On bidbots and EIP
Let me start by saying I already think that the EIP and SPS has been a huge success. Trending is drastically different, whales are re-engaging on the platform, we've already seen the first proposal start to get funding, and we've also seen proposals without community funding kept from receiving funds. My post rewards seem a little down, but my curation is way up. Seems like a great balance and these are great signs. While even some of the witnesses that voted for it didn't think it would make much difference I have been and continue to be a vocal proponent. It's good and this is better.
tl;dr
if a post adds value please don't flag it even when it's bidbotted, especially if it isn't excessively botted
Yesterday
Yesterday I put up a post about a lot of work I had done, showed results of a new working node for the ecosystem, put out some initial thoughts about ways to improve the ecosystem, used a handful of bidbots, and got some pretty large flags and also some pretty large support. I expected some flags. That's the nature of the beast right now, but I'd like to provide some thoughts on flags and bot use.
In the beginning there was vote swapping
It didnt' take much to figure out that vote swapping was rampant on the system. Mined stake and even steemit stake was being put back and forth on circle jerk posts. New users sometimes caught a rare vote, but the exponential rewards curve made that severely punished. If you voted on a new post by a new author your rewards were literally crippled. So, the voting was largely insiders helping one another.
Dr. Otto
A major change happened when @inertia coded up the first bidbot. As an alpha it was awesome. It took the vote swapping circle jerk out of the back rooms and made it so anyone could get the vote. Steeming went from a back room deal to anyone with money could get their post seen.
Linear Rewards
When linear rewards first hit there were no downvotes. So, now everything became about upvoting content indiscriminately. Get your return, get your money by posting, but that also affected the whales. For them to get their return they passively sold off all their votes and leased all their SP.
The resulting ecosystem became a shitshow of figuring out how to leech rewards fastest through the least amount of work possible.
Linear Rewards with Downvotes (EIP)
The biggest change to me is the free downvotes. Now people can freely determine what is good content and what is bad content. This is an extremely subjective field, and I would argue is really hard to pin down to any one thing. Generally speaking though posts about things or that are things that add value to the ecosystem are "good posts," posts that are about personal matters or only really effect a small group of people are "neutral posts," and one liners with a cat meme that are designed to leech rewards are "bad posts."
good posts add value neutral posts don't add much value, but don't harm the ecosystem bad posts leech rewards
Bid bot usage
Over the last week it's been startling to see bidbots with vote windows that go unused. Many in the ecosystem I'm sure will stand and say "this is amazing, fuck them, glad to see those fucking bots gone." I'm not one of them. Bid bots played a role in getting my posts seen and that of others around here. It helped me get the audience I benefit from now. It would be disingenuous of me to turn around and say "hey fucktards, don't use bidbots you'll ruin the ecosystem."
Bidbots have a place. They are the first businesses on the blockchain. It's literally a whole industry complete with tens of millions of SP. They can also be used to help posts, projects, and people get seen.
If your goal is to run off the bidbots I think that's equivalent to your goal being to run off whales who want a passive investment here. I prefer to keep investors on and in the Steem ecosystem.
Sustainable bidbot usage
Yesterday on my post about the work I had done for the benefit of SM and SE as well as trying to figure out how to make the ecosystem as a whole not be reliant on steemit nodes and how to make it easy for new apps I decided to use 3 bots.
I used minnowsupport, not so much as because I needed the vote, but because I wanted to support the community.
I used a relatively small vote from therising because it was available right that second, and I put upmewhale on it as a single large vote to get it promoted. The last one worked to immediately get it into hot. And then it also worked surprisingly to get it to the bottom of trending.
These days when I try to promote something to trending I'm typically aiming for spot 4. It gets it on the wall, and I don't have to get it all the way to the top.
I think this is a reasonable approach.
Bot usage wasn't zero, but it wasn't maxed out. The post was well written and details a lot of work and also includes a new tool to the ecosystem that others can start to use and Privex is already making available to others.
