I don't think that bid bots are bad!
I think bid bots that are abused and run unchecked are bad. I think bid bots that offer ROI are bad.
Promotion should never be free, or you get the worse of the worse!
I have zero issues with people getting on trending organically, I want great post up there. I am strictly saying if you want to promote on trending you need to pay. If google ad words was free, google would have failed.
Honestly, who is anyone to think they deserve a free spot on trending? Regardless if you think your content is hot shit or not, trending space should never be free, ever. UNLESS proof of brain puts you on trending, it should never be free to ADVERTISERS, content creators that "earn" a spot on trending did not get it free, they got it by making content others wanted to see.
You can't put certain people on pedestals and say it's ok for them to use bid bots for free trending space but not others, that leads to Old Steem quicker than an elevator to hell.
So now we have this issue of people wanting to promote but they don't want to use bots because they run the risk of downvotes and negative reputation.
We have a burn to promote on Steemit called the promotion tab, but it isn't utilized well because people don't click a promote tab, just like they wouldn't watch a TV station that only shows commercials. Commercials are strategically forced upon us. That is how we should do it here on Steem, IMO.
So, what do we do? Well, I saw this:
These two users declined payouts, then used bid bots to reach the top of the trending page.
Which, to me means they wanted this post to be seen and did not want it to be downvoted. These users are promoting a game and blockchain products.
I am assuming they were being paid to promote these and, just using common sense I gather that they were paid more to promote the posts then it cost to bot it on trending. Trending space on a website the size of Steemit isn't anything to smock at in the "real world" of promotion.
And these people stayed on trending, no one downvoted them because why would they? Hell, this is amazing!!! I applaud this behavior! That is 200$ worth of Steem returned to the reward pool in just two post! (That is a nice chunk of Steem, esp at these prices.) This is an interesting pattern forming using the tools we have.
The more valuable our trending space becomes, the more Steem it will cost to get a post up there. How do we make trending space valuable? Charging for it! Duh! The community can dictate the price of trending space using our upvotes and downvotes.
So, you decline the payout and burn enough Steem, you can get and most importantly keep a post on trending for a while. You will be competing with trending, however; if you want to get the top spot you must pay more Steem then the highest voted post. If you really care for eyeballs to see your post, cough up some dough.
Now, I am not saying that you need to decline the payout and bot your post to the top of trending to avoid being downvoted. I do believe, however, if you bot your post to trending without burning ANY Steem, the community will happily downvote you, regardless of content. And that is because, as I said repeatedly, promotion should never be free, it can't be free.
I'd bet big on the fact that if you did a "proof of burn" on your bid botted post, where you burned, let's say 50% of the what the total cost was to promote the post by setting null as a beneficiary, (depending on quality, is it a pure ad, etc. enough to where you feel the community will be happy.) that no one (or few) would downvote your post, and if they did people like me would gladly counter.
Why? Because instead of being viewed as someone freeloading off inflation, you are seen as someone adding value to the ecosystem by making our precious Steem more scare via your promotions that burn Steem.
Hell, I would even buy your damn products just to make advertisers think Steem is the shit and want to promote more here. Of course, nothing really makes your post shine like a decline botted post or setting a high % to go to null, I must admit, that is some G shit, and if you are trying to sell something, looking balla is never a bad touch.
This is the free market at work, you want something from the market, be prepared to give something in return, that's called good business.
There you have it! I think bid bots are wonderful! BUT! Only if those bots are quality controlled and burning/returning lots of Steem! This is just me, but people who I see decline payout/null burn post that is botted to trending, I will support them and never downvote unless it is just blatant scam or illegal content, or if trending gets overrun by people paying to get ads up (good problem to have IMO). But if you “pay” to promote a product on Steem, you are more then whalecum and have my full support!
This is one of those situations where I wish condenser development was more responsive. Obviously the promotions page was a terrible idea, like seriously, whose idea was that? But creating a promotion system that works I think would be the best solution.
It's not some crazy rocket science, re-invent the wheel shit. There are plenty of case studies from the giants to learn from. You blend the ads in. Trending shouldn't be ALL ads, then regardless of whether they burned Steem or not, it will still be a place people don't want to go to. There should be a balance of organically trending content and promoted content, and the promoted content should be visually designated as such. Everybody wins.
Downvoting a post can decrease pending rewards and make it less visible. Common reasons:
Submit
Well said. Showing one post from the promoted section every 3-4 trending posts would work wonders.
Downvoting a post can decrease pending rewards and make it less visible. Common reasons:
Submit
This! Or reserve just one spot for semi-randomly selected post from promoted and the more was spent on promotion the higher the chance that this post will be selected. Obviously every trending website load/view would mean new roll.
