I've been blogging here on this blockchain for almost 7 years now and for as long as I can remember there have always been Bots making Comments on posts. Most of the time there is some support or promotion involved and you kind of get used to them because they're adding value in some way.
For a long time I've always made it policy to Upvote ALL the Human Comments on my posts because Firstly - I like to encourage engagement and reward people who add value to my post by making good comments and Secondly - it pushes the human comments above all the bot comments so that readers don't have to wade through the spam to get to the extra value of the human comments...but lately this isn't really working because of the emergence of this new breed of Tip Bots
Now I don't want to be an asshole here because I do appreciate getting Upvotes and Tips in various tokens, but lately I've noticed a lot of people using these Tip Bots on my posts where the bots drop fat comment replies in the middle of the comment feed and yet the tokens they are proudly promoting are worth almost nothing. I'd say...less than Dust.
To be brutally honest, I really don't understand why people are using these Tip Bots because I can't personally see any value in them. Of course I want people to still be commenting on my posts, but because the Tip Bot Comments are coming in as replies to Human Comments (rather than just to my post) I can't just push them down to the bottom of my feed by upvoting all the Human Comments. The Bot Comments get a free ride to the top since they are attached to the Human Comments.
What should I do about this? I'm tempted to start Flagging the Bot Comments because eventually they might become invisible, but maybe I should just stop upvoting Human Comments that are summoning these bots? Can anyone explain why these Tip Bots are getting such wide usage so that I can understand better, or suggest a better way for me to curate my comments and yet still encourage engagement on my posts?
I felt the same way, especially about some of the really useless ones, but then I got sucked up in these tips as many started using them .. I bought some tokens, and joined. Then I decided to sell a few again because I didn't see the point. Only have Pimp, LOH, pizza and luv left (will not tip you to avoid annoyance lol, I see @trumpman is doing that already, he likes to push the buttons)..
In the end, the only tokens of these that I have affinity with is PIMP and LOH (ladies of Hive) so I will personally probably end up using 3 (later when I reach 200k) 4 tips of PIMP a day plus a few Lady tips..
What I find most annoying is when people only leave a tip comment without any actual human interaction (like @trumpman) is doing below, haha.
I'll try to remember not to tip you from now on.. thanks for letting us know!
Glad I'm not the only one who feels this way. Thanks for the comment.
Like I said, I got a bit carried away myself and then realized hmm, this could be a reason that people start ignoring the content. I cut everything in half already but I can totally see how it looks spammy in the whole comment section sometimes if there is not much other engagement.
You made me rethink things again because the last thing I want is to annoy others by showing up to leave a comment because in reality you can't know upfront if they hate or love tips :)
And when you don't and it annoys you, best to point it out like you did. I had one person which I highly value on chain ask me before to please not do that and I never did it again but people can't smell it of course..
There was a time (when I was all into Listnerds) that the only thing I received was these comments with tips and some of them didn't even bother to leave a comment, but only that tip worth 0.00000000 of a cent... I rather have people clicking further than doing that.
I hope you have a good week ahead!
!bbh
The gift that keeps on giving haha
One short fix is the front ends be adapted to give less attention to these comments… if I am not mistaken the new ecency version for desktop ( not mobile) minimizes comments from tip bots and it appears as a symbol only to visualize the comment you need to click in the symbol . Look the screenshot .
I hadn't realized that Ecency was doing this. I guess the Front End sites have a role to play in this too.
Most of them are useless.
!bbh
We're addicted to tokens? The comments are annoying af. The one I use on a regular basis is from a community I believe in. It's silly in the end, it actually feels like one of those fads that goes around a while then either fades away or gets DV'd away.
There are a couple folks I know don't like these and I make it a point not to use these when I comment to on their posts.
Were you at Steem when the posts had a "views" counter? And posts would have 97 votes
and 6 views xD unrelated but funny.
!pimp !bbh
You must be killin' it out here!
@trumpman just slapped you with 5.000 PIMP, @summertooth.
You earned 5.000 PIMP for the strong hand.
They're getting a workout and slapped 2/3 possible people today.
Read about some PIMP Shit or Look for the PIMP District
Maybe it's a fad and if others share my view then the DVs might not be too far away. I always think of that as a last resort though.
Yes, I remember the views counter. Bots have always been here, its just a question of whether they Add Value or not. For some I think it's very borderline.
I have also been thinking along the same lines because I would rather see the user comment without these extra additions. It doesn't matter if someone has a low vote value, but commenting is a tool that helps you grow and this is definitely not helping those users.
That's a very good point. Small users who are using these things because they don't have much stake might not realize they could costing themselves upvotes on their comments.
I also experience this problem when many bot comments are added in the comments section of my posts. I just ignore them for now as they're not any value addition to my posts and tokens worth is less than dust.. you're right.. I think there should be an option to on/off such comments or these should be a short
I like to tip because it's fun and my upvote isn't worth that much, so it's a small addition to it.
!pimp
You must be killin' it out here!
@trumpman just slapped you with 10.000 PIMP, @bulliontools.
You earned 10.000 PIMP for the strong hand.
They're getting a workout and slapped 3/3 possible people today.
Read about some PIMP Shit or Look for the PIMP District
I like em cause you can give a something a bit extra, especially when you are a small fish with not much to give. And you can always ignore the actual bots ^_^
!pimp !hiqvote !bbh 😂😂
Thanks for the comment. You're no small fish though.
This has long been my take, since I AM a small fish. 😄 I have noticed though that somehow, sometimes these comments are hidden from view, though I can't find a good example right now. I use PeakD, so I don't think it's exclusive to Ecency, but I also don't know how they do it.
You must be killin' it out here!
@trumpman just slapped you with 1.000 PIMP, @buggedout.
You earned 1.000 PIMP for the strong hand.
They're getting a workout and slapped 1/3 possible people today.
Read about some PIMP Shit or Look for the PIMP District
There are times when I’d feel I have to go and respond to comments on my posts and when I check, I’d realize that they are tip bot comments…
I think it's good for a new user to stay active and happy when comments come because everyone works hard to make a special post.
@trumpman, the HiQ Smart Bot has recognized your request (2/3) and will start the voting trail.
In addition, @buggedout gets !PIZZA from @hiq.redaktion.
For further questions, check out https://hiq-hive.com or join our Discord. And don't forget to vote HiQs fucking Witness! 😻