This whole article takes into assumption that all bid-bot operators, delegators, or users, are all doing it for profit only, and have no intention of creating value in the network. That's what I personally believe. Bid-bots are just leveraging on the STEEM rewards mechanism to create a win-win transaction between both abusers (the bid-bot and the bidder). Nothing new, there's probably been dozens of decent articles talking about that issue recently.
The problem with the trending
Bots have been ramping up the rape against the reward pool ever since linear rewards. They have been here for a while, but they haven't had an impact like that before. The trending was usually controlled by notorious self-voters/circle-jerkers and by popular authors and the curation trails following them.
FUN FACT: At the moment of writing this article, the top 7 articles in the trending got 90%+ of their rshares from bid-bots publicly listed and advertising on steembottracker.com.
Today, bots control most of the trending, it is obvious to anyone who has been using Steem for a bit. Even the latest article from the official @steemitblog couldn't make it #1 trending (BY FAR).
The metagame has shifted, and more and more whales are delegating to bid-bots as it became a convenient and hands-free method of speculation. It gives out ROIs similar to self-voting, without having to get flagged by @berniesanders afterwards.
More and more users are also stacking bid-bot votes to reach trending. I'm not sure if they use automated tools to automatically optimise their bids through multiple bid-bots, but it surely looks like it, and it's scary to me.
Suggested solution
I totally believe that delegating to bid-bots, or even running your own, to be the best way to speculate on the STEEM blockchain. They convert upvotes to liquidity while syphoning the reward pool and there's no way even the best curator in the world can beat that when 75% needs to go to the real people who create valuable content. The ROI of running a bid-bot is probably very similar to self-voting, i.e close to 100%.
What I believe we can fix easily, is the trending. Just like how back in the past @grumpycat pushed bot owners to enforce the 'no vote after 3.5 days' rule, I believe we should add more rules to bid-bots usage through downvote-pressure, this time by punishing creators who use bots to reach into the trending. Spending 2 SBD to get some visibility in a sub-tag is kinda fair, but scammers spending 400 SBD to promote their ICOs (without the content being marked as an ad in steemit/busy/etc) is terrible for our community (they get scammed) and gives out a bad image to newcomers and potential investors.
But @heimindanger, it's a lot of work to check every post! There's too many bots to check for !?
Not anymore -> https://steemwhales.com/clean-trending/
This brand new page on my dead website SteemWhales.com will allow you to quickly track the status of the trending contents. After you enter your username, it should fetch the list of all public bid bots, the steem natural trending, and show the % of the value coming from bots in the 'Bots' column.
On top of it, all contents that you haven't already voted on, and that have more than 50% of their value coming from bid-bots, will be selected, and by clicking the big green 'Downvote the trash' button, and entering your private posting key, you will quickly use your voting power to clean up the trending.
Basically, it's a weapon for fighting abuse, and punishing users who reach trending through bid-bots stacking. Try it, it's fun. And I believe it's the best way to use your votes in the current state of the system.
Flagged for Hate speech and discrimination against public businesses on the blockchain, in favor of the black market who also operate in the same space.
Why don't you instead make great content and ask us or your friends for sponsorship if you are new instead of making false accusations?
Make sure you also tell these people that you work for d.tube and that you make 25% off of peoples content without contributing a cent to their creation. Should we act the same way? give 25% less on our upvotes to our customers who use d.tube to compensate?
Also - We SPONSOR as well as selling marketing votes for the masses and a lot of other things you seem to not have informed yourself about.
I suggest you think really long before you answer me because your answer will be forever recorded into the block of the chain you post in.
Team Booster
We give everyone a chance
We sponsor great content creators in being better
We give away 25% of our earnings to STEEM OpenSource Projects to stay alive and updated
We reinvest in STEEM to make more peoples dreams come through.
Prior to this, we upvoted absolutely everyone on the steem blockchain for about a year which indeed helped expand the userbase from what it was to what it has become.
What do you do, making one post about d.tube and another about what we do is evil?
You Sir, clueless.
Well said! In personally believe voting services strengthen Steemit and Steem because they create their own economy within Steemit, making Steem the only crypto with practical applications.
You already take much more than 25% when you sell your votes to the bidders.
You remove everybody's chance when you throw in your own bid to upvote yourself.
Only less than a week ago you confessed to stealing all your Steem from @adsactly.
Also dreams come *true not through.
Voting for everybody with your stake had the same effect as voting for nobody. It was for one reason, which was to put your name in the upvote list of every post including the spam and plagiarists.
Heimindanger is a constructor. He has built apps that we needed right when we needed them. You on the other hand, only know how to be destructive. And that's the impact you will always choose to have on the world.
I'm sorry, WHAT??? Hmmm so Fyrstikken confessed to have stolen the million steem he has from adsactly? What's going on here Beanz? Are you on crack? Did you slide off the pole and hit your head? poledancing upside-down not letting enough oxygen into your brain?
And after saying that you expect anybody to take you seriously? Amazing.
No, @beanz, that was me who said that to your boyfriend as a joke when he complained about getting a flag and got angry.
We have a @frontrunner guild who makes off with most of the curation rewards. Normal people benefits from that, plus our customers. We make nothing or very little of the curation rewards because we are the last one to vote.
No @beanz, voting for everyone had a great effect and your opinion is already in a hateful mood, so I wont continue arguing with you.
Had to throw that in there, wow - a foreigner made a spelling mistake according to native english speaker @beanz. Congratulations, I give you that as a win.
I am glad he is a constructor, however I am not happy with this steemwhale bureaucracy. As the gf/ex gf of the guy I flagged last week you are anyway to biased and emotional for me to take anything of what you say seriously.
Maybe @walden has something to add to it.
Heinindanger is not and was never my bf. So I fail to see your point in bringing up an ex irrelevant to this comment. And I wasn't talking about the curation rewards I was talking about the actual liquid payment for the upvote. Which takes back more than 25% of the reward from the upvote.
@beanz, it would be much more profitable to make a quick 200 self owned accounts, re-delegate and just upvote myself 10 times per day with an autonomous feeder like someone else does.
If every single vote-window was full, that would be great - but that is not reality. People, ordinary people has made great profits on @booster since it started almost a year ago and people who have or will use him for shitposting will eventually find themselves in a bankrupt situation because they spent good token promoting bad content, like your current/ex boyfriend.
I was talking about @sirlunchthehost, @beanz. Why are you acting dumb when we know you are devious ans spiteful? Me bringing him up is absolutely relevant. @jonny-clearwater and @instructor2121 and others can tell you that. Heck, you even quoted his recording from that day so please, @beanz. Don`t act a fool for me please. I know your tactics, been seeing them for a year and a half and they never really seem to work.
Why so bitter, @beanz?
I'm not playing dumb and I know who you're talking about. Again, that has nothing to do with booster, nothing to do with heimindangers app and nothing to do with you stealing from @adsactly.
I also fail to see how any of the other people you're tagging are relevant here. It's like you're trying to call for backup or something. Funny to watch.
What's really, really funny, is watching you run your mouth until you crash against a wall like a crashdummy.
You are falsely accusing people of serious shit and this is likely not going to end well for you, as you might be beginning to fathom. Why don't you try something new?
Think, then Talk
@heimendanger, not exactly like d.tube, but absolutely we are running a business on the blockchain. I have written well read posts about that in the past.
We are incorporated in Seychelles and our offices are in Dubai and our Banks are in USA, UK and Norway. If you need to speak with me or any of my team, the best way to reach us is through http://STEEMspeak.com 24/7 on the voice-chat, but if you want to send anything written you can fill out the contact form on http://fyrstikken.com.
Our TOS are explained in the steem blogs of booster and speedvoter and we continuously develop on it to make it better and better along with 20+ other apps/smart scripts we finance through partnerships with @inertia and his company so he has enough funds to keep them up to date as we move forward.
If you are looking for sponsorship for something great, we set aside power for that and is something we can talk about later when you have calmed down some more.
Fyrst.
Lol calm down he says.
How about a campaign to bring n^2 back ?
The real issue isn't linear voting.
It's that your voting power drains after just 10 votes a day. This site was kept clean by a number of power voters who were happy to vote 40 times a day. The power voters have gone because their voting power drains too fast, and everyone else just self-votes or buys bid-bots.
Ok.
Anything higher than n^1 is fine for me.
Where do I have to sign up ?
A reward curve which started as n^2 / exponential (thus flat), and then later changed into linear would work against self-voting as well as excessive rewards:
'Conciliation' of the reward curves?.
Or, even better, an idea of @clayop.
N2 with the whale experiment was doing the trick just fine, it forced the hard fork so that reward pool rape could become a thing.
Does that disadvantage large investors?
Only if the price doesnt rise with all the happy new users that matter in the math.
Who puts $50k into a blogging platform anyway?
If they want to speculate in amounts larger than that they need to keep their hands off of minnow rewards.
When a whale votes everybody else loses money.
Not if they flag each other.
I LOVE flagwars ;)
Thats true, they could fight abuse with their millions rather than screw the little guys out of any rewards.
Yeah this.
This assumption is false. We used bid bots to get exposure on the biggest news in Garden of Eden history and made it to the trending page, and unfortunately were down voted by your bot.
This is unsettling for a few reasons.
#1 We have never used bid bots to send a post to the trending page before this post, but we did here because it is the most important post we have ever made.
#2 Our important post announces the sale of our property which is a huge step towards the next phase of our humanitarian project, and we are offering the property for cryptocurrency. This is significant, and ideally the transaction will be completed in Steem! Obviously, the first real estate for Steem exchange could add great value to the network.
#3 As disclosed in every one of our posts, and more importantly as demonstrated by our actions over the last 2 years here, we are highly dedicated to the success of Steem and creating value in the network. We are extremely devoted to building a better world for ALL - and have been for close to a decade - and have appreciated and embraced Steem's revolutionary potential for furthering that cause since the day we heard about it.
#4 After reaching out to you in Steemit.chat because we feel your downvote per these justifications does not apply to our post, you did not consider these facts we respectfully brought to your attention. In fact, you told us you had not even read the post! You responded absolutely and held fast to your conclusion that the use of bid bots is abuse per se. While it might be true that many posts on trending are of poor quality and are out for profit only, to lump ALL posts together under that judgment is illogical, unreasonable, and tyrannical.
Of course you are entitled to whatever opinion you want as well as to using your voting power however you want, but with this kind of absolute judgment, mistakes have already been made - and you're likely to make more by using a bot to fight a bot.
I'm just going to go through each of your points and deconstruct this argument because it's barely manageable.
The trending section is for to find the best content on the blockchain. The absolute best content at the time and by buying the bids, you effectively kill more and more reason for people to look at trending because it's not the best content. Whilst it's good content, good content doesn't win rewards, doesn't garner real views and essentially rips the opportunity for real content to make it. You might be using it for exposure but this isn't a very good reason because it's not trending worthy and if it was, you'd have put the bids strong enough to get to hot and let the community determine it from there. You didn't. Who am I to call it not great content, well to be honest you've stated it's important but for who and what, let the community decide. You again didn't allow for that.
If it's that great value to the network, let the community decide. Do your outreach, contact people, let people decide it. You rob the community the chance to decide upon it. Next time I have to sell a car I'll just say people can buy it with Steem and start selling everything with it and then switch to Fiat right? No you want people to know about what you're doing but that's all it is. Wrong means to do so as you are killing value for people to depend on Trending as a good means of finding the best content.
Great, that is absolutely fantastic that you are looking to help and benefit the network. I think it's fair to say that we all want this as it helps the blockchain and progresses Steam in the future. I can only hope you continue to do this as I have to gain from your actions. Don't really need to repeat my issue of using the Trending as a mechanic to incorrectly advertise via buying votes.
His reasons don't apply to your post but you still benefit from the ROI or actually ROV. However my issue with your actions is that you are being immoral and not fair to other content creators who might have spent the same amount of time as you but not have the funds to buy the votes.
To conclude, I have absolutely no idea who you guys are or what you guys stand for and you won't know that of me also so that's out of the way. I however do not need to know who you are because what you are trying to defend is wrong. Your intentions might be great but because the trending operates in such a way, you are robbing everyone else the chance of deciding what the actual blockchain wants. If you feel that a whale might not see you, pay enough to get to hot and go from there but that is still unfair. How about network with people, contact whales and get to know them and find out what they feel. I mean if the cause is that great, people will upvote such content. I never seen @heimindanger having to ask people to upvote his content or buy votes for his Steem Dapp "DTube" never was needed because it was that good. People WANTED it and supported it. It was that fantastic that people just wanted to do anything. Your actions prove otherwise and it's absolutely why you had to use Trending to get leverage when something else should have been there.