Downvoting a post can decrease pending rewards and make it less visible. Common reasons:
Submit
With that solution you only get a few promoted posts that people's eyes will be on. If the posts are inside content creators posts. The way Google Ads work. Then the model scales. Because there are thousands of eyes looking at specific posts than the trending page. YouTube has a an ad post below a YouTube content creators video. It scales and works. Because people visit content creators more than they visit a trending page
Downvoting a post can decrease pending rewards and make it less visible. Common reasons:
Submit
Sure, something like that could be done as well.
Downvoting a post can decrease pending rewards and make it less visible. Common reasons:
Submit
We agree.
https://steemit.com/smartsteem/@smartsteem/new-feature-request-a-curation-review-by-burning-steem-and-sbd
Downvoting a post can decrease pending rewards and make it less visible. Common reasons:
Submit
We have control over what reaches trending. I was talking about the tools we have in place now, however if there was way to install a system as you describe, I think that would be cool. Right now, if people want to decline payout and bot their post, I am fine with it. If 100 people all did it and took over trending I would start downvoting what I didn’t want to see and upvoting content I did want to see. In the end we still, as a community, bid bot or not, have control over what we see on trending.
Downvoting a post can decrease pending rewards and make it less visible. Common reasons:
Submit
I find this confusing. If they are all declining payout so that they cannot be up or downvoted, how would you, to quote again, "I would start downvoting what I didn’t want to see and upvoting content I did want to see".
Are you saying that despite declining payment, the poster can still be up or down voted?
Downvoting a post can decrease pending rewards and make it less visible. Common reasons:
Submit
@nonameslefttouse came up with the solution almost a year ago. It all comes down to put the content creator first.
"Content producers come first. The ads and promoted posts should be tucked nicely inside posts as banner ads. That would give those who wish to promote their posts a much larger potential viewership, and the content producers would be able to produce content that can reach top slots organically. There are literally thousands of posts published daily. The ads should be inside those posts and the content producers should take center stage to attract eyes to the platform."
https://steempeak.com/@nonameslefttouse/turning-rage-into-the-soothing-steem-now-blowing-out-my-butt-as-i-mince-my-words-for-you-the-reader-of-this
Downvoting a post can decrease pending rewards and make it less visible. Common reasons:
Submit
You've got some things so wrong here Dan. I'm not afraid to say it despite the risk of being labelled 'old steem'.
By the way, just labelling an idea as 'old steem' doesn't make it bad. This is something I've seen more and more in the last month. Let's make one thing clear before I get into my thoughts on the whole trending and bought votes issue; new steem Vs old steem is just a marketing technique. It's not a fckn religion and I'm not a heretic, ok.
First off, bidbots are bad for steem. If we have a system where the only content reaching trending is that which people have paid for we're exactly the same as everyone else. Do we want to be Facebook? Where people get a feed full of promoted posts about crap they don't want to buy? I thought steem was trying to do/be something different? I know that's how it would become a huge success, by being different to all those jaded social media sites that take advantage of their users. Maybe I'm being a little over critical of the idea as people at least have the choice whether they look at trending, but newbies go there and look at it to gauge what steem is all about.
So, why do you deserve a free spot on trending with this post, if it reaches trending? Is that by virtue of the fact that you've got over a million SP and the support that this massive financial commitment garners you? By the way, I'm not pointing this out to attack you or your writing, I know you don't self vote and you write well... I'm just pointing out the hypocrisy in the idea that no one deserves a free spot. This is BS, plenty of content creators on here right now are getting big support by virtue of the fact they write about steem, and parrot the consensus opinion, or are cheerleaders for steem. From what I can see reading through all of this post, you are pretty much saying trending should only be for advertising and steem related content? Which they should pay for using bidbots or burning their steem, or both. I could get behind that if there were a page/section on all the steem front ends that showcases the varied tallents of steemians based on qualitive metrics; such as the authors post page reads and if curation guilds have voted on them. Then maybe whales/orcas/dolphins could trawl through this mythical place and reward those content creators of quality and create an honest steem USP. Here's why that is important.
I'm gonna lay it out with 100% honesty to you Dan, because I do respect the fact that you're one of the biggest fish here who actually seems to act with some integrity. Also, I want any newbies who may be reading this to understand how much the current narrative from many is pushing against the dream that they're here pursuing. From one steemian (me) who literally has a few thousand dollars in crypto which is all my wealth, to another steemian (you) who I'd guess is a millionaire business person, this is the draw for the average person arrived on steem; they see that some people are earning a decent dollar value from blogging/vlogging etc and they want to learn how to earn. It's that simple. That is the USP of steem, or at least it was always what kept me wanting to come back and I'd argue at 90% of steemians are the same. And you know what, that's not the problem. That's the only thing we have going for us over medium, patreon, Facebook etc; the combined monitary/social draw.
