Is STEEMIT Rigged? Is it Ethical to use Bots to do your voting and posting? Does this create monopolies of Steem dollars in the hands of a few?

in #steemit8 years ago

I was just chatting with somebody about Steemit and I found out that Steemit is already rigged.  Several people have set up multiple accounts using Robots to vote and post the same content over and over.  Mostly the posts are in the #introduceyourself area.  These accounts are grabbing thousands of steem dollars by fooling us all into thinking that this is a real person.

Is this ethical?  Should the Steemit community rise up and stop the robots from ruining this new platform? What do the founders of steemit think?  @dan @ned @dantheman @steemit

Your comments are welcome.  

#steemit #introduceyourself #steem #mining #whales

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The system is not rigged. Power belongs to those who have made the biggest investment and taken the biggest risk and have the most to lose.

It's an illusion that we could have a system where there is no power. The only thing we can do is to associate power with responsibility and this is what Steem does.

In other words, Steem is not about eliminating power but about irrevocably attaching the responsibility aspect to it. This is the actual difference between Steem and the legacy systems - in Steem you cannot have power and get away without taking responsibility for abusing this power.

Whales who operate bots are exercising their power. And they have the most to lose if their bots bring more harm than good.

You are welcome to indicate unfair action caused by the bots - so that the bot owners can improve them or consider scrapping them. But concluding that the presence of bots makes the system rigged is very inaccurate.

When you make a bot, you are putting your own will into code to act for you. I don't see why this would be unethical. And as innuendo said, if they bots start acting unfavorably, it is in the bot-owners best interest to fix them as soon as possible.

The problem with bots is that it gives a bot creator incredible power over the steemit world. Within a very short time steem power can be created and harnessed to sway the entire system by the voting power of those few individuals. Newbies have no voice whatsoever and the whales essentially control the content of all topics and trending content. This is like the liberal media on sterioids with elites deciding on what the masses get to see. I think its heading down a dark road for such a great new platform for expression of ideas and content. I get that somebody can make and will make bots but the power derived is out of control and will eventually ruin steemit.

Why do you think it is out of control? Certainly, it could be out of control, but as far as I've seen the whales are actually behaving themselves quite well.

The whales always behave. They play with their prey just before they gang up on it and devour it. lol

Rigged would be if the bots were voting for themselves. That would be a catastrophe! But as far as I know, that is not yet happening.

If the system is rigged, then it will devalue the currency. It is what everyone is looking for currently,; something that isn't rigged against them. If bot are taking over, and I arrived here yesterday, then I doubt Steem currency will go far. It is a lot like the reviews on Yelp; some paid for 5 star reviews. To me that kills the entire system.

True but I don't see anyone saying anything about @wang and what this account is doing. I would sure think that this has to be dealt with while stemit is still in beta.

Ask @wang the commenting bot that has 350 million plus in steem power

Thought I would check it out, and you are right Estimated value: $1,274,151.18. Pages full of 'Glad to have you...' comments. Steem will be worthless if the bots take over.

My point exactly. And us low power trolls cant even get our posts read unless a whale clicks on it. Kind of hard to make a point if nobody ends up reading it within the first 10 minutes;

I just saw some guy made this site to monitor whales and analyzing the chance of getting votes. But it's all kind of wack to even need to have a weighted system where the few hold such power. http://catchawhale.com/

@wang responded once to very specific types of posts. A lot of new users benefitted from it. (and no I am not affiliated with it in any way). It doesn't post top level stuff. It responds to new users who introduce themselves. I see no harm.... plus anyone making money on this platform potentially helps EVERYONE... doesn't harm anyone.

I tried to explain it here: (this is true whether they are bots or people)
https://steemit.com/steemit/@dwinblood/that-person-is-not-worthy-neither-are-you-neither-am-i-but-who-is-do-things-my-way-or-else

In a way it deos heavily favor the whales that people are actually trying to bribe now to comment on their posts.

I'm new here and trying to learn about how it all works. How did you grow your wallet so far?

Bots hardly have any advantage since last month. I wrote an article about how to make it even better: SteemIt voting algorithm problems and solutions from a programmer's perspective

All of the people who disagree with you probably use bots.