If this bot is to work, ALL CONTENT must honour what is real curation and therefore we can all decide what is the best content. Does that mean Steem has to change how voting works again. I think it will but don't you dare try to say what you done is morally good for Steem because it adds to the problem. It forces more and more people to pay for exposure rather than finding the best content which is why PEOPLE USE STEEM. To find the BEST of the internet within the Steem blockchain and you robbed the community a part of that chance.
If you want to speak to me, I'll be on the DTube Discord as Coldbolt but this isn't right. I absolutely understand your good intention but ignoring how trending works, taints it badly.
Goodluck to the future.
Let's deconstruct the deconstruction.
"The trending section is for to find the best content on the blockchain."
According to whom?
So many assumptions and opinions stated as fact.
Note: You have a view of how SteemIt could develop, not "The View".
I think the trending page is more interesting and higher quality now with the voting bots. I was really tired of the "Circle Jerk" posts.
Now, I will not claim I am right and you are wrong, but your opinion is just that.
hahhaa yea bid bots are actually better than the circle jerking...
I believe in the free market, which means I believe that if someone wants to and has the ability to use bid bots then its all good.
With that being said I can also then say if someone wants to use a bot do downvote without any actual consideration/fairness as ridiculous as it is....well its still part of the free market....Whatever hahaha it is the way it is and will be the way its going to be.
Appreciate your input here though on this important topic.
SteemON!
I would be extremely confident to say that my view of Steem is pretty much bang on.
With this logic, we'd not be progressing as a human race. The quality of content in my opinion hasn't went up but stayed the same. What has happened now is we're paying our way to show our content, rather than giving a platform for finding the best content creators or bringing them over. There shouldn't be a gate to pay to have content seen but rather the content should be seen for it's value and worth.
If we're always seeking to find the best content, then the trending will grow to find such things and it'll develop. If we go about it the current state that it's in, we limit the amount of people that can create that content and therefore the chances of better content surpassing it's current self is diminished.
Therefore I am happy to state my opinion will move correctly. Fair does to yourself, I did state it as a fact but to say that bid bots is the future of Steem, is like trying to defend a house with no walls. and stomps as hands
I view SteemIt as the Firehose the other Platforms will dump into. dbooks, dlive, dtube and others are the future of the platform. I am not a fan of watching people vlog, just as you don't seem to like ads. Shrugs. It's just a point of view.
Upvoted for relevancy
Dang sorry that happened to such a good advocate of Steem.
Thank you for that, it means a lot to me/us. I don't get involved in drama so am actually only just now reading this thread.....Noted for the record.
SteemON!
I'm replacing the value of that stupid flag right now.
Steem on you incredible bastards
Fuck yea you awesome fuck!!!! hahaha
Hoping to see you soon at Eden Metamorphosis!
I plan to be heading your way in June!
ok well come early for memorial day! Have you seen our 4 day festival? Its going to be unlike anything you have ever seen I guarantee you that!
well I want to time the trip with the Austin meetup
This will be WAY cooler hahaha, but do BOTH.
This is really about a monopoly (Steemit whales) kicking out the little guys like any other big corporation, they are protecting their interests. How else do you think this self appointed gestapo account manages to get $200-$700 for his crappy posts? It's a whale club, they vote among themselves and won't let the small fish play. The only thing you can do is power down and let these scammers fall on their own weight. I can't wait to see the prosecutions!
@gardenofeden - on the plus side, ure comment here has allowed me to find you :D - more than if u had just made trending XD
followed and upvoted last post :D
they spend millions supposedly against the abuse instead of helping the little ones to come out from below.
I see the war of flags everywhere when that money could help many people in the world in countries in crisis, who join Steemit in search of rewards for their talent. Then these small fish would not have to buy Bots Bit so that nobody sees them, or worse, to do what a whale likes, to vote, they practically ask for a vote.
When I go to the trends tab, I read what I find interesting and those who publish low quality content and use Bit bots are only accelerating the pace of their failure. We all know here that it is not because you have a tendency, but because it is of quality.
Each person is free to choose what they read. It is equal to the ads that appear on YouTube every time you watch a video, you decide whether to watch it or omit the publication.
We do not all have equal tastes and what for one is a good content perhaps for another is shit. They should let people do what they like most with their money and read what they like most.
This raises a problem of subjectivity. For example, Suesa's post was very clearly not doing it for profit, but that can only be known if you knew the person. Context becomes an issue, quality and value becomes an opinion, and no investigation will reliably give you a true answer to this assumption in general.
With that in mind you inevitably end up arbitrarily flagging every post regardless of its context, and contribution to the platform. I agree with the sentiment on the whole, don't get me wrong, but a higher status of responsibility & regulation is going to be needed if it's to avoid backlash.
For example, as a curator, I don't just upvote things using our tag, nor do I upvote simply 'good' content. I have to visit their profiles and check their comments and previous posts to get a contextual picture of who they are so I know they're not just abusing the system for profit. Takes time.
What about everyone freely doing anything including downvoting, and not talking about it? Just like nobody ever asks anyone why their posts are receiving upvotes. Edit: i know this sounds like a jaded response lol
lol,.. I made a post about that once. Nobody ever posts.. "why are my posts earning this much?" Love the comment.
Subjectivity is not a "problem" it is something to be expressed with your votes. So if you think some activity is adding value to Steem then upvote it and if you think it is not adding value commensurate with its rewards (which often translates into real negative value when consider the massive growth of the blockchain that results from all this bidding and botting, which in turn is making it increasingly difficult and costly to operate and could eventually kill it), then downvote it.
Totally, I'm simply pointing out that the post is written in a way that the method doesn't take into account what the content is, its just an initiative that looks at the trending and bot situation and flags according to that, nevermind what the context is and I'm not sure that is wise without some extra regulation. because people start flag wars over this stuff and makes the platform look childish af - all on trending.
IF you think something is overvalued, then flag, but I question whether flags should be used simply based on a glance at the total price and whether a bot was used
I think that was my point anyway, I kinda forgot now.
It's amazing how touchy some people can be, just the other day I gave some little flags to a bunch of image copyrighted spammer posts and the guy just imploded:
Well, it wasn't on profit, I agree with you on that one @mobbs but it's still a shitpost that doesn't deserve to be on Trending, it doesn't even deserve a dollar since it brings no value to the community. It's just a failed joke. It's a subjective opinion.
I know Suesa, she's doing good, but many other guys are doing good too and don't earn that much in half a year. Regardless of the quality, no post should make $800 unless it's a project update, like the ones that start with D.
Conclusion, even without taking into consideration the context we can clearly see that most of the Trending posts are overvalued and deserve flagging.
Sorry but that sounds a lot like "mob rule". When you write "it doesn't deserve a dollar since it brings no value to the community" you are implying that you are the one or among the ones who decide what brings and doesn't bring value to the community ... Who gave you that role or what makes you think you are entitles to it ? That there is only one way to define "the community" and it is obviously the way you (and those who think like you) define it ...
I guess this drama currently unfolding goes to show why anarchy cannot work - every guy with a metaphorical gun implicitly assumes that things are "right" or "wrong" according to a scale of values that he takes for granted and believes absolute, and also happens to be his scale of values ...
Also saying Suesa's post shouldn't make that much because other posts more deserving do not earn nearly as much is again a very "communist" way of looking at things (it implies "everybody should be judged and ranked according to one rule" - it basically ends up encouraging conformism and kills creativity)
Most of the Trending posts are "overvalued" - is one way of putting it that implies that there is one definition of value (and you are using it).
Paid votes using bots are a bad idea I believe but in this case the cure is worse than the disease, in my opinion
Yes, everyone is. That's why we get to vote.
Another way of seeing it is "nobody is".
I can decide what brings value to ME. But I shouldn't judge on behalf of THE COMMUNITY, nobody placed any power-of-attorney in me ! I can only talk for myself. You can only talk for yourself, you cannot suddenly decide that, because YOUR PERSONAL JUDGEMENT says that it doesn't bring value to you then it automatically means that it doesn't bring value to THE COMMUNITY.
Actually, I'm not sure you even realize the enormity of what you've written ... We get to vote FOR OURSELVES. Your vote indicate what is valuable (or not) FOR YOU! You have absolutely NO RIGHT to imagine that you speak on behalf of THE COMMUNITY.
YOU and THE COMMUNITY are distinct entities. THE COMMUNITY as a whole cannot vote. What is valuable for it results from the aggregate of individual values. If you flag something that many people upvoted it means you are challenging the judgement of the people who upvoted, you are defying them, by annihilating the effect of their vote you want to deny them the right to express their appreciation. It is extremely destructive.
In case the value comes from bots then it means you are defying and challenging the current steemit system. You can do that indeed, I too believe the current HF19 could do with some tweaking, but I think downvoting is the wrong approach. We should instead plead with whoever can do something about it to change the system.
If you want Steem to be successful then you (speaking generally, not just you personally) need to be assessing what in your opinion adds value to the community (especially the community of investors who have entrusted their capital to STEEM/SP) and what does not. And then expressing that with voting. Because otherwise there is no mechanism to ensure the investors' money being spent on rewards is actually delivering value, and instead those who value their own personal enrichment will prevail. Investors will then abandon it and it will die.
There is no 'free money' here. It all comes from investors who buy in. Unless limits are put on those who want to take that money and put it straight into their pockets, investors will turn off the lights and the party will be over.
You are wrong.
Thank you for taking the time to debate. I'm preparing a more elaborate answer that I'll publish as a standalone post because I am convinced the debate is central to the future of steem (the blockchain system)
What value does it brings to the community that it deserves to have such a humongous payout? Does it help people? Change someone's life? Does it develops the ecosystem?
The whole idea of this platform is that if the community find a post valuable enough they upvote it. If you upvote a post up to 800 with bots, 85% of the votes being bought then who is the one deciding the value? You or the community?
I have my definition of value and others have theirs, but that is the idea, if people find something valuable (whatever that means to them), they use their VP to upvote it, showing their appreciation.
For example, your post is in Trending on the tag Steem, way above mine but you bought all of your votes, and I didn't. The community upvoted my post because they found it valuable. So what does that mean, your post is of better quality because it has a bigger payout?
How's the cure worse than the disease? If someone from the community finds your post overvalued, they flag it. The rewards someone bought, go back to the reward pool and the whole community is benefiting from it one way or another.
I agree with your analysis, I think the whole idea of self-voting and bot voting is extremly misguided and said as much in the beginning. But then everybody answered : "these are the rules of this platform, if you don't like it you can go away". Ok, if these are the rules and self-voting and bots are part of the game then what people are doing is just playing the game by the rules.
I agree the game is rigged (a guy from Nairobi or Aceh has little chance to be able to buy several hundred $ worth of bot voting) but the solution is not "opininon wars" that are ultimately destructive ("I think your content is not valuable so I harm you") but rather correcting the problem from its root.
The root of the problem is the "Sybil attack" that the Steem whitepaper acknowledges as a challenge yet it brings no solution, quite the contrary it lets the reader think that it is a good thing to have a system that is vulnerable :
The flagging was not intended for "over-valued" posts - especially when the guy paid for the exposure with his money, it was intended for spam, trolling, etc.
The cure is worth than the disease because it seeds discord and calls for revenge, it generates destructive strife instead of healing and community building. It distracts from encouraging constructive contribution and channels effort and energy into destructive behaviour.
Have a look for instance at the ideas that are presented and inform this post from @lishu, especially the Ted talks he links to.
Every educator will tell you that in order to build and educate gently you need to 1. encourage desirable behaviour (obviously) and 2. ignore undesirable behaviour. Punishing should only be reserved for extreme cases.
To get back to solving Steemit abuse, I am convinced that the solution is to have true, real, provable identities.
As you hinted, the value should be indicated by the communities (plural, very important ! otherwise we go toward a mirror image of the "politically correct" that so suffocate our societies today). But you can't build communities when you don't know who you are talking about, when you cannot tell whether two accounts are of the same person or of two different persons or are bots.
This platform has no rules, and this is the beauty, the people can decide what's acceptable and what's not thus the bots don't have to be part of the game.
It's not a vulnerable system, it has no central authority that can stop bad stuff happening, but the community can decide how to operate and flagging is the only way to stop bad stuff. When I say community, I refer to the whole blockchain as a community.