My point is that we will never have an honest organic trending section while bidbots and vote selling proliferates. People always come back at me when I make these points saying 'vote selling used to go on behind closed doors in private chat groups'. Well duh, of course it did, the difference is that they weren't businesses extracting large chunks of value to one person (bidbot owners who in the main don't produce any content of merit). It's super simple, if vote selling was shut down at source, we'd all be able to spend our free downvotes dealing with those voting rings and self voters who don't interact with the community at all. One less problem to deal with. I know I spotted a circle jerk within 3 months of being on steem and figured out it was all about those people having the same 10000 SP level. That was at a time where I believed in steem's (then) moto... 'be rewarded for your content'. But I remember being pretty disappointed to see that 'circle jerks' were seemingly the only way to find consistent success.
To be honest, I think we kinda agree here, although I'd rather see all bid bots gone, if only because it would make policing steem abuse easier. I could get behind a steem where the only promotion methods were none profit, either burning all profits, or on a constant growth cycle where all profits were powered up to grow the promotion bots account to give bigger ROI for bought votes, also with strict quality control. But even this is a stretch to not ending up being abused.
I'll end this comment with this thought; If seeing your content on trending is to be like buying a spot on mount Olympus, then who will go look at trending? To most content creators steem offers a dream, to actually have people find value in what they are creating, whether monitary or in attention. If we keep watering down this draw, if we keep shiting (pardon my language but I'm passionate about these issues) in their bed of flowers, then the stinc will drive them all away as they'll no longer buy into the dream. With no audience (market) there won't be anyone for developers, blockchain games or advertisers to sell their products to on trending. As I said earlier, if there was some type of page where only organically trending articles were showcased, and whales/orcas visited said page to help drive that steem dream and reward high quality content, then I could get behind the idea of a sold trending page. I simply wouldn't go near it myself. But that wouldn't be a big change, as the only time I've been on trending in the last 18 months is in the last week to use my free downvotes on overvalued crap content.
I hope this comment is taken in the spirit it is meant. As a counterpoint to what you're expressing. If it's taken as 'old steem' then so be it... as Monty python once said...
Downvoting a post can decrease pending rewards and make it less visible. Common reasons:
Submit
I always appreciate you speaking it how you feel raj808 and I reread what I put (wrote this at midnight) and I think I could have explained it better.
“Promotion should never be free, or you get the worse of the worse!
I have zero issues with people getting on trending organically, I want great post up there. I am strictly saying if you want to promote on trending you need to pay. If google ad words was free, google would have failed.
Honestly, who is anyone to think they deserve a free spot on trending? Regardless if you think your content is hot shit or not, trending space should never be free, ever. UNLESS proof of brain puts you on trending, it should never be free to ADVERTISERS, content creators that "earn" a spot on trending did not get it free, they got it by making content others wanted to see.”
Downvoting a post can decrease pending rewards and make it less visible. Common reasons:
Submit
We want new criticism, not old criticism. Criticism is good as long as it's not the old criticism. Not saying you are doing that above. Just pointing out the difference between NewSteem and OldSteem.
Downvoting a post can decrease pending rewards and make it less visible. Common reasons:
Submit
Steemit is a business social network, of course, if you want to make money then you have three options :
Steemit is not a social institution that helps those who have no money, Steemit is a business model that gives everyone a chance to make money.
To me, downvote is a business model disaster, instead, it should have the tools as a ban on my personal followers' list. This gives preference to those with Steem Power to control what they like or dislike. The bottom line is that the value of Steem depends on 1. Investors (those who have Steem power), 2. marketing (those who promote the Steem ecosystem ), 3. developers who build applications in the interest of Steem promotion.
I agree that this is a business and that we need to attract a large mass of users and investors.
I agree that it has to be paid for the trending page, everything else is a complete failure for me.
Downvoting a post can decrease pending rewards and make it less visible. Common reasons:
Submit
Yes it is, it is a socially aware platform that rewards users for Proof of Brain regardless of whether they have paid to play or not. Only the amount of reward differs.
Downvoting a post can decrease pending rewards and make it less visible. Common reasons:
Submit
@theycallmedan, @hatu always come up with very effective content which brings new world to explore and which adds so much Cryptocurrency Knowledge and project journeys too. And most importantly this kind of behaviour reflects that he is respecting the #Newsteem culture and he truly know how Bidbots are used. This aspect will be discussed to some extent but there will be a time when flow of culture will be adopted.
Posted using Partiko Android
Downvoting a post can decrease pending rewards and make it less visible. Common reasons:
Submit
well said,, i agree with the sentiment here, and especially that getting ROI to promote a post is not going to yield good content on the trending page.. #newsteem really is a breath of fresh air, and i can feel and see the tide is turning VERY fast.. these changes were SO needed, and despite getting a fair few flags myself, i fully support this new shift in the steem ethos..
