If you have followed me for a while, you will probably know that I've been a very vocal proponent of getting rid of bid-bots. A lot of my ideas were theoretical in nature and some of them were based on my own assumptions and conclusions drawn based on my experience in investing and managing investments, but that all changes today. I put up my own money to test my theories and my findings are not based on any one bot. I have been thoroughly entrenched in bid-bots for the last couple of weeks and gained more perspective, listened to the thoughts and reasons of people on both sides of the argument as well as bid-bot owners and operators, and today I come back with some interesting findings.
The first defense made by anyone pro bid-bot is that it's a promotional tool. Is it? I think it can be, but the issue that I see is there are just more low quality posts in trending now and the circle jerk voting has moved into the shadows. Personally I feel the trending page is completely useless and has no meaning whatsoever for finding quality content. Sure quality is subjective and perspective based, but that kind of negates the point of curation and having a content driven platform. I suppose that's a different problem that steemit has as a whole. It appears that the platform is simply becoming an investment platform and not a content platform and that basically Steemit Inc is expecting communities to solve the content issues and payout discrepancies with Smart Media Tokens. Anyway, back to bid-bots.
After a couple of weeks of dumping literally thousands of U.S. dollars worth of STEEM and SBD into all of the largest bid-bots on the platform, it's become clear to me what bid-bots are in their current state. Bid-bots are the gambling system built on top of the STEEM platform. The owners wont call them that and the problem is that many users don't see it. I applaud @yabapmatt for the steembottracker.com tool and adding some transparency for the average non-technical user and I give credit to some of the other owners like @themarkymark for providing curation digests as I know how much work it takes to curate and how thankless it can be, but it doesn't change my perspective that bid-bots are glorified gambling. Here's why:
Even if every user is monitoring the feeds on steembottracker.com and being sure not to cost themselves or others money, there are other users gaming the system and waiting for bots to get close to the end of their bid windows to hurry up and post then bid to negate curation rewards when bidding. This is basically a fuck you to everyone else's investment to take a bad investment under profitable conditions. Can you get lucky and get a nice profitable vote? Sure. Can you also throw away more money than your post would have made? Sure. I can't really argue about whether or not that is worth the risk or whether or not it's a form of promotion as the promoted tab is based around burning SBD to promote your post, but bid-bots aren't burning any SBD and if people aren't checking trending then what's the point? Now we get into the ugly that I haven't seen anyone bring up before:
If users can game the system then so can the owners. I want it to be clear that I am not accusing any of the owners of doing this and most of the ones that I know are trying to offer a service to the community that there is demand for and make an honest couple of bucks in the process. Nevertheless, hear me out please. If we can concede that bid-bots are basically unregulated gambling, it's in the houses best interest to make sure they always win. Sock-puppet accounts can be used to over bid the bid windows and make votes unprofitable to users at the benefit of the owners. This can also be used as a form of sabotage on other bot owners to drive people away from using their bots. If you watch the steembottracker.com website, you will see just how often bots get overbid to more than their votes are worth in the first place or well into unprofitable ranges when factoring in curation.
I can't blame this on anyone as there is clearly demand on the platform for the service and I honestly don't want to dig and find out if owners are sabotaging bid windows as I'm friends with several bot owners. The facts are all presented from my own personal findings and I do my best to remain neutral on this topic. I've tried to see it from the promotional perspective and honestly I think it's just idealizing and justification on the parts of the bot owners. I think bid-bots should just be called what they are from my perspective, which is basically a round based lottery and gambling system, and I think everyone should have the right to choose whether or not they want to gamble for themselves. Namaste.
Hi, ultimately it boils down to the very simple economic model used within Steem blockchain; any feedback loops are created by user actions and are not explicitly encoded. Let us also remember that the bidbots are a (partial) solution to another problem: ubiquitous self-upvoting.
On the subject of "content quality", many glossy magazines seem to have 150 pages of adverts before we even see the content page! I very rarely look at any trending pages.
So, the quality content creators need to be followed, rather than expecting them on trending pages of other tags. One feature I always suggest people use are the curator "feeds". There is no button for these, but look at my MAP feed: https://steemit.com/@accelerator/feed
Replace @accelerator with your favourite authors/curators and you can follow what they follow.