The flagging was meant for whatever the individual wants to use it for. We have plenty of low-quality posts in Trending that are just overvalued, bought most of their rewards and certainly deserve some flagging.
I don't think you're right; you can't just ignore the undesirable behavior, if you see bullshit, you have to call it out. Otherwise, if you ignore it, that person doesn't learn anything and just moves on with his life thinking he did the right thing.
I don't think that's the solution, far from it. Many people want to stay anonymous because it's a matter of privacy since it's a blockchain and everything you say stays here forever. In case something happens in the future, those people don't want to have their views linked to their identities here forever.
When I write "ignore" it shouldn't necessarily be taken literally. The usage of a strong word ("ignore") is to divert the reader as strongly as possible from "punishment". I do think that some gentle remark, for instance how to improve a post so it's not bullshit anymore, is more appropriate than simply "ignore". I try to do as much when some Aceh-based steemians come begging for upvotes :-)
Then about the anonymity: it's anyone's choice but someone who chooses to be himself basically makes an implicit pledge to all the other participants: "I choose to be myself, therefore I pledge not to behave like a d*ck or a moron in order to never be ashamed of myself in the future".
One can easily imagine the reverse from someone who choose, on the contrary, to be anonymous: "I wanted to stay anonymous because I want to keep the option open of someday behaving like a complete d*ck with impunity". Maybe that was not the motivation of someone in particular but those interacting with anonymous characters have, by definition, no way to tell beforehand !
Test: You got a 40.00% upvote from @jga courtesy of @fukako!
This is not so.
Code is law. Software is little more than rules.
This is a difficult one, I agree that bots are kind of a plague in the steem ecosystem and it can really go sideways as we progress.
However, I also agree that some solutions can be worse than the disease. It will take a lot of finesse in dealing with this, and out of the box thinking.
The idea is that forces that counter themselves will result in a lot of power being used for this conflict, while forces that complement themselves build on each other and take us further. Sorry, but this subject is one for which I have no practical proposal yet. Maybe the communities should take a moral stance at least and communicate to the users that bit-bot-ing is shitty behavior that might lead to exclusion from certain groups, but this can also go sideways really quick.
In my opinion bot voting and multiple accounts shouldn't be allowed.
"One person, one account". The blockchain is powerful because it can mediate and allow real people to find consensus and built trust. If you allow fake accounts then it's all useless and we are back to FB and the rest.
How that can be implemented, I don't know.
But for as long as bots are allowed and the Steem whitepaper says, black on white "Eliminating "abuse" is not possible and shouldn't be the goal." (page 15. I disagree, but who am I?) then downvoting people because they have used the system as designed is destructive and harmful
Why not? If someone manages two different accounts differently, you can relate to either identity per their behaviour. If they simply have multiple accounts they manage with the same behaviour, why would you treat either account differently?
What difference does it make who is the actual meatbag behind the behaviour?
Well, the root being discussed is botvotes for profit. Thus decreasing the profitability of the botvotes by flagging is directly getting to the root of the problem.
How would that impact buying botvotes, selfvoting, or circlejerks?
I can easily see how it could prevent people from speaking forthrightly. I do not see that as a benefit.
The problem is that we cant flag it or wont. Im all for this (well with a different approach) and even i wont flag undeserving posts. Because, you know what, those that can buy their way to the top of trending frequently have the power to run me in the ground. Who cares if what i do brings value to the steem platforms. Retaliation is a sure reaction.
I propose that we look at bid bot owners and talk to them. Short term they are profiting but in long term this will destroy steemit and steem based platforms. EOS is just behind the corner waiting.
Once you get upvote bot owners to adjust their practices (yes at a cost to their profits) you will have a much healthier ecosystem. It doesnt have to be perfect but any move in the right direction is a positive step.
This will literally kill steem in the long run.
I dont care if people upvote themselves. Its their sp, their invested money but the upvote bot owners are here to blame.
When the facebook fiasco was made public i didnt blame those that abused the system, i blamed those that put the system in place. Now, Ned probably wont fix this, but we can police ourselves and those that profit from such a loophole.
Im a bot user myself. But i keep the use to the smallest of scales. Bots have their use but the abuse they allow to happen makes them have a net negative effect.
@guyfawkes4-20 we believe we are adding adding massive value to the community with a unique Steem platform (not more tools or steemit styled interfaces) and yet this system has failed us.
After a months work on a unique open source platform we get neg votes because we seek to rise above the crap posts.
Very disappointing.
There is a very simple solution to this that will eliminate the mob rule, that will effectively stop the abuse in its tracks... And thats a simple matter of having the bot owners
That way the decision if something is a justified upvote or not is completely in their hands. They still keep control of the trending pages, but guess what?! Crap content isnt going to get as much exposure anymore!Smartsteem has a 3 star rating and thats great, but thats not nearly enough to stop abuse. Even those with 3 star ratings start abusing the bot after time when they see they arent getting reprimanded. I tried to recommend this to @therealwolf but since im insignificant here it probably went by him.
I know this would be hard to implement and i dont know even how to go about that, but im sure there are people that could figure it out.
Yes... This will hurt bot owners profits and those who delegate to them but, cmon guys, this is hurting Steemit badly.. Take up some responsibility. People arent even checking the trending page anymore.
....a planktons opinion.... :D
It's not realistic in my opinion to expect people who have a life to just sit there 24/7 and review articles above a certain amount. I promoted my last post with (among others) a 50 SBD bid through smartsteem. It's a pretty long post, almost 10' reading (about 2000 words), how is the guy behind smartsteem to read all that and decide whether that post is worth 50 or 30 or 200 ? Especially when he has maybe 20 posts like that day-in day-out ?
I think bid bots shouldn't (somehow) be allowed. How to prevent that ... "is left as an exercise for the reader" ... :-)
Well you pay themfor their work. As a curie curator i couldnt tell you how many lines of text i could go through in 2 hours. Probably a 100 posts. And how many 50SBD or 100SBD bid bot payments do you think there are? Not many. You find those willing to do the work and give them a cut. Curators are payed by Curie and all Curie makes is from curation. Not a full blown business like upvote bots.
The problem is that there is no will. And wheres no will theres no action. Outside the coding im positive this could work.
I think you are being a bit pedantic with the wording. I think all value is subjective. Even money. But I can still say "overvalued". I would argue that he is not the one to determine the value of a post but rather he is one to determine the value of a post.
Whales have been flagging for disagreement of rewards for over a year now. I disagreed with flagging for that reason because it is based on aggregate earnings of a user over many other up-voters when the flagger has nothing against the post itself. I find I agree with you.
" you are implying that you are the one or among the ones who decide what brings and doesn't bring value to the community"
It is their Steem Power, it is precisely their right to use it to downvote content they don't believe brings value to the community. How is that 'mob rule'?
Yes, that's the whole idea, the individuals should be the one to decide what's valuable and what's not for them through upvoting/flagging. If the author is upvoting himself to Trending with bots, then the whole purpose of this platform is lost, but the community can still decide to flag, which is a much-needed action.
Still, I don't think that bots will ever be killed, but they can still be improved.
The bots could be killed if a superbot was created, enough delegation given to it and it began targeting all the trending/hot posts that were using vote bots. I believe Grumpycat proved this with his/her targeting that if people start losing money (in that case, bots that vote after 3.5 days) that vote buyers will modify their behavior to avoid the monetary loss.
Yes, if the people with the stick start pushing the bot owners towards change more, they would have to comply at some point.
Think "worshipping different gods" (disapproven but sometimes tolerated) versus "witch burning" in ancient times. If you use your steem power to upvote whatever shitpost you want, that's your right and freedom. When you use it to harm someone, to do (financial) violence onto someone it's not equivalent.
I am convinced downvoting should be used very, very sparingly, only when there is a manifest abuse.
I also do think having bot voting and paying for upvotes is a bad idea and should not be possible but as long as their are allowed downvoting is understandably seen as stealing from the pocket of the guy who paid for his upvotes ...
Good then please commence downvoting regularly because there is manifest abuse on a huge scale including as described in the post. If you don't agree then that's perfectly okay, but those of us who do see it that way are going to express it with our votes.
By "abuse" I meant posts attempting to promote demonstrated scam schemes, phishing posts, child pornography or other such egregious abuses. I think it's a very, very slippery slope to start calling abuse the fact that suesa post racked up $900 or that yallapapi scored $500. I haven' t read the others in the list but I read those two and I upvoted them.
Are they worth that much ? Heck, who am I to judge ? Are Cristiano Ronaldo or Neymar Jr worth the money they are making ? In my opinion no, but again, who am I to judge ? Some people take from the same "reward pool" (the sum of all euros printed by the ECB) and directs those euros to Cristiano Ronaldo and Neymar Jr. That is the system ! If I disagree, I try to do politics to change the system. But I'm not "downvoting" Ronaldo and Neymar
When @heimindanger and others downvote @suesa's post and @yallapapi's post I feel insulted ! I feel that my very right to upvote a post is being questioned ! Do I have a right to express my liking for a post ? Because I feel that the flaggers want to deny me this right ! They want to censor my right to vote posts that I consider worthy of my votes !
"downvoting is understandably seen as stealing from the pocket of the guy who paid for his upvotes ...". Huh. That is the exact opposite of how I see it. I see buying a huge upvote to put your own post in trending as stealing from the pocket of everyone else who is posting without paying for votes. The reward pool is finite. Buying your way into trending decreases the payout going to other authors. If anything, the community coming together to flag an author who bought huge votes is stopping theft.
That is correct if someone has the monopoly of that behaviour. But when doing that is available to everyone, there is a pesky things called "game theory" and "Nash equilibriums" who stick their fingers in the spanner.
To be clearer: the fewer people buy upvotes, the bigger the incentive to be the one that cheats. The situation is not stable and evolves toward a Nash equilibrium: people start paying more and more to bots to get on trending page - it's the system that's broken and needs fixing, not the actors who are inside the system and playing by the rules. You can indeed attempt the latter but it's self-defeating if the system stays broken.
Voting to prevent reward pool rape isn't financially harming anyone. It is voting to determine how the current reward pool is divided. An upvote is an upvote in favour of giving a post/comment a slice. A downvote is a vote that a given post should be paid less.
Not really sure what any of that has to do with religious persecution.
"Reward pool rape" needs defining. When someone with a lots of SP and consequently a lot of VP publishes obviously shitty posts every 6 hours and upvotes himself, as I believe haejin is (was?) doing, I believe that qualifies as "reward pool rape".
When a guy pays with his own money to get his post trending he's only getting back what he has put in. He pays X and the bot upvotes for a value of X. If you downvote Y he only gets back X-Y < X so you are financially harming the guy who paid the bot.
You can indeed argue that it is the bots that are doing the reward pool rape and I will agree with you. But then you should "punish" the bots, not by taking money from the guy who paid the bots (for as long as the bots are officially allowed at least).
You can argue like grumpy cat that, for instance, one shouldn't use bots for posts older than X days but, when steemit allows bots, that basically means that you are making up your own rules (on top of those of the system). You become a kind of vigilante: you take your own gun and start dispensing what you believe to be "justice" of your own accord, following whatever rules you edict.
That is what I call "mob rule". I was comparing this with a village that suddenly decides that a lady living alone is a witch and then proceeds to burn her at stake of their own accord (ok, my analogy wasn't very well formulated in the previous post, I hope now I got it a bit better)
Great Projects , even crucial one's like mine don't get exposure to many eyes. Sometimes one has to make a decision whether to use bots to get their word out, or do it organically which many have pointed out as being extremely hard to do. It's not the average bot user's fault that the network has been construed to fit the agendas of the most powerful here. We're left with little option as minnows and dolphins especially. They've built these highways now man, and the majority of people are not willing to ride horse and carriages anymore. I don't know how to fix that I have to be honest. Perhaps we could propose an option in the steemit.com permissions tab to "allow" promoted content in which case each bot owner pays a percentage of it's earnings or gross delegated SP into a fund that pays each account that opts-in to view "promoted" posts? Use that SP for something good that will help people. Using it to power up in order to fight a war with bots will only cause more anguish for the innocent people caught in the crossfire. I'm not saying do nothing and it's our own right to protect ourselves from any threat, But we can launch bullets without guns too.
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That's a great idea. How about the folks opting to receive promoted posts in their feed are recipients of the overage? Seems fair to me.
Sorry I'm so awful at keeping things succinct:
This is obviously your opinion - it's a subjective statement and that's my point. Your idea of value appears to be website projects that start with D.