Downvoting a post can decrease pending rewards and make it less visible. Common reasons:
Submit
I do buy vote of about 2 steem sometimes in order to get let's say. 0.30$ payout on it because I want prospective curators too see how quality the post might be and then vote it. What I'll never do is to inorganically trend myself. Because I believe that should be naturally instilled. I basically feel an action of burning steem while promotion is basically a bit about respecting the importance of the trending Pages. Like you said, no one is entitled to trend it isn't really a birth right. I Believe the community should determine who trend. That way there will be an Equilibrium or check really. In other words we're cleansing steem and we're getting there.
Downvoting a post can decrease pending rewards and make it less visible. Common reasons:
Submit
I like your approach
Downvoting a post can decrease pending rewards and make it less visible. Common reasons:
Submit
Definitely,I believe this as well, the community nowadays should decide who trend and even when there must be vote buying then there should be this equilibrium
Downvoting a post can decrease pending rewards and make it less visible. Common reasons:
Submit
I’ve been getting destroyed by downvotes fml
Downvoting a post can decrease pending rewards and make it less visible. Common reasons:
Submit
Over the last 2 years we've had a vote selling system where buyers get paid to promote, while sellers get to make as much as 100% self voting
Just take a moment to think about that.
Can this possibly be sustainable? Some magical win win with no cost?
If we pay people to promote on here, we're by definition ensuring that ad space on our platform is worth less than nothing. If stakeholders can take back 100% of their voting rewards, who's going to settle for 25% (back then) curating honestly? If very few are curating honestly, who's going to create half decent content? If very few are creating half decent content, then the only things left on our trending and indeed platform at large are ads and farm posts. How much would you say ad space on a platform almost exclusively comprised of ads and farm posts is worth? Less than nothing sounds about right.
The success of our platform depends on our ability to deliver a sensible form of proof of brain content discovery and rewards system. In other words our success depends on our ability to incentivize our stakeholders to curate in accordance with their honest appraisal of content (or at least delegate that job).
You can't have another form of staking returns, such as vote selling, that entirely out-competes honest curation without undermining our core value proposition.
Promotion shouldn't be in direct competition with honest voting. With NewSteem, everyone has the tools to fight promotion that's used in this way. We fight for the platform by making vote selling as unprofitable as possible, or at least less profitable than curating. Because if not, they'll be virtually no one left curating and we're back in the dark ages.
There's a place for promotion, and many ways in which it can be delivered without undermining our core proof of brain values. And while I have no fucking clue why official promoted posts are segregated into their own section to ensure that no one ever sees them rather than inter-spaced between real content, the economics of burning Steem for eyeballs at least isn't directly self defeating for our ecosystem as a whole.
Downvoting a post can decrease pending rewards and make it less visible. Common reasons:
Submit
Actually, you just said it all. Using bid bot is not an offence but when you use them to push post that are not what while it is unfair. Steemit community should raise up for this kind of abuse. It will run the community down to the grass if this kind of practice keep persisting.
Let Stop the Bid bot abuse.
Posted using Partiko Android
Downvoting a post can decrease pending rewards and make it less visible. Common reasons:
Submit
its mostly because you can't have vote selling out competing honest curation
otherwise, who's going to bother curating? and if not, who's going to bother producing good content?
Downvoting a post can decrease pending rewards and make it less visible. Common reasons:
Submit
if you don't mind I would like to join this conversation. I have been paying to promote a post written in Italian (language that not everyone can speak) and I have been downvoted by you @trafalgar probably because you didn't like what I wrote down in my post (assuming you do speak italian or you googled it). Is there a reason why we should stop paying to promote our posts? Please let me know as it costed me about 40$ having it downvoted.
Downvoting a post can decrease pending rewards and make it less visible. Common reasons:
Submit
The reason is you're not meant to come out ahead after promoting a post on here. The true value of your post is what its organically deemed to be worth by users of this platform.
This place isn't worth a thing if people are paid to advertise on it and sellers get higher returns than curation to support them.
For more information, read my main comment here https://steemit.com/bidbots/@trafalgar/pxcvtq
Downvoting a post can decrease pending rewards and make it less visible. Common reasons:
Submit
That's absolutely fine mate. I thank you for your time and your answer. I have given a push to my post in order to have more visibility for those that are following the Italian's community.
I had a read of your post and I do agree with you 100% if not 1000%. My query is... do we really have many whales (like yourself) having time to read posts and to give a real push for the posts that are meant to be pushed?! I see many whales delegating SP and VP to bots as you rightly said. Where is the point of having bidding system such as smart steem and minnowbooster if then this is not what others whales want?
I don't want to be in the middle of whales' war. I have used a service that was provided.
Said so I will stop using their services if this will create me problems and I will save even money ;)
Downvoting a post can decrease pending rewards and make it less visible. Common reasons:
Submit
A lot of the bidbots are feeling the heat
If they don't survive in their current incarnation, they'll likely pivot to something else like curation with smartsteem
I don't know how to answer what the point is for having them as I don't support them. They're a product of the market. If they're profitable, they'll exist, if not, they wont'. I'd like to see the latter because I think it's better for the entire ecosystem.