Very true. I don't think bid-bots are a problem and are more a symptom of the way the platform functions. That is a great tip though and one of the things I use to hunt for posts as not everything gets resteemed. That reminds me, I've been meaning to clean out my own feed a little better for a while now. Great tip!
The two are not mutually exclusive, especially if you don't think the system functions properly, or even perfectly.
There are many issues with bid-bots. The two largest ones are that:
They are parasitic - They don't actually add anything to the blockchain.
They are "reward pool rape," because the bid-bot owners basically earn money, while giving more of a share to someone, at no real cost to themselves. So it's basically reward just being taken out of the pool for no real reason.
Having an opinion and stating it in a numerical list doesn't make it a fact. People throw money away for all sorts of reasons, who is supposed to tell them they can't throw it away on a bid bot and hope to get lucky gaming the system? The moral majority? Fuck that. As far as reward pool rape goes, the SP that is leased to these bid bots could just as easily be used to self vote. No difference. The term reward pool rape is kind of a joke in and of itself. If someone goes out and buys a million dollars worth of STEEM they can use their stake however they want. The system is delegated proof of stake. No one is telling Bitcoin miners they have to use their mined coins in a certain way. Why is proof of stake different? Because we want it to be? That's entitlement.
Hmm. But that just taps into what they follow, right? Which is probably why @clayboyn unfollowed me and a lot of people. It would be nice to see the feed button be useful again. I dig it.
LOL I actually didn't mean to unfollow you, I was on my tablet and I might have bumped a few wrong people. Glad I saw this.
It IS an investment platform.
People are invited to this platform using money as bait...
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The current mechanism of how this platform works, is finalizing any decision that steemit IS an investment platform. Smart money earning more money. Big money opens up to more investment opportunities. Those are how steemit work.
New account with zero post, and lots of SP invested inside, could earn money through curation, while new accounts with lots of good quality posts and 15 SP, have no earning. Steemit is first and foremost an investment platform, imho. It's in "the blood" :D
If steemit is a content platform, then people with e.g. more posts (after spam detection) would earn more money, not people with more money earn more money.
Luckily there are people like cheetah and steemcleaners who are trying to make this as a good content platform. Or else, steemit would implode itself long time ago. Imho, It seems like steem inc wants an investment platform, but the community wants a content platform.
To really make steemit as a content platform, steem inc should make basic changes on how this platform rewards people. If people with good contents get accumulated high SP, then make it so that people (new and old) can not put in any SP. That's the basic and the most foundation way to change steemit.
I have used bid bots on 3 of my post and found them useless. They say they are for promotion but i would like to disagree. Promotion should result in sales. When promotion doesn't result in sale then people should not opt for promotion. I am going to do this now. I am not going to use these bots unless i can manage to spend atleast 50 SBD for bid. Smaller bids are worth less. They don't result in sales or bring in new readers.
I tried a lot of different values up to ~120 SBD (about $500 USD) and the value didn't make a difference in return. The whole thing just feels like self masturbatory gambling and ego stroking.
I think that you may be right in that you're taking a gamble on bid bots but I don't think it's the owners doing any of the bidding. I think it's a lot of the same people doing spam posting and not paying attention to what they're doing that are over bidding. I check out steemttracker every day before making my bot bids and it's ridiculous what these people are bidding but I think they may just be doing it blindly. I don't like using bid bots to buy votes but when you're trying to build momentum on here it can be extremely difficult with the amount of posts that come out to get noticed, and get noticed by people with a decent amount of steem power to propel you forward.
I agree entirely, I just can't honestly see how bid-bots are doing anything whatsoever to actually fix that problem. Trending is basically a hot mess that few will look at, so what visibility is actually being gained?
The viability aspect I think may be debatable. If people see that a post has a higher dollar amount in the upvotes and upvotes in general, they may be more inclined to look, possibly. However, in my case where a big priority is building steem power, by using bid bots (with profitable returns) I can get my sbd back while gaining steem power that I wouldn't have gotten otherwise. Not saying that this is the preferred method and I would much rather have people upvoting and commenting on my content to have a dialogue going forward but the bid bots help you move forward regardless of followers (if you pick profitable bots of course). I know, doesn't sound too good but what are the options?
