Those pesky bots.
One thing I've noticed on Steemit lately is the quick rise in reputation of some users who use paid bot votes to upvote their post to higher dollar values in the hot and trending pages.
Dollar amounts are one of the sole drivers of reputation, and newbies seem to be exploiting this trick as they back fill their posts with dollar laden bot votes to boost their reputational score.
I believe reputation should only come from moral community values, and should not be subject to gameification. Others may disagree and believe it's a truly free market. But then where do our morals end on this?
I recently saw a newbie who shall remain nameless who'd been on the platform only a few months and had a reputation in the high 60s. In the old days of Steemit this would've taken nearly 10-12 months of hard writing to earn. Very few tread that path now. It's been abused by the rise of the paid bots. Quality work is plainly not being seen via the reputational score.
Community values.
This all comes down to the morals of a community and whether we value the reputational numbers that we hold or not - @berniesanders at -18 may be the exception to the rule here, as he is a man unto himself. Bernie is a sociopath that does attack those that prey on the gameification of reputations. Even sociopaths can do good.
The ultimate aim here for all of us is to get to reputation 100 to enable a spam-free network. But what behaviour shall we demonstrate on the way to get there? Yes, many of us on here have made errors on Steemit. Some have corrected them and some have not. @craig-grant for example has been hounded to death from the platform at reputation 75. It's sad in a way for me personally, as Craig was one of the first people I met on Steemit, but he did fall on his own sword with the Bitconnect and Davorcoin debacle.
It's taken me 18 months to get to reputation 72, and I have destroyed my idol of Steemit at times along the way as I patrol its borders and weaknesses. I've published walled garden content, inverted images and many other tricks to test @cheetah. @cheetah does great work, but I'm sure the tweaking of the algorithm persists. @pfunk has done some great work on this, and I've been caned by him and others on several occasions as I walk the perimeter fences of Steemit.
So, as @ned continues to take our platform forward on a full on assault to take on @dan (should he start his own EOS Steemit variant), my money is on Steemit. An EOS Steemit variant would need to build a reputation system with morals that exceed Steemits to be any kind of competition - and thus solve the Steemit's 'stickiness' problem with it's new users. Even after 2 years Steemit still hasn't fully solved this yet.
Hopefully by the time an EOS Steemit variant arrives we'll all have a reputation number that truly means something, as without morals and only greed, the platform remains meaningless.
Steem on!
I would like to see everyone use the promotion feature. It voids the steem thus giving value back to the hodlers. It seems the best way to go, so I occasionally do it.
An enhancement of the Promoted tab might just negate the bots?? Just a random thought!!
I really don’t like the whole paid upvote service concept but it’s seems part of the ecosystem now. The fact people are buying their reputation as well is really the sign that these paid upvote services make The Steem ecosystem a less genuine community.
Governance is currently failing us. Rivals are starting to line up. The fiddling in Rome needs to be called out now before the fire starts!
Absolutely agreed. I certainly smell smoke and hear the sounds of fiddling on the wind.
Also, full disclosure: I paid my oldest boy, @walky123 , a hundred bucks in sp to make a steemvoted and include me in it.....and do some chores. I personally know every person who has a votebot aimed at me. Is this morally palatable? To me it is.
Family or friends voting for you is no problem - as is voting for yourself. When it comes to wholesale bot voting in the thousands of dollars, that is what really shifts reputation quickly. The gameification of reputation is now rife. No one thinks to question it amid the stench of greed.
But according to whom is this a problem.. Who is the board of people deciding what is morally acceptable on steemit. I'm pretty new here but the people who want to control steemit and place their own values on to it are kinda scary to me. This is how oppressive regimes start off, a bunch of people get together with their "great ideas".. then they eventually start pushing them on others, then they start enforcing them.. Very scary.. but I guess this is also natural.
You pay to play on steemit, whether by buying steem from blocktrades or renting delegated steem or taking your chances with the bid bots. Those who fail to see the value of steemit are free to leave, nobody is keeping anybody here.
Are we capitalists or socialists? I think the market decides here, so it's not up to any person to dictate how someone can use the system. The majority of people go for an opportunity when they see it, it's not cheating, it's survival, a natural instinct. I see your point, but I really just don't agree with it. There are a ton of heavily moderated communities out there, I just don't think any actually earn you any money.
As a new member of this community. Really i thought it is common here. And there is a huge number of bots also.
I agree with what you pointed out @mindhunter. And I do not agree with people who do things like that .. it's not sporty ..
In fact, I have been looking for 4 days. And I found a very interesting explanation in your post ..
Thank's @mindhunter .. let me resteem this post ..
Thanks for the RS Jamal. It is indeed the road to ruin. Soon we'll go from Steemit to Game-it!
We do not know what business that bot runs .. but will be honest in using .. we have to believe in ourselves .. cheating can not avail ourselves.
From what I can see, it has become the norm rather than a mere exception. Everyone wants to game the system and as a result, unfortunately, good quality content is kinda fallen along the wayside.
Imo, it's a pity. But I'll also be the first to admit that I do use upvote bots. Not as blatantly as most, but I do. And it's mainly because, otherwise, posts just don't get any attention without some external help.
Just because it's the norm doesn't make it morally right. Even @dan has pointed this out in his good governance post. If Rome is to burn here, then I imagine @dan and his disciples will be holding the matches whilst Rome fiddles ... I may even join them on the outskirts of Rome. My match is ready.