Downvoting a post can decrease pending rewards and make it less visible. Common reasons:
Submit
it is a good point. Now the problem is ... you might support or not them (you already said no) but if you downvote posts only because someone has used their system... you are just saying don't use them. I rather prefer having you happy instead of having you downvoting me because I used bidbots.
Downvoting a post can decrease pending rewards and make it less visible. Common reasons:
Submit
So sorry about that. But I will like to say this clearly I was downvoted sometimes ago but I think it was a mistake. If you actually write and compose a good article that everyone who read it will be educated and learn something new and outstanding you may not have to go to the extent of using bid bot or paying huge for little reward. Because I know sometimes when you use bidbot and pay them. You pay huge for it and yet you stay on top of the trending page.
I just followed you now. Thanks for participating.
Posted using Partiko Android
Downvoting a post can decrease pending rewards and make it less visible. Common reasons:
Submit
well my article was in italian so for a niche of users... I used the bidbot for having more visibility and I don't think it was a crap post even because there were few rows... wasn't just a picture and 2 lines of text
Downvoting a post can decrease pending rewards and make it less visible. Common reasons:
Submit
That's it. @trafalgar. I noticed that even the vote selling is very competitive to some extent when just for instance. I post an article not even up to Steemit standard. Yet I place close to 30 steem or 30sbd to keep it to the top trending page. That's unfair. Bad behavior.
Posted using Partiko Android
Downvoting a post can decrease pending rewards and make it less visible. Common reasons:
Submit
Are you on Twitter friend? Let catch up. Thanks. I l followed you on Steemit for a very long time. Love your work. Same username on Twitter.
Posted using Partiko Android
Downvoting a post can decrease pending rewards and make it less visible. Common reasons:
Submit
I completely disagree with this
What is Trending Then?
![](https://steemitimages.com/640x0/https://cdn.steemitimages.com/DQmUoFa43P9gXB6ynXVEVMHenegQYBJPx5MVqPNDs77A1sT/image.png)
In my opinion, the trending page should be fully organic, by allowing paid posts on trending page we are just spreading a false message to the whole community members as if these are the recent hot discussion on steemit but sadly which is not true most of the time.
In fact, this is the exact situation of steemit trending page for a long time now and I know many are complaining about this specific topic many times.
If you want trending position to be paid then what's the use of the promoted page. Now don't tell me promoted page here is different, I know it and I just want to give example.
Let's take an example of other centralized social media, in theory, don't pay for twitter's trending page, neither for facebook or youtube.
Now we are in decentralized media(so-called ) and being one of the influencing people of this platform you are saying trending page should be paid??
Trending represents the currently popular topic/discussion of the entire community and hence it should always be organic.
This is what I always say if you set any rules then, it should be equal for everyone. But here, it seems like rules/barriers/....whatever you say are only for small fishes.
Downvoting a post can decrease pending rewards and make it less visible. Common reasons:
Submit
Spot on, and well said. unfortunately people on steem have been indoctrinated into seeing black as white and down as up in a lot of cases. Peeps have been saying all of this for years and the vote sellers have just been laughing and saying 'what you gonna do about it'.
That's an over simplification, but you get what I'm driving at... good sense is thrown out of the window when a bunch of powerful people see an opportunity to get richer off the back of a system exploit.
Downvoting a post can decrease pending rewards and make it less visible. Common reasons:
Submit
Ya I can see where it seems like I think trending should only be for ads and not content creators with that sentence. I updated it to better reflect what I meant.
Downvoting a post can decrease pending rewards and make it less visible. Common reasons:
Submit
I think that we should see organic, not bids form the trending page.
Calling it trending when the only way to get there is to buy a slot is a massive misnomer and not an accurate reflection of what is "trending".
Posted using Partiko Android
Downvoting a post can decrease pending rewards and make it less visible. Common reasons:
Submit
I think we should see a mixture of the two, if you separate ads from organic, you get the "promotion tab" which no ones uses. People pay for ads so people will actually see the ad, if we find a way to have people pay for trending space, without it taking over trending (can always DV if there is too many people trying to promote at once) we can strike a nice balance and start giving advertisers a reason to keep buying Steem.
Downvoting a post can decrease pending rewards and make it less visible. Common reasons:
Submit
Better option imo is setting a beneficiary to @null. You can’t do this easily on steemit but you can on steempeak.
Declined rewards just go back to the pool for other posts. Beneficiaries to null get Steem permanently off the chain.
Downvoting a post can decrease pending rewards and make it less visible. Common reasons:
Submit
Yes, also as an addition I think there needs to be clear indication on UI level that a portion of a post beneficiary is set to @null like posts with declined payout has the reward amount crossed out. Currently we can't know know that's the case in a glance, the author needs to write it on the post to indicate it or we need to mouse over the reward amount manually which obviously no one bothers to waste time to check one by one.
