Thank you for your service protecting Steemit. The bidbot problem is a threat to the future of this platform. All Steemians should appreciate your efforts. I'm curious how transparencybot will use its steem power. If I delegate to you, will you be using your voting power to down vote those who abuse the bot system?
Because the bot has very little SP of its own, it is not yet commenting on all posts. It needs more SP for both bandwidth and to be able to comment on the highest reputation/SP bidbot users.
It first must build itself up enough not to be squashed by the first larger SP bot user that wants to attack every post it has made. I, @bycoleman have leased some SP to counter this, by upvoting any comment that is downvoted, so far the bot is gaining in reputation.
If the bot has sufficient SP and reputation, it could begin to downvote the most egregious uses of the bid bots, but I'm thinking a better approach would be to use a companion account to do the downvoting, this keeps the mission clearer.
Any SP delegated to the bot (or companion account) will go directly to this fight and I will continue to release more tools as quickly as I can create them and know they have a fighting chance.
I would love your support, you could make a huge difference.
I don’t think transparencybot is about downvoting. It’s about transparency and bringing awareness. There are enough flagging wars going on as we speak. (@by oleman, please correct me if I’m wrong)
WTF? Yes, I'm using bidbots, but I know that my article isn't a shit and otherwise it just won't be noticed, I'm not going to spend 2-3 hours on the article which no one will read. Ability to use bidbot is the only reason why I'm still on this platform and I'm sure many will agree with me.
Instead of writing comments judging my work you better consider downvoting whales who makes >$1000 a day by posting shit or even simple photos on dmania. Unlike them, most of the bidbots have limitations and filters the posts they are upvoting...
As part of my contest series:
"Steem Decathlon #1 D2E02 "Baby Needs a new pair of Shoes!" - Theme - 'Politics" - Fake News Quiz...iceberg tip."
I bid it up with bidbots to give the results of the upvotes as a rewards pool to my contest participants....And to get the word out....
I'm not taking the money it's being distributed....
Plus it is my decision to spend the money and for what purposes is my decision, whether it is long term sustainable is not an issue. And issues with the SteemIt platform not really curating/classifying and lack of capabilities/functionality are much bigger impediments to the platform.
I have great ideas for bots that would enrich the community if you want to actually put your talents to better work.
Want to collaborate.
Labeling someone with a big posting giving the impression by implication they are doing something by using bots vs. paying directly to put on the promote page is blatantly wrong....
And by using a bot and asking for remuneration to accomplish this is the height of hypocracy.
You have a problem with something than hand curate it.
Well said, mate, this whole idea of a "Transparency Bot" is nonsense, a storm in a tea pot. It is a conspiracy theory. If there are no bid bots, everyone will have to lick the boots of whales before they trend, which is like the dehumanizing Slave Trade era.
The transparency bot is an attempt by a few to demonize the majority by manipulating the psychology of the majority. Why should a bot that seek to be non-profit be looking for delegation? Does that not tell you something? That the owners of the bots are spammers and opportunists disguising as noble men?
I laughed really hard reading your reply. You say pandering? Before I give a proper response, will you kindly tell me the "nice things" people like me have hindered because of bid bots patronage?
There’s a better way to design a decentralized ledger blogging site that will enable everyone to earn fairly. But never expect it on Steem nor EOS. If you’re wise you will follow me and wait for the announcement.
All my predictions about the demise of Steem are coming to fruition:
Paying for advertising is an old practice which is perfectly acceptable. Every day we see advertising for crappy products or for excellent ones. Without the visibility we wouldn't know the good ones exist. The bidbots were allowed on Steemit, so putting pressure on people not to use them creates a contradictory situation. If a bot brings an interesting article to my attention which would never have otherwise appeared on my feed, where is the problem? All artists and musicians face this difficulty of trying, first of all, to create really good art, then trying to get it "out there" so people can know about it.
I've been thinking about this a lot today, and I need to investigate the 'getting seen' aspect further. But, at a glance, it seems to me that a lot of people who are putting about 25 SBD on bots are getting around 50 views within the first day or so.
Now, if I pay facebook $20 AUD, which is about 8 SBD, I can get a post in front of 340-1500 specifically targeted people (e.g.: interested in cryptocurrency) per day, for 3 days. Sure, the engagement rate can be pretty bad, but if even only 10% of people click the link I'll have 100 views for only 8 SBD.
Now, none of those people directly pay me anything, so it's not the same as here, and obviously I need to look further into what the comparative views are over a longer time period. But I think we should think hard about this 'being seen' angle that we are being sold here.
Also, and I need to flesh this out a bit too, appeal to advertising assumes that advertising is in itself morally acceptable. To your credit, at least you defend the view openly not everyone gets that far). But equating bidbot usage with advertising fails if advertising is not an ethical practice.
Finally, yes, bot are allowed. But I don't accept this 'code is law' argument from an ethical viewpoint. There are lots of things that you can do within the code parameters on steemit, but you wouldn't say that they were all morally good, or that they were helpful for the long-term sustainability of the steem economy.
Banning the bots is one thing. But how do we get people to look at things and support them financially? I know a number of FABULOUS artists who are totally under-recognized because they are not getting the right exposure. And god-awful art that gets rewarded by strong marketing. I was lucky to make a living with my paintbrush - but very few artists are able to to that. What can be done to remedy this? If artists don't get rewarded for what they do, they have to spend hours and hours doing other things just to survive. And as a result the general quality of the art suffers because it requires full time work to arrive at a high quality result.
If you can come up with something better than the bots, more power to you. They are far from perfect. What we need is not to remove what already exists, but provide more viable solutions and people will gravitate to them.
If artists don't get rewarded for what they do, they have to spend hours and hours doing other things just to survive.
This is a problem both on and off Steemit. Part of the problem is artists believing good art is, or should be, enough.
Good marketing isn't using money to get in front of the most people. Good marketing is figuring out who the right people are, why they want to buy your art, and how to present it so the right people will see it and see something they want.
What we have here with bots isn't marketing, cause there is no way to discern who is seeing the message. And many of the automated votes come from non-human accounts with steem automatically delegated to them as new "members". Delegated from whom? All those artists. You, and me.
Believe me @wholeself-in, it is a problem I know quite well having been a self supporting artist for the last 30 years. Finding your audience is what it is all about. At some point you need to extend your audience, having sold work to all your current clients. Now steemit should be good for that, right? Actually the bots have brought my work to the attention of some like-minded individuals who would never have found me otherwise. I feel like everybody is ready to criticize, but no solutions are forthcoming. I am not computer savvy and my creativity is not in that area. So maybe we can appeal to people who have those abilities to create tools to diffuse the right information to the right people.
This situation is much more complicated than simple advertising, and there it’s also fair to raise the question of the ethics of some forms of traditional advertising.
Bid bots make no discrimination based on quality, we are just being shown articles for people who pay and the ad power of these giants will only get stronger and stronger until the whole platform collapses.
Yes that is the defect of the bots - they'll upvote anything. So somebody needs to invent something that can somehow upvote real posts and differentiate between them and junk. Now there's a real challenge for the computer geeks...
Actually you are 100% correct and I have no idea why nobody has figured out to set certain requirements that the algorithm will recognize and most importantly enforce like 1: MUST contain 2-3 paragraphs minimum 2: Make sure these are words (which can be done from the bot to make sure that someone doesnt kijghdsfkjdsfghkrfg kjsadbads kjsdfh. making it look like a sentence) 3: 1+ Pictures required (we like pictures ^ ^) and if it does not check out.. Insta-Refund! Happen 3 times in any 7day period=blacklisted simple, easy and it works! Does it mean that the posts will be quality!? that is in the eye of the beholder BUT it definitely won't be spam. But you see, that would actually work WITHOUT being beneficial to them so they say "We have to keep you from getting where we are and we will break the very rules that we set in advanced then present them as a just reason of why we do what we do under the guise that we are actually doing something great for this platform instead of locking it down like we really are. Something like "This will be GREAT for steemit!... we will keep all the sp and sbd and you get to spend hours of your day posting and if you do really good with the current market prices you might just get an entire dollar out of it or if you do favors for a whale he might make it rain on ya ;-)
Well said. @transparencybot@bycoleman & @tarazkp are spamming hundreds of posts from their 'Transparency Bot' in order to get more delegation and more followers. It doesn't matter if the posts are original and of great quality. In addition, they are also upvoting their own comments so they show up on the top of your comment thread. That's just playing dirty.
a great point made on one of my comments was, why do we need a transparency bot when everything is transparent?! Anyone can go do research or look at the information as it is free for all of us to see to begin with. the upvoting self and asking for deli i did not see, and that is ridic. so they are making money off of us (another ploy) just as the argument that bots are a hack on the steemit platform. SMH
@transparencybot is not about judging, but about transparency. I’m sure that if the community thinks your work is of good quality, the message sent by @transparencybot will have no impact at all.
I can agree that there is no need to ask for an upvote. If people like it, they will upvote without being asked. And @bycoleman, maybe you could add the delegation links to the introductory post you are referring to?
That's the question, why does the bot needs delegation if its purpose is only to show readers that author has used upvote bots?
I mean the bot creator just want to make some money like everyone on steemit. And I think his hypocrisy is much worse than bidbots usage...
If I understood correctly it needs a valuable upvote to counter the downvotes it will get, so it will not be made invisible by those downvotes @bycoleman, can you confirm this?
Many people are downvoting the comments so they do not show.
If the bot or someone else does not upvote them, then they will be hidden and serve no purpose.
Soon there will be a consorted effort to out SP the bot so the comments are never shown. Several posters have already begun to power up (which is great), but that power will directed at the bot to try to shut it down.
exactly, and also telling everyone if you used more than one bot to make money. the message is actually confrontational and not very nice. to boot they upvote themselves and ask for a deli. LOL yikes
The message no longer asks for upvotes or delegations. This was removed yesterday shortly after getting the bot in full gear. Your feedback and others were very helpful on this regard.
The post from transparencybot is like spam, it looks like crap on the comment section of the blog post. And the blockchain is transparent, all anyone needs to do is look at the wallet of anyone on this platform and they can see every transaction. This bot is crap and not needed.
I had just followed you and was excited to learn more about you. But when I saw that you guys used a bid bot, that told me everything that I need to know about you. In ten seconds, you are not just going to be unfollowed. You are going to be MUTED!
Go ahead. Mute me and hide in your filter bubble. Or, encounter me. Social intercourse is about giving, not taking. Human relationships, even isolated encounters, are sacred. Whenever you disagree with something I post, say so, in whatever terms you choose to express yourself. I will consider your thoughts.
My most significant achievement in life is the large number of mistakes that I have made and false ideas that I have embraced. You can quantify the maturity of a person by counting the number of times he or she has apologized and/or admitted that he or she is wrong.
there are so many groups and people using bots! you look fairly new, maybe do more research before passing judgment. if you like the content, which is what steemit is about ... what would a bot matter?
I am new, and I am willing to admit being wrong if it appears that I am. But I am a trained economist, and my trained instincts tell me that gaming the system will destroy it. There's an old saying in monetary economics that is closely related: "Bad money drives out good".
I'd like to have a respectful conversation about each of the types of bots currently in use or emerging, in which we take a good look at whether they are good, or bad, for the platform.
I think that @transparencybot is the best thing I've seen yet here. You guys who are paying for exposure are selfish, morally ignorant people who don't get the concept of community.
We don't need your shitty content or your even more shitty predatory personality here. I personally wish that you all DID leave. Three cheers to @transparencybot.
I'm glad you think that it is the best thing here. selfish/ignorant? What does using a bot have to do with community? Is this platform fair for all users in the community?
We don't need your fucking twisted perspective on the issue and it's best if you shut your fucking mouth.
This is a public platform and you are free to write anything you want on any post, but you shouldn't be condescending to those you do not know.
That being said, I see what you have wrote and it would be best IMO that you take your shitty worthless posts and leave the platform. Do us all a favor and go fuck yourself and leave the platform.
