Why We Can't Have Nice Things...

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(Edited)

Why we can't have nice things...

https://steemit.com/@banglatech

This user posts many times a day, waits until they are 2 days old and upvotes using the bid bots.

The posts have no engagement I'm sure someone will tell me that although they can't afford to do a thing about this now it will be addressed with the downvote pool.

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In one day this account received over $100 in payouts with zero engagement. He's been doing it for a while.

Yes, I know he had to pay for the posts, but how does this not devalue my investment?

This guy is also posting something like poorly transcribed quotes multiple times a day, he waits a couple of days until he will be off the radar and upvotes them with bots.

https://steemit.com/quotes/@mrsallu/one-is-loved-because-one-is-loved-no-reason-is-needed-for-loving

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Will the downvote pool really help with this kind of abuse?

We can expect Steem to hold very little value until we cooperate to stop this type of behavior.

By the way, the effort I put into finding these accounts was to go to the bidbotracker and look at one round of bids on one bot.. It took me about 10 minutes.

I am not a content snob and I do not dislike the idea of the being able to purchase a vote. Without any curation or responsible bidbot owners Steem will never hold any value.

Now all the EIP promoters can assure me how this will stop after the Downvote pool. I say, only if people work on the issue.

Will it be too little too late?
@whatsup



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My fear is that the downvote pool will only give more ammunition to those presently abusing flags.

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Like Cvae said in that awesome song...
It's better late than never...

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Sad to say but it also highlights how manipulated and meaningless the reputation metric is; while some (like me) are proud of it...

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(Edited)

If we are all over in out Tribe communities his little stunt won't mean much, or if he tries it there (in the tribe ) it will be more magnified. Either way, people will less and less use Steemit.com and focus in on these niche communities and little @banglatech punk won't be doing that anymore. Although, as long as Steemit has a trending page I suspect he will.

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A tribe of max 25 persona's. Do not use the buzzword communities please.

There are not lots of users left, to call it a community, or even communities.

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There isn't a max of 25 users lol
Not sure where you got that from.

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All those trending reward pool rapist do the same.

Look at this one, he is on spot 20 of the most payed out authors last 30 days.

https://steemit.com/@apix

This is automated, copy paste, use some templates, mix a little here and there.

Steemit is a joke... Yes it's too late...

There is someone trying to take him down,

Steemit inc's vision seems to be, milk as long as the servers are running.

But hey... keep on smiling, there is more to life...

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(Edited)

I agree there are plenty doing it, in fact, many of the serious authors have long since
left.

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Yes, I am afraid that's the case.

And why the whales are sleeping? Maybe it's all one big conspiracy? smiles

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Well they certainly seem either out of this world silly or yeah.

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(Edited)

To github.com:themarkymark-steem/buildawhaleblacklist.git
1962e28..4d3b8fd master -> master
banglatech

He doesn't use my bot, so it will be limited use but will help a little for the three bots that do use the blacklist.

If you see something and it isn't already on the list (easiest way to know is to use my Chrome extension) feel free to let me know and I'll have a look. You know how to find me.

Besides, Steem will be fine, we got lines now.

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Thanks Marky! I appreciate it.

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Thanks for all you have done on this. There are those who will cynically take unearned rewards as long as someone is happy to keep taking their bids. That may be a profitable business, but it harms Steem.

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A downvote pool honestly was the dumbest idea I have ever heard. Now those few whales that downvote people for no reason get a reward. How is that fixing anything...

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What would you like to do about abuse like the case mentioned above?

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What would you like to
Do about abuse like the
Case mentioned above?

                 - whatsup


I'm a bot. I detect haiku.

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Something wrong with that not lately lol.

I just don't like the idea of taking away rewards for a few bad apples. The system should be designed in a way that punishes just them not everyone. The hardforks seems very unfair to me.

Not sure of a solution off the top of my head would have to think about it a lot more. But not like anyone would listen anyways 😕

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The system should be designed in a way that punishes just them not everyone.

I'm not getting downvoted when someone downvotes junk and shady behavior. As a matter of fact, I see a TINY increase in my rewards.