The other option is to go to the internal market, convert your SBD to STEEM and power up without risking losing out on someone sniping your bid window. You always get exactly what you pay for. No risk of losing.
I have been having this debate with a few anti bot people, and I will tell you what I have told them. I believe overall I am losing a little bit on using them, and I don't mind investing in visibility. Because sure enough if I don't use them my new posts will be on the first page for all of 30 seconds and then disappear. At least using these bots will keep me on the hot list for maybe a few hours or longer so my posts can even be seen.
So while few may be looking at these lists, at least I am visible when they do.
Thanks for your analysis - I haven't been here long and I quit looking at the trending page after about 3 days - so much junk! It also gives new people a really warped idea of what posts are worth. I think I have found the most interesting stuff by just searching. I've been trying to understand things like bots - so confusing! It did seem like a very risky business with the waiting till the last minute to bid and all that. I can't handle that kind of stress! I'm just gonna take it slow and concentrate on writing what I want to write and doing my best at it. Namaste.
First, let me join you to appreciate @yabapmatt He has help make the entire system as transparent as we currently have it.
However, I couldnt help but notice you were skewed towards the bad and the ugly. Just my thoughts actually. After I learnt that most bots don't vote during the first minute, I became skeptical. However, I use two service that vote my posts within the first 15 minutes. What I lose in SBD, I gain in Steem.
Plus, I think you're forgetting one underlying reason for using voting bots. Aside for the need to earn more, there's the self validation one acquires when he looks at his post earnings and sees an 'encouraging payout'. (encouraging is subjective).
When people see a lot of people earning a lot and then see the $0.56 on theirs, they can easily feel inferior and unappreciated. So they turn to voting bots. In times like that, they don't do the maths and realise the bots still take back a portion of the post payouts.
So yes, it's a gamble. But it's just as the gambling in the real world. People focus so much on what could and less on reality. (kinda reminds me of your poem, Resonance).
The house always win; almost everybody knows that. Even the practical guys still indulge in it just for the thrill and luck.
I've typed too much for a comment.
I'm out
Well I can't really disagree that my findings skew towards the negatives, but the argument that I was presented to reconsider my position on these bots is that they are good for promotion. I struggle to find much credibility to that school of thought and while you may have a point about self validation being another use, I really can't see the point of paying myself to post so that other people can see how much I can spend to out do them. If I wanted to do that I would just power up and self vote.
That still points to self validation. Let me explain. One of my posts recently made the #trending league for a while. (less than an hour). I was exhilarated at the very least. Finally, someone appreciates my work.
This recognition/appreciation is measured in post payout. So it is easy to believe that the higher upvotes I have, the more valuable people might consider my posts.
When people talk about promotion, there's an underneath desire for attention, for a pat on one's back for doing well. If I can't get that from others and I cannot afford to power up, I simply scrap up my remaining balance and bid for some votes.
Of course, the most practical thing to do is to build slowly and consistently. But then, how many think that way...?
Is that really in their best interest though? They are already winning by selling a vote that they can't really use.
The SP leases cost money and some of them run on delegations they must pay out daily. The more bots there are, the higher the competition and price get. It's business and too many profitable votes going out is a loss. The bots running on delegations are subject to lots of different people having a reason to overbid them as they are basically paying themselves to do so.
i have literally watched while a 30 percent profit on payout got put on hold for 40 minutes while other huge sbd amount bids were taken until the profit went into the negative. I not only didnt come even, I lost half the value of what was put in. To me that's not "breaking even" by owners, its outright and intentional theft. Its not the first time i've seen this either, and it seems if people don't speak up, the practice will continue. not accusing all owners, some i always get a fair deal from. buyer beware.
Hey @clayboyn, what do you think of smartsteem? They have a system in place where users can sell their votes and apply a setting to make it so votes sold are only from certain quality users. The problem with this is smartsteem has to manually approve you to whatever quality level the see fit.
I'm not sure what other solutions might be in the works. Bid bots are annoying to use, and scrolling through hot and trending doesn't mean anything. Much easier to find good content by tag, but even that can be a challenge. So far the best method has been finding people I like to follow over time.
I think a section for resteemed stuff should be implemented, like most resteemed, most upvoted(quantity) or a sort by tool. I don't know what's in the works but site navigation and organization is gonna need some work. I need to check out appbase still to see what it's got going on, and I know updates are on the way, but sooner would be better.