Thanks for providing even more evidence that you are a selfish person who flags people merely because you don't like what they have to say. If everyone was like you, we'd all destroy the platform in a nuclear flag war. I'm not going to flag you because I'm not that kind of person. My policy is to UPVOTE people who disagree with me. So you are getting an upvote from me.
You assumed that I flagged your post b/c I did not like what you have to say. While in fact, when you read the message that appears before you flag, one of them are 'Hate Speech or Internet Trolling'.
Your initial post described your personality from the get go. And for someone that just came in last month, you sure have no problem shooting your mouth off with no respect at all. It actually does not matter b/c crypto and a decentralized system is a free for all and the wild wild west.
Nuclear flag war huh? If you look at my history from July 2017, I have flagged one other person, that is it. You and this new bot were number 2 and 3. There are a lot of people that flag every single week. I have flagged 3 times in 10 months.
In addition, since I have been on this platform since July 17, I have never been in one argument with anyone with the exception of today. So congratulations, you are the first.
One can get a misconception from my reply post that I am an aggressive poster based on the profanity used. But if you look at every single one of my posts or comments from July 17, you will see that I do not use profanity or swear in any of the posts. Your reply brought it out and I think that people need to stand up to what they believe is right.
Commenting on posts is fine, when a bot FORCES an unwelcome comment that has zero value on a post is SPAM. One only needs to look at a wallet to see if they were using a bot.
I personally do not need upvotes that are of zero value...
I Agree the comment looks like other loud bot spam, but I think for example an outsider who lands on trending wouldn’t go look into someone’s wallet...
YOu will never hear me say that it is perfect, but it is a step in the right direction: bringing awareness about the problem of upvote bots (I know there are many more, but I’m already happy with one step in one direction)
IMO, most of the bot users are minnows that send in 5-10 SBD to get something back for their post. They do not care if their post is on any trending page at all.
I see this as a small crypto savings account that may have more value in the future. I can continue to grow it slowly for potential future monetary gains.
I'm not sure how the abusers of the bid bods can be addressed as it is hard to tell someone to stop abusing the system.
There are others here that have multiple accounts with high SP that are really abusing the system. They make 1000's of dollars in withdrawals a month and are living off Steem/SBD's. This is the stuff that should be stopped, but the high profile people (witnesses) just turn their heads the other way.
Don’t get me started on all the things that need to be fixed around here, lol. I can go on for a day or two...
The real fixing should be done by SteemIt Inc., but they don’t care and they don’t do anything.
The fact that a lot of early adopters are stuck in their circle-jerking and don’t care about the community, only about the money is a huge problem.
But we are small and can only do so much...
Those minnows that invest $5-$10 in bots are not going to be addressed by the bot. I must admit, I am not innocent in this. I do send money to the bots, although i realize I shouldn’t. But I have invested quite some money into Steem, and I never got a payout as high as $50, even when buying upvotes.
You know people are throwing $100s at a time to the bots??
I'm using $25-30 to buy upvotes for every post and getting payout around the same amount + some SP and I think this system is useful for platform, especially for minnows, since whales and dolphins has much more ways for promotion.
Also, let's not forget that main vote sellers like @minnowbooster and @smartsteem has limits and they use rating systems, so that they won't upvote shitposts. Maybe someone will use bidbots to make money on a low-quality post, but leaving spammy comments under everyone's posts in a row is not a solution. In my opinion this bot is not more useful then bot posting BTC price.
And I still havn't got an answer, why does this bot need SP? What it will be used for? It's not supporting minnows or quality posts, it's just leaving comments. If I'm not wrong no SP needed to post a comment.
While I'm not quite as belligererant, I do have to agree that many people using bid bots is a symptom of the low quality stuff getting to trending page. I appreciate the idea of the bot, but I think this is something that should be looked at manually vs automated.
If quality content is upvoted with a bid bot, that's okay. Many times I spend 2-4 hours on a single blog post. To have that go on to make .12 is stupid. I sell those same blog posts for $100 to clients.
I think there will be a point where bid bots become obsolete (possibly with the communities update), but until then it's the best way for a creator like me, who spends hours creating and publishing high quality content, to get any sort of traction. Without a valid solution to them, I and many other high quality writers/content creators wouldn't be here.
if u are making good post a dont Se a problem om advertising it. but the problem is the shit posts.
if someone can take one photo of a garbage can put some random texs on it pay 100$ on bid pots get it on trending and make 150$ on it the system is not working. and its down hill from there. the bots Ned to be controlled in some way or like these bot is doing.
And again, the problem is the vote sellers who don't care whom they are selling their votes. And I would understand if the @transparencybot filter that kind of posts, which consists of one image or random text and mark them, but not the same huge and spammy comment under every post is annoying and pointless!
Rightly said bro, I am a newbie and have written down around 10 articles, but it is quite disappointing to see my good posts not even making $1. I have much to write about, writing is not a problem for me, problem right now is the fear of having my article lost and not seen by others, as its been happening since I joined. Can you explain to me, how can I use the bidbots to have few of my articles get in the streamline?
The bot is non profit, all delegations will be used directly to keep the platform transparent, by continuing to be able to post these comments.
That statement by itself is shady. You're not disclosing at all what that means. Further, you've done nothing to show what your reports look like that show your non-profit status. Transparency means everything has to be clear and out in the open. You have to be beyond reproach.
I am open to specific suggestions on what wording might be used.
This bot is similar to steemitboard, spaminator, steemcleaners, cheeta etc, which are in place to help protect and/or highlight the platform. It is up to the community to decide if they want to support it.
The topic reveals your agenda.
transparencybot is focused on transparency in regards to bidbots, not in transparency as a whole.
If you care about reward pool abuse, 15% of the reward pool goes to pay interest mostly for preminers.
If you care about overall abuse, no amount of reward pool abuse can offset the initial abuse of premining.
People can vote and buy votes for themselves to oblivion, and still remain with less than 5% of what a dozen of preminers have without an effort, and still take out of the reward pool less than what these people get through:
interest on vests, curation rewards, author rewards on self upvotes, STEEM rents via delegation and payments on vote selling.
You blame it on the victims trying to grow.
You do not cause any guilt for me.
STEEM is a game of abuse, and one of the whales even gave me a little upvote once for stating so.
Excellent Initiative. The Ezira project utilizes bid bots for promoting our posts to the wider Steem audience. This is due to the lack of viable blockchain mechanisms for promoting content. The Ezira project plans to improve the Steem model to provide a way for creators to directly pay the blockchain for useful promotion.
That would be a very welcome initiative as well. I wish you much success, the current model is as you say, without any viable means of visibility other than to steal rewards from others.
This assumption of stealing from the rewards pool needs to be addressed, there is no stealing going on. That SP is being delegated to earn a reward on investment, if it were not 'sold' do you think it would be used to vote on what people regard good content. No, what would happen then is they would be forced to write posts and self vote to earn the reward. The problem with Steemit is not the bid-bots but that the curation rewards are not geared to forcing people to go out and vote for good content or any content for that matter. I hope the addition of communities may help in that regard, but since the vast majority of users here have little or no SP the curation reward system as it stands is clearly not working and that is what needs to be addressed.
Most of this stems from the fact that Steem distribution is very very concentrated towards a few at the top with the vast majority having little or no SP at all and the current set up isn't helping to distribute that SP more evenly, fix that and you will fix the problem.
Also this notion that only good content deserves to be highly paid is false as well, I think at best you will hopefully end up with the majority of highly regarded content being well paid but there is always going to be some bit of crap that will make it to the top if it is well liked. That's why you can't ban a one picture post with just one sentence, what if that was the most important picture ever taken and it just needed to be posted and shared, you couldn't judge that on substance alone.
Hi Craig - thanks for this information. You did an excellent job ofexplaining why people are drawn to using bots and the inherent consequences to our community by doing so.
Clearly using bots or not, is a reflection of our true motivation for being on this site.....personal gain vs adding value to a chosen community.
This is my first post...just getting my feet wet.....but from a newbe
I would sooner be promoted on the basis of worthy content than by clever manipulation of the system......no ands, ifs or bots!!!
Joanna
And for the record, do I really want to drop a large chunk if change into this platform if it has such significant systemic issues? Hm.... Seems like nasty elitist capitalism all over again...? Or....?
Yeah because trending before the bidbots was full of good content. I think it is the choice of the ones who writes articles to promote itself and I see the bidbots as a mean of promotion, so if you use them, try to reach trending.
Also the bidbots are a mean for investors. The ones strongest against bidbots are the ones who never put a dime in Steem. From nothing comes nothing. I think the ones who bid for less shall be banned as the promotional effect disapears.
You make some very valid points. Many of the most recent users of the bidbots have almost no investment, other than what they received back from the payout. They then take the SBD, create another article and promote it to the extent of what they have. It would seem like a great plan except....
If EVERYONE uses bidbots to make sure their article is seen, then eventually, no post will be seen, just paid for.
And, the bot owners remove the profits and sell it on the open market, dropping the price of Steem. So the SP invested by the rest of us is worth less each day.
I've seen this on golos, the sister site of steemit. There bidbots are not allowed and votes are sold via telegram on a higher margin for the vote sellers. Vote selling will not be stopped by removing the bidbots.
Yes if everyone would use the bidbots. Without the bidbots or whales ass kissing a new minnow would not have a slight chance. When I joined Steemit over a year ago, there was one post every few minutes, now there is a post almost every second. The chances to be seen have diminished exponential.
I see bidbots as a means of self promotion and I used them before to reach trending or hot. I have now a good follower base and stopped using them. I plan to raise one more account where I will use the bid bots even for a loss.
I invested in a bid bot as delegator as I see it as an incentive for investment. I bought some thousands of Steem just for that. Would it have not been for this ooportunity I would have probably not have done it. I'm not saying that I don't vote and read other posts as I had 326 upvotes, on 138 accounts, in the last 7d with zero votes on me. Data can be checked on steemworld.org for comparation with other accounts. ;)
The problem is with the trending and hot sections, they need to go. We have on trending on a normal day without the bidbots only +70 accounts with crap crypto analyse. There are some guys that used the shotgun method and bought randomly coins and are in most cases far better than following 90% of the expert advice in trending.
Like said, remove trending and hot and add a random section, where post that are active shall be randomly shown, the newer the post the more views it shall get. This will give more value also to the resteem function, as now it is mostly done by spammers that eat up the bandwith.
Only commenting that a post wwas paid for will mostly bring the account very fast to a low reputation by being flagged. I've seen one project like this before that was commenting on minnowbooster when the comments have been removed. I think that the bidbots that use the comment are already showing that the post has been paid for.
By the way, Minnowbooster added the option for an external vote selling service on their website, where one trades vote anonymous.
Hope that you take my comment as constructive and not criticism.
Again, all of your comments are well founded and I do not necessarily disagree, yet transparency remains the goal of this project. If golos and the external MB voting were more transparent, it would reduce the problem.
As a tiny minnow ("catfluff," really...) trying to navigate this community honestly, I certainly commend your efforts. Whereas I think Steemit is really cool and has lots of potential, it often feels more like "Game of Dollars" than social content venue. Which is a shame.
Cooperation is key, for sure. My Human seems to think that the Hivemind/Communities feature might help because people will become more likely to cluster around around topics and interest groups. Mutual support will develop there; when people discover they can get 50 votes from friends for FREE, they'll be less inclined to BUY votes. Time will tell.
More and more people are starting to realize the devastating impact bots and auto curation is having, but the money is so huge, it will be no small task to bring this back under control.
I don't know anything about Hivemind so perhaps you can point them or me.
I feel exactly the same way, @curatorcat! I think communities are the answer. Many of us came here to be supported and to support others with great content. In my topics of interest, I love making friends and learning from them. I will happily reward their efforts with upvotes and resteems when I know their intentions are education and sharing. I don't even have to be 100% in agreement, since it is just as important to learn from different points of view as it is from people you agree with.