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We can pool upvotes via bidbots. Why can't we pool downvotes?
My downvote by itself will be as insignificant as before. Free downvotes dont change a thing.
The ability to delegate the downvote pool would be logical. Why are we breaking the symmetry here? It's a missed opportunity.
At least it will generate some dRama

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Yeah, that is my fear as well.

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I would like to know if some of the T20 brought that up. It's a logical question.
I would love to know the arguments against delegating downvotes.
Why stop halfway? It's so obviously half baked.

As much as I try to ignore this fruitless topic, it keeps luring me in from time to time.

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it's being discussed.

regarding the half baked... my old company went through this phase too. The guy that solved it called it...

There is never anytime to do anything right but there is always time to do it over... Except no one ever really does it over. I think it is a thing of inexperience and we are loaded with it.

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I don't think that's it in this case.
Everybody is talking about delegating All The Time. Why stop now?
This is not a case of experience. It is a case of basic principles. These dudes are programmers. It takes a certain amount of logic to read and understand code.
They are able to make handy charts about payout curves.

They must be aware. Why is nobody of them adressing this issue? There are many many point for point arguments about SPS and EIP. This topic has never been talked about in public by T20.

But at least they promised us so much more manual curation.

Yes, I read your post from yesterday about that :D

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They must be aware. Why is nobody of them adressing this issue?

What if the ~30 people abusing the pool have 500k+ accounts and they like things just fine the way they are?
In fact, 100 years from now they may think they will be worshipped as heroes for having maximized their stake.
More likely the masses will reject them as a git rich quik skeme, imo.

Fiat always goes to zero when those contributing nothing are in control of it.
No wage slave will pay the amount of tax wanted by those that live lavishly while contributing nothing, once those slaves know the truth.

This current set of controllers, locally and wider, have done an excellent job of controlling the narrative.
Wages dont make you free, they keep you on the plantation and buying at the master's store.

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Ok, it was taken out of context. I was going in a different direction.
But your answer works as well.
Misaligned incentives.

On your point about fiat. It might go to zero over time. Who cares?
Every currency has one selling point: as a medium of exchange. If you need a store of value you need to look somewhere else.

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I'm fighting hard for downvote delegation. I really feel this is key to the success of quality negative curation.

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I really hope that happens. Otherwise there is no point in that pool.
Have you seen reasonable arguments against it or is that a philosophical thing?

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Downvote delegation is doable.

Just write a bot that can be delegated to. The bot mirrors each delegator's upvotes with voting power equal to the delegated amount. The downvotes the bot uses as it sees fit in exchange for a small fee.

Because one account being able to transact once per block (there seconds), an array of bot accounts would have to be created for that purpose.

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You have to delegate your upvote voting power along with it. The idea is being able to delegate just free downvote power.

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(Edited)
You have to delegate your upvote voting power along with it. The idea is being able to delegate just free downvote power.

I know that. And I pointed out a way to work around that limitation.

Yes, you have to delegate your upvoting and downvoting power together. So what? The bot can do your upvoting on your behalf with voting power commensurate to the voting power you have delegated to it. The downvoting it can do as it sees fit. The end result is that whatever you upvote gets upvoted (by the bot) with the exact same power as before delegating to the bot. Only what is downvoted gets decided by the bot. And if the idea is that it would only use the free downvotes, then that's what it would do and no more. Naturally, the bot would calculate how much it owes you in curation rewards from the upvoting it does on your behalf based on what it sees you upvote by scanning the chain. It might even pay you a bit more as a fee for your letting it use your downvoting power, which it would get as payments from people who want to direct that downvoting power as they see fit.

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When you take the second link, the mrsallou account unless he's plagiarizing please do explain to us how him posting several of these feel gooders several times a day is any different then that chbartist (or something of that nature) account that runs two, three post a week on trending for hundreds of dollars isn't the same kind of abuse just done less often for bigger rewards?

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It's not different. Chbartist got flagged for a week and powered down.