It depends what we want from Steemit. Do we want a trending page to just be a list of steem dates and steem promotion and steem analysis and steem complaints, or do we want something 'trendy'?
If we're to have a trending page of 'trendy' posts, currently the only way to do that for the vast majority of cases is to either be a team of very skilled coders with huge delegations, or be someone with enough money for bot promotion. Right now there's just no other way.
$800 is surely excessive, but on the flip side I upvoted a single post of mine to $150 once, partly for international women's day, partly because I got flagged by some haejin goon, but that $150 post was totally invisible, I had to scroll several loading pages to get to it past all the haejin crypto jargon, posts like today's 'Double Bubble Analysis: update' and'Monthly Steemit Top 200 POWER UP List: March 2018' The post awareness of the hell women go through around the world went by comparatively silently.
Of course, mainstream adoption nis going to want to see things like inane april fools posts, travel blogs, philosophical discussions, political views, pranks, games. Natural social media material. So whether or not you personally find the post funny or clever, the fact that a high-rep individual contributing a lot to the community had some fun and somebody else got it into trending, to me, is totally fine and really one of the few good examples of bot usage.
Again, 800 could have been halved with the same effect, but much less? Back you go to obscurity, replaced by crypto steem bull patterns, 'Steem experiment: Burn post's and so on. (Actually today isn't a bad day for variety, but you get the idea)
I said that only the projects with D, the big projects that help grow this ecosystem, the ones that have countless hours of work behind them are those that deserve 800. But I didn't say that they are the only ones of value, the only ones that deserve big rewards.
The way I see it, it's straightforward, does a particular post helps the community? Does it brings any value to people? Does it help the people? Does it change something for the better? I think you see where I'm going and if the answer to some of the questions is affirmative then that post is valuable.
Now I'm asking you, what value does that post from @Suesa brings to the community that it deserve to have such a huge payout? None. Let's even say that the post reached its whole purpose of being funny but that still doesn't mean that it deserves so much since we have plenty of other posts a lot more valuable.
I feel what you mean mate, but if people didn't abuse the bots anymore there would be a lot more room for the quality, valuable posts to make it to the top. I had in the past some of my posts upvoted organically to 100-200 even 200+, and they did not reach the top because there were too many posts upvoted by bots.
The discussion is not even about that post from @Suesa but a reflection of what's going on on Trending. So yeah, the page is filled with shitposts that are outshining the quality and organic ones just because they paid for votes. The solution? Either stopping the bots (not going to happen) or flagging the posts, so the users don't abuse bots anymore (doable).
Sure, although don't see why the 'trending' page should be filled with 'helpful' stuff. It should be filled with 'trending' stuff. You don't see twitter trending tweets about twitters dev team or how they've helped speed up tweet times, you see people's every day lives and loves and adventures. That is inherently what I see as 'valuable'.
But you're right, it's not entirely about suesa, we both agree that the bot situation is a big-ass problem, and as I said, I don't even disagree with this idea, I'm all for it. I just think there should be methods to prevent arbitrary and blanket flags, something more objective than simply 'this post is shit and presumably just for profit based on my opinion'. Perhaps you are right that things over 800 bucks should be only for big projects - perhaps bots can set tiers for such things; registered projects having the highest/unlimited bid limits, everybody else capped at, say, $400.
The problem with flagging is at best it makes a temporary statement. Even all the activism on steemit made haejin's posts go from, at the peak value time, $450 down to about $400 a pop. Flagging is almost nothing more than a symbolic statement at this point until people learn to band together via powerful communities (flag-a-whale being a hopeful example of that)
Yes, I see what you mean, I think the Trending page should be filled with what the community thinks it's valuable. If they consider a post being of quality, they upvote it, if more are doing so, it reaches Trending. But the whole purpose of this platform is lost when people are using bots to get to Trending, 85% of the votes being bought.
As far as I noticed, the big projects don't use bots; they are reaching trending thanks to the support received from the community since they are doing something beneficial for everybody. But yeah, the bots need to set some more limits.
Flag-a-whale was a beautiful movement, and even if it had many people behind it, it's sad that the outcome was not the one desired.
I guess we have to wait and see what happens now. :)
I wonder if that post was posted on any other platform on the internet, would that have earned even 10$.
$10? Nah, maybe like $1-2 but Steem likes to reward shitposts. Anyway, it's sure as hell not worth $1000, the price that it had after the Steem pump.
It would be really awesome if 20 people who put real efforts on their posts, gets 50$ each instead of one post getting 1000$.
I'm powering down and dumping this whale club for good. Heck, I might even come up with a tool and big ass campaign for people to do the same, just like @heimindanger did to protect his posts while green with envy from others, it's not really about bad content is it?
See, he didn't do this out "love for Steemit", he is just protecting their monopoly on post positions and that of his big whale friends. We are not stupid, you gotta let the little fish play too once in a while or they will just just leave the pond...
Are your posts so good quality that they deserve $200 to $700 payouts? Give me a break, you use your Whale group for that, something a lot more questionable and damaging to the platform than using bots and that's the real problem with Steemit, it's a Whale Club and people will just get tired and leave...
Countdown to freedom:
@mobbs: I appreciate your more nuanced and holistic view of this debate. The "solutions" I see are often one-sided and dramatic. There's a lot of complexity to this that must be thought through.
I like how you analyzed things. Bull's eye my friend :)
She was not using bots for profit... for what then? For vissibility? XD Cmon, please!!! I understand your point of view but you are defending just that, your point of view because you do not know exactly why did she use the bots ... I am pretty sure was for profit as everybody who use the bots do.
Pd: I am complete against the use of bid-bots on the Steem blockchain for whatever reason ... that will be normally profit, even if you want to say something nice at the bottom is just that
I've said this a few times now, I didn't buy the bots. Reggaemuffin thought it'd be funny to have an April Fools joke on trending and bought the votes for it.
Personally, I'm not really a supporter of bots, but there isn't much that can be done about it. I even doubt that people will keep using this tool to keep flagging after a few weeks.
Glad to know was not you. Looks like he have a very "expensive" humor ... anyway, this shows me one more time why this bid-bots are a problem for the Steem blockchain in general.
Yes, like had happens every time some tool like that came to light. You do not get anything for flagging and also you loss VP ...
Out of curiosity, why would Suesa's post be exempt?
Regardless of context, people can decide for themselves whether the content of the post itself is worth the value it is drawing from the pool. The post must be compared to its total draw on the pool on personal judgements of value, not context.
Granted, @heimindanger should add a link to the posts in question so people can more easily read and judge for themselves but there is no way in my thinking that a shitpost should have over 1000 dollars on it.
I can't tell who is talking to whom on this post anymore, but since I know you I'll reply to you. Simply, I didn't state suesa's post should be exempt. I just pointed out that the assumption that she did it for money was incorrect. But yes the only qualm I had was that it was described as an artbitrary flagging, which is risky and controversial
They highlighted the problem didn't they? Even the large, heavily rewarded, many eyes already on accounts will use bidbots just 'for a laugh'. Nice role modelling.
For 'disagreement of reward' the content has to be judged on what it takes from the pool, paid or not. That content may not have been worth the value it would have made organically but went over 1000 even after flags. Error in judgement by reggae but saying that it wasn't her that ordered it rubs salt into the wound considering the circumstances and the one minute lockout voting which stops all minnows who support her from getting curation returns.
I agree that context might be important at times but a lot of the context in that argument was being left out of the conversation.
and yeah, the UI for long chains sucks ass.
Well, the problem @heimindanger is facing is that the posts in question are upvoted by the very non-subjective methodology you complain about his flags being flown by.
Essentially you both are in agreement that votes ought not to be based on profitability. IMHO, @heimindanger has the better argument, since his flags are only flown in response to purchased upvotes, which discourages purchasing votes.
I reckon that best forces personal and informed curation by attacking the mechanism that causes the problem directly.
I do believe an additional metric that included frequency of purchasing botvotes would better target the most egregious effectors of the problem @heimindanger intends to impact.
This would have precluded @gardenofeden's flag (if their comment here is factual) and also your contention.
This isn't a bad idea.
You're right, I basically agree with the concept on the whole, but I'm simply taking into account the reality of the likelihood of it being effective. We know from haejin that almost nobody is willing to sustain high-value flags to accounts, let alone getting $500 down to 0. There's just nobody on the platform with that kinda money and that kinda focus, and those who do care take thousands of flags to get rid of a couple of bucks.
This is not going to change any time soon and no initiative of self-policing is going to consistently cause any impact whatsoever - consider 'flagawhale', probably the largest community of flaggers for this cause that are, together, imperceptibly ineffective for the most part. Haejin still makes as much as he ever made (minus steem value) and bots users and owners will continue to profit.
The problem of bots needs to be disincentivized from the core, not from self policing.
With that in mind, blind flagging is not an effective methodology in my opinion, because nobody will want to waste their precious SP, whereas flagging based on your subjective consideration of value upon viewing a post, is something that should be an active part of the steemit culture. The rest is an inherent flaw that needs fixing by STINC somehow.
The thing is, even if we get all the current bots to agree on certain rules and regulations, it's a verbal contract and thus hardly binding, and any new bot services that prop up are going to instantly see how to take advantage, and do so. All it takes is a single millionaire to come on board and we have ourselves yet another crisis we spend weeks on battling with futility until we forget about it, until another millionaire comes on and repeat.
Reasonable opinion. While I don't necessarily agree it is the best way, or even the only solution we need, it is certainly a reasonable one at this point.
First of all, @suesa contributes - a lot - for the community and the new Steemian. This is something you cannot see or will read about with that bot you created. Completely transparent and utterly unethical, based on a gamble and some shallow calculations, leaving all possible ethical aspects OUT of it.
Second of all, she did not even buy the votes herself, she doesn't really care for that either. It was a gift from someone who follows her and he wanted to reward her for -all- the time and contribution she already pledged on and for Steemit.
Third, yes that post had a 'too high' pay-out, for a joke. I downvoted it for 2 cents, "here are my 2 cents".
Fourth, she, as a contributor to the Steemit platform is worth so much more than that single stupid post's pay-out.
Lastly, who the fuck are you to judge -like this-? Can you not see the bigger picture @heimindanger what the actual fuck you have created? You are playing with other peoples money, based on crap. If you want to remove the crap, do it manually and do it with your own judgment.
Agreed, 85% of the rewards generated by bots is way too much, especially that the post is worth 800+, she wouldn't have made near that amount without the bots. It was a cute little joke, but now it's time to get off the trending page.
I think this is beneficial and it reminds me a lot of The Whale Voting Experiment, even if I wasn't on Steem back then.
Test: You got a 5.00% upvote from @jga courtesy of @fukako!
It is a personal attack, and you are now on my shitlist.
Trying to remove responsibility for your actions from some "tool" just makes you a tool.
"If you are not doing it for profit, there is an option to decline rewards."
Great idea if you want nobody to see your post. You are fucking naive, @heimindanger
Lex if you're going to sell your account it would be nice to let the community know. For your own good mostly because whoever this guy is running your account is making a fool of you.
look who is talking...
I have to agree.
I think it's informative to consider the tools you have recently begun to use in this regard.
You have changed, sir.
Very very good points, nice to see someone really laying into this.
The rewards are paid by investors in the STEEM token. If investors are not able to generate a ROI by seelling votes they can't justify investing because of the inflation. If you scare away investor you undermine the token price.
I am not entirely sure that is mathematically accurate.
Were rewards to be distributed more widely, more people would stay. Last I checked Steemit has ~10% YOY retention rate, meaning 90% of new accounts are abandoned within the first year.
Steem tokens gain value by being used by many people. Those massive stakes mining the rewards pool aren't contributing to the price of Steem rising by broadening the market. Instead they're decreasing the rewards creators receive by profiting from voteselling, which decreases the encouragement creators receive to continue to post and receive Steem. This fails to increase the market for Steem, thereby reducing capital gains, which BTC showed last year can return far more to investors than rewards mining.
There is risk that Steem might not appreciate anyway, and the ROI from delegations and self-votes is assured. Cash is king, so that's how whales generate ROI. That's not investment, as investment depends on risk. It's profiteering.
It is noteworthy that AFAIK only Steem permits investors to generate ROI other than through price appreciation and capital gains. I believe this is depressing the price of Steem by discouraging creators such that almost all of them bail, instead of sticking to it and generating utility for the token and thus raising the price.
