Bid-Bots... Heinz Sight Is 20:20

mamalikh13 (65) · 6 years ago

I don't understand what would be the issue if we use the services to get our content out there.
some of us are just as active or even more active than the ones having so much in their wallets!
it's not like the bots are just there to upvote us for free! they get money to upvote our content.
I don't know man it's just becoming like the real world over here!
same issues, same problems the just have a different colors.
I think I'm pretty worked up by the BOTs! haha :D

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steemmatt (69) · 6 years ago

I'm talking more about people delegating to the bots for passive ROI, so their SP is staked and locked up for a service. This means those people can't curate/rewards authors or merit themselves, and that they're supporting any and all content (even crap) that people pay to promote. People who use the bots to upvote their stuff are simply playing in the pond that this system has created, which means content creators being dependent on buying votes to be seen, when humans should be seeing them and helping them get rewarded/seen organically. The entire system is broken in this respect, but bots don't help it at all because they encourage people to delegate for profit and not be using/engaging the platform themselves nearly as much, which hurts adoption.

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mamalikh13 (65) · 6 years ago

that I agree with you man.
that effect I cannot deny! <3
some people just don't see the value that people like you are putting in this place! thank you bud!

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3 votes

tibfox (69) · 6 years ago

Hey pal! hmm I think yes and no..

It depends on how you define the wor "bots" ;) Bots controlled by human and for a good purpose are still bots. Like @diytube - I would appreciate every new delegation because this is a curation service for creative content on dtube. It pushs so many people to make different content as the average PLUS it is fully non-profit and pays back 100% to the delegators. No bidding - just manual curations.

Voting, Commenting, Paying out to the delegators and so on. No one wanna do this by hand if we have the tools for automating these tasks. We should use the possibilities this blockchain gives us. Other blockchains are definetly underdeveloped in this aspect.

If you mean the common bid bot with "bots" then I want to agree with you because they make money, not the bidder nor the delegator.

Does the delegation has something to do with the EOS competition ? Never heard of that.

Please teach me how a steem delegation affects the power of steem on the market :) Thanks

Peace!

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3 votes

steemmatt (69) · 6 years ago (edited)

Hey @tibfox - my title referenced bid-bots, so that was what I was concerned with. Delegation to curation groups is amazing because it enhances community effort without the priority being on maximizing passive ROI. You make good points above, which are mostly geared for a different type of situation, when I was mainly talking about the bid-bots you sought confirmation on. Thanks for your contribution to the discussion and for what you do around here.

I'll update the post to make it more clear to avoid anyone interpreting it differently.

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tibfox (69) · 6 years ago

Glad that I could help you with my missunderstanding :P
Always enjoy to get in contact with ya ! Especially when I receive such kind words 😅

Hava an awesome weekend :)

Peace!
_{Posted with}

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skramatters (66) · 6 years ago

Let’s name names I’ll start lol... I won’t start detailed drama on your post without permission..

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steemmatt (69) · 6 years ago

Must resist. It's hard enough to get support around here as it stands.

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skramatters (66) · 6 years ago

True, funny stuff though despite the undertones of seriousness.. Profiting off of people's desperation and playing hero is sure great campaigning...

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steemmatt (69) · 6 years ago

You get it. I get it. I wish more people would.

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raj808 (71) · 6 years ago

This is the biggest issue on steem imo. All the while, the community embraces the people who run these bots as leaders.

I may be somewhat of a hypocrite as I recently started using OCDB which is a non profit bidbot (from ocd curation guild), garuntees a small ROI, and at least seems to be a better option. They are a whitelist system where only quality content creators are allowed to use the bot. Before that I'd been a staunch never used bots guy.

So what changed?

Simply, I was fed up to the back teeth of seeing users who've been on steem less time than me, who make content than has little merit, with 70 reps and in trending.

Fck it. If the system is broken, I'm going to use the only ethical way within that system to gain a qualtive footing reputation-wise.

Success on steem should be based on the quality of what you put into the ecosystem. Whether that be content or development. If this were the case we wouldn't have a problem onboarding and retaining new users as it wouldn't be so confusing and unfair.

People who run bidbots need to wake up to the fact that they are destroying steems chances of success by sacrificing everyone's long term gain for their short term profit. It's extremely blinkered behaviour and I don't know why everyone just blithely excepts it!

Fear is why they accept it.

It's so easy to manipulate people on steem through either; dangling the carrot of whale upvote or the fear of flags.