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I admit it's been a bit since I've regularly surfed trending, I am not saying his stuff was bad but the money he was getting for it was absurd to say the least. I questioned him one time if he thought what looked like someone jotting down two, three paragraphs on the back of a bar napkin was worth the money he made off it. All that did it seemed was prompt him to write a post about negativism so I quit following him.

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Looking at the first one's account, I almost have to admire the amount of energy going into that amount of posting and back and forth with the bots. Especially for the little profit that it ends up making.

You're going to get this sort of thing one any social media platform, but I guess the money attached to it makes things a bit different here. Personally, I would have given up long ago for the amount of money it makes, but this user lives in a country where the money has more value. Looking at it that way, it seems greedy of us to try and stop them from having that money. What if it's the only thing feeding their family at the moment, or the only thing which might get them out of a poverty cycle? You never know...

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(Edited)

Yeah, I'm not moved by that idea at all. It makes the site trashy, absolutely does make a profit and stops real effort from being rewarded.

He made $7ish on this post alone he is doing it 10 times a day and has a higher rep than I do after 3 years. He is in full powerdown and has $8k SP. That puts him in a top earner category.

There is no excuse to allow this to go on. I think your words are kind but based on that thinking no one can build anything that rewards.

Also in his poor country there are people trying to make a living and doing it with honest effort not scams. Even here on the site. He can screw himself.

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Just this week he has over 500 USD coming in rewards out of the inflation pool. And he is only half way though upvoting them.

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I can't help myself, but wonder where others are coming from. Often there's more to a behaviour than we know. The scale they're doing it on its much smaller than some do, or is that only because they're blacklisted from the other bots?

How do you find all this information? Is there a way to see how much someone is taking out of their account? The wallet is limited now and you can't see past recent transactions. I think a lot of us are limited in how well we can work out what's going on, because we don't know where or how to look.

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I also try to understand, but I don't have tolerance for making excuses to continue bad behavior. You can get most of this info from steemworld.org

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Especially for the little profit that it ends up making.

This is the great thing, it takes very little in terms of downvotes to make it unprofitable.

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Exactly who do you think is going to downvote the biggest stake holders abusing this site? They come up with the stupidest ideas sometimes.

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Honestly though, we have a lot of impoverished Steemians in countries where earnings go further, and they get more support from the community when they honestly interact rather than scam. How much support has been shown to our friends in Venezuela who are going through hell right now, or love for @schoolforsdg4 that helps kids in a slum, or how many Steemians earn by participating in #cleanplanet from poor countries (a lot!)? Being an impoverished person in a rich country even, Steemians have been amazing to me too.
Back during the ATH, we had a big turnout for the #ophumanangels community. There were legitimate participants, and scammers. The legit OHAers got some nice rewards, and the scammers got flags. They would whine about how mean we were, even after we had explained and used Google Translate and the legit OHAers who spoke the same language explained that just do a random act of kindness, that's what the tag is about. But they would still rather scam and expected rewards. Even as people from their same city/area said just don't scam. It wasn't their only or even their best option to scam, but they did it anyway.

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I've noticed these people too. Occasionally I will go on a frenzy downvoting them. Can't wait for it to be free.
I wonder if these clowns will retaliate now that it's free?
If you can afford Internet access, you can afford to behave yourself.

My idea is for someome to just make a bot we can all give posting permission to and they can go after these fools with our combined free downvotes. Obviously they stop at 250% a day, but if it gets enough sp it may be effective.

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We will have 2.5 free votes a day. Mine are worth around .30 cents. So if the whales don't actually curate it solves almost nothing.

I don't care about revenge flags because if we take the profit out of this for a while these people will be gone. I can outlast them. I already DV with about 10 percent of my power.

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I think you are right, bottom line is unless all the bidbots become responsible like some of them are....we have a hopeless situation. Many of the people delegating are inactive and the bid bots dont care.

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I've delegated to accounts that flag abuse with no expectations of getting anything back. The Steem 'crab bucket' model is not dealing with such abuse.

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When I firdt heard aviut the crab bucket I laughed. I don't vote out of jealousy.