@transparencybot - I'm just asking a question here. So please don't flag me. So it's okay for whales to upvote themselves, with high SP and get lot's of rewards right? But it's not okay for people who are minnows, who write good quality posts- to buy some upvotes to increase their exposure and hope to get some SteemPower/SBDs back? Whales and people who have been here a while have followers many of whom are dolphins or whales too.
I'm a minnow trying to grow. And I can write the most excellent post in the world. But, because I have few followers and all my followers are new too- I don't get squat if I don't use any bid-bots. Why should I be penalized because I want to swim with the whales?
This seems a little unfair and selective in who your bot targets- whales use bots too. They just have a lot of followers who comment on their posts also.
People pay to be in the trending page. this plattform works in that way. However your work will help to change this.
I held a contest and I wanted the maximum exposure for the artworks of the participants, so I paid for votes. Maybe is not the ideal solution, but that's what I have. If someone knows a better solution (a quick solution), I'll be glad to receive feedback. In general words, I think steemit is a bot gaming system instead of a social network. (see davemccoy 's post). A suggestion could be that "trending" and "hot" pages show "sponsored" results and "organic" results (without paid votes), but off course, this will depend on steemit's owners and witnesess. This is just my opinion. Thanks
I'll be interested to see how this goes. Someone tried to do a similar thing in the past couple of weeks, can't remember the name - it got flagged down to nothing in the first day by more than one bidbot owner. Guess they weren't as ready as you were.
Lots of great discussion of paid-upvoting (and its connection to witnesses and whales alike) going on at the moment. Anyone who doesn't think that it's a problem needs to educate themselves by reading up on "rent-seeking" and "regulatory capture".
Hope it goes well for you. I look forward to upvoting your comments on trending posts.
Yes, it is going to be a battle and I may need to power up a lot more. Hopefully I will receive some delegations to be able to keep in the fight.
There is so many opinions on these bots, it is really amazing how many think they are good for the platform. Send a link to the concepts you are speaking of and I may be able to include them in an upcoming post.
In economics and in public-choice theory, rent-seeking involves seeking to increase one's share of existing wealth without creating new wealth. wikipedia
@krnel (with a little input from me) has a good discussion of how this might apply to steemit. There's a bit of nuance in how this applies - it's not quite the same as in classic economics (I think), but it is certainly something that is putting the brakes on growth here.
Regulatory capture
Regulatory capture occurs because groups or individuals with a high-stakes interest in the outcome of policy or regulatory decisions can be expected to focus their resources and energies in attempting to gain the policy outcomes they prefer. wikipedia
I have discussed how I think this applies to steemit, but you don't need to use too much imagination to see where I'm going with this if we recognise that the top 20 witnesses are essentially making policy/regulatory decisions.
Yes, that was me, I scanned the blockchain for each and every bid bot and vote selling transaction and called this out, but I got immediately flagged. If the community is now being supportive of such an initiative, I may restart my operation and join your cause :-)
Hey! Glad you are still around. Let's not get to ahead of ourselves regarding community support - though anyone paying attention would know which higher -rep steemians are likely to support this (privately at least).
If nothing else, I'm sure there are lessons to be learned from your experience.
This is a promising and necessary step forward, I've been guilty of going a bit overboard with the bots but I'm glad you commented to remind me of my transgressions.
I don't think people would mind if one day all the bots just disappeared, the only reason people use them is out of necessity due to everyone else using them and whales not curating.
It is really understandable that everyone has started using them, really out of total frustration. We just need to start educating and even flagging abuses to get our platform back.
Wow, I really appreciate the offer of help. Not sure where it will go next or what I might need, but I will follow you and bookmark this page so, if down the road, there is more clarity, I will certainly reach out to you.
If you have an ideas, let me know. This tool is going to be entirely non-profit and once large enough will begin flagging the most egregious of offenders, but for now, it needs to get its legs under it.
Not a lot in the way of ideas, I think getting a delegation from @steemcleaners / @berniesanders is the next big step. Bernie's already voted on this and he's very generous with his delegations (often about 20000).
Maybe make a daily post as well which lists all the worst offenders, that way the bot has a revenue stream/way for people to show appreciation.
Unfortunately... To say another individuals work is trash is a harmful thing.
About what was just said,
Have you ever been in a relationship where your life partner said you were trash?...
Your own mother.. Telling you, you will never amount to anything? Beings close to you.. Saying the same thing?
A man spends the last coins he has to try and gain some more, giving it all he has, on any idea he can think about? He just wants to purchase fruit at a local market to possibly then open his own restaurant in the town to then spread prosperity? Gets his tokens taken away?... Because a Judge decides his fate....
A life of FATE and CAUSALITY.
Will you be the man with arrows standing forward... Or will you be the man ready to burn the village down?
I have personally upvoted this post, your understanding and actions are accepted! 👌⭐
For many years, all caps has been considered rude because it's like SHOUTING.
To me it telegraphs the person's point will be very weak, because they need to resort to forcing people to give them attention. To me it's like talking to a person who's had WAY TOO MUCH to drink.
I never read anything in all caps for that reason.
The platform and thus the price of Steem is only worth something if the masses think the future of the platform is secure. This occurs if they see the trend leaning towards quality and long term motivations.
I don't agree with your assesment that "Steem is only worth something if the masses think the future of the platform is secure" and here is why. If this is so why does BCC or Bcash have value>? Bid bots are actually driving the Steem price up and continue reading to find out how.
Simple economics. People care about one thing above all else, generally speaking, PROFIT. The easiest, most hands off way, to profit on Steem is to get SP and delegate it to a Bidbot. Do this, sit back and collect your profit. This would not be possible if there weren't a market of people willing to pay for bids. Hence bid bots contributing to the demand side of the suply demand curve.
@bycoleman I reject your claim that people will only "believe" in Steemit if" trends lean towards quality". When has this ever been the case anywhere historically? Provide any sort of evidence.... even if it's just hearsay. People don't want to invest into crap, agreed. But they aren't investing because it give them a warm fuzzy feeling ether. People invest to profit. Go buy SP, sell your votes and BAM! Profit!
You should try to appeal to those vote selling instead of vote buying. Why not target them instead of vote buyers?
If you were vested with 2,000 SP three months you had an upvote worth nearly 1.00 SP, now it is worth around .25 SP, a 75% loss in vested wealth.
The claims on the rewards pool has grown exponentially. Bidbots add more claims without more SP invested, just delegated. The very small amount of SP brought into the space to bid on bots, is significantly countered by the expansion of claims.
Check it out, the code and delegations, it is open source and open to all.
I agree, vote sellers need to be a part of the solution, I have some ideas to bring to the vote sellers that I believe can make a substantial difference without killing their bottom line.
I agree, vote sellers need to be a part of the solution, I have some ideas to bring to the vote sellers that I believe can make a substantial difference without killing their bottom line.
I don't comprehend your position. Why it's ok for this bot to create a focus around getting rid of bid buying when both the buyer and the seller are equally responsible for the situation. I hear you say don't hurt the seller... but what about the buyers... hurting their bottom line is ok? And getting rid of buying will infact hurt the bottom line of sellers?
I think you have identified a problem, but before trying to implement solutions, my opinion is that, we need to fully understand the market conditions that are driving this behavior and change the system. Shaming people will not work.
The wealth behind your SP hasn't changed. It is just that your vote is now being held to its true value. That is because before there was a large portion of unused SP inflating the value of your SP's vote. Now that this SP can be more easily used the result is SP being activated and utilizing it's full voting potential that was being squandered before.
Once bid bots have become a standard, which is fast approaching, then they will be providing an economic incentive to holding Steem as they will give an easy way for new users to get in the loop. The loop that was formerly held to small groups self voting themselves up and retaining the benefits of holding SP to a small subsection of the platform before.
I guess we'll find out. Problem is if you are wrong, we all lose. If your right we all lose, there will be no quality, all will be lost. Easy money never works.
We are fine either way. Content isn't being produced just for the rewards otherwise Facebook wouldn't have any valuable content. Good content is a part of a strong community and that is something that just needs to build with addition of new thinkers and publishers.
I do, however, like that you're looking at bid-bots. Some bots are useful (and don't dilute the pools with frivolous upvotes), but unfortunately they are in the minority.
I think you need to change your text a little bit
before posting "@XXXXX, The community appeals to you, please help build a great platform by posting quality content and letting the community curate our work."
you just saying to a person that he has a bad content, but you never read his contet
Welcome to Steemit! I hope you’ll enjoy being here as much as I do.
You might find these YouTube videos useful. They are created specifically to help new Steemers grow and be successful on Steemit and will be posted on the @steemitvideos account as well.
GREAT to SEE you! I guess, welcome aboard the Steemit Train! You are already a great blessing to us all by being on this platform with us.All for one and one for all! Namaste :)
Oh thank you..I didn't post for that but thank you...I am so humbled...I just could not agree more with this article...how can we have a replacement of a system that is violating our Freedom of Speech like Twitter to replace it with something that says "Pay for Play"...you can't ...and I don't think that was the intention of Steemit ...well done
XOXOXOX
We know steemit is a transparent platform, but if there are still not transparent please to let us to know special bit bod guaranted votes value, are they as same as doing with the rules?, I support your program and your performance.. Welcome to amazing platform
Very noble cause.
I hope people will be honest enough to not flag the comments made by @transparencybot...
And I guess the bot will be working overtime, lol. There are few articles that reach such a payout without using bots.
Anyway, I’m very happy someone finally steps forward and addresses the problem. Good work!
It had a rough start, as soon as it was launched some bot owners took aim, but a community of voters came to the aid.
More bot owners will attack it soon, but I believe the community will keep it supported with their votes and possibly even delegations. It is strictly non profit and all funds will be used allow the bot to be increasingly effective.
Spread the word, bots are destroying the platform and there is something that can be done -- we just need to stick together.
I really hope this will work. I’ll try to keep an eye out to see what happens.
I need to check my available sp, because this might be something I would be prepared to delegate to.
Meanwhile, I’ve set it up in Gina, to see what happens
Extremely important post. As a new steemian I find myself weighing whether this platform really has a future, given the dynamics described...
If it's just about making money, even as a talented writer and multimedia artist, my time probably will be better spent learning more about trading crypto. At least that seems "more honest" than playing the bots.
I've seen (a lot) more actual debate of ideas on (hold your noses) Facebook than here... Something really is off here, maybe fatally so (?)...
Thanks so much, bycoleman, brother or sister! I find I'm so inspired by people like you to move beyond my negativity and cynacism to get back to focus on my own heart and what I can bring to the truth disclosure that is the central imperative of these times...
As an addition to your initiative, I hereby commit to specifying how I use bots in any post of my own I self-promote . Thx very much for your effort in this.
Peace, blessings and juicy bits to you today, tomorrow, and the next day!!!
You are fake news running off subjectivity, relativity, based on your opinion, shared by other brain washed liberals, progressives, or prove me wrong, but what is spam or not is an opinion and you do not care about what I did in Vietnam for five years and you do not care what I did with the Salvation Army since 2003 and with Word Of Life and you are generalizing and that is too bad for you. http://DrudgeReport.com
I try my best to care and to talk to people. I want to respond. I am multi-tasking between YouTube, Twitter, Facebook, Steemit, Linkedin, and sometimes other places, and I can get lost here or there or many places for years or for hours or for weeks at least. I've been pretty well known since I was in high school but then it grew from there and that was over a decade ago. So, I'm still running around like a chicken with no head haha.
This qualifies as spam, however it is not malicious spam and this user is actually providing a service by greeting all of our new users. I thought at first it was abuse of the system but after getting to know him, I know now this is not the case. Either Zoom In or Right Click Image and Select Open In New Tab
Best of luck with your mission. I think it is a useful endeavour, however, in not sure if will bring change by itself. Hopefully, a small step in bringing about much needed change though...
This is great! I've been taking aim and reserving part of my voting power to flag overvalued trending posts. Now I can simply follow your comments. We need to make bid bots risky again. Yes I know people are losing money promoting but they need to deal with the consequences of the case when a large number of people do not like the post.