The whole two coin nonsense also further discourages investors from places where the trading of these (almost a requirement to retain initial investment in the recent market conditions) incurs huge tax liabilities. Just get rid of SBD and streamline the coin creation process and make holding more attractive. Most of what is being discussed here are moot points because of the crippling faults of the system that have not and will not be dealt with. Most people run the fuck away from top-heavy structures that look like pyramid schemes.
I spend a lot of time and effort maintaining a blacklist for @buildawhale even when it means I take a lot and lose the best customers.
https://steemit.com/buildawhale/@buildawhale/2wq69g-buildawhale-blacklist-update
https://steemit.com/buildawhale/@buildawhale/2wq69g-buildawhale-blacklist-update
https://steemit.com/buildawhale/@buildawhale/2wq69g-buildawhale-blacklist-update
Almost 1,100 accounts on my blacklist, all personally research and verified by hand.
I run one of the few bots that blacklist people, and even fewer who spend 10-40+ hours a week finding and punishing spammers without funding or benefit and frequently results in retaliation and harassment.
I also run one of the few bid bots that actually have a reasonable cap to their maximum bid (50 SBD) so my bot cannot be used to abuse trending. I am not against people using bots to get to trending, I am against trash getting to trending. Spending money to get to trending (which is usually at a loss) is no different than using advertising on any other social media platform on the Internet.
While I appreciate your mission, you are vastly mistaken that the ROI of running a bid bot is close to self voting at 100%.
This is very far from the truth, on good days you might average 75% of a full vote, if you run a blacklist and stop the best customers (spammers) you make even less. When STEEM drops, you make even less.
That being said, most bot owners give off the majority of their earnings to delegators in many cases 95% of liquid rewards or more.
There is a big difference between using bid bots to promote trash to trending, and using bid bots to promote quality original content.
It isn't a disguise, I work pretty damn hard to prevent garbage being rewarded by my bot. It's not just something I say, look at the queue of my bot and compare it to any other, you will find all the blacklisted users hammering other bots and you will see by their content why they are blacklisted.
They make a new account but they lose their votes/money they will stop. I frequently find networks with over 50 accounts and punish them all.
I'm sure many people in top 25 use my bot to get to trending, my bot didn't get them there though, and if it is garbage I will blacklist them myself if it is stolen content or a scam I'll even remove my vote.
I appreciate you putting in the effort to blacklist abusers. However do you think when there will be more people coming or even at the moment that you can do enough to stop all abuse. There is only so much you can do by hand.
In an utopia voting bots are able to stop all abusers, but that is not possible. The point with this all is that the voting bots are toxic and draining everyone's wealth from the platform.
The difference with real advertising is that using vote bots dillutes everybody's holdings and earnings. That is just in my opinion unethical.
If many people abuse the bidbots to be in trend recently, I saw a memes that was in trend, these incredible but true. The owners of bots like you should eliminate the votes to this type of publications, I know that it is not easy. your bot vote an average of 600 or 1000 daily publications and follow up is very difficult, but not impossible ...
Are you opposed to legitimate content using the bots?
Or just abusers?
I'm a user that has decided to invest in my content and pay for said advertising...but I also believe the content I'm creating deserves this investment.
I don't use these services on all my content either, just one specific project.
I'm curious where you stand on that.
(Self voted for visibility)
This is a good question, I'd like to know the answer as well! Upvoted. (I'm still not using bid bots in general . . . but one may want to reward another post that deserves it . . . or one may have an important post to share occasionally . . . and bots make those options viable and real.)
Nearly all posts on Steem are overvalued. They generally do not evidence significant contributions to the platform or community (with a few exceptions for posts about meaningful development efforts and/or marketing) nor do they pay their own way in generating traffic and promoting the platform. A fair value for the traffic generated by most posts would be a few dollars at best, maybe less.
Stakeholders are paying for all this and it is just a rip off, but worse, with all the botting and bidding it is weighing down the blockchain to the point where it can very easily become unusable. It is already difficult to use.
In the real world pre-crypto boom you're looking at less than a dollar per thousand views unless it's on some kind of subscription model, so yes, no posts on steemit save for maybe a handful that have ever been posted and gained traction on other social media sites qualify for this metric of actual worth per post.
If the only value that exists is monetary, you could well be right.
But society is much more than an economy, and some things far more profitable than mere financial increase. Since Steemit is a social media platform, the society is the purpose of the platform. Seriously, without folks posting there'd be no reason to have mined those massive stakes.
The ~10% retention rate is execrable for reasons, and the profitability of the token to investors doesn't only depend on marketing, development, and the percentage of the pool that can be extracted with it. Folks trading recipes, posting pics of the birds they saw at the park, and crappy memes are an integral part of society, which if Steemit is to grow and prosper is what Steemit must foster.
There is a misconception that it is content quality that creates value of a social media platform, and the truth is that it is the quality of the engagement; of the societal vigor that is generated, that is far more valuable.
The rewards mechanism is most of why Steemit's engagement is very good. Stake-weighting and the concentration of power is most of why it isn't good enough to retain more than ~10% of accounts YOY.
You can have a social community and social value without giving money away (or nearly as much). Indeed in some ways it is better. There is some psychology research suggesting that introducing monetary incentives actually substitutes for and damages social values, sometimes resulting in worse outcomes.
I can't hate you for your opinion.
I guess I'll be getting a flag from you today, as I will most definitely be using bots to advertise my project.
It would be nice to see your service actually provide a clickable link to the content, instead of simply an option to flag.
Good luck to you.
See you on trending.
You can hate anyone you want. This is America.
@AbuseReports
@Duplibot
@Spaminator
@SteemCleaners
@SteemFlagRewards
@Steemit-Abuse
BUT YOU SURE LOVE TO FLAG HUH!!!
BID BOT ABUSER!!!
I don't agree. It's not because you buy votes through bid bots that your article is worth a flag. I don't think it's a good idea because it doesn't take into account the quality of the article.
It's no different from buying ads on Facebook. By doing bid bots, it can create a demand for STEEM and SBD from outside in order to advertise.
Unless the article is bad or misleading, I wouldn't punish people who pay to get trending...because in most cases, it's not even profitable. It also gives a chance for people who would have no other way to get visibility.
Most of that stuff will solve itself when communities will come online since there will no longer be a single trending.
On Facebook, advertised content is marked as advertisement. So how about enforcing "advertisement" as the first tag for every post that has more than 50% bot upvotes and flag all the posts on trending that don't? We certainly need a way to mark ads that are pushed by bid bots, especially the scammy ones.
I'm in for this. Thanks for the flag.
No hard feelings. I totally understand and agree. I hope more will join.
It would be great to see new faces in trend I'm bored of always seeing the same face .. and always talking the same, that leads as a consequence that nobody sees the trend section
Trending page is trash and will always be as long as there are chosen few (whales) who control the rewards against the rest who can't do much.
Unfortunately there is almost no way to make it to trending without paid votes even for whales. By the way, did you power down?
I appreciate your efforts @heimindanger.
But I do think that downvoting content based on bought votes is not the right way and will result in punishment of innocent steemians and will profit most of all the circle-jerkers and self-voters.
This will also result in people upvoting just as much to stay under the radar.
Instead of your current initiative - how about you focus on circle-jerkes like @me-tarzan
Ever since I've joined Steemit in August 2017 - that guy is posting the same complete trash content day after day multiple times a day.
While it was only 4 times a day in August 2017 - it went up to 10 times per day now.
If you think that is a problem then please undertake an initiative to take action against it, and rally stakeholders to support your initiative as @heimindanger is doing here. One does not preclude the other and it doesn't make sense for people to argue over which is the biggest problem, when there are so many.
To be honest, I didn't expect your answer on this comment @smooth .. at all.
But you are correct - the problem with self-voters and circle-jerkers is as bad as bid-bot abuse and I shouldn't put the one of the other.
However, I don't have a solution against it. Limiting self-voting abuse is something which should be done on the blockchain level. I.e. through changing the dynamic of downvotes - e.g. making it profitable to downvote bad content.
Only problem is: this could get out of control - so we need to be careful with this.
Regarding bid-bot abuse: Smartsteem.com is already on the forefront against abuse, but there is only so much we can do there, when the rest of the services (excluding buildawhale) aren't doing anything about it.
And my understanding is that you are not per-se against voting-services, otherwise you wouldn't have delegated to upmewhale, passive and promobot.
So my question is: what change would you like to see and would you be willing to support it?
Hey @heimindanger - just saw the article few minutes ago.
Thank you @heimindanger! I've much respect for @dtube.
Ever since the creation of smartsteem.com - my goal was to reduce abuse and give users who create quality content a way to promote their posts.
Now, after months of running, developing and improving it - I feel that there is a limit of what smartsteem is able to to do. Part of this reason is also because many many many more bid-bots have been popping up in the last 1-3 months - of which 99% run on an open source codebase and are simply not giving any f* about stopping abuse. (afaik only buildawhale is actively blacklisting users besides smartsteem)
Even if smartsteem were to blacklist ALL spammers and restrict users who are abusing our services (by pushing posts to global trending every single day) - those users would simply go to another service.
Don't get me wrong - I will still personally blacklist all spammers and abusers I see - but there is a limit on what smartsteem can restrict as long as all other services allow it.
Nevertheless, I will brainstorm about ways to stop the hijacking of global trending spots in an excessive way.
I don't miss the times where the same 5 faces were on global trending every single day. But of course, real bid-bot abuse is just as bad.
I'd actually say that the circle-jerks are the worst thing on steemit. I checked out @me-tarzan and it was just bizarre. There are only 18 accounts with higher reputation to bring down that abomination. Most bid-bot rounds end up at a loss. So it's just payed promotion. Whether they deserve the trending page is questionable. But looking at old interviews of @ned he wanted people to buy STEEM to get into the trending page. Bid-bots are simply a market solution for the promotion feature that doesn't work.
Unless a person get lots of organic upvotes or STEEM price has a bull run, id-bot users will eventually run out of funds. circle-jerkes never run out of funds. They can only grow. I think the white-list system is the best path. But there will be other bid-bots. There are only 16 bots with a vote value over $17 If these bots can work together the level of abuse can be greatly reduced IMHO.
@promobot and @booster do not allow promotion for ICOs, Should it happen the vote is removed and the money not refunded.
Upgrading our Term of Service will always be an ongoing process.
Why would we burn the money? We spent the VP to upvote it, it's their problem if they didn't follow the TOS.
Are you really asking if one of the top shitposting, self-voters on the entire platform, who replied to you again just to farm the reward pool below, was burning his profit?
I see plenty of crappy ICOs being promoted by many powerful groups on steemit all the time, who needs bot votes when you're already a whale?
It begs the question, why isn't there a curation reward for down voting? It's the same mechanism, requires the same voting power, and adds value to the network by adding your opinion to the consensus. But, it invites getting flagged into the ground and has opportunity cost. The risk/reward is asymmetric which is why the vote buyers will win.
@flagawhale rewards downvoters of our star analyst, pretty cool.
Thanks for speaking out against this, I hope to see more large accounts/influential users doing this as the year progresses.
I'd like to see max bids across the larger bots, that when combined cannot beat the likes of @steemitblog to the top.
Yay. I never bought bidbot votes, stopped self-voting after 3 months on the platform completely. Then reggaemuffin thinks one time it'd be fun to have an April Fools joke on trending and drops a ton of money and that's the moment people choose to start cleaning up trending.
Not asking you to withdraw your flags, it's your right and I expected them to come sooner or later when the votes came rolling in. I'm just slightly annoyed by the whole thing.
Hey @suesa, using this tool, It recognised that I organically voted for your post, and it excluded it from my downvote barrage. Not that my voting power counts for much, but yours was a post genuinely enjoyed!
Thanks and thanks for letting me know! I'm mostly a bit worried that this is going to harm my reputation (both the numerical and the one in the community) a bit. That's my main concern here. Not like I can do anything about it though.
I think the problem could be solved (or made worse) if bid bots refused upvotes for people voting for their own content. (And kept the money, to ensure that the next upvote for a genuine piece of content would be even greater) - the only problem is people pay x to pay y to pay the bid bot to vote for themselves.
Yeah. People will always find a way to cheat the system.
I agree that you give downvote to an article that is not of quality like a memes or a short publication that does not take any effort .. and that has abused the service of the bidbots. Tell me who is interested in seeing a memes in trend?
You never bought bidbot votes ...
... yet, your main supporter is a major vote-broker :D
I think I kind of get the joke ... I am glad the flags only slightly annoyed you.
Can I pick my voters? :P didn't know I can choose who likes my content.