Flagged anyway
These guys have a right to flag. I actually support the flagging. I'm even happy to get flagged myself. This is how this shit works now. But I think the standards of the whales aren't exactly right just yet. That's ok, we're a week deep into EIP and honestly the fact that they are voting at all and not just being completely passive is a huge win.
Here's my ask though. Not all bidbotted posts have to get flagged. When flagging ask "did this post provide value to the ecosystem." If the answer is yes, and especially if the botting is outrageous then please let the post stand. If the answer is "No, I don't see value here" then please nuke it.
Good curation is about discriminating between posts with and without value
Indiscriminate upvotes don't differ that much from indiscriminate flags to me. So, just flagging everything because it's botted seems like the opposite of linear rewards and just flags everywhere instead of votes everywhere won't help curation much.
Bots investors are stakeholders and wear a ton of risk
I agree that having them get 90% returns versus holding your own stake and voting reasonably would be bad, but I trust the downvote economy to prevent complete gaming of the bots anymore. I'm hoping for an equilibrium where bot investors can be here, invest in steem, remain passive, maybe get slightly more for their curation rewards for their risk and their stake, but not have it be automatic. Bad bots that indiscriminately vote should see small returns. Good bots that force standards and practices should get higher returns.
There's a reasonable zone where bots, whales, flags, and promotion can coexist. I think the trick is asking "did this provide value." Please take that one question into consideration when botting or flagging.
tl;dr
if a post adds value please don't flag it even when it's bidbotted
Can't some "vote swapping" just be people voting for content of their friends?
It's not all bad. I only pass out votes to stuff I like, from people I trust.
I like posts about politics, not kittens. So I'll mostly only ever be voting for a small number of users.
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This whole topic feels weird to me because I've been on both sides; on the promotion- and on the curation side. So I can understand both points of views.
Of course, people simply want to "earn" with their Steempower, that's why they delegate to bid-bots, but accepting it as status quo since there is seemingly nothing better available right now, is a massive jump backwards. If there's nothing available, then let's build it. We finally got the SPS. We can fund things.
Either proof-of-brain works and upvotes are only distributed via that method, or it doesn't and we should get rid of the inflation.
If this is about promotion, then there's already a way out: promotion via burning where posts are mixed with the normal trending/hot page (see SCOT).
If this is about giving people a way to earn with their investment: implement a staking option with increased staking inflation on the blockchain is a much better option IMO. That way, people could decide whether they want to use their Steempower to curate content OR if they want to lock it away and be rewarded with a steady amount of revenue. This would require another HF and probably another reduction in author/curator rewards, but the pie slices would become bigger.
One of the biggest problems I see with the bid-bot/promotion model, is the fact that nobody talks about it. It's a gray area and when someone asks why they should buy Steem, power it up and hold Steempower: "Well, you can earn even more Steem with it. Either you do the 'right' thing and curate content, or delegate your Steempower to a bid-bot. You'll then be seen as a greedy whale, but oh well."
Maybe it's just me, but sticking to bid-bots feels very backwards to me.
I started to pull back some delegations in order to get myself into curating more actively and I feel this can be a new beginning where I can organically get more followers who engage with my posts as oppose to just look for their votes to get me rewards. In the long run I think this can be the starting point for a good part of newbies to the crypto world and I would like to have a better reputation and audience to when that day comes. I think bid-bots felt like the only way to go in the past and I think it feels good to get rid of that idea at least partially. As a developer I made a few front runners and other small bots to counter the huge bid-bots and I always felt I couldn't fight against them, today I think I can just ignore them and focus on other stuff that might produce more benefits to myself.
There would have been so many options to decrease the efficiency of Bid-Bots - if really needed. Actually they might become STEEM Banks in the end, isn't that funny?
In the end the market will decide, now that the market has the ability to decide.
In my opinion, people are growing weary of accounts with massive amounts of STEEM telling them what's good for them, especially when those voices seek to preserve the old way of doing things. People with massive amounts of STEEM taking an about-face with their actions are really resonating right now. A lot of that pent up #oldsteem apathy is falling away, and people are being energized for change.