Effect is double if enough people chip in: bid bots being riskier means less users fill the pools and bid profits are less. That means those that survive the flag judgements are actually worthy of the value and we've hit a nice equilibrium.
Advertisement = Exposure. Not a guaranteed welcome reception.
Yes, I agree. We all need to spend a little SP "curating" trash. If even a fraction of the people flagged a low value post, then the problem would be solved instantly.
This is just one step, more are coming and I'm we are not going to be alone in this battle.
I’ve just sent a 100sp delegation to the bot. It’s not much, but all I can spare for the moment.
I read the comments you’re posting. They are informative and polite. I don’t think there will be a lot of problems with ‘normal users’. They seem to react in a good way when you’re making them aware of the problems. I wonder about the big guys, though...
If I can find the time, I’ll write an article about @transparencybot. It deserves attention: finally someone has the guts to stop whining and actually do something about it :0)
Wow, that is really great. You're my first delagator.
I'm going to setup links to let others delegate as well. The bots going to need a lot of help, there are plenty of the big guys that really do not want things brought into the light.
I have seen your other comments, but am just now getting back to the computer, so It will be a bit before I go through all the replies.
I also upvoted your post to increase its reward
If you like my work to promote newcomers and give them more visibility on Steemit, feel free to vote for my witness! You can do it here or use SteemConnect
One interesting point I discuss in the article is using a bid bot versus a big whale upvote. Which is worse or is it the same? Does voting bots just even the playing field so normal people without $1 million accounts can also reach trending. It is an interesting debate, one that I would like you to be a part of because you are also doing something about it.
Also interested in your opinion of minnowbooster and if it is somehow not a voting bot.
I’ve taken some time to check the comments made by @transparencybot, and especially the reaction and up-/downvote behaviour of the people who have received a comment.
I was actually a bit surprised to see that there are quite some positive reactions. More than I had expected, actually. For now, that is. I’m not sure what will happen if the ‘real’ whales will come forward, but it appears you already have the support of some..
I love how @transparencybot is so transparent about how it will use the delegation it's requesting. I'm being sarcastic of course. This bot is simply taking advantage of the bot climate to spam users with comments and upvotes. Likely, it will use the delegation to upvote itself. If @transparencybot really cared, it would be providing a report that denies payout.
Yes, I of course have been monitoring this very closely as well.
The reaction is very surprising indeed. The bot has received around 30 downvotes, but MANY more upvotes. So far it is gaining very well in reputation.
I believe since the bots mission is simply to give transparency to the platform, it is not judging the author or its content, that most people are not viewing it any way other than information and an earnest appeal.
Yes, there are some very invested players here who are very fed up with this bidbot problem. I was certainly hoping they might take notice.
THe problem however is that even if you buy only 1 upvote, (or domeone else does so for you), you get stuck with the message (which lookslike any other loud bot message).
And what about people like you and me, @bycoleman? We use the bots, but we stay under $50...?
And shoulf you upvote your own comment? I understand visibility is important, but it’s a bit of a bad message you’re sending by upvoting yourself...
Anyways,... there are more questions I have, the system is not perfect, but it’s like I said before: at least there is someone who is trying to do something.
I have been making some comments, making clear yo people it is not a judgement, still, they feel judged.
I think that’s a good thing...
As far as my own upvoting, I would love to up vote everyone, but because a lot of my SP is going towards this bot and other entities like @introbot, I often drop below 80%, (right now it is at 73%) so I have to let things rebuild. I would let it drop further, but then I cannot protect the bots.
On the bot upvoting itself, this is how it survives at this early stage, plain and simple. Later, more people may do that. If the bot (or someone) does not upvote, then every comment would get hidden with the smallest downvote.
Thank you very much for the support and questions.
I believe the true goal of this has to be transparency and not judgement as you say. With a mission so clearly defined, then those that find transparency a problem, need to search their own self and find out what is causing them stress with transparency.
Due to limitations of SP, I had to start start at $50.00, if I were to try to do $25.00 the bot would not have enough bandwidth.
Forgive me for being so nosy, but I suspect that a lot of people will get pissed off. I just want to be sure I can reply in a correct way and use good arguments
I prefer if you did not post your crap post on my blog. If someone wanted to check if a person is useing a bid bot, they can just look at your wallet and see every transaction that he/she made.
Your auto post on a blog looks like shit and does not need to be there. It's like spam and most people see that as crap.
Look for a better way to find the crap posters and people who are raping the rewards pool.
I find this funny, because I clicked on the replies tab for @transparencybotjust to read the comments like this that I knew would likely exist.
The tides are turning against bid bots, and you may find that a public service like this attracts a large following... Anyone is free to comment anything they like on any post they like, just as anyone is apparently free to buy votes for their post instead of letting the public at large determine how valuable their post should be.
Not everyone has time to check up on high paying posts to know whether it's genuine value, or whether someone decided their own post should earn more. @transparencybot makes it incredibly easy for people to know at a glance what posts are being massively boosted.
Personally, I think this is great, because I'm one of those people who will check a "high value" post for bot votes. I'm very unlikely to use my own VP to increase a post that's already been artificially inflated by its author... just my two cents, though.
I agree anyone can comment on a post, this is a public platform. But this service is an automated post, not by a person producing a comment directly related to the blog post.
If someone was really interested if a person is using a bot, they can look at the wallet. If they are that interested, it only takes one click.
And what is anyong going to do when they see a post used a bid bot? If it was for $50? Are you going to flag it? What is the outcome?
You are not going to flag every post that uses a bid bot. If you did, you would get so many downvote flags that your future posts would not make .01 for the rest of your time here.
I do agree that some people are abusing the service by gaining 100's of SBD/Steem on every post. They should be the one's who need to be notified of their actions and the impact on the 'trending/hot' page and with the rewards pool.
Bot votes are an automated system. No one read the post that got voted on, but the value of it still increases...
I've flagged many posts for abusing the upvote system, have gotten flags from people for nothing other than the person was butthurt I had the audacity to negate some of those rewards with my democratic vote in one direction or another. I shrug them off.
As I said, the tides are turning against bid bots and their users. The overwhelming use of them has led to such the need for an automated transparency effort.
Could the comment be restructured, sure. Is the whole thing worthless or spam? NO.
I LOVE WHAT YOU ARE DOING! This is such a good idea. It is totally awesome to be able to see who is purchasing votes. Also hilarious. You're going to embarrass the hell out of these people. Wonderful. You've made my day. I am following and just can't put into words how totally awesome I think what you are doing is!
Anyone who pays for votes is a morally ignorant person who does not comprehend what either "community" or "human being" means.
You're new here - so you probably don't see that bulk commenting like this might be considered 'comment spam', which may result in people flagging you.
Thank you for your service protecting Steemit. The bidbot problem is a threat to the future of this platform. All Steemians should appreciate your efforts. I'm curious how transparencybot will use its steem power. If I delegate to you, will you be using your voting power to down vote those who abuse the bot system?
Thank you @themightyvolcano very much for the upvote and support!
Because the bot has very little SP of its own, it is not yet commenting on all posts. It needs more SP for both bandwidth and to be able to comment on the highest reputation/SP bidbot users.
It first must build itself up enough not to be squashed by the first larger SP bot user that wants to attack every post it has made. I, @bycoleman have leased some SP to counter this, by upvoting any comment that is downvoted, so far the bot is gaining in reputation.
If the bot has sufficient SP and reputation, it could begin to downvote the most egregious uses of the bid bots, but I'm thinking a better approach would be to use a companion account to do the downvoting, this keeps the mission clearer.
Any SP delegated to the bot (or companion account) will go directly to this fight and I will continue to release more tools as quickly as I can create them and know they have a fighting chance.
I would love your support, you could make a huge difference.
I don’t think transparencybot is about downvoting. It’s about transparency and bringing awareness. There are enough flagging wars going on as we speak. (@by oleman, please correct me if I’m wrong)
This pretty much sums it up.
https://steemit.com/funny/@mrhanky/howwwwdyyy-ho#@transparencybot/re-howwwwdyyy-ho--bidbot
WTF? Yes, I'm using bidbots, but I know that my article isn't a shit and otherwise it just won't be noticed, I'm not going to spend 2-3 hours on the article which no one will read. Ability to use bidbot is the only reason why I'm still on this platform and I'm sure many will agree with me.
Instead of writing comments judging my work you better consider downvoting whales who makes >$1000 a day by posting shit or even simple photos on dmania. Unlike them, most of the bidbots have limitations and filters the posts they are upvoting...
As part of my contest series:
"Steem Decathlon #1 D2E02 "Baby Needs a new pair of Shoes!" - Theme - 'Politics" - Fake News Quiz...iceberg tip."
I bid it up with bidbots to give the results of the upvotes as a rewards pool to my contest participants....And to get the word out....
I'm not taking the money it's being distributed....
Plus it is my decision to spend the money and for what purposes is my decision, whether it is long term sustainable is not an issue. And issues with the SteemIt platform not really curating/classifying and lack of capabilities/functionality are much bigger impediments to the platform.
I have great ideas for bots that would enrich the community if you want to actually put your talents to better work.
Want to collaborate.
Labeling someone with a big posting giving the impression by implication they are doing something by using bots vs. paying directly to put on the promote page is blatantly wrong....
And by using a bot and asking for remuneration to accomplish this is the height of hypocracy.
You have a problem with something than hand curate it.
Well said, mate, this whole idea of a "Transparency Bot" is nonsense, a storm in a tea pot. It is a conspiracy theory. If there are no bid bots, everyone will have to lick the boots of whales before they trend, which is like the dehumanizing Slave Trade era.
The transparency bot is an attempt by a few to demonize the majority by manipulating the psychology of the majority. Why should a bot that seek to be non-profit be looking for delegation? Does that not tell you something? That the owners of the bots are spammers and opportunists disguising as noble men?
Regards.
Amen! This is exactly my feeling.
We are together, friend.
yes definitely
Where do you think the delegations to the bidbots come from?
Paying for upvotes is the worst kind of pandering to whales... bootlicking indeed!
You're the reason we can't have nice things.
Quit paying for votes!
I laughed really hard reading your reply. You say pandering? Before I give a proper response, will you kindly tell me the "nice things" people like me have hindered because of bid bots patronage?
Well, here's a couple off the top of my head:
You are discouraging human beings from actually engaging.
You are devaluing the upvotes of your peers.
You are concentrating SP in the accounts that already have the most of it.
You are destroying the Steem platform by rendering the society burgeoning on Steemit by concentrating the SP in the accounts of whales.
I could go on, but you're just gonna get madder, and pretend none of that is bad, or real, or matters.
Bye!
Good observation. I will get back to you on this. Regards.
There’s a better way to design a decentralized ledger blogging site that will enable everyone to earn fairly. But never expect it on Steem nor EOS. If you’re wise you will follow me and wait for the announcement.
All my predictions about the demise of Steem are coming to fruition:
https://steemit.com/steemit/@anonymint/re-ats-david-re-pfunk-re-themarkymark-steemit-creates-accounts-for-scammers-and-nobody-else-20180412t201119569z
https://steemit.com/steemit/@themarkymark/steemit-creates-accounts-for-scammers-and-nobody-else
https://steemit.com/steem/@ats-david/re-steemitblog-exploring-steem-scalability-20180411t005457232z
The above links explain why the following stats for Steem are probably to a large extent fake traffic:
https://steemit.com/steemit/@penguinpablo/daily-steem-stats-report-thursday-april-12-2018
I'm sure your articles are good. But don't you resent a system that means you have to pay someone in order for them to be seen?
Paying for advertising is an old practice which is perfectly acceptable. Every day we see advertising for crappy products or for excellent ones. Without the visibility we wouldn't know the good ones exist. The bidbots were allowed on Steemit, so putting pressure on people not to use them creates a contradictory situation. If a bot brings an interesting article to my attention which would never have otherwise appeared on my feed, where is the problem? All artists and musicians face this difficulty of trying, first of all, to create really good art, then trying to get it "out there" so people can know about it.