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It's not necessarily about jealousy. Voting redistributes the rewards and that can be up or down.

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I always thought about the crab bucket as the crabs don't want the one crab to escape even though it won't really affect the fate of those still in the bucket. Actually, it will make the bucket less crowded. Oh I'm definitely overthinking this.

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(Edited)

yep cant afford it.

i downvoted someone from trending in SPORTS token yesterday (which only made a dent based on my token amount) but then felt bad because i wiped all his STEEM and PAL votes out lol.

Ended up reversing the decision. - me thinks this will need to be fixed or it will make us all have multiple accounts for every fricken new token

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(Edited)

@whatsup,
Honestly my bot SPs are not truly enough to reduce his SP, anyway I will make one to start down voting these type of people!
!trendotoken
!dramatoken

Cheers~

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It looks like in the Steem universe, just as in society there has to be some policing against the psychopaths and sociopaths that make like more difficult for everyone.

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The downvote pool is not going to fix things like this. The best way to stop this type of behavior is to increase the legitimate demand for the service that the voting bots provide. That service is advertising.

The cost of that advertising is based on a market. There is a limited vote value among the bots, which is the supply, and the people buying the votes is the demand. Right now the demand is so low that buying votes is profitable - meaning that bots are effectively paying you to use them.

If the situation were reversed and there were more legitimate brands or businesses that wanted to promote their posts to trending, then buying votes would cost money - which is how it's supposed to be.

If that were the case, then only people who could actually get value out of promoting their posts (i.e. they have something actually valuable to promote) would pay for the service.

So tl;dr to fix the problem we need to get more legitimate demand for advertising on Steem-based sites.

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I agree the downvote pool isn't going to fix it.

I also agree more demand would help.

So would bidbot owners taking responsibilty or stakeholders flagging

I just can't see new traffic coming. I guess we all just wish..

If only there had been more demand to watch this BS. ;)

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We had it, but it was kneecapped.
Intentionally, imo.

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Or, the bid bots could require rewards to be declined.
The post still trend and get their 'advertising', but their impact on the rest of us would end.

That will never happen because we all know that the true value of advertising here zero.
Very few of us follow what is happening on trending.

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It's true. Trending is really followed by very few people. Most people think Trending is crap and will steer clear of it and only look at their follower's posts.

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(Edited)

If they only gave votes to posts with declined rewards or 100% SP it would help as there would be less Steem available to keep buying them. Unfortunately some of them have no morals about who or what they vote on. This harms the image of Steem and the morale of those trying to make it work.

As it stands being on Trending has little benifit as most big users don't look at it. We know it's mostly trash there. I get to see stuff through it being resteemed.

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Yep, feeds are where i get things.
Resteems do help me find things.

Let's just hope the folks that did to golos what they did can't do it here, too.

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(Edited)

85% of my interactions happen via my feed. The rest via dApps. Sometimes I check "New".
If you had something to advertise... Steemit has banners now ;)
Advertising is not an argument I buy

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Advertising was an afterthought.
After folks got riled up over the change to pay to play, 'advertising' got the masses back on their porches.

It never was anything more than cover.

Who are they advertising to?
@noganoo's 80k accounts?
Ned?
The ~1200 users?

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(Edited)

Prediction: People can't be bothered to downvote and the arrival of a downvote pool will not change that.
Prediction: The proposed HF will change nothing but bot settings.
Prediction: As long as delegations and bidbots are allowed to exist, the current charade will continue.

API keys that are given freely but can be revoked when used to interfere with curation are starting to look better and better, but centralised therefore bad, of course, and not technically possible. Pffrt.

We are trying to solve problems with the same way of thinking that got us into trouble in the first place. Downvote delegation and bots, hilarious. Bots against bots, place your bets, and let the highest stake win. Pull your heads out already, so you can see the outside world laughing at you.

But while we're at it, can somebody make a repost bot that reposts all my content from the day I started posting here onwards, at a rate of 4 postings a day? The up- and downvote bots can then fight over those postings, and we can have popcorn and watch. That's entertainment; advertisers will be flocking to Steemit in droves.

