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RE: Are You Part Of The Elusive Steeminati?
Use of bots is what I call cheating. Self upvoting is a right gained from rewards for curation or authorship or investment. Upvoting bots be definition cheat the system. As far as I'm concerned I see steemit as an innovative leader of the pack but ultimately a failed experiment.
Why do you keep ignoring my quote I keep posting?
Now of course you're going to say you're talking about "bots" not upvoting yourself, but no one says self upvoting is ok but not bots.
I suggest to you that you don't understand the economics of it, which I understand is difficult I still can't get my head around the deep technicals. But from the level of analysis that I can understand and observe the problem with self voting and bots is not the same problem that most people who go around complaining about it seem to think.
Most of these people don't really understand blockchain technology and don't really know where the money comes from. They're filled with indignation because they hear that there's these people over here who are "abusing/cheating the system/the reward pool" and they're very pissed off about it. From what I've seen many of them act as if they're being cheated out of all this money that rightfully belongs to them.
Steemit is designed and constructed in such a way that the way the system works tends to be in itself opposed to many of their arguments, but they don't seem to notice. They think they're complaining about bots and self voting and extra accounts to vote the maximum amount to yourself, they think they're complaining about specific people but you hardly ever see them say the entire system is the problem. Instead it's always about trolling and flagging those people, and as an aside it's usually in ways which seem self defeating and pointless most of the time.
It's not that there isn't a problem, there is, it's just not what's commonly repeated over and over is the problem. People who don't know any better listen to things they don't quite understand and then they go off repeating what they thought they understood.
As I said in the above quote, if self voting was considered abuse of the system then they wouldn't have provided a checkbox for you to "upvote" yourself automatically when you post a new blog. This fact is invariably completely forgotten though, because it doesn't fit at all with someone's idea that "self voting" is not just less cool but actually "reward pool abuse and cheating the system". The reality is buying and selling votes, "self voting" , selling delegated Steem Power to others or to vote bots isn't inherently cheating, and the idea that it is is indefensible. Not only isn't it cheating but I suggest to you the economic evolution of Steemit where Steem Power/Voting Power would end up being traded had to be intended by design.
Now just to be clear. There is truth to the idea that self voting can be cheating the system, but my point is it's talking about two different things. To "self vote" isn't a loop hole, it's a feature. The way in which you can exploit a loophole happens to be describable as "self voting". So in other words if someone wants to complain about "self voting", are they complaining about some very fundamental structure of the Steemit system? Or are they complaining about particular actions which exploits a loophole?
Now in regards vote-bots something similar applies but it requires understanding more about economics. The vote bots can't be considered cheating for the same exact reason you're also inditing Steemit itself. The fact that someones vote is more valuable based on how much Steem Power they have shows you bots aren't just not cheating but they serve a very important function. Vote bots weren't just an obvious consequence of the system, but the fact that votes work the way they do means that the whole system NEEDS vote bots. The alternative isn't to get rid of bots, even if you could you'd soon realise what an essential role they served. The alternative would mean you'd have to fundamentally change and rethink the whole system.
So long as votes are WORTH MORE THAN SOMEONE ELSES VOTE based on how much Steem Power they have it means votes are not really the same as facebook likes, or youtube thumbs ups, or reddit upvotes. The nature of the Steemit upvote is something different, it's a whole economy in itself and so like in any economy you'll find that creates a whole industry deeply tied to it. Steemit really hasn't figured out what it thinks the upvote means, but it's no good treating it as if it's supposed to be the same as youtube thumbs up and thinking all attempts to monetise your own Steem you aren't using is somehow wrong. If it's wrong, it's the whole system that's wrong. And you'll never get anywhere if you can't figure out what you're really looking at, and how much of the baby you think actually does need to be thrown out with the bathwater