I've been thinking about this a lot today, and I need to investigate the 'getting seen' aspect further. But, at a glance, it seems to me that a lot of people who are putting about 25 SBD on bots are getting around 50 views within the first day or so.
Now, if I pay facebook $20 AUD, which is about 8 SBD, I can get a post in front of 340-1500 specifically targeted people (e.g.: interested in cryptocurrency) per day, for 3 days. Sure, the engagement rate can be pretty bad, but if even only 10% of people click the link I'll have 100 views for only 8 SBD.
Now, none of those people directly pay me anything, so it's not the same as here, and obviously I need to look further into what the comparative views are over a longer time period. But I think we should think hard about this 'being seen' angle that we are being sold here.
Also, and I need to flesh this out a bit too, appeal to advertising assumes that advertising is in itself morally acceptable. To your credit, at least you defend the view openly not everyone gets that far). But equating bidbot usage with advertising fails if advertising is not an ethical practice.
Finally, yes, bot are allowed. But I don't accept this 'code is law' argument from an ethical viewpoint. There are lots of things that you can do within the code parameters on steemit, but you wouldn't say that they were all morally good, or that they were helpful for the long-term sustainability of the steem economy.
Banning the bots is one thing. But how do we get people to look at things and support them financially? I know a number of FABULOUS artists who are totally under-recognized because they are not getting the right exposure. And god-awful art that gets rewarded by strong marketing. I was lucky to make a living with my paintbrush - but very few artists are able to to that. What can be done to remedy this? If artists don't get rewarded for what they do, they have to spend hours and hours doing other things just to survive. And as a result the general quality of the art suffers because it requires full time work to arrive at a high quality result.
If you can come up with something better than the bots, more power to you. They are far from perfect. What we need is not to remove what already exists, but provide more viable solutions and people will gravitate to them.
Yeah, I feel the same way about my writing.
This is a problem both on and off Steemit. Part of the problem is artists believing good art is, or should be, enough.
Good marketing isn't using money to get in front of the most people. Good marketing is figuring out who the right people are, why they want to buy your art, and how to present it so the right people will see it and see something they want.
What we have here with bots isn't marketing, cause there is no way to discern who is seeing the message. And many of the automated votes come from non-human accounts with steem automatically delegated to them as new "members". Delegated from whom? All those artists. You, and me.
This is long but if you'd like to see how deep the rabbit hole goes...
Believe me @wholeself-in, it is a problem I know quite well having been a self supporting artist for the last 30 years. Finding your audience is what it is all about. At some point you need to extend your audience, having sold work to all your current clients. Now steemit should be good for that, right? Actually the bots have brought my work to the attention of some like-minded individuals who would never have found me otherwise. I feel like everybody is ready to criticize, but no solutions are forthcoming. I am not computer savvy and my creativity is not in that area. So maybe we can appeal to people who have those abilities to create tools to diffuse the right information to the right people.
in your opinion because they financially don't back their own endeavors they are better?
I ran Arkahdia Arts Studio for 16 years and am an Artist myself..
You need money to build a following......
The reality is Art is subjective and those spending for position with something people aren't interested in will go broke...
So they will be like most other artists....
This situation is much more complicated than simple advertising, and there it’s also fair to raise the question of the ethics of some forms of traditional advertising.
Bid bots make no discrimination based on quality, we are just being shown articles for people who pay and the ad power of these giants will only get stronger and stronger until the whole platform collapses.
No judgement on you personally.
Yes that is the defect of the bots - they'll upvote anything. So somebody needs to invent something that can somehow upvote real posts and differentiate between them and junk. Now there's a real challenge for the computer geeks...
Actually you are 100% correct and I have no idea why nobody has figured out to set certain requirements that the algorithm will recognize and most importantly enforce like 1: MUST contain 2-3 paragraphs minimum 2: Make sure these are words (which can be done from the bot to make sure that someone doesnt kijghdsfkjdsfghkrfg kjsadbads kjsdfh. making it look like a sentence) 3: 1+ Pictures required (we like pictures ^ ^) and if it does not check out.. Insta-Refund! Happen 3 times in any 7day period=blacklisted simple, easy and it works! Does it mean that the posts will be quality!? that is in the eye of the beholder BUT it definitely won't be spam. But you see, that would actually work WITHOUT being beneficial to them so they say "We have to keep you from getting where we are and we will break the very rules that we set in advanced then present them as a just reason of why we do what we do under the guise that we are actually doing something great for this platform instead of locking it down like we really are. Something like "This will be GREAT for steemit!... we will keep all the sp and sbd and you get to spend hours of your day posting and if you do really good with the current market prices you might just get an entire dollar out of it or if you do favors for a whale he might make it rain on ya ;-)
Yes, there must be a way to do it.
Well said. @transparencybot @bycoleman & @tarazkp are spamming hundreds of posts from their 'Transparency Bot' in order to get more delegation and more followers. It doesn't matter if the posts are original and of great quality. In addition, they are also upvoting their own comments so they show up on the top of your comment thread. That's just playing dirty.
Totally agree, they just need upvotes.
a great point made on one of my comments was, why do we need a transparency bot when everything is transparent?! Anyone can go do research or look at the information as it is free for all of us to see to begin with. the upvoting self and asking for deli i did not see, and that is ridic. so they are making money off of us (another ploy) just as the argument that bots are a hack on the steemit platform. SMH
@transparencybot is not about judging, but about transparency. I’m sure that if the community thinks your work is of good quality, the message sent by @transparencybot will have no impact at all.
You're right, but I don't want to see a spammy comment on each my post, asking people to upvote it and delegate some SP.
I can agree that there is no need to ask for an upvote. If people like it, they will upvote without being asked. And @bycoleman, maybe you could add the delegation links to the introductory post you are referring to?
That's the question, why does the bot needs delegation if its purpose is only to show readers that author has used upvote bots?
I mean the bot creator just want to make some money like everyone on steemit. And I think his hypocrisy is much worse than bidbots usage...
If I understood correctly it needs a valuable upvote to counter the downvotes it will get, so it will not be made invisible by those downvotes
@bycoleman, can you confirm this?
Many people are downvoting the comments so they do not show.
If the bot or someone else does not upvote them, then they will be hidden and serve no purpose.
Soon there will be a consorted effort to out SP the bot so the comments are never shown. Several posters have already begun to power up (which is great), but that power will directed at the bot to try to shut it down.
https://steemit.com/steemit/@transparencybot/the-daily-coverup-transparency-under-attack
The message was changed yesterday. No upvote or delegation is requested.
exactly, and also telling everyone if you used more than one bot to make money. the message is actually confrontational and not very nice. to boot they upvote themselves and ask for a deli. LOL yikes
The message no longer asks for upvotes or delegations. This was removed yesterday shortly after getting the bot in full gear. Your feedback and others were very helpful on this regard.
Thanks,
The post from transparencybot is like spam, it looks like crap on the comment section of the blog post. And the blockchain is transparent, all anyone needs to do is look at the wallet of anyone on this platform and they can see every transaction. This bot is crap and not needed.
exactly! i totally agree
This is unasked for spam. I agree with you 100%
I had just followed you and was excited to learn more about you. But when I saw that you guys used a bid bot, that told me everything that I need to know about you. In ten seconds, you are not just going to be unfollowed. You are going to be MUTED!
Do you think @dunite actually cares that you followed him/her? No fucking way, you should mute your fucking self.
exactly, you are my hero!
Go ahead. Mute me and hide in your filter bubble. Or, encounter me. Social intercourse is about giving, not taking. Human relationships, even isolated encounters, are sacred. Whenever you disagree with something I post, say so, in whatever terms you choose to express yourself. I will consider your thoughts.
My most significant achievement in life is the large number of mistakes that I have made and false ideas that I have embraced. You can quantify the maturity of a person by counting the number of times he or she has apologized and/or admitted that he or she is wrong.
there are so many groups and people using bots! you look fairly new, maybe do more research before passing judgment. if you like the content, which is what steemit is about ... what would a bot matter?
I am new, and I am willing to admit being wrong if it appears that I am. But I am a trained economist, and my trained instincts tell me that gaming the system will destroy it. There's an old saying in monetary economics that is closely related: "Bad money drives out good".
I'd like to have a respectful conversation about each of the types of bots currently in use or emerging, in which we take a good look at whether they are good, or bad, for the platform.
I think that @transparencybot is the best thing I've seen yet here. You guys who are paying for exposure are selfish, morally ignorant people who don't get the concept of community.
We don't need your shitty content or your even more shitty predatory personality here. I personally wish that you all DID leave. Three cheers to @transparencybot.
I'm glad you think that it is the best thing here. selfish/ignorant? What does using a bot have to do with community? Is this platform fair for all users in the community?
We don't need your fucking twisted perspective on the issue and it's best if you shut your fucking mouth.
This is a public platform and you are free to write anything you want on any post, but you shouldn't be condescending to those you do not know.
That being said, I see what you have wrote and it would be best IMO that you take your shitty worthless posts and leave the platform. Do us all a favor and go fuck yourself and leave the platform.
Thanks for providing even more evidence that you are a selfish person who flags people merely because you don't like what they have to say. If everyone was like you, we'd all destroy the platform in a nuclear flag war. I'm not going to flag you because I'm not that kind of person. My policy is to UPVOTE people who disagree with me. So you are getting an upvote from me.
You assumed that I flagged your post b/c I did not like what you have to say. While in fact, when you read the message that appears before you flag, one of them are 'Hate Speech or Internet Trolling'.
Your initial post described your personality from the get go. And for someone that just came in last month, you sure have no problem shooting your mouth off with no respect at all. It actually does not matter b/c crypto and a decentralized system is a free for all and the wild wild west.
Nuclear flag war huh? If you look at my history from July 2017, I have flagged one other person, that is it. You and this new bot were number 2 and 3. There are a lot of people that flag every single week. I have flagged 3 times in 10 months.
In addition, since I have been on this platform since July 17, I have never been in one argument with anyone with the exception of today. So congratulations, you are the first.
One can get a misconception from my reply post that I am an aggressive poster based on the profanity used. But if you look at every single one of my posts or comments from July 17, you will see that I do not use profanity or swear in any of the posts. Your reply brought it out and I think that people need to stand up to what they believe is right.
Commenting on posts is fine, when a bot FORCES an unwelcome comment that has zero value on a post is SPAM. One only needs to look at a wallet to see if they were using a bot.
I personally do not need upvotes that are of zero value...
Sounds like a very balanced and fair perspective to me, @glennolua . “You can say whatever you want, just don’t disagree with me”. Got it.
I'm glad you see it as fair and balanced... if you don't like what is written, say it straight up or don't write anything at all....
I Agree the comment looks like other loud bot spam, but I think for example an outsider who lands on trending wouldn’t go look into someone’s wallet...
YOu will never hear me say that it is perfect, but it is a step in the right direction: bringing awareness about the problem of upvote bots (I know there are many more, but I’m already happy with one step in one direction)
IMO, most of the bot users are minnows that send in 5-10 SBD to get something back for their post. They do not care if their post is on any trending page at all.
I see this as a small crypto savings account that may have more value in the future. I can continue to grow it slowly for potential future monetary gains.
I'm not sure how the abusers of the bid bods can be addressed as it is hard to tell someone to stop abusing the system.
There are others here that have multiple accounts with high SP that are really abusing the system. They make 1000's of dollars in withdrawals a month and are living off Steem/SBD's. This is the stuff that should be stopped, but the high profile people (witnesses) just turn their heads the other way.
Don’t get me started on all the things that need to be fixed around here, lol. I can go on for a day or two...
The real fixing should be done by SteemIt Inc., but they don’t care and they don’t do anything.
The fact that a lot of early adopters are stuck in their circle-jerking and don’t care about the community, only about the money is a huge problem.
But we are small and can only do so much...
Those minnows that invest $5-$10 in bots are not going to be addressed by the bot. I must admit, I am not innocent in this. I do send money to the bots, although i realize I shouldn’t. But I have invested quite some money into Steem, and I never got a payout as high as $50, even when buying upvotes.
