Source: giphy
There's been a lot of discussion around curation bots, trails, Steemvoter and potential abuses of auto bot voting. If you want to view some of the controversy, go here for a full viewing: https://steemit.com/spam/@marcgodard/steemvoter-com-stats-dec-4th-2016
I'm not going to weigh in on the controversy but I will say that massive amounts of automation is showing its vulnerabilities. I think there are two things going on that are problematic:
When people who sign up for a service are not fully warned of some test that the service provider is doing, trouble can brew. Lack of transparent communication is a true killer in business. It seems that people got offended when their votes were used to upvote a comment, were not aware of this and the presence of curation trails made the situation worse.
Curation Trails can be potentially problematic because your vote may not be going to places where you feel comfortable. I highly discourage you from having your upvotes follow another user's upvotes. It just doesn't seem to be a neutral thing to do and I think it's inherently problematic.
For the first 5 months while I was in Steemit I did all my upvoting manually.
I didn't use any automation at all. I was like hardcore against it because I felt that the auto upvote bots were killing this platform. The rub is that I was being rewarded heavily by bots when I first arrived in Steemit, so naturally, I had fuzzy feelings towards them. The real reason I didn't get a bot set up is that I am very cautious with my posting key. I really don't like the idea of someone else or a different server having access to my key.
Now I have a pimp bot and I couldn't be happier.
Well, after doing manually voting hardcore for 5 months, I crashed and burned, found myself mired in some sort of deep depression and I realized I needed to take a break from Steemit and all electronics. I decided to have @ontofractal make me a personal pimp bot because I saw the possibilities of getting curation rewards while I was offline. I got over my fear of having my posting key in someone else's possession and after doing an intense interview with @ontofractal, I felt like I could trust him.
I'm happy with his service and he's a good communicator. I haven't had anything fishy happen while he created my curation bot, so I'm content.
The main reason besides the Steem rewards that I had a curation bot made is because I am actually a crappy voter.
I'm very stingy with my upvotes due to my overly critical nature.
I'm also moody as hell, so there are days that go by that I only vote for say two authors. Having my own personal pimp bot evens out my hyper-critical nature and spreads out rewards more evenly. I might add that I usually manually upvote new authors when I'm on Steemit, so my bot adds a regulated layer to my curating. I still upvote new stuff every day, and try to comment as much as possible. I feel that I'm in control of my bot, and how it votes, which is my #1 number one priority in here. I don't want to be part of the auto upvoting bot problem. Because I certainly recognize that it is a big problem which makes the rewards uneven.
I will say though I upvote only authors that I really believe add an interesting dimension to Steemit or whom I like.
I also make use of a blacklist and I don't vote on accounts like Steemsports. I try to balance out the authors and I'm always adding new ones to it. So far, I am exceedingly happy with my bot and I feel silly for not doing it earlier.
I wanted to write this because there are some users who are saying that the bots are the problem. Sloppy users who use bots in an indiscriminate way are really the problem. And bots are certainly the cause of some issues, too. But the bots help me play the game of Steemit better, so now I'm pro-bot. I gave up trying to make Steemit my place, and instead, I started playing the game. Is this kind of crappy? Yes, but since bots are never going away, I decided to embrace them.
The bot vs. human wars are on I guess.
Steemit is a blogging petri dish, bringing forth a new crop of digitally growing species every day. What will you grow tomorrow?
I've been seeing the fights, I weighed in to say that when I build enough for my votes to make an impact I will use a bot, I'll just make sure that I check in on the sites I autovote to make sure they continue making quality content. Having been here five weeks now I am exactly where you were in the beginning, as you would know if you saw the ludicrous amount of 'posts' I have already from commenting like a maniac, haha! I've heard people argue that autovoting takes away from interaction and comments, I don't think that's true, I feel that those who like to comment will comment regardless of autovotes.
People who want to manually vote and interact will do so. Those who do not, will not. The automated services allow many inactive people - no matter their reasons for being inactive - to support other users or to give more voting weight to active curators. There's absolutely nothing wrong with this. It allows passive investors to gain ROI. This is something that is needed on the platform.
The people complaining the loudest about these things simply don't understand the system. And their behavior is becoming increasingly trollish - which is a term I don't use lightly...in fact, almost never.
I agree. I've been confused about the complaints since I first heard them. People say "90 votes but only 6 views and one comment, this is an outrage!" I say....so you just want six votes and one comment then? What do they think is going to change other than less votes and money for them? Makes no sense.
I imagine that's their response, based on what I've been seeing so far. Or they actually believe that the six votes will magically become more valuable than the 90.