Your recent actions have shown that you chose to be at the vanguard instead of trying to dig in, which should be applauded.
This. Has anyone tried to pull request this feature into Steemit itself? Is Steemit Inc. receptive to that model? Failing that, if bidbots are about promotion, I think they should be revenue negative at outset. Just as the community began to enforce bidbots narrowing their vote windows to not vote on content late in the 7 day period, we could equally enforce standards that bidbot votes should result in an initial 20% loss on investment. In what world are advertisers paid to run their ads? If a promoted post can’t make up the difference through organic votes that follow then it deserves to lose money.
I also don’t see bidbots as a respectable use of passive investor delegation. With the rise of projects that pay out a fair share of curation rewards, like Actifit, Wherein, etc. as well as new passive curation services like Curangel, I don’t think it’s beneficial to encourage bidbots as investment opportunities.
The “next EIP” doesn’t need to be a hardfork. It should be a combination of revamping the inbuilt promoted post/Steem burn system, promoting new organic curation/passive investment models, and enforcing community standards on revenue negative bidbot expectations, if simple changes to promoted posts don’t greatly reduce bidbot usage on their own... which I actually believe they would.
Thank you for being rational and working towards new steem.. Don't know if you'll see this since you muted me ages ago, but nonetheless I'm happy to see you're moving forward. It would be great to see you reply to traf in your recent post about burning and smartsteem curation.
In regards to this post I think with your following and almost rock star of steem status your desire to top trending by buying it was excessive and I'm glad it did not work out the way you intended.. Have some faith in the system and if a, post adds value it will be resteemed, discussed, and rewarded appropriately..
I also think you have mistakenly said if the botting is outrageous do not flag it, when of course you meant to say "not outrageous" I think this is as subjective as anything else and IMHO and others we felt coming from you it was indeed outrageous. If only because you're highly regarded and get plenty of eyes so not showing our dissatisfaction on your methods would be a disservice to not just steem but also you as its not a good look for new steem..
Great bots got you where you are you say, move on and trust your following and your peers, or maybe you don't? I dunno
So many people are now forced to judge what is good or bad content, that can't be healthy.
Look at the hundreds of thousands of professional content creators all over the world (not on STEEM), they all use bought clicks and likes and they all have irrational high value even on some super small posts. If they try STEEM now, they will just get burned brutally. On top of that, the general mood here is going straight down the drain, isn't it glorious.
Not every content creator is doing that!
you choose the %, it's a lot of them
@aggroed this is a really good topic to discuss as my reply to @therealwolf , I had the need to pull back some delegations and also hoping to start building up my account organically and specially increasing the curation part of it. I feel this should come naturally to those steemians who care about the platform. I also have a few friends who started to engage more with projects like @steemleo (looking at you @jrb450) so it seems that the whole #newsteem is getting there and hopefully be able to attract, keep and sustain growth for a wide variety of people and interests. Hopefully the usage of bid-bots will be in the past and many other good bots and projects will keep adding the value they hoped!.
Yes, this needs to be said thanks Aggroed. Excessive bids on mediocre posts for profit had to end. Promotional posts on decent content is fine. For a while there people were mostly using bidbots to profit. Without paid advertising in the form of bid bots Steem won't work.
I've been flagging people who are using tags inappropriately. Steem Engine brought about many tribes and people are cross posting in hopes of getting rewards, this is far worse for Steem. I don't want to seen an actifit post when I search for economics.
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But they're investing in their health 😂
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Bid-Bots are like "Money", you can use them in a good and reasonable way or in a corrupt and foolish way. Nevertheless, I think we would be better without them. Though, I'm not hating on them as long their not overused.
Love the problem, not the solution.
People holding on to the idea of bidbots are not trying to solve any problems that Steem has or move things forward, only clinging to "solutions" that brought as least as many new problems with them as they solved... (The fact that things sucked more before bidbots is not an argument for bidbots). Bidbots as we have known them over the last 2 years will habe to adopt or die.