You know people are throwing $100s at a time to the bots??
I'm using $25-30 to buy upvotes for every post and getting payout around the same amount + some SP and I think this system is useful for platform, especially for minnows, since whales and dolphins has much more ways for promotion.
Also, let's not forget that main vote sellers like @minnowbooster and @smartsteem has limits and they use rating systems, so that they won't upvote shitposts. Maybe someone will use bidbots to make money on a low-quality post, but leaving spammy comments under everyone's posts in a row is not a solution. In my opinion this bot is not more useful then bot posting BTC price.
And I still havn't got an answer, why does this bot need SP? What it will be used for? It's not supporting minnows or quality posts, it's just leaving comments. If I'm not wrong no SP needed to post a comment.
Yeah, there are some dolphins/whales that throw in 75-100 at a time to the larger bots. Their posts and payouts are like $700+, that is abuse.
While I'm not quite as belligererant, I do have to agree that many people using bid bots is a symptom of the low quality stuff getting to trending page. I appreciate the idea of the bot, but I think this is something that should be looked at manually vs automated.
If quality content is upvoted with a bid bot, that's okay. Many times I spend 2-4 hours on a single blog post. To have that go on to make .12 is stupid. I sell those same blog posts for $100 to clients.
I think there will be a point where bid bots become obsolete (possibly with the communities update), but until then it's the best way for a creator like me, who spends hours creating and publishing high quality content, to get any sort of traction. Without a valid solution to them, I and many other high quality writers/content creators wouldn't be here.
corporations paying for politicians sounds like a great idea too, of course it doesn’t affect their motivation to represent the people, right?
if u are making good post a dont Se a problem om advertising it. but the problem is the shit posts.
if someone can take one photo of a garbage can put some random texs on it pay 100$ on bid pots get it on trending and make 150$ on it the system is not working. and its down hill from there. the bots Ned to be controlled in some way or like these bot is doing.
And again, the problem is the vote sellers who don't care whom they are selling their votes. And I would understand if the @transparencybot filter that kind of posts, which consists of one image or random text and mark them, but not the same huge and spammy comment under every post is annoying and pointless!
Rightly said bro, I am a newbie and have written down around 10 articles, but it is quite disappointing to see my good posts not even making $1. I have much to write about, writing is not a problem for me, problem right now is the fear of having my article lost and not seen by others, as its been happening since I joined. Can you explain to me, how can I use the bidbots to have few of my articles get in the streamline?
Oh seriously!? On top of spamming for upvotes, this bot is asking for SP delegation? What the hell are you using that delegation for?
Thank you fro your reply.
The bot is non profit, all delegations will be used directly to keep the platform transparent, by continuing to be able to post these comments.
Funds will not be sent out to anyone else, including myself. I am the largest delegator at this point.
Transparency is a good thing, isn't? After all, many believe that is what this blockchain is all about.
That statement by itself is shady. You're not disclosing at all what that means. Further, you've done nothing to show what your reports look like that show your non-profit status. Transparency means everything has to be clear and out in the open. You have to be beyond reproach.
I am open to specific suggestions on what wording might be used.
This bot is similar to steemitboard, spaminator, steemcleaners, cheeta etc, which are in place to help protect and/or highlight the platform. It is up to the community to decide if they want to support it.
What happens to the payouts? Do you need a lot of SP to leave comments?
Thank you.
Your support is going to be needed, some bigger hitters have started to come after the bot.
Transparency is a good thing, isn't? After all, many believe that is what this blockchain is all about.
That is why people can click on anyone's wallet and see every transaction, it is transparent. They do not need a bot spam post on their blogs...
OMG! Another bot spamming users to to get upvotes.
The topic reveals your agenda.
transparencybot is focused on transparency in regards to bidbots, not in transparency as a whole.
If you care about reward pool abuse, 15% of the reward pool goes to pay interest mostly for preminers.
If you care about overall abuse, no amount of reward pool abuse can offset the initial abuse of premining.
People can vote and buy votes for themselves to oblivion, and still remain with less than 5% of what a dozen of preminers have without an effort, and still take out of the reward pool less than what these people get through:
interest on vests, curation rewards, author rewards on self upvotes, STEEM rents via delegation and payments on vote selling.
You blame it on the victims trying to grow.
You do not cause any guilt for me.
STEEM is a game of abuse, and one of the whales even gave me a little upvote once for stating so.
You got a 25.00% upvote from @ubot courtesy of @stimialiti! Send 0.05 Steem or SBD to @ubot for an upvote with link of post in memo.
Every post gets Resteemed (follow us to get your post more exposure)!
98% of earnings paid daily to delegators! Go to www.ubot.ws for details.
You got a 3.32% upvote from @brupvoter courtesy of @stimialiti!
Excellent Initiative. The Ezira project utilizes bid bots for promoting our posts to the wider Steem audience. This is due to the lack of viable blockchain mechanisms for promoting content. The Ezira project plans to improve the Steem model to provide a way for creators to directly pay the blockchain for useful promotion.
-> https://www.ezira.io
That would be a very welcome initiative as well. I wish you much success, the current model is as you say, without any viable means of visibility other than to steal rewards from others.
I'll try to keep an eye out on your progress.
This assumption of stealing from the rewards pool needs to be addressed, there is no stealing going on. That SP is being delegated to earn a reward on investment, if it were not 'sold' do you think it would be used to vote on what people regard good content. No, what would happen then is they would be forced to write posts and self vote to earn the reward. The problem with Steemit is not the bid-bots but that the curation rewards are not geared to forcing people to go out and vote for good content or any content for that matter. I hope the addition of communities may help in that regard, but since the vast majority of users here have little or no SP the curation reward system as it stands is clearly not working and that is what needs to be addressed.
Most of this stems from the fact that Steem distribution is very very concentrated towards a few at the top with the vast majority having little or no SP at all and the current set up isn't helping to distribute that SP more evenly, fix that and you will fix the problem.
Also this notion that only good content deserves to be highly paid is false as well, I think at best you will hopefully end up with the majority of highly regarded content being well paid but there is always going to be some bit of crap that will make it to the top if it is well liked. That's why you can't ban a one picture post with just one sentence, what if that was the most important picture ever taken and it just needed to be posted and shared, you couldn't judge that on substance alone.
Very nice work!
Thank you, it means a lot from you as you have been here nearly from the beginning!
Once this bot gets established, I have a few more tools I hope to be able to add to the battle.
Hi Craig - thanks for this information. You did an excellent job ofexplaining why people are drawn to using bots and the inherent consequences to our community by doing so.
Clearly using bots or not, is a reflection of our true motivation for being on this site.....personal gain vs adding value to a chosen community.
This is my first post...just getting my feet wet.....but from a newbe
I would sooner be promoted on the basis of worthy content than by clever manipulation of the system......no ands, ifs or bots!!!
Joanna
Haha, nice Sagestuff!
And for the record, do I really want to drop a large chunk if change into this platform if it has such significant systemic issues? Hm.... Seems like nasty elitist capitalism all over again...? Or....?
Good, i follow you!!!
Yeah because trending before the bidbots was full of good content. I think it is the choice of the ones who writes articles to promote itself and I see the bidbots as a mean of promotion, so if you use them, try to reach trending.
Also the bidbots are a mean for investors. The ones strongest against bidbots are the ones who never put a dime in Steem. From nothing comes nothing. I think the ones who bid for less shall be banned as the promotional effect disapears.
You make some very valid points. Many of the most recent users of the bidbots have almost no investment, other than what they received back from the payout. They then take the SBD, create another article and promote it to the extent of what they have. It would seem like a great plan except....
If EVERYONE uses bidbots to make sure their article is seen, then eventually, no post will be seen, just paid for.
And, the bot owners remove the profits and sell it on the open market, dropping the price of Steem. So the SP invested by the rest of us is worth less each day.
Thank you for the reply.
I've seen this on golos, the sister site of steemit. There bidbots are not allowed and votes are sold via telegram on a higher margin for the vote sellers. Vote selling will not be stopped by removing the bidbots.
Yes if everyone would use the bidbots. Without the bidbots or whales ass kissing a new minnow would not have a slight chance. When I joined Steemit over a year ago, there was one post every few minutes, now there is a post almost every second. The chances to be seen have diminished exponential.
I see bidbots as a means of self promotion and I used them before to reach trending or hot. I have now a good follower base and stopped using them. I plan to raise one more account where I will use the bid bots even for a loss.
I invested in a bid bot as delegator as I see it as an incentive for investment. I bought some thousands of Steem just for that. Would it have not been for this ooportunity I would have probably not have done it. I'm not saying that I don't vote and read other posts as I had 326 upvotes, on 138 accounts, in the last 7d with zero votes on me. Data can be checked on steemworld.org for comparation with other accounts. ;)
The problem is with the trending and hot sections, they need to go. We have on trending on a normal day without the bidbots only +70 accounts with crap crypto analyse. There are some guys that used the shotgun method and bought randomly coins and are in most cases far better than following 90% of the expert advice in trending.
Like said, remove trending and hot and add a random section, where post that are active shall be randomly shown, the newer the post the more views it shall get. This will give more value also to the resteem function, as now it is mostly done by spammers that eat up the bandwith.
Only commenting that a post wwas paid for will mostly bring the account very fast to a low reputation by being flagged. I've seen one project like this before that was commenting on minnowbooster when the comments have been removed. I think that the bidbots that use the comment are already showing that the post has been paid for.
By the way, Minnowbooster added the option for an external vote selling service on their website, where one trades vote anonymous.
Hope that you take my comment as constructive and not criticism.
Again, all of your comments are well founded and I do not necessarily disagree, yet transparency remains the goal of this project. If golos and the external MB voting were more transparent, it would reduce the problem.
Blessings!
This is a great idea. I hope you upvote yourself to make sure the @transparencybot comment achieves high visibility.
Thanks for reblogging this @eonwarped
cheers
Thank so very much for the support!
As a tiny minnow ("catfluff," really...) trying to navigate this community honestly, I certainly commend your efforts. Whereas I think Steemit is really cool and has lots of potential, it often feels more like "Game of Dollars" than social content venue. Which is a shame.
I wish you much success with your venture!
=^..^=
Thank you very much for the reply and support.
We all need to work together to get this platform back to what it used to be and how it was designed.
Cooperation is key, for sure. My Human seems to think that the Hivemind/Communities feature might help because people will become more likely to cluster around around topics and interest groups. Mutual support will develop there; when people discover they can get 50 votes from friends for FREE, they'll be less inclined to BUY votes. Time will tell.
=^..^=
Indeed, you are correct!
More and more people are starting to realize the devastating impact bots and auto curation is having, but the money is so huge, it will be no small task to bring this back under control.
I don't know anything about Hivemind so perhaps you can point them or me.
I feel exactly the same way, @curatorcat! I think communities are the answer. Many of us came here to be supported and to support others with great content. In my topics of interest, I love making friends and learning from them. I will happily reward their efforts with upvotes and resteems when I know their intentions are education and sharing. I don't even have to be 100% in agreement, since it is just as important to learn from different points of view as it is from people you agree with.
@transparencybot - I'm just asking a question here. So please don't flag me. So it's okay for whales to upvote themselves, with high SP and get lot's of rewards right? But it's not okay for people who are minnows, who write good quality posts- to buy some upvotes to increase their exposure and hope to get some SteemPower/SBDs back? Whales and people who have been here a while have followers many of whom are dolphins or whales too.
I'm a minnow trying to grow. And I can write the most excellent post in the world. But, because I have few followers and all my followers are new too- I don't get squat if I don't use any bid-bots. Why should I be penalized because I want to swim with the whales?
This seems a little unfair and selective in who your bot targets- whales use bots too. They just have a lot of followers who comment on their posts also.
Maybe your tool would be effective if it could tell which posts are high or low quality.
That would of course just be a judgement call. tranparencybot simply posts stats and does not judge.
People pay to be in the trending page. this plattform works in that way. However your work will help to change this.
