Steemit Crypto Academy Contest / S10W2 - Bots in the STEEM Chain

Good day to everyone, my name is oluwatimileyin and I welcome you to the season 10 of the engagement challenge.

I welcome you to my participation in the week 2 of the Engagement contest with the title: "Bots in the STEEM Chain.

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What is a voting bot in Steemit ?

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Voting bots are the automated accounts on the Steemit Platform which users delegate some certain or some amount of to Steem Power (SP) to in order to receive upvotes on their posts.

These bots are built to use some kind of automation systems to determine the amount of the upvote to give on users article, they considers some parameters such as bid amount, and the bot's voting power.

The reason why people make use of voting bot is to make a post more visible, get more engagement, and also earn bigger reward on there article.

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How does a voting bot works on steemit

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To make use of a voting bot on steemit, a user will need to delegate a portion of their Steem Power to the bot's account, the bot will then consider the user's bid and some other factors to determine the amount of the upvote it will give to this user.

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The voting bot give an upvote to the user's post, by increasing there post visibility on Steemit in the community, and the quantity of the upvote given is determined by the bid(which means the amount the user Delegated), the voting capacity of the bot, and other factors as well.

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Is it worth using the bid bots to get upvotes in Steemit?

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Although, using voting bots seem to be a quick way to earn rewards on Steemit, the question is now whether it is worth it or not at the end, it depends on everyone's view actually.

Some people have the thought that bid-bot upvotes can greatly help them increases their post's exposure and give them more rewards whether it is quality or not, but to me , I saw it as something that is not organic, and it devalue those who give original contents as there work are not as appreciated due to people who have money have already bought the vote, leaving real contents behind.

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Why are posts with bid-bot upvotes still downvoted on Steemit and why does Steemit still punishes it's users for upvoting with bots

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Regardless of the benefits this people earn from using bot, articles that have bid-bot upvotes still receive downvotes from Steemit team simply because this goes against the idea of Steemit ecosystem and it usage, and it also go against the idea of the Steem consensus known as Proof Of Brains (PoB).

So therefore, the Steemit team always downvoted because the bid-bot upvoting can cause harm to the Steem rewards pool, disrupt the true worth of content, and provide reward only for those who can afford to buy bots and this is disheartening for the actual content creators.

The Steemit team recognize all these concerns, and that's why the team has put in place some steps to downvotes any accounts that is using bid-bot for upvoting.

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How did Steemit do to combat bid-bot accounts

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This as much been previously discussed earlier, additionally to that, the Steemit team has made some measures of arrangement to tackle the bid-bot issue by introducing the Resource Credit (RC) system, and what this system does is that, it limits the voting power of some accounts to their available resource credits only, and this is a great important measures.

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And also, the Steemit team does not give supports of manual curation and rewards people that use bid-bots on there contents, and to make the issue worst for them, the curators are also encourage to downvotes heavily on posts that are bid-bot for upvotes leaving the user with no reward at the end.

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Advantages and disadvantages of voting bots in Steemit

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Here are the advantages and disadvantages of using bid-bots for upvotes on Steemit.

Advantages:

• Voting bots can help user to easily reach a larger audience as there articles will be at the tops of community due to the rewards, especially for users with small follower.

• Bid-bot upvotes give users more rewards on their post, giving users the opportunity to earn more Steem tokens.

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Disadvantages:

• It Manipulates the reward pool: Bid-bot upvoting have some influence on the reward allocation, thus reducing the value of real content on steemit.

• It is inorganic: Relying only on voting bots has the power to destroy the organic contents and participation of real content that Steemit was initially meant for, this will destroy the PoB consensus and might ruin the platform system.

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Conclusion

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In conclusion, Steemit voting bots have become some part of the platform, and these bots are use on the platform for scheming, providing users with a way to boost their visibility by buying upvotes which this act is totally against the idea of Steemit and it's ecosystem.