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steemmatt (69) · 6 years ago

You speak the truth 100%. I really don't understand how people can be so short-sighted, especially when the proclaim themselves to be the next coming of Jesus on here. They wear peoples' values down to delegate to them for the optimized ROI, creating pawn after pawn.

Thanks for sharing your thoughts. I'm right there with you.

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raj808 (71) · 6 years ago (edited)

Cheers Matt.

You hit the nail on the head in something I forgot to mention in my reasons why people accept it rant ;-)

They wear peoples' values down to delegate to them for the optimized ROI, creating pawn after pawn.

The dangling carrot of delegated ROI. That ones a kicker as it plays to two human traits; greed and laziness lol.

I still do at least 90% of my return of value to the community through manual curation. That other 10% comes from a few very worthy community initiatives I delegate to @bananafish @naturalmedicine etc, which don't have a bidbot anywhere near them. I do have some autovotes set for long term friends but not many. Most of what I do, and I can see you're the same, comes from genuine reading/watching content and appreciating it with upvotes, or not if it's shit lol

That's the way it should be for everyone for steem to find success. Devs can build as many dapps as they want, but without taking out the bad players on steem, their will be no audience here to use their dapps.

I sat down on a couch with some reasonably high up people (witnesses etc) in the lobby of the Qubus at steemfest 3 and raised these exact points and the consensus between them, which was short and rather insulting, was that I didn't understand how things worked. Honestly, I had to literally pull my punches as if I'd let my true feeling out in that conversation someone would have got hurt.

This idea that it is the system that we all have to work within is bullshit. If people came together to change it they could, through the only mechanisms we have on steem; consensus action and monetary incentive.

To put it with a no fear attitude (and I really hope that certain individuals don't read this comment as it will be my steem suicide if they do), if all the whales, orcas and dolphins who are against, or ambivalent to, bidbots got together and flagged both the owners and the customers posts into the ground then it would stop bidbots. Maybe only for a time, but it would stop them in their tracks... and maybe make the owners think about what they're doing and how they can make similar (all be it slightly less) ROI through delegating to dapps with profit share schemes. It certainly would stop people using them for a good while as the customers are usually either people gaming the system with shitposts, or steemians who have given up all hope of being rewarded organically for decent posts. It would be bloody, uncomfortable and a lot of people would get butt-hurt in the short term but long term it would do serious damage to the user base of bidbots, as who wants to send money to a bidbot (with only a chance of positive ROI in the first place) to see the value of their post go down to zero. All of this is part and parcel of why steem community (of quality content creators) and price, never grows as fast as other blockchains when the bull takes hold.

Two whales have been famously engaged in flag wars for the best part of 2 years... what does that achieve? Well, at least they are negating the some of the steem value that their respective accounts take out of the system, as they're giving precious little to it. But this is yet one more thing that some new people who come here see and it makes them run a mile.

The run a mile effect is something that needs sorting here or it's doomed to fail. SMT's maybe could mitigate against all of this by removing the earning value of content to different (smt) coins, but that means that everyone on here has to start from zero to add utility value to those tokens. Steem price would go up though, which I guess is good for me having 50% of my portfolio in steem, but I see community smt's 'as a way to reward content' as simply another mechanism for the people in charge of those communities to capture the largest % of value from the whole ecosystem.

Ha ha, rant number two was a doozy. No more rants from me, I promise ;-)

P.s. in getting a little riled up I forgot to mention that the meme in this post was fantastic! I was chuckling for about 5 mins 😂

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skramatters (66) · 6 years ago

Best comment ever ! New follower and fanboy right here

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raj808 (71) · 6 years ago

Ha ha, cheers skramatters

When I get worked up about steem this is what usually comes out.

There are always solutions but they're solutions no one (with stake at least) wants to be a part of.

I made a promise to myself about a month ago to stop worrying (and writing) about it and either leave or get on with creating the content I like to create.... Seems like I lasted about 23 days with that plan lol

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skramatters (66) · 6 years ago

If I'd gotten the "you just don't get it" response to my very valid complaints, especially in person, and with a few drinks in me I'd have made a scene steem not to be forgotten..

Your tongue biting abilities are second to none. I appreciate the keep it positive and don't panic approach, but I don't have enough stake to be so concerned with anyone's feelings or opinions. I tend to stir the pot with my unwashed fingers often and briskly.

I actually originally named quite a few of the holier than thou steemian witnesses/bot bosses but deleted it as I respect Matt's space and try to retain some semblance of steem etiquette.

My favorite 🎯 is a blank in sheep's clothing, that guy is such a politico and that's me being very kind and luckily sober...All in all my biggest beef here is people taking this experiment too seriously.