I held a contest and I wanted the maximum exposure for the artworks of the participants, so I paid for votes. Maybe is not the ideal solution, but that's what I have. If someone knows a better solution (a quick solution), I'll be glad to receive feedback. In general words, I think steemit is a bot gaming system instead of a social network. (see davemccoy 's post). A suggestion could be that "trending" and "hot" pages show "sponsored" results and "organic" results (without paid votes), but off course, this will depend on steemit's owners and witnesess. This is just my opinion. Thanks
You are correct, the platform is now pay to play. But it was not designed to be so and does not need to be so.
I am a real fan of the sponsored and organic results, but not optimistic it will occur.
All it takes is for a fraction of people to start downvoting bot abuse and things would change instantly.
Perhaps the owners will wake up soon, until then, we are all we have.
Blessings!
I'll be interested to see how this goes. Someone tried to do a similar thing in the past couple of weeks, can't remember the name - it got flagged down to nothing in the first day by more than one bidbot owner. Guess they weren't as ready as you were.
Lots of great discussion of paid-upvoting (and its connection to witnesses and whales alike) going on at the moment. Anyone who doesn't think that it's a problem needs to educate themselves by reading up on "rent-seeking" and "regulatory capture".
Hope it goes well for you. I look forward to upvoting your comments on trending posts.
Yes, it is going to be a battle and I may need to power up a lot more. Hopefully I will receive some delegations to be able to keep in the fight.
There is so many opinions on these bots, it is really amazing how many think they are good for the platform. Send a link to the concepts you are speaking of and I may be able to include them in an upcoming post.
Blessings!
Rent-seeking
@krnel (with a little input from me) has a good discussion of how this might apply to steemit. There's a bit of nuance in how this applies - it's not quite the same as in classic economics (I think), but it is certainly something that is putting the brakes on growth here.
Regulatory capture
I have discussed how I think this applies to steemit, but you don't need to use too much imagination to see where I'm going with this if we recognise that the top 20 witnesses are essentially making policy/regulatory decisions.
Thank you very much for this. I will review later and then again.
Yes, that was me, I scanned the blockchain for each and every bid bot and vote selling transaction and called this out, but I got immediately flagged. If the community is now being supportive of such an initiative, I may restart my operation and join your cause :-)
Hey! Glad you are still around. Let's not get to ahead of ourselves regarding community support - though anyone paying attention would know which higher -rep steemians are likely to support this (privately at least).
If nothing else, I'm sure there are lessons to be learned from your experience.
It takes a bit of SP to keep from being crushed. Transparency bot was going backwards until I leased more SP to keep it afloat.
Check out who is flagging @transparencybot here: http://www.steemreports.com/incoming-flags-info/?account=transparencybot&days=14
Thanks. @samueldouglas. For some reason I forgot all about steemreports and went through the comments one by one manually ;0)
This is a promising and necessary step forward, I've been guilty of going a bit overboard with the bots but I'm glad you commented to remind me of my transgressions.
I don't think people would mind if one day all the bots just disappeared, the only reason people use them is out of necessity due to everyone else using them and whales not curating.
It is really understandable that everyone has started using them, really out of total frustration. We just need to start educating and even flagging abuses to get our platform back.
Thanks for the support!
Yeah, self policing is really the only way on here it seems. I'd love for this to become the next cheetah/steemcleaners.
Also, if you need any scripts/modules written for this, I'd be glad to help.
Wow, I really appreciate the offer of help. Not sure where it will go next or what I might need, but I will follow you and bookmark this page so, if down the road, there is more clarity, I will certainly reach out to you.
If you have an ideas, let me know. This tool is going to be entirely non-profit and once large enough will begin flagging the most egregious of offenders, but for now, it needs to get its legs under it.
Not a lot in the way of ideas, I think getting a delegation from @steemcleaners / @berniesanders is the next big step. Bernie's already voted on this and he's very generous with his delegations (often about 20000).
Maybe make a daily post as well which lists all the worst offenders, that way the bot has a revenue stream/way for people to show appreciation.
Unfortunately... To say another individuals work is trash is a harmful thing.
About what was just said,
Have you ever been in a relationship where your life partner said you were trash?...
Your own mother.. Telling you, you will never amount to anything? Beings close to you.. Saying the same thing?
A man spends the last coins he has to try and gain some more, giving it all he has, on any idea he can think about? He just wants to purchase fruit at a local market to possibly then open his own restaurant in the town to then spread prosperity? Gets his tokens taken away?... Because a Judge decides his fate....
A life of FATE and CAUSALITY.
Will you be the man with arrows standing forward... Or will you be the man ready to burn the village down?
I have personally upvoted this post, your understanding and actions are accepted! 👌⭐
@herorasseru will always support everyone here 👍✨
Don't just use bolding man, it's like all-caps ....
🤔 Is there a way to explain the reason one shouldn't?
IS THERE SOMETHING WRONG WITH ALL CAPS? I ACTUALLY HAPPEN TO LIKE IT. VERY EXPRESSIVE YOU SEE, HAHAHAH 😁👌✨❤
I like your spunk @herorasseru
😁✨
For many years, all caps has been considered rude because it's like SHOUTING.
To me it telegraphs the person's point will be very weak, because they need to resort to forcing people to give them attention. To me it's like talking to a person who's had WAY TOO MUCH to drink.
I never read anything in all caps for that reason.
Hahahah, I see! That does explain! Well.. We are in a new age afterall, maybe things this time could be different? 😁👍✨
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How will bidbots destroy the price if someone is having to buy SBD/Steem to pay for a bid?
Thanks for your worthy question.
The platform and thus the price of Steem is only worth something if the masses think the future of the platform is secure. This occurs if they see the trend leaning towards quality and long term motivations.
Please see: https://steemit.com/steemit/@bycoleman/steem-price-under-massive-pressure-as-more-whales-power-down
I don't agree with your assesment that "Steem is only worth something if the masses think the future of the platform is secure" and here is why. If this is so why does BCC or Bcash have value>? Bid bots are actually driving the Steem price up and continue reading to find out how.
Simple economics. People care about one thing above all else, generally speaking, PROFIT. The easiest, most hands off way, to profit on Steem is to get SP and delegate it to a Bidbot. Do this, sit back and collect your profit. This would not be possible if there weren't a market of people willing to pay for bids. Hence bid bots contributing to the demand side of the suply demand curve.
@bycoleman I reject your claim that people will only "believe" in Steemit if" trends lean towards quality". When has this ever been the case anywhere historically? Provide any sort of evidence.... even if it's just hearsay. People don't want to invest into crap, agreed. But they aren't investing because it give them a warm fuzzy feeling ether. People invest to profit. Go buy SP, sell your votes and BAM! Profit!
You should try to appeal to those vote selling instead of vote buying. Why not target them instead of vote buyers?
If you were vested with 2,000 SP three months you had an upvote worth nearly 1.00 SP, now it is worth around .25 SP, a 75% loss in vested wealth.
The claims on the rewards pool has grown exponentially. Bidbots add more claims without more SP invested, just delegated. The very small amount of SP brought into the space to bid on bots, is significantly countered by the expansion of claims.
Check it out, the code and delegations, it is open source and open to all.
Many delegations have changed from non-profts to bots.
https://steemit.com/steemit/@bycoleman/where-are-the-millions-of-usd-in-sp-being-delegated-to-by-the-largest-stake-holders-top-100-revealed
I agree, vote sellers need to be a part of the solution, I have some ideas to bring to the vote sellers that I believe can make a substantial difference without killing their bottom line.
Blessings!
I agree, vote sellers need to be a part of the solution, I have some ideas to bring to the vote sellers that I believe can make a substantial difference without killing their bottom line.
I don't comprehend your position. Why it's ok for this bot to create a focus around getting rid of bid buying when both the buyer and the seller are equally responsible for the situation. I hear you say don't hurt the seller... but what about the buyers... hurting their bottom line is ok? And getting rid of buying will infact hurt the bottom line of sellers?
I think you have identified a problem, but before trying to implement solutions, my opinion is that, we need to fully understand the market conditions that are driving this behavior and change the system. Shaming people will not work.
transparencybot is not making judgment calls just posting stats. This is simple transparency at its core.
@mulletwang I wholeheartedly agree.
The wealth behind your SP hasn't changed. It is just that your vote is now being held to its true value. That is because before there was a large portion of unused SP inflating the value of your SP's vote. Now that this SP can be more easily used the result is SP being activated and utilizing it's full voting potential that was being squandered before.
Once bid bots have become a standard, which is fast approaching, then they will be providing an economic incentive to holding Steem as they will give an easy way for new users to get in the loop. The loop that was formerly held to small groups self voting themselves up and retaining the benefits of holding SP to a small subsection of the platform before.
I guess we'll find out. Problem is if you are wrong, we all lose. If your right we all lose, there will be no quality, all will be lost. Easy money never works.
I do appreciate the feedback.
Blessings!
We are fine either way. Content isn't being produced just for the rewards otherwise Facebook wouldn't have any valuable content. Good content is a part of a strong community and that is something that just needs to build with addition of new thinkers and publishers.
A whale eat shrimp, shrimp eat plankton.
I love the irony of a bot to "out" the bots, but understand where you're going with it. Keep fighting the good fight.
Indeed, it takes a bot to know a bot and a community to make sure they stay in line.
I do, however, like that you're looking at bid-bots. Some bots are useful (and don't dilute the pools with frivolous upvotes), but unfortunately they are in the minority.
For now, I am just trying to bring full transparency to the bidbot usage. It will be up to the community to make the final decisions.
Thanks for the support!
I think you need to change your text a little bit
before posting "@XXXXX, The community appeals to you, please help build a great platform by posting quality content and letting the community curate our work."
you just saying to a person that he has a bad content, but you never read his contet
That was highly entertaining!
Welcome to Steemit! I hope you’ll enjoy being here as much as I do.
You might find these YouTube videos useful. They are created specifically to help new Steemers grow and be successful on Steemit and will be posted on the @steemitvideos account as well.
How To Write A Good Intro Post
All The Best!
Spencer Coffman
My Latest Article: Get More Blog Traffic
Ahahahhah, that's really funny! :)
#sarcasm :)
Exactly.
GREAT to SEE you! I guess, welcome aboard the Steemit Train! You are already a great blessing to us all by being on this platform with us.All for one and one for all! Namaste :)
SOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO AGREED!!!
https://steemit.com/promo-steem/@angelking/introspective-time-what-does-a-minnow-like-me-think-about-steemit
Great article, I have given you all the upvote I have.
Thanks for the support!
Oh thank you..I didn't post for that but thank you...I am so humbled...I just could not agree more with this article...how can we have a replacement of a system that is violating our Freedom of Speech like Twitter to replace it with something that says "Pay for Play"...you can't ...and I don't think that was the intention of Steemit ...well done
XOXOXOX
We know steemit is a transparent platform, but if there are still not transparent please to let us to know special bit bod guaranted votes value, are they as same as doing with the rules?, I support your program and your performance.. Welcome to amazing platform
I did not fully understand your reply, but thank you so much for the support.
Very noble cause.
I hope people will be honest enough to not flag the comments made by @transparencybot...
And I guess the bot will be working overtime, lol. There are few articles that reach such a payout without using bots.
Anyway, I’m very happy someone finally steps forward and addresses the problem. Good work!
Thank you very much for the support.
It had a rough start, as soon as it was launched some bot owners took aim, but a community of voters came to the aid.
More bot owners will attack it soon, but I believe the community will keep it supported with their votes and possibly even delegations. It is strictly non profit and all funds will be used allow the bot to be increasingly effective.
Spread the word, bots are destroying the platform and there is something that can be done -- we just need to stick together.
I really hope this will work. I’ll try to keep an eye out to see what happens.
I need to check my available sp, because this might be something I would be prepared to delegate to.
Meanwhile, I’ve set it up in Gina, to see what happens
Well, I've seen one case already where someone flagged @transparencybot...
Not surprised, though.