I mean, I can't do anything against the flags anyway, no use getting more than a bit annoyed. Can't turn of the annoyed completely tho.
You bring up an interesting point when it comes to scammers abusing bots to mislead members here into thinking their scam is trending because it's popular and since they're mislead into thinking the scam is popular, they're more likely to fall for it. That's really bad for business here, especially during a time when these scam ads are being banned from the big players on the internet like facebook and google; and for good reason. That ban gives this platform the perfect opportunity to truly shine in this world where cryptocurrency is getting so much bad press, but instead we have this bidbot nonsense holding us all back with the potential to turn the place into a garbage dump of ads nobody wants.
Any time a promo bot is used, the post should be marked as an advertisement otherwise both the blogger and owner of the bot is technically guilty of false advertising and that typically means paying fines.
Those running the bots are quite careless and it is laughable. Since those promoting something like a ponzi scheme often take the fall along with the creators of the scam, all it would take is one scam post to put the bot owners behind bars since they are technically promoting the scam.
I think these bots are a failed experiment that will only lead to more problems down the road not only for Steemit but every single investor. They're bad for business, bottom line.
Unfortunately how do you block bots in a decentralized manner? And some bots are good like childfund or crpytoempire.
The Steem blockchain is decentralized. Steemit and all of these other sites and apps are businesses. There are things that good for business and things that are bad for business. If you ran a manufacturing plant and one of your robots was malfunctioning, you'd fix it before it can cause more damage. This is simple stuff.
Again you can't block bots you prevent it from being seen on trending and stuff. Even facebook and twitter has bots. You can make bots harder to be made but not blocking.
When robots take over the world; the people who said, "Nothing can be done," will be to blame.
Well that is point nothing can done :(
Unless you make humans even stronger than robots by genetic and robotic enhancements.
So we can apply this strategy to bots by making bots harder to run and giving human aka manual votes more power/incentives
That's a start.
As of this writing, there's a gentleman on trending who introduced himself at the cost of around $400 US. That behavior creates a paywall of $400 just to say hello on this platform. That paywall only exists because of these bots and those who run them. If this place wants to be a disruptive technology and see 1 billion members using various apps and sites, the playing field must remain accessible to as many walks of life as possible. That can't happen now. Not like this. People can say hello anywhere else in the world, for free. So, something needs to be done. It's getting out of hand and it's painfully obvious where it will lead. People come and leave before they even get started.
Allow the Steemian users to vote for "approved" apps, just like they do for witnesses.
Restrict upvoting to only those apps.
Require those apps to have two-factor authorization before doing upvotes.
How do you tell the diff from apps? I guess a common code can be made but... I not a coder i guess it could work.
Plus upvote selling can still be done even if you block apps.
Just like your wallet on Steem has a key and a secret, APIs give registered apps a key and a secret.
They key is to prevent bot upvotes.
True. But then wouldn't destroy the free market by requiring users to vote for apps to be allowed to be activated on the blockchain? Also upvoting selling can still happen even if you block the apps
My the community choosing which apps are valid, it encourages the free-market to build good app.
Did you miss the point about two-factor authentication for doing the upvotes. So, you would have to do a "I am human" action after you click upvote in order for the upvote to go through.
Blindly flagging other people's post is abusing the steem power you have. Whether someone use bot to upvote their content is orthogonal to whether the content is good or bad.
What you proposed (and doing), in my humble opinion, is hurting the community, not helping. If you really want to fix the abusing issue, go ahead and implement something smart to differentiate bad content from good (e.g. use deep learning to predict content quality, or, even better, predict DAU / MAU impact for steemit, if you can). What you are doing now, is abusing the trust people put on you and demotivating people to contribute content for the community.
I just want my content to grow organically and help the people it was meant to. I have no plans on using bots, at least for the moment. The whole thing seems horribly confusing and I have no desire to PAY for my content to be seen.
By truly providing valuable content, it's just one more way we are giving back to the universe, so to speak. I believe when done as a genuine gift, the universe will have your back later, one way or another. It doesn't matter it if it's in the form of a cryptocurrency, a helping hand, or a new opportunity for you to explore. And that could be a very long investment.
The best thing about it all is that "help" you get in the future may not be in any form of currency or even bartering -- therefore the IRS (or your country's equivalent) can't tax it. That is quite satisfying indeed...
Either the bot thing will go away and everything will rebalance itself, or it will change for the better (as you and others have mentioned with solutions that would be possible), again restoring balance, or the platform will implode. BUT if your intention was to genuinely give....then it's my person opinion that is "stored up" for you somewhere by someone with a much higher power than us.
What goes around comes around.
Thanks for doing this. I would like to see more options, e.g. downvote if >X% and > Y pending payout. Then confirm the list, select a voting % and downvote.
Ideally, I would wish to see a full-fledged project around this, that's run by people with updates on a daily basis. Finally, Steemit should consider running a large scale vote on opinion on these bots. I'm willing to bet a majority will want these gone, at which point they would be well justified to start devaluing bot votes from the trending page. People will cry censorship, but it's not really - it might even give others the motivation to start their own competing frontend that champions vote trading.
At the end of the day, the buck stops with the delegator. There needs to be blockchain level changes that make it less profitable for massive whales to delegate to vote trading. Instead, they should be incentivized to either vote themselves or delegate to those who curate on merit. How this can be done - I don't know, but this should be the goal.
Pretty sure allowing authors to chose how much percentage they want to give to curator would solve this.
People like me delegate to bot because its more profitable than curating, as I explained in this post https://steemit.com/steem/@snowflake/enter-a-whale-s-mind. The vote buying popularity came as a result of reducing curation rewards from 50 to 25%. So making curation more profitable would encourage manual curation. I know that if I could earn as much as with a bot by upvoting content that I like I definetely would do this.
Flagging the bid-bot posts should work just as well.
If whales are soley motivated by money, and the bid-bot posts they've lent their steempower to, stop earning as well, they'll find another way to use their steempower (perhaps curatgion guilds).
It feels like operation-cleanup is aimed at writers on the front page, but it is really aimed at the delegators who support the bid-bots with their steempower.
I was offered 5,000 Steem to delegate 100,000 SP recently. I'm sure that's not sustainable, but even at the going rates I'm afraid the curator will need to get 80% share or something ridiculous.
That said, I'd support a 50%-50% split. But we need something more than that.
Congratulations on getting in the top 50 witnesses.
The current state of the Trending page is just a symptom of the actual problem.
At the moment users on Steem have a very high incentive to sell their votes. Selling votes almost generates the same rewards as selfvoting without the bad reputation or work.
It has been accepted and legitimized by the community.
The problem with vote selling is that undermines any curation efforts by the community and isn't regulated by the blockchain.
Atm around 30% of the generated rewards on Steem are being paid for. -> https://steemit.com/steemit/@penguinpablo/how-much-sbd-and-steem-is-sent-to-the-voting-bots-per-day
It will only become worse and more and more people are going to sell their votes. Something has to be done on blockchain level to fix this. Soon 50% of the Steem Power will be sold and things will go downhill drastically. Curation will be reduced to a minimum. New users won't get rewarded anymore.
I was heavily criticized the last time I started a discussion about this. I am not going down that road again.
People will soon realize that the current trend with voting bots won't end well.
I agree with you about most of this. Everyone is entitled to their own views on the biggest problems and the root causes of the problems, and naturally even when people decide to take action (which is generally costly to the individual since there is little to no compensation for anti-abuse) they will concentrate on what they feel is the most serious and most readily solvable problems. @heimindanger has zeroed in on bid bots and that's okay, it is fair to say they are part of the problem.
Personally I believe the root cause is that the reward pool is vastly oversized for the ability of the community to generate real value-added contributions (of the kind which can and should be usefully rewarded). As a result there is a surplus of 'free money' that gets chased after by various zero-sum (really very negative sum, after considering the blockchain bloat that results) schemes such as bid bots. The surplus in turn caused by recent high speculative interest in both STEEM and SBD which has outstripped organic growth and delivery on scaling developments.
As such I have been supporting @burnpost to help reduce the price of SBD (which accounts for some of the oversized reward pool) toward $1 and also to return a portion of the reward pool to stakeholders via burning, with the amount return determined by voting (i.e. people can vote on how much excess funding there is which isn't being absorbed by rewarding true value-add; when there is more value-add and/or a smaller reward pool, then people can vote to burn less or not at all).
Is this something the backend of Hive is intended to solve? We management at steemSTEM are working on our own frontend that I hope, if time and funding permits, revolutionizes the way academic research gets published and accessed - and in the spirit of social media, reconnects science with the masses. If we and others can simply and quickly build our own Dscience or whatevers with ease, it'd lead to more 'usefully rewarded' content that would also bring investors' eyes toward the blockchain, so I'm pretty excited for the day when these things are easy to implement.
(2am, can't tell if I'm making any sense, soz)
Communities and the other improved features enabled by Hivemind may indeed help the community grow and create and curate more value.
Says the person who is rewarding trash & copy-paste memes with automated votes.
Those participation awards they hand out are just as detrimental to the platform as your paid votes.
You basically sell flags. If I publish a post, it gets bumped down and knocked out of contention by people who use the paid vote bots. It's the same as flagging my work, except your flags cost money.
So, I came here to be an independent artist and writer. Since junk memes and low quality posts can easily bump my work down, I'm left with two options: Leave; or cave in, use a middleman like you and lose my independence. I don't want to work for you, you never hired me. So, I suppose I have to leave like everyone else you folks are chasing away; and that's unfortunate.
They pay robots for "visibility" yet robots can't see and when they buy the vote, they are paying those who delegated SP so they can look away for a profit. How can that be called visibility? They got duped by advertisers and now they shoot themselves in the foot. The blind leading the blind.
Anyone who's for those bots and this system wants this place to fail. That's how I see it. I'm outta here.
Preach it brother. I’m no big content creator by any means. Just trying to find my place and nitch here on Steemit.
Bots were tempting at the start but I have a conscience and figured that isn’t right. Paying someone to get you upvotes. That’s like a presidential election. Dah ha ha ha
Bots will run new comers away at a rapid rate. Just watch and see
These folks don't understand the entertainment industry. It's worth billions of dollars. Steemit and everything else that runs on this blockchain now and into the future has the potential to grab on to a massive portion of those billions by allowing creators to be 100% independent. Book authors, podcasts, musicians, bloggers, vloggers, film producers, everything under the sun. Now what investor on the planet wouldn't want a piece of that pie?
Does a busker in the subway tunnel pay people to listen? That's the most basic, entry level form of the entertainment industry. The answer is no and everyone knows that except for these folks who don't understand the entertainment industry and assume the busker will start paying, after hundreds if not thousands of years of never paying. That's how much these folks don't understand what they're doing. If the buskers can't even scrape up a bit of change, nobody else going up the chain will be interested. People are already leaving because these folks selling the votes don't know what they're doing. Does a musician buy the seats and play in front of an empty house? No. So what are they trying to achieve here? Stupidity? Trying to win the Darwin Award? Sure seems like it.
“Does a musician buy the seats and play in front of an empty house? No”
This is exactly what these folks are doin. Steemit has had some big namers in YouTube coming over (&furiouspete123 and many others, first one to come to mind) to join D.tube. This is just a start of the huge wave I believe. Yet some probably look at the trending page and go wow that is neat, then leave. Great bloggers get overshadowed by a meme that used bidbots, a picture of some coffee with very minimal words typed. This is a huge problem for the future of Steemit.
Unfortuntiy when there is $$ involved greed takes over and morals and values get kicked to the curb. It’s all about getting that $$.
Greed? These folks are working so they can make thousands instead of millions. It's not greed. They just don't know what they're doing and those who buy the votes aren't the sharpest tools in the shed either.
The people using the bidbots are trying to get more $$ than they would without them. So it does have some greed behind it. Sharp or not they are still after that $$ so it is greed.
Great analogy. As a musician, producer and artist, this platform has so much potential. I see the bots as a major problem. It doesn't do much for my art if I have to buy all my votes. My goal is not only to make a living making my art, but also to gather larger amounts of people who love my music and art. I feel you 100% as an original content creator on Steemit. I haven't given up yet, but it is certainly discouraging. I'd still rather post here than to facefuck or instagarbage
Exactly.
in addition to your solution, I suggest a new and specific custom Feed (Trending), filtering only human votes by removing Bot votes from the est. reward value. That way, we can have top articles with bot votes (in current Trending: sort by rewards incl. bots), and one without bots (in new custom Trending: sort by rewards without bots).