I don't want to analyze specific bots as I'm not trying to single out any of the bots or their owners. The resteemed tab is something we've been asking for since resteems started actually working. It's one of the reasons I switched to using busy.org at first even though there latest release got rid of the resteem tab. I don't want to have to use external browser add-ons to hide resteems, but good luck actually getting answers on requests. You can check the github and see the state of pull requests.
Every thing s has good an bad side.It depend on how to you used.So after all very good writing .I appreciate it you r creativity
Keep it up
Thanks for your careful and well thought analysis. As a newbie, it becomes frustrating to lose out on the battle for visibility with every post one drops. One would think quality contents should at least get seen.
But then, not everyone have the funds to hustle for the biddings or make those early investments.
I personal feel the bots should be rested to allow for a fair ground. Such that people are able to see the contents for what they are, and not because the whale upvotes pushed them up the page
I'm up in the air on bots in general. I have used bid bots on some of my posts but only if I think the post has worth and would be of interest in the community. I just feel like people are more apt to actually read posts if they have a value connected to them. I have also used resteem bots but I understand that they are not as productive as they seem on the surface. Sure, your post will gain exposure to their many followers. For half a second. And they don't tell you that some of those followers are defunct accounts. Or that they are towing a lot of bots. Or that some of them are foreign language accounts. At the end of the day your post will get seen by maybe 20% of their followers for a red hot second. It is, like you say, a gamble to use any of these services and you should really be sure the posts you are spending your money on are worth the gamble. At least that is how I feel. Thanks for posting this information. It really has shed some light on the 'scam'ble of it all.
LOL, I don't think anyone could pay me enough to do a two week experiment on resteem bots.
I absolutely agree! I saw the problems with these bots well before yabapmatt ever made the tool.. however even with the tool that doesn't mean that the owners don't have other accounts to vote at the last second and basically take most of the rewards for themselves under a different name. I wouldn't even call it gambling to be honest, atleast in that nature things are relatively fair. Before the tool the bots would "accidently" not vote for hours but still somehow collect everyones money and not pay out until they were making 10 to 1 profits. I once sent in 5 sbd and got back .35 as a vote, that was it for me..
I agree, content in the trending tab isn't even worth looking at. And it really pisses me off that I can't get any delegation to curate good material because they are constantly buying and bidding it up! Not only that, they are ruining steemit because people are more concerned with bidbots than writing good posts. There are some serious issues that need to be looked at or steemit is going to eventually fall apart.
Great article..
@yabapmatt Has just introduced max accepted bid code so bot owners can limit to what ever they want. 10% under bid or 10% over bid etc.
The real gambling is bidding SBD when it is highly valued compared to STEEM. By the time your payout hits the value of SBD could be much lower.
If you have enough STEEM Power the best way to earn is to buy stake in a bot by delegating SP to one.
Thanks for your analysis - I haven't been here long and I quit looking at the trending page after about 3 days - so much junk! It also gives new people a really warped idea of what posts are worth. I think I have found the most interesting stuff by just searching. I've been trying to understand things like bots - so confusing! It did seem like a very risky business with the waiting till the last minute to bid and all that. I can't handle that kind of stress! I'm just gonna take it slow and concentrate on writing what I want to write and doing my best at it. Namaste.
You know you are wasting your life on Facebook. Doubly so here. Nobody but the idle rich and unemployed has TIME to wade through all the visual and printed drivel intended purely to justify upvoting. Steemit IS a money-making enterprise. It can help some people have a better living in developing countries. Precariously so as the 'commissions' for curation then exchange of cryptocurrencies bleed everyone white.
Any 'writer' making a living on Steemit (and there are some) run their blog as a full-time business, playing the system and bots to leverage it with serious money. NOT because of content. Want to make a living writing, sorry to say it won't be here.
Steemit.com can start closing down the scam bots taking small deposits continuously but never upvoting nor return funds to numerous steemians demanding action. @hellowhale wallet shows constant deposits despite claiming on a blog they down but nothing is ever returned not upvoted.
Unless action is taken to clean up the act the Steemit 'vision' will be forever tarnished. Management must get their act together