Sute, it’ll probably happen again and afain. But there are also a lot of upvotes from people...
Extremely important post. As a new steemian I find myself weighing whether this platform really has a future, given the dynamics described...
If it's just about making money, even as a talented writer and multimedia artist, my time probably will be better spent learning more about trading crypto. At least that seems "more honest" than playing the bots.
I've seen (a lot) more actual debate of ideas on (hold your noses) Facebook than here... Something really is off here, maybe fatally so (?)...
You are so correct, something is off and it will be fatal if not addressed soundly.
There is a real movement to take back the platform, this is just one tiny step.
You can help by spreading the word that quality is the only long term solution.
Thanks so much, bycoleman, brother or sister! I find I'm so inspired by people like you to move beyond my negativity and cynacism to get back to focus on my own heart and what I can bring to the truth disclosure that is the central imperative of these times...
As an addition to your initiative, I hereby commit to specifying how I use bots in any post of my own I self-promote . Thx very much for your effort in this.
Peace, blessings and juicy bits to you today, tomorrow, and the next day!!!
Thank you for this kind response and honest reflection.
It is brother and let me know when you make your post, I'm interested in reading it.
Blessings!
Hey bro, here's my latest: https://steemit.com/funny/@elderchild/red-pill-blue-pill-1-9-11
Hope you are well, Cheerio
And another:
https://steemit.com/funny/@elderchild/red-pill-blue-pill-2-antarctica
Cheerio
I agree with both of you.....yes something is off so let's acknowledge it AND then lets get focused on the solution - quality, quality, quality!!!
What we choose to focus on, selects it, unzips it, and collapses it's possibilities into reality.....
(A little "sagestuff" to ponder....ha!)
You are exactly correct.
Blessings!
Following this one with interest!
Thank you, hopefully I have your support and many others, it will be needed.
Interesting. Thanks for sharing, hehe. You are awesome. I'm Oatmeal Joey Arnold. You can call me Joey.
Joey, you are a spammer and adding nothing of value here. Why should you not be flagged!
You are fake news running off subjectivity, relativity, based on your opinion, shared by other brain washed liberals, progressives, or prove me wrong, but what is spam or not is an opinion and you do not care about what I did in Vietnam for five years and you do not care what I did with the Salvation Army since 2003 and with Word Of Life and you are generalizing and that is too bad for you. http://DrudgeReport.com
Glad to know you actually came back to read the post you posted on.
I try my best to care and to talk to people. I want to respond. I am multi-tasking between YouTube, Twitter, Facebook, Steemit, Linkedin, and sometimes other places, and I can get lost here or there or many places for years or for hours or for weeks at least. I've been pretty well known since I was in high school but then it grew from there and that was over a decade ago. So, I'm still running around like a chicken with no head haha.
KEEP SPAMMING & YOU GET MORE FLAGS!!!
@SteemFlagRewards I warned this account to stop the comment spam but they never stopped.
Please consider to UPVOTE this warning if you find my work to protect you & the platform valuable. Your support is welcome!
This qualifies as spam, however it is not malicious spam and this user is actually providing a service by greeting all of our new users. I thought at first it was abuse of the system but after getting to know him, I know now this is not the case.
Either Zoom In or Right Click Image and Select Open In New Tab
He cant do all those things at once while fucking spamming steemit every 30 seconds.
Best of luck with your mission. I think it is a useful endeavour, however, in not sure if will bring change by itself. Hopefully, a small step in bringing about much needed change though...
Thank you, yes just a very small step. But as they say, a journey of great distance, still starts with a single step.
This is great! I've been taking aim and reserving part of my voting power to flag overvalued trending posts. Now I can simply follow your comments. We need to make bid bots risky again. Yes I know people are losing money promoting but they need to deal with the consequences of the case when a large number of people do not like the post.
Effect is double if enough people chip in: bid bots being riskier means less users fill the pools and bid profits are less. That means those that survive the flag judgements are actually worthy of the value and we've hit a nice equilibrium.
Advertisement = Exposure. Not a guaranteed welcome reception.
Yes, I agree. We all need to spend a little SP "curating" trash. If even a fraction of the people flagged a low value post, then the problem would be solved instantly.
This is just one step, more are coming and
I'mwe are not going to be alone in this battle.Thanks for the support!
I’ve just sent a 100sp delegation to the bot. It’s not much, but all I can spare for the moment.
I read the comments you’re posting. They are informative and polite. I don’t think there will be a lot of problems with ‘normal users’. They seem to react in a good way when you’re making them aware of the problems. I wonder about the big guys, though...
If I can find the time, I’ll write an article about @transparencybot. It deserves attention: finally someone has the guts to stop whining and actually do something about it :0)
Wow, that is really great. You're my first delagator.
I'm going to setup links to let others delegate as well. The bots going to need a lot of help, there are plenty of the big guys that really do not want things brought into the light.
I have seen your other comments, but am just now getting back to the computer, so It will be a bit before I go through all the replies.
It feels good to be doing something (doesn't it!)
I teally hope this works, and if it won’t that it will make people think of setting up other initiatives to make things right again...
It will, there are more that will join us soon. This is just a small match to the bonfire.
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This is a laudable effort and I'm curious to see how it goes.
Following, upvoted and resteemed
Great, your support is really apprecated!
Congratulations @transparencybot!
Your post was mentioned in the Steemit Hit Parade for newcomers in the following category:
I also upvoted your post to increase its reward
If you like my work to promote newcomers and give them more visibility on Steemit, feel free to vote for my witness! You can do it here or use SteemConnect
You go for it, @transparencybot! Finally someone is doing something to stop the trending trash that is destroying Steemit.
Upvoted, resteemed and Good Luck!
Thank you very much for the support, it is going to be a massive uphill battle.
Oh, you bet it is! But seeing the bot showing the amounts in the post comments already is a great start!
I wrote an article testing the effectiveness of having no steempower and not using bid bots. There is a link to the article here.
https://steemit.com/steem/@allcapsonezero/testing-testing-is-this-thing-even-on
I will be doing more tests in the following week.
One interesting point I discuss in the article is using a bid bot versus a big whale upvote. Which is worse or is it the same? Does voting bots just even the playing field so normal people without $1 million accounts can also reach trending. It is an interesting debate, one that I would like you to be a part of because you are also doing something about it.
Also interested in your opinion of minnowbooster and if it is somehow not a voting bot.
Great initiative!
I really welcome this kind of "transparency"... to many of these voting services have stopped leaving obvious traces!
I’ve taken some time to check the comments made by @transparencybot, and especially the reaction and up-/downvote behaviour of the people who have received a comment.
I was actually a bit surprised to see that there are quite some positive reactions. More than I had expected, actually. For now, that is. I’m not sure what will happen if the ‘real’ whales will come forward, but it appears you already have the support of some..
I love how @transparencybot is so transparent about how it will use the delegation it's requesting. I'm being sarcastic of course. This bot is simply taking advantage of the bot climate to spam users with comments and upvotes. Likely, it will use the delegation to upvote itself. If @transparencybot really cared, it would be providing a report that denies payout.
I think there ís a point here...
Yes, I of course have been monitoring this very closely as well.
The reaction is very surprising indeed. The bot has received around 30 downvotes, but MANY more upvotes. So far it is gaining very well in reputation.
I believe since the bots mission is simply to give transparency to the platform, it is not judging the author or its content, that most people are not viewing it any way other than information and an earnest appeal.
Yes, there are some very invested players here who are very fed up with this bidbot problem. I was certainly hoping they might take notice.
Blessings!
THe problem however is that even if you buy only 1 upvote, (or domeone else does so for you), you get stuck with the message (which lookslike any other loud bot message).
And what about people like you and me, @bycoleman? We use the bots, but we stay under $50...?
And shoulf you upvote your own comment? I understand visibility is important, but it’s a bit of a bad message you’re sending by upvoting yourself...
Anyways,... there are more questions I have, the system is not perfect, but it’s like I said before: at least there is someone who is trying to do something.
I have been making some comments, making clear yo people it is not a judgement, still, they feel judged.
I think that’s a good thing...
ABOut the upvotong: I see you sometimes do it, but sometimes you don’t. Any particular reason for that?
As far as my own upvoting, I would love to up vote everyone, but because a lot of my SP is going towards this bot and other entities like @introbot, I often drop below 80%, (right now it is at 73%) so I have to let things rebuild. I would let it drop further, but then I cannot protect the bots.
On the bot upvoting itself, this is how it survives at this early stage, plain and simple. Later, more people may do that. If the bot (or someone) does not upvote, then every comment would get hidden with the smallest downvote.
I monitor downvotes and upvote as necessary
Okay, I get it now...
That explains why some are upvoted and some are not :0)
Thank you very much for the support and questions.
I believe the true goal of this has to be transparency and not judgement as you say. With a mission so clearly defined, then those that find transparency a problem, need to search their own self and find out what is causing them stress with transparency.
Due to limitations of SP, I had to start start at $50.00, if I were to try to do $25.00 the bot would not have enough bandwidth.
Forgive me for being so nosy, but I suspect that a lot of people will get pissed off. I just want to be sure I can reply in a correct way and use good arguments
You are not being nosy at all, your questions are well thought out and extremely useful.
I hope I have helped you with useful answers, which may change as the platform dictates.
Youvhave. I’m very curious how this will evolve... hopefully it won’t start another flagging war ;0)
I prefer if you did not post your crap post on my blog. If someone wanted to check if a person is useing a bid bot, they can just look at your wallet and see every transaction that he/she made.
Your auto post on a blog looks like shit and does not need to be there. It's like spam and most people see that as crap.
Look for a better way to find the crap posters and people who are raping the rewards pool.
I find this funny, because I clicked on the replies tab for @transparencybot just to read the comments like this that I knew would likely exist.
The tides are turning against bid bots, and you may find that a public service like this attracts a large following... Anyone is free to comment anything they like on any post they like, just as anyone is apparently free to buy votes for their post instead of letting the public at large determine how valuable their post should be.
Not everyone has time to check up on high paying posts to know whether it's genuine value, or whether someone decided their own post should earn more. @transparencybot makes it incredibly easy for people to know at a glance what posts are being massively boosted.
Personally, I think this is great, because I'm one of those people who will check a "high value" post for bot votes. I'm very unlikely to use my own VP to increase a post that's already been artificially inflated by its author... just my two cents, though.
I agree anyone can comment on a post, this is a public platform. But this service is an automated post, not by a person producing a comment directly related to the blog post.
If someone was really interested if a person is using a bot, they can look at the wallet. If they are that interested, it only takes one click.
And what is anyong going to do when they see a post used a bid bot? If it was for $50? Are you going to flag it? What is the outcome?
You are not going to flag every post that uses a bid bot. If you did, you would get so many downvote flags that your future posts would not make .01 for the rest of your time here.
I do agree that some people are abusing the service by gaining 100's of SBD/Steem on every post. They should be the one's who need to be notified of their actions and the impact on the 'trending/hot' page and with the rewards pool.
Bot votes are an automated system. No one read the post that got voted on, but the value of it still increases...
I've flagged many posts for abusing the upvote system, have gotten flags from people for nothing other than the person was butthurt I had the audacity to negate some of those rewards with my democratic vote in one direction or another. I shrug them off.
As I said, the tides are turning against bid bots and their users. The overwhelming use of them has led to such the need for an automated transparency effort.
Could the comment be restructured, sure. Is the whole thing worthless or spam? NO.
I LOVE WHAT YOU ARE DOING! This is such a good idea. It is totally awesome to be able to see who is purchasing votes. Also hilarious. You're going to embarrass the hell out of these people. Wonderful. You've made my day. I am following and just can't put into words how totally awesome I think what you are doing is!
Anyone who pays for votes is a morally ignorant person who does not comprehend what either "community" or "human being" means.
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STOPNice post, i will follow your account !
You're new here - so you probably don't see that bulk commenting like this might be considered 'comment spam', which may result in people flagging you.
Suggestion: Include total bid-bot upvote value in post.
cool!