We are also doing something similar at our (the steemstem) level. Less and less support to posts being rewarded by bots. Of course, we are dealing with 10 times smaller rewards :)
I am happy when I see the status of the steemstem trending page. Not perfect, but already much better than the general one or the one of many other tags :)
Wouldn't it be enough if we had an interface that allows people to use some sort of filter lists, to disregard certain account's voting power? People could then go ahead and make a list of the most commonly used upvote bots or really just anyone they think doesn't contribute to good curation and share those lists with others to use as well. Anyone else could then decide for themselves what to leave out for their browsing experience.
Good idea. captcha also sounds good
Sure but the hot and trending metrics are not blockchain-level metrics anyways? It seems like ultimately it's best for layers on top of the blockchain to run algorithms to identify the right content for a given user.
Agree,
1/ It could be run by witnesses. Just need a proposal to allow new content filters in witness consensus. (HF) Not easy though...
2/ It could be a solution like Hivemind or specific db like you mentioned with an open-source algorithm (and provably fair etc.) to query and sort the way we want.
I think your solutions, incl. the last one about not giving upvotes to people who use bid bots, are short-term solutions. Still, it can improve the overall quality of the Trending page, but we still need more long-term solution to keep aligned both interests:
unless we HF the Steem blockchain to remove the delegation feature, bid bots will exist because it's allowed and incentivized by design. So you have to deal with it and find a solution that doesn't necessary fight the existing reality. It can be just done by building an alternative that makes the current system obsolete: a New trending section sorting content by rewards without bid bot votes. If dTube would have it instead of the current trending, users would not be incentivized to use bid bots ;)
To be honest I don't think we will ever turn back on this Delegation model :(
Love it, this is badly needed. Resteemed and I'll use it later tonight once my VP has recharged more. Thanks for another awesome contribution :)
Greetings. I've discovered Operation Clean Trending after I noticed downvotes from @heimindanger and @nikokafka on my post Mississippi's best hiking: backpacking in Noxubee Hills. The Clean Trending utility correctly identified my use of voting bots, and my post is still featured prominently by the utility:
If you look at my post, I suspect you will consider it high quality content that brings value to the Steem ecosystem, especially since it provides unique content on a niche topic that has the potential to yield search engine traffic from users who will want to engage via comments (i.e. new users). Perhaps, it sounds like you'll disagree with the amount of pending payout, currently at 119.66 SBD + 66.70 SP. Now that's a fair point, but I'd say that my profit is much lower, once you take into account the 38.190 STEEM + 99.095 SBD I paid to bots.
In my case, and I suspect in the future as the platform evolves, vote buying is essentially advertising. Now were there greater demand to advertise, votes would be purchased at a greater loss. I think it would be better for the ecosystem for vote purchasing to have an immediate ROI of around -40% (I used bots that cap the ROI at -10%). Should the platform grow in popularity, I think we may see more advertisers willing to take larger losses. At this point, vote buying could be a source of monetary inflow into the system, that enhances the value for existing vested users.
Anyways, I applaud you for taking to time and trying to do something about low quality content and reward manipulation. Given the current lack of rewards for downvoting, it's really an altruistic act. Operation Clean Trending is definitely a bold and innovative concept, and in an odd way I'm glad to be an early victim of the service.
Personally, I think the solution would be for explorers to have a trending mode that ignored vote-bot votes... sort of like the ad-block I have activated on my browser.
Currently there is no blockchain-level indicator on votes for whether they're paid (i.e. advertisements) or not. Certain bots, such as @postpromotor, do however leave comments making their usage is more transparent. I would support a "paid vote" field on vote transactions in the blockchain.
However, given that the protocol doesn't have this feature yet, it's up to frontends to decide whether to filter paid votes. The Clean Trending utility shows that it's not hard to detect paid votes at this point in time. My fear is that your downvoting operation will push vote purchasing to use more stealth methods, potentially transacting in other currencies than STEEM or SBD. This will make it much more difficult for frontends to filter paid content.
In other words, why punish producers of high quality content who decide to advertise just because the primary frontend (steemit.com) uses a trending view that doesn't filter paid votes. I feel like an ad-free trending view would solve the problem best. And in the long term, the community should consider a protocol level flag for paid votes.
Two suggestions for https://steemwhales.com/clean-trending/ that would make it less prone to downvoting high-quality content are:
regarding 1. you can simply click on trending. That's the problem about it.
Maybe you should look up what an advertisement is.
Hint: it sells you a product.
What was dhimmel selling you?
You might want to learn to distinguish the difference between promotion and advertising.
This is really about a monopoly (Steemit whales) kicking out the little guys like any other big corporation, they are protecting their interests. How else do you think this self appointed gestapo account manages to get $200-$700 for his crappy posts? It's a whale club, they vote among themselves and won't let the small fish play. The only thing you can do is power down and let these scammers fall on their own weight. I can't wait to see the prosecutions!
Most vote bot power is owned by @freedom.
https://steemit.com/busy/@fow/freedom-original-steem-miner-is-a-major-vote-bot-investor
And goes who has the biggest influence on who are our top witnesses to keep the system as it is http://steemreports.com/witness-voters/
You can have my sword.
We always had paid votes. It was just done behind the scenes. Bid bots allow that to be open and transparent. If you silence bot use you will shove these votes back into private channels and that's bad for the network. Then it won't be who has money controls trending it will be who has money and is connected so it will be a narrower group of people.
My point is that don't blame bid bots. Blame HF19 and linear rewards. If we're going to stick with linear rewards let's get everyone a down vote pool to keep spam, circle jerks and shit posts from getting rewarded.
I know I've been attacked for buying trending, but to be clear I've lost money on many of the bid bots I did knowningly because I was trying to support a community event.
"Bid bots allow that to be open and transparent. If you silence bot use you will shove these votes back into private channels and that's bad for the network. Then it won't be who has money controls trending it will be who has money and is connected so it will be a narrower group of people."
I concur, and your comment should be top comment on this post.
Elitism always hates the light.
This is really about a monopoly (Steemit whales) kicking out the little guys like any other big corporation, they are protecting their interests. How else do you think this self appointed gestapo account manages to get $200-$700 for his crappy posts? It's a whale club, they vote among themselves and won't let the small fish play. The only thing you can do is power down and let these scammers fall on their own weight. I can't wait to see the prosecutions!
Dear @heimindanger, I started last week with a plan for a magazine on Steem, called HodlingMoon, first edition came out as a post on my blog. Although I have some 2K followers, trending is needed to make it worthwhile (I spend about a to write articles and then post 1 time per week).
I'd like to ask you, do you think a project like this should be allowed to use bid bots?
If I may, if there would no bid-bots around your 2k followers would make it to trending or at least if you want to invest to it, you could use promotion tab instead, imo.
I only used bots because I thought they were a legitimate way to promote good quality content. Nowhere in Steemit's whitepaper is said this is wrong.
This automated tool that blindly flags content without checking it will destroy years of reputation building on this platform. I understand the abuse issue but think the automated approach is wrong. You should focus on fighting spam comments and bad quality content, not downvote everything trending blindly.
I'm powering down and leaving the platform, if I can't legitimately promote my content without risking ny reputation it makes no sense to keep posting here for a few cents hoping that whales see me which they never will. Advertisement is legitimate everywhere but I guess Steemit has become a place for the same big guys only, an echo chamber. Don't worry, you won't be seeing my posts on the trending list anymore. Bye now
You tell me I can still use bots for "50% of the total value of your content" how am I supposed to know what that is without running afoul of your gestapo list?
I'm already doing fine, I'm powering down and dumping this whale club for good. Heck, I might even come up with a tool and big ass campaign for people to do the same, just like you did to protect your posts while green with envy from others, it's not really about bad content is it?
See, you didn't do this out of your "love for Steemit", you are just protecting your monopoly on post potitions and that of your big whale friends. We are not stupid @heimindanger, you gotta let the little fish play too once in a while or they will just just leave the pond...
Are your posts so good quality that they deserve $200 to $700 payouts? Give me a break, you use your Whale group for that, something a lot more questionable and damaging to the platform than using bots and that's the real problem with Steemit, it's a f... Whale Club...
Countdown to freedom:
All you need to do is stop buying bid votes and you have nothing to worry about.
I don't have anything to worry about. I'm dumping hard this whale club where only the big guys can play. You do have plenty to worry about: Will you be powered down by the time these whales pull their exit? Tick tock haha
Did you even read my post? I paid for advertisement on top quality content. You will destroy Steemit automating downvotes blindly without checking content. People will just leave. Bad content I understand but a human, not another bot, should decide that.
Sure, you read my posts... If you are superman trying to save steemit why don't you do something about the spam comments rather than downvoting legitimate, hard working content producers that paid for promotion? I understand your efforts, just think you are doing it wrong and are hurting this platform. You won't be seeing my posts in trending from now on. Downpowering and leaving.
If you're cleaning the trending page, please do it correctly and not selectively.
If you started this operation maybe you should start another one rewarding those who are creating projects for the community.
An example is Steem-bounty by @knircky which is clearly helpful and he is getting 0 profit.
I don't get how projects like that are downvoted but a project like creation of a bot where the reward pool is raped is very supported.
Upvoted for visibility.
He is entitled to his own views on the best way to improve the platform and so are you. If you don't like his ideas then don't vote for them.
To be fair it is clearly going to be upvoting a lot of trash as well, unless you downvote all of the trash which is clearly impossible. That is one of the reasons why I have tended to support burning rather than just downvoting. There is a lot of trash right now.
Exactly. Thats why people need to be encouraged to use flags responsibly as a cleaning tool and not be worried.
I didn't say that downvoting rapes the reward pool.
I said that good projects should be boosted and not downvoted, yes, you're right, I am subjective, everyone is.
What if all bid bots are denied? Wouldn't that solve the problem better?
I think that's the real problem.
Trending page was similar before the popularity of the bots but with exchanges between upvotes.
I appreciate your initiative but I think we can solve the problem deeper. We - the members who care about Steemit.
I only used bots because I thought they were a legitimate way to promote good quality content. Nowhere in Steemit's whitepaper is said this is wrong.
This automated tool that blindly flags content without checking it will destroy years of reputation building on this platform. I understand the abuse issue but think the automated approach is wrong. You should focus on fighting spam comments and bad quality content, not downvote everything trending blindly.
I'm downpowering and leaving the platform, if I can't legitimately promote my content without risking ny reputation it makes no sense to keep posting here for a few cents hoping that whales see me which they never will. Advertisement is legitimate everywhere but I guess Steemit has become a place for the same big guys only, an echo chamber. Don't worry, you won't be seeing my posts on the trending list anymore. Bye now
Counting down to Freedom:
Hi Sir, Im a one of the oldest standing cleaners around, I have been fighting abuse for 2 years now, in this very same platform.
I would like to have a private chat with you about your latest operation, how can I contact you? All I need is 5 minutes of your time.
Click the Image Below
I like trending better now. It is a surprise every day. Instead of the same 12 people.
I don't see a problem here.
Can you solve the problem then of posts by big whales get into trending just by self voting amongst themselves then? I agree bid bots are abused a lot, but it is also the only way an minnow who produce good content get noticed. I think it is unfair just to blindly down vote anyone who uses Bidbots without actually looking at their content.
To be clear I also agree that 800 dollars on a crap introductory post that takes 2 minutes to spit out is bulls shit. However, I saved up my earnings from my last two weeks to promote my post which I took a week to edit. I don't think the quality of my work is any less than the posts that are getting the same amount right now. Yet mine got down voted just because I paid for my own my advertisement. I don't think that is fair.
This is really about a monopoly (Steemit whales) kicking out the little guys like any other big corporation, they are protecting their interests. How else do you think this self appointed gestapo account manages to get $200-$700 for his crappy posts? It's a whale club, they vote among themselves and won't let the small fish play. The only thing you can do is power down and let these scammers fall on their own weight. I can't wait to see the prosecutions!
Interesting... lets flag the guitarist assh*** who takes his trash everyday on the trending.
I read many of you say
I understand the concept. Just like in life the concept is one thing the reality is another.
The only voices that matter on steemit are the Whales and the founding community.
Oh sure we occasionally get a bone from our masters. But we (the real community) are all just dogs here on this platform. Hoping to get a pat on the head.
We just invest our money and time and do our best to fit in. We are not accepted by the founding click. We are only accepted by other unheard voices. We understand.
But dont say community like it is some big benevolent organic entity. It is not.