Anything for a dramatoken, there is that too, of course.

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Delegation is a useful tool, but everything can be abused. Tweaking the as algorithm cannot prevent abuse totally, but reducing the profitability of using bots might improve things.

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Here's another. Unless the vote sellers will blacklist this will continue. Efforts like Steemflagrewards cannot cope with them. We could flag the vote sellers to get their attention, but some might retaliate.

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Those 2.5 downvotes will be sold in the market along with upvotes.

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I'm glad you pointed this out because Im someone who is very against downvotes and thought I would never use one. But this is a perfect example of why it makes sense and would applaud the downvote of this content. However, I believe that judging the value of someone's content not worth arguing over. I mean I don't believe someone should downvote an actifit post or a funny picture of someone's pet. Facebook, Istagram and Twitter have spent a decade training people how to consume and share content. It's mainly short form low quality and that is fine with me. I think there is a place for it here. That is what worries me about downvote abuse. But if someone uses a bot to promote something like that I think it should be downvoted into oblivion. If their followers want to vote on it because they like it I'm all for it.

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Actually very well stated. I agree. I'm not worried because I think the community will acclimate to flags as they become more common.

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I raised these accounts months ago and no one cares as everyone is too busy trying to get their own bit of the pie. People care enough to bring this to our attention but not enough to create a community to do anything about it. As far as I'm aware, no one has even got them to verify the Steem account owner is actually the same as the the you tube owner.
The HF won't make any difference as to stop this abuse it will still take someone with massive SP.....or is this abuse? or is this legitimate use of the system? Does no engagement mean no reward?

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The kind of behaviour of these types of posters is the reason why a lot of folks outside the steem community turn their noses up at it. Thanks for calling them out!

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Thanks for pointing this one out, you know what's going to happen next don't you? :)

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Nothing! :)

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Oh come, you know I flag stuff all the time, now there's SFR tokens to be gained. It's good to know about any crap you find..., I will check this one out later as I'm at work now.

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I have no idea about the first link you put up as I don't read a foreign language but as far as the second link if he wrote it himself it's ten times better quality then anything I've ever seen you post, if we are going by quality then I'd think you'd have to go before he does in that regard with this particular account. What about that Chbartish dude or something like that, he's on trending all the time ranking in hundreds for content similar to what this guys second link put out. I've seen him write two, three paragraphs of his supposed touchy, feel-ly stuff and rake in four hundred bucks.

Do I think people will downvote? Not a chance on your life except those who'll write the same two, three paragraph junk like CHbartist or whatever his name is and get flagged for it when CHbartist doesn't so they'll get up set and revenge flag until someone comes along with a lot of power, considers them a nuisance and flags them then places a warning that anyone responding to these post will also be flagged.

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On the second link he is translating articles in some manner.

No I don't think anyone will actually downvote or not for more than a few days.

!dramatoken

For slinging an insult in. But also it made me smile. :)

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An insult?...and here I thought I was being nice, an insult would have been telling you when I see your postings images of the Aflec duck fledgling around comes to mind...

giphy (3).gif

lol

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Unfortunately there's so little many of us can do, and only a select few of whales can really combat such high upvotes. Usually I downvote any blatant spam I come across but if the upcoming reward is so high, higher than my voting capabilities, I have to ignore it and just continue using that SP on those who do deserve it.

I somewhat support EIP but this is something I can't argue against.

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I'm curious what the ROI is on his bids. Must be tiny if not negative right? It's a shame I'm too lazy to do math. Death to bid bots! I hope they shift over to supporting curation guilds or slowly bleed out after the HF.

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Hi, @whatsup!

You just got a 0.26% upvote from SteemPlus!
To get higher upvotes, earn more SteemPlus Points (SPP). On your Steemit wallet, check your SPP balance and click on "How to earn SPP?" to find out all the ways to earn.
If you're not using SteemPlus yet, please check our last posts in here to see the many ways in which SteemPlus can improve your Steem experience on Steemit and Busy.

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