#NewSteem Is Actually Having an Effect on Bid Bot Usage!

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(Edited)

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For all the criticism the latest Hard Fork has received, regarding diminished payouts, it has also had a significant effect on bid bot usage. I think most people can agree that it's quite nice to see more organically upvoted posts hit the Trending page. That's not all though, SmartSteem has also decided to move away from the bid-bot model & focus more on manual curation.

I would never have thought that we'd see such a big difference so soon after the new HF was implemented. The people utilizing bid bots on a daily basis have now either stopped or they've declined payouts on their posts. The ones that still use bid bots, have seen a massive increase in downvotes. The quality of the Trending page has improved greatly, in my opinion at least.


Bot Vote Statistics

I'm not great with statistics, heck, the one time I tried to query the Steem blockchain I failed epically & decided it wasn't worth the effort since there are other people who are much better at it. There's one person who has been posting daily statistics for ages now, I highly suggest you follow him and upvotes his posts! I'm talking about @penguinpablo of course, his statistics show a clear decline of bot votes.

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The data in the image above shows the percentage of paid bot votes for the past 8 days. Do check out his original post, it includes much more statistics, plus you can also see the decline on a graph. I'm not including everything here, so you still have a reason to have a look at his post.

Now, compare those stats with these ones from the beginning of August, pretty significant difference I would say. We're not even at the 2-week mark yet from when the new HF was implemented and yet we're seeing such a decline in paid votes already.

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I'd actually suggest to @penguinpablo to also add downvote statistics to his posts, that would be very interesting to look at these days! If anyone has access to those statistics from the previous months, so share them, I'd love to be able to compare those.

Need for Promotion

I do understand that there actually is a need for people to promote their posts, but it's clear that the Steem community is now stepping away from the bid bot approach. This recent post from @theycallmedan had some really interesting discussion about that in the comments below.

One interesting suggestion I had seen there, was basically to revamp the native Steem promotion mechanism, to include posts from the Promotion page on the Trending page.

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In general, I do think Dan has made a great overall point with his post. Now, I personally think that there needs to be something better than bid bots in place, but his general plea for a promotional tool that takes quality into account does resonate with me. It's these sorts of discussions we need to have at this point, now that the bid bot issue is lack into the limelight.


Conclusion

For me, this current HF is one of the most interesting ones to see unfold. I'm particularly stoked to see if these effects will remain in the long term or if it's just temporary. I had always been of the mindset that something had to change and while I wasn't 100% sure that this HF would be the perfect solution, I was actually completely in favour of it for a long time.

Now that I'm witnessing the effects firsthand, yes I have actually received a bit more downvotes too, I'm sure that this was the right move to make. My rewards have gone up in general and I don't mind people downvoting if they really don't like a post I've made. It's a necessary curation tool in my opinion and that's what proof of brain is all about.

While I wasn't really against all uses of bid bots, I was very concerned about the influence they had over the Trending page. It's good to see that their influence has decreased quite a bit!

Do let me know how you feel about paid votes and if you've also seen a change!



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15 comments
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This « bid-bot era » ending was EXACTLY what I was waiting for.
I used them as most Steemians to showcase my best posts but I am so happy to see that interactions increased between Steemians since HF 21 👌.
This is the real value of the STEEM ecosystem. I see old bidbots now actively curating, I see 🐳 also doing it and I feel some bug SP holder that posted « average » content just to gain steem now prefer curating.
The feed is way better than just a few weeks ago and it will only increase in my opinion.
#newsteem will make « STEEM great again » 😂

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I'm glad you've noticed as well, was kinda gauging whether other people had also noticed a difference. So it's good to hear that I'm not completely off base with my assessment ;)

Yeah, I'm seeing much more curation happening and that was exactly what Steem needed IMO.

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It is kind of old ecosystem slowly developing upon....good to see whales coming out from everywhere to support the content and motivate the user

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I'm not altogether huge into bid bots but I have to admit to using one recently @tipu (is that a bid bot?) I don't go for huge paydays or to make a trending/promotion, I just want a little more of the #newsteem pie. It that so different then when larger account self-vote their way to a nice payday?

I could also look at @tipu as a investment (tokens earned) and maybe that's not the right way of looking at it. I don't know, I'm still new to the idea of using my steem and steep power as investment tools.

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Actually this new steem, i guess it will take some weeks to settle down and fill in properly. Looking at it, does it means that any steemians why buy a vote from bidbots due to a post, the post will be flagged?

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The bidbot effect have been gradually been decreasing which is good and i hope it continues like that. But ehat i am afraid of now is the possibility of flagwar break out by some ehaled

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@daan this is a great improvement to the Steem environment.

This also can allow for human-oriented curation programs to develop, such as our decentralized curation community project called the HoboDAO. This community intends on utilizing multisignature accounts to form a DAO (decentralized autonomous organization) on Steem with different kinds of members operating the DAO.

Casters are our human curators. A collective of Steemians that are not bots but real humans reviewing content that is submitted to the HoboDAO using our utility token called the Hobo token.

We reward delegators to this decentralized curation account with Hobo tokens, and tokens are used to cover submission fees. Although there are fees, it is not like a bot service that is just about money.

This program we have is human-powered, and focused on quality content. Submissions are not guaranteed curation support, but cover the fee needed to maintain operations so that our curators are incentivized to review submitted content and decide on the daily top 5 posts to reward with curation and additional token rewards. So this is a daily contest with only the highest quality posts submitted receiving rewards and increased visibility.

Want to know more about this project or get involed? Join our discord chat area:

https://discord.gg/sgHyY6c - HoboDAO Discord Server

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Hi @daan!

Your post was upvoted by @steem-ua, new Steem dApp, using UserAuthority for algorithmic post curation!
Your UA account score is currently 4.416 which ranks you at #2413 across all Steem accounts.
Your rank has dropped 1 places in the last three days (old rank 2412).

In our last Algorithmic Curation Round, consisting of 128 contributions, your post is ranked at #24.

Evaluation of your UA score:
  • Some people are already following you, keep going!
  • The readers appreciate your great work!
  • Try to work on user engagement: the more people that interact with you via the comments, the higher your UA score!

Feel free to join our @steem-ua Discord server

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I did use bid bots early on but stopped using them just because for me it wasnt what I wanted to do and I am kind of glad that the numbers are dropping for use of them and I hope it keeps going down

I have seen a drop in returns for posts bbut not as bad as I was expecting and luckily haven't been hit with any downvotes of consequence, I will say yet as I am sure it will happen

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Thank you so much for participating in the Partiko Delegation Plan Round 1! We really appreciate your support! As part of the delegation benefits, we just gave you a 3.00% upvote! Together, let’s change the world!

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I keep seeing the statistics and keep thinking "meh" bid bots took up less than 1% of the votes and now they do even less.

Never saw it as much as a problem because of those statistics.


Posted via Marlians.com
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I never used bid bots, or really liked them. I liked the interaction and everyone getting out there and mingling!

Hey! This is social media!

!tip

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Is there a way to see if you have been downvoted at all without having to go to each individual post? I am pretty low self esteem, so I am sure I have been down voted a ton! :) It is exciting to see the changes that are taking place. This is definitely more visible than the changes with HF 20.

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