The Koreans have their own group the homesteaders have another one the Spanish speakers have another one.
We're all divided here just like in our personal lives. We follow who we agree with and upvote what we like.
The money powers reward those who pay them, nothing new under the sun! If you need money you cant have any if you don't need money it is abundantly available to you.
Steemit is a beautiful Idea but beyond that it is just a microcosm of the divided lives we live.
Totally agree spending 400 SBD for bid bot votes on one single post is getting ridiculous. To cap a limit would even out the reward distribution. But then again users who have the SBD would likely post multiple posts to get around this cap.
Thanks for the upvote
Very well done @heimindanger! The downvote button is specifically designed as a means to disagree with the payout of posts. Unfortunately, most people don't even use it. I have spent some time reading other people's posts and downvoting all the "nice post, follow me" non sense. Now with this, we have an effective solution to evening out the reward pool and allowing good content to flourish.
This is what makes a platform great. We don't just assume that everyone will behave the way we want. Instead, success comes when we work to provide solutions to existing problems instead of waiting for someone else to do all the work.
I will give this a try. I have already started with spam comments, and now I think this is what I need to look into. Decentralization brings on a greater responsibility for the users.
can you please set the site up like steem auto so we can form a DOWNVOTE curation trail so it doesn't destroy our vote power? That would be the shit and I would be all over it. I still think if you use bots you should get put in the promoted section automaticly.
I agree, all posts boosted by bidbots AND any post with a self upvote should be automatically moved to the 'Promoted' tab and excluded from all others.
^This
While we're at it, can we get rid of auto voting ? Look at many top well-earning posts and they're not even read ! Compare the rewards to the views, too many simply making money off the back of auto voting dolphins meaning the reward does not correlate with the quality of content. Look at Steemits 'darling', @allysyummyfood, total joke
Great post and thanks for bringing it to the fore.
I also want to see more people using flags for the good of the community. Even us tiddlers can find some shit poster who posts 20 stolen dog or cat pics a day and flag them, If you hit these types hard and early before they build up power they never get chance to earn anything and it puts them off.
People like @berniesanders could alleviate hundreds of shit posts a day with barely any effect on his SP, instead of going after the big players, hit the small ones first so they never get chance to be big. The big ones leave for a concerted and coopperated attack later.
The ecosystem needs badly cleaning up or it will just become a very specialist niche forum with no potential for growth.
And dont get me started on @dmania.....
@themarkymark needs supporting for his work with his blacklist. The bot owners need to take responsibility like he does, and again, focus on the small bot owners. They dont give a fuck about the shite theyre promoting. Bots like @drotto will promote any old shite, single stolen pics anything. No scruples
This isn't mob rule, its individual choice to help the community, the more the better. I choose to use my SP to downvote @morelife and his numerous aliases, my choice. I wish more people would pick up on flagging as a method to improve the community.
I think this was the reason @dan pulled of from steem and is now making new set of rules to get with the Eos ,i am pretty sure he wont be making this kinda shit out there.
And regarding @berniesanders he has always been right about these things but people wont change ,greed wont let them.
Most of the time in the trending i see there are 3 posts out of 10 that are worth ...and i have personally have seen some planktons making great content but getting over shaded by posts with bots....this system need many fixes...
A good way to down-vote trending topics by making easy to solve calculations @heimindanger, however, your tool is still a mere tool that is based on numbers and can not read the actual content. I saw you down-voted some posts on trending that contain decent quality.
As for our post, that you down-voted as well, if you would read our previous articles and this one, we try to motivate users to improve the quality of Steemit, since we are new and there are a lot of circle-jerk-voting going on that will only vote for themselves or 'proven', we cannot get the exposure that would lead it to the new Steemian (who look at trending) without using a bot.
The education we provide is normally education that we would charge clients for. An amount that the majority of Steemit cannot afford 101, hence the reason we started this project to provide education that not only would increase the chances for higher rewards for those who struggle to get noticed but would benefit the entire community as a whole. Even if 1-5% would start putting a little bit more effort or time into the platform than they already do, this would change the brand-identity of Steemit created by the user itself.
We stimulate more contributing engagement by adding something unique in their reply/comments/up-votes or whatsoever. While Steemit is already the #1 with the number of transactions per day, more engagement means more transactions, more flow, possible distribution of rewards and so on.
Yes, we agree, using a voting bot is not something we enjoy doing since the ROI is not higher at all. This might be hard to believe since we have used it on 3 articles already. Currently, there is -no- other way to get our articles seen by the right (amount) of people.
We suggest that you read -all- listed articles before adding them to your own down-vote automated list.
Cheers,
XPOSED
Beautiful work heimindanger. I wonder though, with new bid bots being launched on the daily, is it possible that you've missed a few and if so, can people bring them to your attention to be added to the trash? Even though I pay for my delegation and need to get a return for my curation, I'm going to dedicate some of my power to this.
Good work...
2% of accounts control 95% of SP and you want to police the other 98% of users who have the means to promote their content. Think you're going after the wrong problem...
Your interpretation of what is going on here is very incorrect. This is actually policing the 95% who are providing the vote power for the bots.
If I understand the promoted option correctly, you are paying steemit.com to promote the content on steemit.com only... right? I think you can understand why most advertisers would prefer to promote their content on the blockchain rather than with a single block explorer.
You didn’t address my point. All that coding and you ignore the main problem which is the centralization of SP. Look man I agree the trending page is trash. I’ve been saying it this whole time. But that’s the system that we have now.
Unfortunately the system also allows for you to organize a group that uses methods other than you and people on your team circle jerking each other to downvote competing content “for the good of the platform.” Nothing any of us can do about it unless we want to kiss some ass as well. I’m sure most of the people who agree with you will be happy to oblige.
@heimindanger, I've only gotten involved in Steem within the last year, although I've heard references before to these early distribution issues. I'd like to learn more, since I think fair distribution is extremely important to the long-term health of an ecosystem. Do you know of any posts or in-depth descriptions of the early distributions and any problems that may have had?
And now he is offering a service that allows people to increase their SP and get exposure for their content without having to participate in the massive circle jerk culture that exists on this site.
You’ll always have people that exploit the system as long as there is money to be made. It happens on literally every platform. This place has literally no rules, so just like nobody could stop him, nobody can stop you from controlling this platform by strong-arming people into following your rules. Rules which obviously benefit you and people close to you at the expense of new users.
No problem. The system is set up to allow that to happen. But you’re only going to make the culture/content on here WORSE - because now instead of there only being an incentive for writing happy wow Steemit is so wonderful posts/comments, you are setting a precedent where non compliant posts will be flagged “for the good of the platform.”
If this has all these bid bots then he doesn’t need our money to increase his stake on here. He can just upvote his various accounts if he wants to print more money. But by offering a bidding service, he allows users to increase their own stake without having to align with any of the factions on here that claim to know best. It’s not likely that anyone will reach whale-status, but at least they can derive peripheral benefits like a small overall profit, increased SP and an increased audience for their work.
But that “wouldn’t be fair” to you poor people with plenty of SP, influence, and a network of buddies who already promote each other’s work at no cost. Wow i feel so bad for you. $200 with no promotion at all. That’s just awful. All that contribution for nothing. Better push your anti vote bot campaign hard before new people come along and level the playing field.
Somebody grab some ice for that wicked burn.
I appreciate the tool and the attempt to clean the trending page. But I have to double down on @yallapapi's question. And I'm saying this as someone who does not appreciate his approach to the trending page, but respect his right to speak up his mind.
Yes. We had to work and now they flag our work away with their paid votes. When you look closely, you can see how those paid votes are the exact same thing as flags. People could go around and flag away the competition for free and it would have the same effect as paying for votes. Many people here, established members, people who worked hard; they're leaving because months upon months of effort are being flagged away.
"I invite you to (waste your SBD for no effect)"
Fixed this for you. Christ, you are naive.
While I do support the idea, I don't know if down voting is the best solution. There is a big difference between a red fish trying to get some attention with using resteem services and spend a small amount of SBD to bid bots, then to people pumping hundreds of SBD to get their post to the trending or hot pages!
Don't you think that this could start a complete new flagging war? The downvote power we have been granted should be used in a different way in my opinion. It should be used to spam posts, copyright inflictions and so on!
So, yes I do support the idea but not 100%. I do think that it needs to be fine-tuned a little bit more! Just my 2 cents!
This is pretty much where I stand too. Flags should be for violation of the NAP. I do think it'd be great to have a seperate "Dislike" button that is like a 1% downvote. People can show disagreements without resorting to flagging wars.
The flagging wars are killing the steem blockchain! But I do feel that something has to change. Maybe my post are not good enough to get on the trending or hot pages, but at least I would like to have an equal chance!
We could turn the trending page around and let only the comments counts, but this would not solve the problem, cause people would be using bot who do also place comments.
I will admit that I do use bots sometimes to advertise a post, like the one I wrote about interaction on Steem, but for sure we plankton or Red Fishes have to do this to get some attention. And yes, I am very active on Steem. Trying to discover great authors and writing genuine comments.
Thx for the support!
Hiveminds should make things much better. It won't make things perfect. STEEM intitially had POW mining. That's just madness. Much of the current problems arise from that. The tokens were not distributed based on the contributions and they did not come at a large cost for the miners. Basically the equal opportunity part was distorted. Only a tiny fraction of the STEEM user were part of mining. By the time the rest of us came, POW was gone (as it should be) but the damage was done.
I never knew this! this explains why some of the whales are just raking in curation rewards without placing one post or comment!
To be fair self-voting and curation trails also suck, maybe they aren't the biggest current problems and I could find common ground with you there. But they are hardly a goal to aspire to. For example, curation trails are very wasteful in terms of blockchain usage (resulting in many, many additional vote transactions on the blockchain with little added value in the form of actual curation) when a very similar result could be accomplished by delegating to a successful curator and the curator sharing some of the curation rewards with delegators periodically (especially if curation rewards weren't tiny).
Doing this is better than to do nothing at all! So I will support the idea. 2 reasons for this. 1. It should be all about interaction and rewarding the people who do deserve the rewards. 2. I don't have any better solution!
At least you are trying to clean up some mess. Thanks for that.
@heimindanger, we appreciate your fight against incorrect use of bidbots, but your latest downvotes on our launch post are unwarranted.
We have spent over a month of our time developing new code and bringing a new platform to the Steem ecosystem. And to beat the abuse you are fighting we need to poke our heads above the water line, to get feedback from the community.
We have no choice and ask if you could whitelist this one post so we can get some clean air.
We are not the people you are fighting against, but rather trying to help the Steem Blockchain grow.
This is really about a monopoly (Steemit whales) kicking out the little guys like any other big corporation, they are protecting their interests. How else do you think this self appointed gestapo account manages to get $200-$700 for his crappy posts? It's a whale club, they vote among themselves and won't let the small fish play. The only thing you can do is power down and let these scammers fall on their own weight. I can't wait to see the prosecutions!
Lol, you are half way there :D
I wrote a post a few hours before this one that has a similar idea. Gamify Flagging. Obviously you were ahead of me since you have a website up and all but perhaps you might get some ideas for v1.1
https://steemit.com/steemit/@tarazkp/worth-it-or-not-lessons-from-zuckerberg
@flagawhale have been doing this for a few months now - they currently only target one account though.
https://steemit.com/@flagawhale/transfers
Yep. As you know that is a 'drop in the ocean' so to speak when it comes to total pool value yet still can't be handled decisively.
Indeed.
The disappointing thing is that the ones with the SP to help, who 'offered their axe' initially, have given up and are now self-voting alt. accounts producing memes.
This is why decentralized and voluntary has issues. If it isn't easy and fast to do, no one wants to do it. Even if this type of thing could happen in a centralised community, it would have been taken care of much earlier. Decentralised communities currently movee quite slowly because the consensus needed. Too slow and it becomes fatal.
Going off on a tangent - is it possible you could revive steemwhales? It was the most useful steem-related site around.
The point is... I understand clearly your point of view but Isn't that a kind of dicteture?
I considerer that Steem blockchain and all components that work together with that blockchain is part of the libertary principals. And if all others privates networks they have bots. Why we don't have right to have that?
If someone pay for... What's the matter? Do you don't beleave that the community have the right to decide what is good or not by themselves?
Using this tools that you created is a kind of inverted-bot. The diference is that is not automated. But It´s a kind of... because we can downvote in many in single click...
What's the diference? Or do you really believe that people who will use this tool have read each link carefully? I honestly believe this will incite a kind of war that will make many quality posts take downvote.