And no, there are 0 reasons to think that the millions of SP delegated to them would be dumped if that happened. And yes, it would be better for Steem long term of the few "investors" who don't see any reasons to be there other than the "passive income" they get from delegating to bidbots (it is not btw) were to dump and be gone. Else they will by definition need to dump more STEEM than they brought in for their "ROI" to be positive, so what's the point? A Steem where bidbots as we know them is a "major industry" is effectively just a ponzi where entrants depend on more people coming in after them to run a system that has proved to produce no value...
I am curious if you read the comments to your previous article?
In short: Yes, there is room for paid promotion on Steem. And yes, we need ways for people who want to get seen to break through the ceiling of the same circle-jerks on trending. So let's focus on building the most value-adding, sustainable solutions to those problems, rather than holding on to bad "solutions" that contributed to sending STEEM from #20 to #80 in marketcap in the first place.
Hear hear!!! it would be great to see some engagement from the original poster.. 🤔
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This...
He did read them ofc. Hes ignoring them and trying to power through it repeating his narrative and ignoring the responses, even if he might reply to them.
Its politics at its most basic. He has a following and will try and push the agenda on them, after time with his following attract a few bigger accounts, etc. and try to make his vision of breaking up the core downvoting group a reality.
That way bots will get a chance to be profitable again.
I think you meant to say:
Sometimes the author was the one being upvoted and not the post. But if the post is not spam then it has to get flagged but if it is not then it is okay to promote it via bidbots but subject to the terms of the bidbots.
The value of a post is subjected but the problem is that not all agree in the same opinion about that factor. So with that a common sense should be observed.
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Non-linear payout system is the one thing I dislike about HF21. Most of my posts get less than $2 before the hardfork. Now if a post is less than 20 STEEM it'll get even less.
Now I'm forced to use upvote bots (though I'll try to be fair about it.)
A silver lining for me is eSteem points system... Now I can collect points and use them for one big upvote once in a while. (I hope my posts are good enough not to get flagged.)
I see the value of the new downvoting system, but I am yet to use my downvotes due to lack of time since I spend 24 hours a day playing Steemmonsters. Is there a downvoting pool I can delegate my downvotes to?
I think there soon will be many such initiatives
Check out @howo for example, I think he runs a downvote trail
EDIT: He created and maintains a tool that allows everyone to easily trail the downvotes of others here https://downvotecontrol.com
Downvotes are a very healthy part of the ecosystem and act as a check and balance to keep post rewards honest. People who are unable or unwilling to directly participate in downvoting are strongly encouraged to use one of these new services.
I don't run a downvote trail but maintain a tool to easily trail people :) https://downvotecontrol.com
Even better
Sorry I actually knew that, I just got lazy and inaccurate with my explanation.
Edited. And it's a fantastic tool. We definitely need stuff like this to keep everyone honest for this place to function
Because as we already know, either we successfully keep pretty much everyone honest, or over time no one is going to be honest and that just completely undermines any value this platform has to offer.
Thanks for the kind words :)
I think we need to have as many downvoting tools as possible because there is a ton of sp in small accounts with 500-2000 sp that don't care about downvoting themselves but if they all start trailing people, this sp can quickly add up to be a huge force.
Obviously we will have teething problems, but I have to admit, things are starting to look up.
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Do you have charts or data on the reduction of the vote of bots - where can I see?
if the content on the platform is going to contribute to bringing the 'masses' to the platform the variety and depth is what is going to make a difference.
Any well written post which serves to draw a group of people's interest and keep them here contributing adds value to the ecosystem.
You might consider personal posts or posts that serve what you think is a small niche to be 'neutral', the fact is those are often the posts that draw the largest response from mainstream audiences.
The type of post is not near as important as them being well written and well presented.