Maybe putting a fire icon beside the reward amount can work? It goes from empty to full according to the percentage of beneficiary to @null and we can mouse over like usual to know the exact percentage.
Downvoting a post can decrease pending rewards and make it less visible. Common reasons:
Submit
True, good idea. Can set like 50% of the post to go to null, pretty easy.
Downvoting a post can decrease pending rewards and make it less visible. Common reasons:
Submit
anything less than 50% leaves the possibility of it out competing honest curation at the sellers end
Edit: I'm not really standing by this, please read followup comment below
Downvoting a post can decrease pending rewards and make it less visible. Common reasons:
Submit
50% seems reasonable to me. Thanks for the quick maths Traf!
Downvoting a post can decrease pending rewards and make it less visible. Common reasons:
Submit
My suggestion above is actually likely too rough and not very meaningful
Basically there are in theory a set of different options
The end goal is that you want a system where the sellers on the other end of the transaction aren't making more than honest curation. But if they make less, obviously no one would be selling any votes.
There isn't really a set level of parameters that ensures that the balance here is just right. Imagine if we went with burning 100% of promotion post payouts. It's still possible for everything on trending to be promoted posts, and the harmful effects of that to be completely absorbed by a collapsing Steem price. So as a rough analogy imagine trending is filled with declined payout promotional rubbish, but Steem price is so low (in part because of it) that it only takes $5 to get to the top of trending. That's the result your intuition was guiding you to fight in the case there were excessive declined payout posts on trending in one of your other comments.
A far better general approach is to just not have promotion be part of vote trading that directly involves sellers at all. One way is just bidding $ into the null account and winning ever increasing promotion placements (that obviously could be placed better than a neglected section on their own). But there are literally countless ways promotion can be done that don't involve a direction transaction between stakeholders and promoters and thus won't risk our proof of brain system.
I'm not against promotion, I'm against vote selling for promotion. They're simply just circle jerking rings in disguise economically speaking, and do harm even if they're run at a loss. We keep them in check by offering non harmful alternatives to promote (eg bidding for placement going straight to null), and combating them directly by downvoting posts with bought votes to make them as unprofitable as possible.
Downvoting a post can decrease pending rewards and make it less visible. Common reasons:
Submit
Indeed, ive suggested that before, if they want to actually promote and buy ad space, then make it decline payout. Otherwise, the argument that bidbots were simply or mainly used to buy ad space or promote is a lie. People were doing it to make money first. To prove its not about making money from buying votes, decline payout. Thus is the first time ive seen this actually happen.
Downvoting a post can decrease pending rewards and make it less visible. Common reasons:
Submit
I might be wrong about this but declining payouts does not burn steem. It only puts it back in the reward pool and others will earn it pro-rata to the amount they have been upvoted with.
If this was burning, it would be amazing.
Downvoting a post can decrease pending rewards and make it less visible. Common reasons:
Submit
No you are right. I used the term too loosely last night. What actually happens on a declined payout is the funds are sent back to the reward pool. If you want a real burn you need to add @null as a beneficiary and those funds are sent to a null account and burned.
Downvoting a post can decrease pending rewards and make it less visible. Common reasons:
Submit
The question is does Steemit or any of the interfaces still have room for an organic, un-promoted, new content discovery section?
I think the whole notion of "trending" is a little nebulous when a site is too big to be a single community (Steem is bigger than that) but also too small to be representative of a much larger zeitgeist. Twitter thinks it represents a country's zeitgeist but I'm having serious doubts about what it does represent and the high level of control they're imposing on trending).
What Dan's proposing here is that Trending will become largely a paid-promotional area where the payment directly benefits the entire community. That's not a bad thing.
Back in the late 1990's in London's nascent tech startup scene (and before the 2000 crash) I remember a guy pitching me his idea called "Paid Attention" which was a physical device plugged into your home phone to opt into receive marketing phone calls at a specific time of day for 30 minutes. I have no idea what became of the guy or his startup.
Downvoting a post can decrease pending rewards and make it less visible. Common reasons:
Submit
I believe we need to mesh the two together. Organic trending will command a lot higher price to be promoted on then one that is just filled with ads. So I believe the magic balance is to find a way to sneak some ads into trending without it being too obtrusive. Of course those ads will need to pay steem, it has to cost money to promote or trending gets filled with garbage.
Posted using Partiko iOS
Downvoting a post can decrease pending rewards and make it less visible. Common reasons:
Submit
I doubt that it would because relatively few people actually want to promote, and then few others want to vote, without receiving rewards. Yeah it happened in the case cited but its very likely to be an exception.
If it did becomes rampant then we could call it a problem but I'm doubting it.
The vast majority of the vote buying we've seen has at least part of its motivation getting the rewards back from the pool.
Downvoting a post can decrease pending rewards and make it less visible. Common reasons:
Submit
When someone declines payout, they are sending their reward to null? Burned? Wasnt awere of this.
