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RE: #trending #153
No need to defend your service against me. I questioned the intent of your post, not the service that you are providing. I accept the existence of bid bots and I can even see reasonable use cases for them. Still, bid bots add another vector to bypass community approval (or proof of brain if you wish) and thus I find it strange if you complain about an outcome that you are actually enabling.
True, as of now, voting circles and other sort of deals extract significantly more from the reward pool compared to the aggregate of bid bots.
Thanks for your reply!
When I started @buildawhale there were very few bots, and now there are a ridiculous amount of bots and more coming daily.
This the result of a lot of things, but I think a lot of it has to do with low morale and the fact this is seen as the only profitable action on Steem right now.
As for why I did the post, mainly because I just snapped. Got sick of the huge voting circles getting free passes to trending, while exploiting the system. I knew people would bring up the bot angle and would be the primary focus, but it really isn't even remotely close the root issues going on.
I wanted to start a discussion, and unless I am on trending, I don't have the influence to do that. So like any good marketer, I bought it.
I make sure I didn't overdo it, I could have easily put it at #1 spot on trending for days, but I made sure it was high enough to be seen but not high enough to stick.
Well, I think those who followed you in doing what you started doing early on shouldn't be blamed for having a low morale. Under current circumstances bid bot providers are doing what is economically sound to do. If enough of the stake here is not happy with the outcome of this economy then the system parameters have to be changed. To repeat what I said in another comment, counting on morale or community-oriented behaviour is an expectation that will always be disappointed when there is money to be earned.
As for the root cause, to me it's the introduction of delegations and linear rewards that marginalized community approval as a factor for reward allocation. And both, the bid bot economy and voting circles have been fueled by these changes. Yes, voting circles have existed before, yet were a phenomenon that required whale participation. Now we have these circles throughout the entire stake-holder hierarchy.
So if changes are introduced that counter voting circles you will probably erode the economic viability of bid bots, too.
What I meant about low morale, is many people are discouraged and jaded right now in general with how things are and where they are going.
The SBD pump has also dramatically changed the game and how people interact with the platform.