Bots on Steemit
Now. I love Steemit. I love the block chain, social-media-platform that it brings to the cryptocurrency world. I love that it's built on support for others opinions, stories, going's on, interests, hobbies, etc. I love that other's support for you, or agreement with your opinion rewards you and I love that it's a civilians way into the cryptocurrency world.
What I absolutely loathe... are bots. Now, not all bots are bad.
Take Baymax, for example.
He's caring and kind and lovely. And his actions come from a good place.
But, it seems to me that there's BAD BOTS on Steemit.
These buggers look like good bots, giving you UPVOTES and shit. But they're bad.
As much as you think that's fantastic, woo, you got an "upvote", it really isn't.
Some people's naivety can think this spam, and yes it's spam, is coming from a good place; the creator of the bot wants to reward the minnow of steemit, to help you all become dolphins and then whales, in time (if you don't know what a minnow is on steemit then look it up). This seems all good and dandy, but I hate to break it to you, one bot isn't going to make your post automatically the next big thing. That's dependent on REAL people, the curators, creators, users who like your content, based on originality, honesty, interest and information. One bot, as he is still a minnow himself, will not make you become the next whale. The dolphins, whales, and the support from a larger amount of minnow is what will make you succeed on this site.
What's more is that, the more you upvote their comments for you to be 'put on the trending page' etc, the more steem power and steem they're earning, and instead of YOU becoming the dolphin or the whale. They are, slowly but surely through manipulative abuse of steemit's ultimate ability, power. It is greedy, selfish and jeopardising the honesty and team community built on steemit at the moment.
Do we need to introduce a way for comments to be monitored more closely, and in fact each user. Will there be a way to monitor the bots on steemit? If so how is it done at the moment?
Now, growing up, I was told not to bring up a problem if you don't have a solution, so I've got one, as simple as it is...
In some way, shape or form, comments and user's who comment must go through a check to see whether what they're posting is spam, such as - comparing the previous comments string of letters to the future comment's string of letters. If they are both exactly the same, then the comment is classed as 'spam' and not allowed to be posted - or, it goes to another check, with people on the other side. Or your current comment is compared to your most previous comment to see if you've posted annoying and what can be classed as 'spammy material'.
The steemit economy and the way it functions is also being effected by this. There is no rewards, nor room, for bots in our community.
I don't know, just thoughts.
Nice post
Clearly a bot reply. 😒
@s1ennaaa Your solution won't work for the same reason we have to have cheetah here. People don't know how to check these things and a bot wouldn't be good enough to handle it.
Bots are not the problem here. Incentives that favor bots are the problem because people want to maximize revenue while minimizing effort.
Bot are owned by people. At some point there is a human behind every single bot. Give those people something else to do, something interesting and that has better incentives and this problem solves itself.
https://steemit.com/introduceyourself/@williambanks/announce-steembots-com-your-source-for-everything-bot-related-now-hiring
I'm working to get botbuilders to build high quality useful bots. Bots like cheetah, jeeves etc and even better. But all agreeing to a common code of conduct that means making sure their bots don't go places that have posted that they aren't wanted.
You can use #STEEMBOTSTAY to keep bots out of your posts that are using the STEEMBOTS platform as soon as we launch.
In the meantime, I've been reaching out to bot owners to implement this leash code on their own bots, so they stop annoying people. So I've already got 2 or 3 of the builders on board.
I've upvoted you! Enjoy!
Thank you so much for your feedback. I really appreciate the time and effort you took to reply!
So, I understand that my solution was very basic and quite a civilian way of thinking about it. I just wanted to suggest something, after bringing up the problem. :)
The people behind the bots are the ones I'm frustrated with. They know they're posting irritating content on other's posts, and they're doing it from a place of greed and ultimately cheating the systematic economy and fundamental support system of how Steemit works.
I have seen jeeves, but i'm annoyed with the upvote bots that are misusing steem.
Thank you for using your time and effort to work on high quality useful bots. I appreciate your help to keep the users happy and content.
And thank you for your upvote.
I LOVE THE STEEMIT COMMUNITY.
We are looking for Bot Builders
http://shaivitetemple.org/Forum/topic/blockchain-bots-that-benefit-people/
We need a single bot (created by Steemit developers) banning all bots and giving full power to human users. That's my humble opinion.
I agree, as controversial as it is. I believe it will ruin the (i repeat) fundamental economy and basic way that steemit works.
Interesting, this feels like a story from a city in "Star Wars" or some other Sci-Fi story, finally we are living in the future, is it possible some of these bots are created by "the competition" to counter-disrupt this place? Just a thought...