Downvoting a post can decrease pending rewards and make it less visible. Common reasons:
Submit
It isn't literally burnt. I'm not sure if @theycallmedan was somewhat confused about this or using the term lossly, since the it was "burned" from the perspective of the poster doing the promotion in the sense that they don't get it back from the reward pool.
It was indeed not burned, however, and got paid out to the bid bot operators and delegators. That is a transfer that benefits those specific parties and doesn't directly benefit Steem and Steem stakeholders in any way (other than the tiny benefit that Steem gets from being the platform used for the transactions, which is something just not very much), but at least they aren't taking rewards for that, so arguably it is somewhat neutral.
If someone did an actual burn (sending to null) then it is doing more to contribute to increasing the value of Steem and more worthy of broad support from Steem stakeholders/voters/curators, all else being equal (and by the latter I mean not harmful to Steem in some other way such as scams damaging the brand).
Downvoting a post can decrease pending rewards and make it less visible. Common reasons:
Submit
Great point, thanks smooth
Posted using Partiko iOS
Downvoting a post can decrease pending rewards and make it less visible. Common reasons:
Submit
Thanks :)
Downvoting a post can decrease pending rewards and make it less visible. Common reasons:
Submit
This is a great point. I completely agree with this line of thinking. It costs money to promote your products in the real world, it should cost money here too.
Downvoting a post can decrease pending rewards and make it less visible. Common reasons:
Submit
Incredible information my friend @theycallmedan
Totally I agree with you..
You right..!! Bid bots are not bad, it is bad when we use them with abuse and a high promotion service to promote our articles.
Since the newsteem started, I stopped using bots to promote my content because I understood the importance of care our Steem and this amazing ecosystem.
My content is about meditation, and sometimes about psychology, with my content I always try to help people in our community, but how to be visible without using promotion service..?
Some people downvote original content just because the reward is high but they don’t check that the publication is original, and the autor don’t use bots. Rewards are solid organic.
It is very clear that many people don’t understand why downvotes section was created.
My reputation and SP are small and I don’t have the power to bring my content more visible. The only thing I’m trying is to help people.
If you have the time visit my profile, I did some publications to help Venezuela community and some donations to people to try help others bringing food.
You know, I’m not reach but I’m trying to do my small support to make some difference in this beautiful ecosystem called Future for all of us.
Have an amazing time.
Your,
Edgar..!!
Posted using Partiko iOS
Downvoting a post can decrease pending rewards and make it less visible. Common reasons:
Submit
$trendotoken
Downvoting a post can decrease pending rewards and make it less visible. Common reasons:
Submit
Congratulations @goldcoin, you are successfuly trended the post that shared by @theycallmedan!
@theycallmedan got 6 TRDO & @goldcoin got 4 TRDO!
"Call TRDO, Your Comment Worth Something!"
To view or trade TRDO go to steem-engine.com
Join TRDO Discord Channel or Join TRDO Web Site
Downvoting a post can decrease pending rewards and make it less visible. Common reasons:
Submit
$trdo
Downvoting a post can decrease pending rewards and make it less visible. Common reasons:
Submit
Congratulations @minnowspower, you are successfuly trended the post that shared by @theycallmedan!
@theycallmedan got 6 TRDO & @minnowspower got 4 TRDO!
"Call TRDO, Your Comment Worth Something!"
To view or trade TRDO go to steem-engine.com
Join TRDO Discord Channel or Join TRDO Web Site
Downvoting a post can decrease pending rewards and make it less visible. Common reasons:
Submit
The above paragraph nearly cracked my ribs. More seriously, #newsteem is marvellous and will take Steem to the promise land. This new approach to bid bots is great and beautiful.
Downvoting a post can decrease pending rewards and make it less visible. Common reasons:
Submit
Many Great Points @theycallmedan and STEEM is so Valuable and What a Gift At This Price Level........
Downvoting a post can decrease pending rewards and make it less visible. Common reasons:
Submit
Another way to do promotion right imho is for Promotion to not have a specific tab, people that paid for promotion should get their posts in the middle of steem user's feeds, that way they would get visibility, just like reddit puts ads in the middle of the feed.
The declining payout function is also a good alternative, that was a really smart and ethical idea.
Downvoting a post can decrease pending rewards and make it less visible. Common reasons:
Submit
Thanks for pointing this out, its a great way of giving back to the steem community as a whole and promoting your own content.
The issue I have with bid bots, and why I don’t use them, is that they negate what I feel are the fundamentals of the Steem community. Which is that content is curated by the community, a post should be in trending due to its popularity and not because it is paid advertising. Is that not what the Promoted section is for, should your post not rather show up there if you are using bid bots? I’d also love to see the view counter be reinstated.
Downvoting a post can decrease pending rewards and make it less visible. Common reasons:
Submit
I think I would only use a bit bot now if I truly believed my work was good and worth the extra boost.