Some people just need something to complain about is really what it comes down to, because there is no logic in that. Do I want people to read my posts? Of course. Do I want people to comment? Sure. Would I want to make five cents as opposed to ten dollars when the same amount of people are reading and commenting and the only difference is the curating autobots skipped my post? Why would anyone want that, really it's illogical. Hence some people whine for the sake of whining, and maybe to irritate the hell out of the rest of us.
Yeah...pretty much this. I agree.
Is the purpose of a blog to receive votes, or to get readers?
Of course it's to get readers, but the autovoting is completely separate from that. Those people using autovotes do not have the time to manually vote and comment on every post that they would like to. So the authors they like and know they would vote for if they did have the time they send bots to. I don't see the problem with that.
I guess that depends on your motivations. Some people blog for money - to make a living. Others blog for popularity - to reach a large audience. Some want both. I think Steemit can meet the various types of demand...and thrive doing so.
And I come from a position where i spend hours and hours a day reading and commenting and voting manually just to be clear.
Take note our readers aren't only for steemit, so tho invisible or I don't know if there is way yet to determine this with a tool but 6 people viewed it steemit, hundreds may have seen it on google
I think until a massive amount of real readers and commenters come into steemit, there's a place for the bots....
Exactly.
This post has been ranked within the top 10 most undervalued posts in the first half of Jan 02. We estimate that this post is undervalued by $21.01 as compared to a scenario in which every voter had an equal say.
See the full rankings and details in The Daily Tribune: Jan 02 - Part I. You can also read about some of our methodology, data analysis and technical details in our initial post.
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I have roughly 9% of your voting power (about 17,000SP compared to about 186,000) and I've made over twice the amount of profits on my curating over the last week compared to you.
You're right, "[you're] actually a crappy voter."
I know that I took that out of context, but my point still stands, from the perspective of auto-voting to make profits, that is.
If you're serious about making money by curating, I have a few tips that I can throw your way and an excel spreadsheet that I made, which makes it easy to quickly determine what content creators on your voting list are paying out well (compared to the rest on your list), both on a day-by-day basis and average payout per post basis.
the authors I choose to upvote are not necessarily the ones who make a lot on Steemit. I chose each one for a particular reason, but I would be interested in learning more about this. send me a pm if you could....
Thank you. Make a little money on this if you want, but it should be used (just as good manual curation is) to choose worthy authors who are not necessarily good moneymakers. Knowing you, I don't even have to say this, since I know that helping good people is one of your main reasons for being here.
yeah, that's why it took me so long to get a bot. I was very strict about them, but I see their benefits now....
the week before I think I made around 150 sp in curation rewards...
If you're after profits, you could do much better with the amount of SP that you have.
I think I could almost achieve that amount in a week if I spent enough time picking my content creators and voting at 100% voting power.
can you send me the excel sheet? can you pm in steemit chat?
I'll probably make a post soonish (in the next week or so) that will allow anyone to safely download it (through Microsoft's "share" service for Excel 2013).
As far as the pm goes, I've never used steemit chat, nor know how to even access it (never looked into it) and I'm going to sleep in less than an hour.
Maybe we can chat, in private, some other time?
ok, send me a comment on one of my posts with a link to your post when you write about it. Thanks!
@stellabelle
Will do. My pleasure.
I look forward to seeing your post when you write it, soonish. :-) I am a manual curator but I'm interested in who others choose to vote for. Thanks in advance, followed!
Even I'm becoming interested in this process now. I really want to be able to support the people I follow on a consistent basis. My main focus is content creation of course. These atrocious images I produce take time. Lots of time! Then writing, editing... and I'm in and out trying to vote and comment. I have no idea how I'm still alive.
I'm using steemvoter, but it's to support people rather than making money. I don't understand the hordes of bots with hardly any sp. The system is designed so that they won't make much
In my opinion bots are only valuable as a money making scheme and if anything make steemit worse. No matter how big a fan you are of someone it's doubtful you are going to like everything they post or that everything they post is going to be good. It just leads to inaccurate curation and potentially disadvantages those that vote based on what they actually read. If I ever start using one it probably means I've stopped taking steemit seriously as a content platform.
For 5 months I thought the exact same thing as what you wrote here. If there were more readers, curators and writers, I think the bots could play a much smaller role...
I just upvoted this... and contibuted 0.003 cents to your payout. hehehehe soooo sad! but - i upvoted for the support! and cuz i want to find out more! and cuz I wish that my vote really did have more value - so that it actually MATTERED when i voted for people based on their content. but it doesn't. such is life ;)
kumusta stellabelle! I know this is an old post already, but it really helped me understand what bots can do and how to use them. Thanks! :) I am glad to be following you now..