Don't worry. I'll be right there with my torch as well. Gonna make sure there's an abundance of pitch on it so Rome will go down in a ball of flames ;)
I'll even use English matches! :)
)
I would support the area where no one should be able to pay or buy reputation upgrade, to the real fact, it should have been an automated system that should regulate the level of every account, it doesn't make a good moral to the community with what i saw on your post, i think something need to be done. I love Steemit, please people should not destroy it.
I I agree with you about this article. Reputation is very natural from mindet and attitude from what we do
Thanks for the support @elfahlevi
nice post
thanks for sharing a valuable post
keep it on
Ideally the bot votes should come from an account that doesn't post and so doesn't get much of a reputation. I'm creeping towards 71, but it may take all year. I choose to not buy votes as I prefer my posts to trend purely on what others think. I guess I have enough of a following to get some votes anyway. My main objection is to those who buy themselves massive votes that are obviously to make money rather than to trend. They are leaving less of the pool for others. Many of them don't even vote much for anyone else. Of course we can see all they do.
Game theory predicts that these actors will always appear - but not at the detriment to where they become the rule rather than the exception and @dan's model of good governance is burnt to the ground. Rome beware here ... violins and matches are making their way to Steemit.
I can understand some people are desperate for money, but they are not necessarily producing good content. The Hot and Trending pages should not take bought votes into consideration.
An ethical algorithm is tricky territory here ... just ask Google self-drive cars! But we do need a set of rules upon arrival that serve as some kind of moral compass. Then people can make as much money as they want within the rules. The bad actors should be the minority and not the majority!
I've been provoking some discussion around this. Seems at least some people agree with me. Very few have the SP to really counter the bots. Ned obviously chooses not to
Buying into SP is too high for the 99% now so I've powered down to horde SBD instead. That way if Bitcoin tanks or a market black swan appear later this year, then I'm ready to cash out ASAP. A mix of hodling and cashing out is good, as pure hodling just doesn't work.
I'm powering everything up. I think Steem is good for the long run. Not that bothered about the money really. I don't have expensive tastes
One problem I see with that would be that it would also exclude those votes from users who send other people upvotes through bots in the hope of them getting a little bit bigger return. On the other hand it doesn't look like anybody really uses bots in that way anymore, so it might be neglectable...
It is disheartening when you take time and energy to actually say something of value in a post and it is rarely read/noticed and poorly upvoted. It is equally frustrating to see some posts that earn a God smack of up votes that aren't even interesting.
For the first 12 months on here reputation meant something. After that is was the low quality road to ruin! I wonder when the fires of Rome shall start??
I think part of the issue is currency is driving the involvement and participation of members. It seems very few or at least the minority are focused on building community and quality. Ironically, I think the majority of users view this as a platform to make money and that's an inherent and fundamental problem in the system that cryptocurrency is trying to topple. It's reinventing and reascribing the wheel with all its problems. If there is to be something new and different you need to embrace values that actually are new and different.
Decentralized or centralized system, greed can transcend both if the morals are not in place. Just look at the number of 'dead accounts' on Steemit - headstones of the greed motive itself.
What if reputation was also earned from helping other members and being involved in promoting other's posts through comments resteeming etc. on steemit? It just seems to me you should reward behaviour you want to encourage.
Honestly this is how I have conducted myself on here. The problem is that it’s hard to find good content. I’m happy to upvote and resteem things l like, but it’s hard to find the great content that I care about because it’s buried in lots of nonsense.
Agreed. It is like finding a needle in the haystack and often feels overwhelming.
That ethical algorithm is coming along nicely :) ....
I completely agree that you should not be able to buy reputation. But I also believe that fraudulent reputations reveal themselves everyday with their weak engagement and low quality content. There will be a day of reckoning for them because digital masturbation is not enough to sustain growth on this platform and the community will prevail.
Lets hope so @otage - I must admit though, I've never read a crap article from anyone with feedback >70.
70 is still safe!
It's because the early adopters had some morals early on. The aim now is to get new Steemians to move from vicious actors to virtuous ones.
We may need a virtue fork... ha ha!
All reputations <70 will goto the Gameit fork, and those >70 shall continue on on Steemit fork! Ha ha!
LOL!
I simply refuse to pay for a bot to upvote my content. I use the upvotes and comments that I receive as a form of analytics to see how well my content is doing overall and where I can improve. Buying votes merely skews that analytic factor away from accuracy and towards falsehood for the soul purpose of building reputation faster.
I don't even use a bot to curate my "Steemits Worth Mentioning" digest, that's all manually performed, which weeds out the risk of promoting someone that's just throwing out garbage. I really mean it when I said in one of my own previous posts that "I hate bots".
Excellent discussions here. I wonder if there’s a moral/ethical balance people can find on steemit.
I saw someone who just cuts and pastes articles on to his blog the other day earning a fortune and he was resteemed by a popular steemer. It’s sorta frustrating to those of us who spend time writing original articles.
There are problems to be sorted out with steemit. In the meanwhile, I’m trying to build a reputation the old fashioned way. I hope I don’t get buried by my traditional intentions.
Traditional intentions vs the global economy is a constant battle alright @thecryptogold - Best of luck on the platform.