Sure, but the value isn't in the personal post as much as the ability to gather a larger audience. I accept eyeballs as a good indicator of value. So, if the post is about something personal that then gets a lot of attention rather than say it's a neutral because of it's content I'd say it's valuable because of the attention. Either way I think we get to the same point. Eyeballs = value.
the eyeballs don't get onto the content without the awareness of curators which is what drives content discovery on this platform. Referring to posts like that as neutral sends the message they should be treated less by curators. The quality of the writing aka the presentation of the message is important. When curating with an eye to content discovery for larger audiences, that needs to count strongly.
On Medium which manages to attract 93million visits a month with a paywall beyond 3 views a month for non-members a post about Medium has to be really well written to even get curated. The team of curators focus on well written content in each topic. They are well aware that is what is bringing eyeballs to the site.
I am going to have to strongly disagree with you on what you consider posts of value, or not.
I am not a judge of art and many posts that we consider short, or simple, are art. AND they do bring value to the ecosystem.
Some might consider Actifit or posts about Steemmonsters to bring no value to the ecosystem.
Who are they to judge?
Seems to me, the ecosystem voted to give ALL USERS, two free downvotes.
thinking more on it, there is value when a post is extremely poignant, even if it really only reaches a small group, or as you say, neutral.
It's valuable both to the content creator, and the small group. AND deserves upvotes there.
Human curation services as contest systems can work better. Why not learn about how the HoboDAO plans on curating content using real humans and not bots and doing it in a decentralized way.
Feel free to check out this post:
Why Give A HOOT About The HoboDAO?
I was really surprised when I saw them downvoting/flagging that post. It was of huge value to steem. They treated it like spam in a steem engine tribe. But hey at least we know people are doing the do to make new steem what they hope it should be.
"good posts add value neutral posts don't add much value, but don't harm the ecosystem bad posts leech rewards"
Although you said that the value of posts is very subjective, I am reminded about a post some time back where one user argued that it would be hard for every post to have "high" value. The example was reddit: it basically just consists of memes or pictures without any text.
So can we automatically assume that posting one picture without text is bad? And are we perhaps preventing thereby the on boarding of the masses as it won't be possible to just have posts of "high" value? Or to put it another way: aren't the 1 picture/meme posts what a lot of people on social media want?
You made absolutely no valuable points here and all of them have been already tackled in your bidbotted post, in the comment section.
Again, youre trying to power through the answers given to you and ignore them by relying on your reputation.
Your choice, i just hope people dont buy it.
Dont go soft folks.
I do agree that they were addressed in that post, especially in the conversation between smooth and thecryptodrive
I fail to see the argument. Bidbots were generally accepted, but as they actually do ruin the Steem eco-system they have to go. The SP will have to be invested in new ideas.
People who used horse-carriage never told themselves they were ruining the carriage industry when buying a car, neither should they, nor should you.
Sustainable bidbot usage is standing with one leg in the past, better to invent some better way of promoting posts that does not undermine the proof of brain concept.
Surely it's clear by now that you can't have a voting market scheme that on the one hand pays people to promote, and on the other hand pays vote sellers almost as much as fully self voting without the entire system eroding over time.
If you use a bid bot, you're by definition obtaining a vote that would not have come your way had you not paid for it. This puts you at an unfair advantage over those who rely purely on organic votes which undermines the proof of brain process.
Economically, it's far more harmful. If I could make more selling my vote than curation, then what the hell would I be curating for? Then if over time every stakeholder decided to sell their votes, who's going to vote for actual worthwhile content? If no one votes for them, why would anyone bother to create them? It's just a downward spiral that leads down the same shit's creek which we're far too familiar with already.
There's a place for promotion but the method can't involve directly out-competing the very process that provides this blockchain its core value: honest curation.
Something similar to what you said about burning to have your post features is likely fine, as is literally an infinite other set of ideas that don't undermine curation. Bid bots or other vote selling networks however, are not among them. They're just glorified self voting/circle jerk groups and need to stop if this place is to have a chance to function at all.