My name is skram and today I didn't rant on steem... It's high time for steem anonymous meetings.. 23 days is great, call your sponsor next time you feel like the demons are steeming 😈

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steemmatt (69) · 6 years ago (edited)

Thanks for contributing with another whopper^2 of a comment.

In our small active user base, people seem to think they carry a lot of weight (relatively) and that their greed/indifference is excusable. If/when developments ramp up, marketing catches on, and real money shows up, well, they'll become less influential. Their control is all relative to the small ecosystem now and old guard. If they don't change, well then they'll sink with the ship. Hopefully trying to dominate a rewards pool that keeps shrinking in value every day will set some real flags off with them. The focus is so narrow on profiteering from a small pool of people trying to combat the curation system, while hiding in the backdrop, it's laughable to me.

Glad you found this funny. It's my subtle or not-so-subtle way to shed light on the nonsense with humor. I used to get frustrated because I saw what you see, but it wasn't getting me anywhere.

While you care a ton, it might not hurt to take a little Steemcation to refresh your energy here.

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svemirac (71) · 6 years ago

Sounds legit!

steemmatt (69) · 6 years ago (edited)

Just trying to vent about the elephant in the room/chain. This issue alone has talked me out of investing over and over, even as recently as this week, where I almost convinced myself to pay up for the sake of manual curation. It shouldn't feel like swimming upstream to act in the spirit of the blockchain's initial design, but it does, and that spirit is really struggling to stay alive these days.

svemirac (71) · 6 years ago

Yeah, I am involved in various manual curation projects... but still find it difficult to power up the stuff I earned the hard way... almost pressed the button last night, but again didn't do it. I have no faith that we will ever fix broken curation system here anymore - yes there is talk everywhere, but still 90% of stake is stagnant and "hidden".

3 votes

steemmatt (69) · 6 years ago

I know the feeling. I've earned all my Steem and have never powered down. I have sold some Steem/SBD for USD and other tokens in the past, but only liquid earnings. For now, I'm still powering up 100% until I reach 5,000 SP, and then I'll re-evaluate. I was going to buy quite a healthy amount of SP for a second account which make my hustle for another 700 Steem seem silly, but I'm stubborn and committed to the principle of being a use case for those to follow that it is possible to earn Steem the hard way... it's just really f'in hard as you know! Thanks for your efforts with manual curation projects. You're instantly good in my book for that.

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tamaralovelace (62) · 6 years ago

hahaaa so clever!

Agreed, though, 100%

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steemmatt (69) · 6 years ago

Thanks for the condiment. I've seen this gif forever and finally had something pop into my head that was relevant. Fortunately, the juice was worth the squeeze.

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willowwisp (62) · 6 years ago

I can't say I really understand this subject but I'm glad you do and that you have suggestions to make steemit better. I'll follow your lead.

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steemmatt (69) · 6 years ago

Bid-bots are a pay-for-vote service that many large stakeholders delegate to for passive ROI payouts from the profits the bots make on their rewards-pool extracting venture. This entices larger and influential Steemians to lock up their SP with these services (mostly profiteering in nature), and not use their SP to curate/reward good content or delegate to new development projects who need support. Bid-bots allow anyone willing to pay for post promotion to be seen more, despite the quality of their work. This then inflates peoples' reputations. Most importantly, larger stakeholders become lazy/ROI-driven in a passive way and don't manually put their weight into fixing the imbalance.

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stokjockey (70) · 6 years ago

@steemmatt excuse for my stupid Question but is it OK to utilize @tipu or is that a Bidbot that is a Negative Here on STEEM ???

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steemmatt (69) · 6 years ago (edited)

Fair point, but I did't use it. I won't and can't speak negatively about someone's generosity to try to get my message heard since it resonated strongly with them. I don't use upvote services, but don't want to take away from someone's kind gesture here.

Tipu is also a slightly different animal because the spirit of it (as I interpret it) is to make the best of the situation by being a means of giving to others to reward them for their effort. It does lock up a lot of Steem via delegation though.

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tipu (67) · 6 years ago

This post is supported by $13.79 @tipU upvote funded by @rmsbodybuilding :)
@tipU voting service: get instant upvotes + profit sharing tokens | For investors.

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steemmatt (69) · 6 years ago (edited)

Thank you, @rmsbodybuilding. To anyone who sees this, he's one of the most devoted fitness bloggers on this platform and he never complains. I can learn from him, but he certainly deserves more eyes and ears for his commitment to spreading physically well-being on Steem. Please follow him and reward him for his dedication and loyalty for almost 2 years now.

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