅
the problem is not votes, but ranking system of content in website, right now its who got more money got better visibility. But overall because of this rule, without bots there is almost no visibility of posts.
I'm not sure old-school witnesses care too much about it either, they are the ones who let this happen. You warned people, I warned people, we did our duty.
How about system neglect the user's post who used bid bots from going to trending/hot tab. I mean most of bid-bots are known so shouldn't be a hard task, so put them in ignore list. When people won't get visibility using those boys , they will eventually stop using it.
But yeah, this can't stop minnowbooster, smart steem where votes are directly sold between users.
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