That's quite valid forethought, I hadn't considered before.
The problem is not bots, the problem is it's easy to make (imaginary) money by upvoting everything quickly, if bots don't do it, people will do it manually. This is such an obvious flaw that completely destroys the stated purpose of this site that the only conclusion I can draw is we are being scammed into parting with money and the people running this site know full well it ain't ever going to work in the interests of anyone but themselves.
That's why we have the blockchain, so it links up all connections of energy. positive or negative http://www.steemshare.com/lists/27
I stop listening when people use the word 'energy' in the incorrect manner, it messes with my chakras man.
Believe it or not that is not the actual problem. You upvote a post before 30 mins you don't get the money, the author does. What is actually going on is that there is a tutorial that was posted before that rule went into effect and that tutorial code is being copied and pasted and run by every script kiddie on the planet because they don't actually realize this isn't making them money.
Better solution is to give them tools to make better bots and incentive those bots more than the spammy bots.
OK, so we now know to set robots to upvote every post when it reaches 30 mins old, or just scroll down the list of new posts until you find posts old enough to upvote, jeez it's hardly any more difficult. As I've stated elsewhere the major flaw is the only source of revenue is people trying to make money and like any classic Ponzi scheme it will fall over pretty quick once people realize there is no real money to be made by the vast majority of people and pretty much everybody tries to cash out, problem is it will take two years for us to get back whatever's left of our investment and the chances of this site surviving that long are pretty minimal.
I am in total awe of your want to instead of cut off those who are hindering us, due to their inability and lack of knowledge, you wish to help them and make them grow.
You are coming from the right place, and I am behind you on this decision.
As for therealnivok, I believe this is an investment opportunity. It's not a make money quick scheme and people are unable to realise that. It works around the support of others, and the community that we build here. When we bring negativity into that, like assuming it won't work before we try - and remember, it's an investment opportunity, you need to be patient and trust in chance - it will fail to work before we begin.
These bots, being run by real people, are not earning themselves anything bar the agitated state of those they're effecting. They're bringing negativity here, by being annoying and spamming others.
We need to remember that this is in the beginning stages, we can't knock it before we try it. We need to invest in it, support our community and have steemit's back to make it somewhere in the future. And I know full well, I am investing in this, as the future I see in steemit is rather bright.
I'm afraid I do not see a bright future, as an investment opportunity it seems a very poor choice. Ask anybody with a little knowledge of finance to invest in something whose sole source of income is the investors and they will scream 'Ponzi' and run out the door.
As a platform for content sharing it shares the same 'wisdom of the crowds', 'what's popular must be best' thinking that is not actually true. Somewhere in the site docs (such as they are) it states 'users are rewarded for voting correctly' what that means is you get paid for voting for popular content not for content you actually feel is quality. This sets up a positive feedback loop that ensures that a few creators will always get votes because they are good earners and everybody else gets left out.
Where would democracy be if we got a financial reward for voting the winning party?
`When the community becomes larger this won't be the case, I believe there isn't enough patience from users. It's not a quick cash fix, and a lot of people seem to think it is.
The problem s1ennaaa is that, surprising as it may seem, the vast majority of people here are acting out of self interest and as the community grows this will not reduce but become much, much worse. I agree that this place is not a quick cash fix, it's impossible for everyone to make money, there is no income apart from investment in steem power and a huge amount of income is soaked up in 'running costs' so what's left over is all that's available for rewards. Put very simply, the average amount paid in by users must vastly exceed the average rewards paid out. So, for a few people to make a lot of money a lot of people have to lose money. This hardly seems like an equitable social contract to me but it's what you get when you allow people to buy voting power.
I see bots that are downvoting other bots that are downvoting other bots... Which are commenting on every post that they can find.
This is becoming a bad cycle for Steemit. There should be no bots at all.
(And take a look at your upvote count, mate. All of them are bots.)
I know, it's shocking. How do I even stop this. It's ruining the economy of how Steemit is supposed to function.
You can't ruin something that is already fundamentally flawed. If bots were successfully banned people would still vote up content that makes them money, it's human nature, we all want something for nothing.
That's when we build the community on the basis of greed, and selfishness. If people do it for eachother, it will work.
I see your skepticism.
I think greed and selfishness are harsh terms to use, people naturally act in what they consider is their best interests like the developers of this site, they are taking 80% of the income and sticking it in their back pockets, if they were interested in the long term future they would not be leaching most of the money that should be paid out in rewards from us.
Self interest.
Nice post!
Keep up the good work!