Whats your take on self votes?
Downvoting a post can decrease pending rewards and make it less visible. Common reasons:
Submit
I love your views on this bro! I agree totally. No such thing as free promotion in this world so I don't know why some steemians think they deserve it.. and hell yeah, that shit was Gangsta AF! Respect..
Downvoting a post can decrease pending rewards and make it less visible. Common reasons:
Submit
I always took the approach that, I was never abusing the system by using the bots...I just wanted to get seen!
If I had something I thought should get more eye balls, I happily paid for it...Without a second thought of...Hey, this is supposed to cost something!
You are right man...Advertising and promotion SHOULD cost something out of pocket. Think of Google, no one in their right mind thinks Google will pay them back a percentage of what they dropped on Ad Words....But here on Steem, we got spoiled.
We expected ROI just from the upvotes.
Took me a while to figure that out...We shouldn't expect to get all our Steem back and like you said...Heck, we should burn some in the process.
Cost of doing business and the more this starts to make sense to me...I'm perfectly fine with it all.
New Steem is getting better and better the more we start to see how this will play out in the long run...
Downvoting a post can decrease pending rewards and make it less visible. Common reasons:
Submit
The popularity of a publication must be expressed by the community.
The promotion should be separated from the rewards obtained.
Downvoting a post can decrease pending rewards and make it less visible. Common reasons:
Submit
@theycallmedan, That's a point. I never thing trending space want to be free. I looked some users was in trending page with declined payouts. But seemed they used promotion bots burned steem lot for increased reputation. I don't say everyone included this list. Within 12-15 months I never used bid bots for promote my posts. If I never deserve to receive rewards, I consider to change my posts without frustrated. Actually #newsteem need to be well deserve to everyone and burn more steem for promote creator's contents seriously abuse task to our blockchain.
Downvoting a post can decrease pending rewards and make it less visible. Common reasons:
Submit
If promotion could be implemented, either directly into the Steemit front end or through some private initiatives I will be all for it. Problem with the current solutions is that they wreck a system promising to be something else: proof of brain. You can't have one number with a dollar sign in front showing both the community's assessment of and reward for quality content and a user's need to have people see his or her post. This is as I see it the main problem - that the most fundamental thing in Steem distribution becomes ambiguous and even illogical.
The trend in online advertising is to reward people for watching commercials, and steem is perfect for this. Instead of paying for not seeing adds, you could pay people to have promoted posts in their feed. Psychologically it would probably make much more sense to people. If someone set up a system like that with a sort of trickle down economy I would be all for it. Could be tons of market solutions I couldn't even fathom. I just think it is important to make sure they are not built in the same place that is already occupied by important Steem infrastructure.
Downvoting a post can decrease pending rewards and make it less visible. Common reasons:
Submit
You're one of the growing number of people who 'get it'
Could really use more people like you spreading the word and helping to instate proof of brain by using our downvotes to make vote selling less profitable. Thanks for your help
Followed
Downvoting a post can decrease pending rewards and make it less visible. Common reasons:
Submit
Just saw this and had an idea on how us, the users could implement it.
My Idea (Probably won't have time to make it tho):
Edit: Should probably add that the money is then split between all the followers (and a small fee to the account?)
IDK. Just an idea.
Downvoting a post can decrease pending rewards and make it less visible. Common reasons:
Submit
Sure thing!
Downvoting a post can decrease pending rewards and make it less visible. Common reasons:
Submit
A well craft strategy is what people use to get what they want and these two people used it wisely.
Like you said, I think nothing goes for nothong. You have to sacrifice in order to get what you want.
Downvoting a post can decrease pending rewards and make it less visible. Common reasons:
Submit
I saw one of those posts on one of my rare visits to Trending. It does look better now, but is too crypto-heavy to attract general users. I would hope some of the new curation projects can help with that.
Downvoting a post can decrease pending rewards and make it less visible. Common reasons:
Submit
Those guys who burned their rewards are brave to do so! Or should I say smart. There's a psychological factor that plays when you see a post with declined Payout. Respect. (Depending on the content of course.)
Is that a shooting game that's promoted? I should look for it, it might be interesting.
Downvoting a post can decrease pending rewards and make it less visible. Common reasons:
Submit
There should be a certain level otherwise how one who post quality content will rise
Downvoting a post can decrease pending rewards and make it less visible. Common reasons:
Submit
It's some what true that people with lots of fiat are abusing it to the best and as now downvote has came in it's place so hope so people will be abusing it a little hope to see a positive impact.
Downvoting a post can decrease pending rewards and make it less visible. Common reasons:
Submit
An interesting perspective. It makes sense that attention should cost money if it's not organic. Should we start flagging every bid botted post in Trending to the extent every such piece of content has at most zero ROI?
Downvoting a post can decrease pending rewards and make it less visible. Common reasons:
Submit