Who will create the content for the Bid-bots to 'promote' in the future?

in steem •  7 years ago 

In the future, the Steem Blockchain interface that you are looking at right now will likely have options available to filter out Bid-bot promoted posts.

Browser extensions will likely have this feature in place even sooner, and right now you can install one called SteemPlus that will make an accurate guess as to weather a commentator on a post is a 'bot/spammer/human'.

Communities may well also choose to hide Bot boosted posts from their feeds in order to keep a solid set of Trending/Hot posts which match their vision and goals at the head of affairs - Anyone wishing to to make a name for themselves in a community will have to 'go clean' to do so.



source

So what's next for Bid-bots if when this takes place?

Who will bid on a post that is hidden from the most popular interfaces and feeds?

The Bid-bot Dark web

So we have our communities and their custom feeds in place, the content valued the most by each community membership will sit proudly at the top of each feed, receive more views, more votes, and these authors will quickly gain a good reputation in this field.

Will the bid-bots no longer be of use and slowly die out?

Sadly, I don't think so.

If the number of bids reduce due to authors seeking involvement in a community filtering out Bots, another user seeking ROI, and only ROI will just take their place.

Will they give a shit who sees their content? Nope

Will the delegators to said Bid-bots care if the content is viewed or not? Probably not

Will the Bid-bot owners care if the content meets their 'standard' but is not receiving many views? I doubt it.

Will the deadly efficient raping of the reward pool still exist? :(

I've got an idea

What about just creating an alt. account and producing 'short-form' content or memes and sending bids there?

Too late - It is already happening

Some prominent community figures are already ahead of you.

Seemingly not happy with the witness rewards, Bot SBD sends, the curation rewards from the Bot votes, Bot posts, and personal account posts.

For maximum ROI and a coin-filled swimming pool, in addition to the above, it works to create some alt accounts, produce debatable content, and throw Bot-earned stake in that direction.



source

Am I revealing who I've spotted doing this? Not yet.

It would be good to see an adjustment in strategy this next week though.

Who will create the content for the Bid-bots to 'promote' in the future?

The businesses and people that care only for collecting and much money as they can, as quick as they can.


Asher @abh12345


More posts like this one / #bidbot

What would Steemit look like if everyone chose to delegate their stake to a bid-bot?

How to make friends and influence people

How much 'available' SP is there for Steemit.com content?

Am I stupid?

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As a community we can start now by not voting for any content that is using bidbots and also removing your vote from the witnesses that are running them. I really believe that only a grass roots movement can beat this destruction of steem by greed.

Well said. Is there a list of such witnesses who run bots?

.... I already removed @jerrybanfield many moons ago, although in fairness, not so much for the fact that he started running a bot, but rather because he just generally did my head in.

Haha... I'm not alone...

Thanks, i was trying to find a list also, luckily @abh12345 made this post a while back. https://steemit.com/busy/@abh12345/how-to-make-friends-and-influence-people

Great thanks!

I agree with the grass root movement . the only problem is that it needs numbers of people . Most people are uninformed . This is a very important subject and one that I try and pass on in my small pool . It is not good enough to just make post and comments , one must also educate himself in the platform and it operations .

  ·  7 years ago (edited)

Yes indeed, you can see that by all the votes made to the posts on the trending page. Upvotes that would be better served going to quality content and not as payment for a hopefully reciprocated upvote.

exactly ; people are voting there because they believe it helps them . I've been putting out that the trending page should be avoided by newbies . I myself have not gone there . They should instead build their foundation make comments, create good post and get out of the now mentality .

Hear hear!

This is the message my Curation League post is trying to put out each week. Welcome on board there, the post will be out in a few hours :)

thank you very much

Agreed!

It's not even the case that a low SP user will gain the most curation by voting on the biggest payout posts.

I could not agree more with this.

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Asher you should become a witness, maybe even add a friend like @paulag to partner up with... And then you could help clean this place up...

Ohhh wait, you are already doing this! :)

To anyone that agrees with this message, vote your witness for:

@steemcommunity

a joint witness brought to you by @abh12345 and @paulag

How much are we paying you? 'cause it's not enough! :D

Thanks for the words of support @davemccoy!

haha... you could cut my pay in half and I would still work for you both! :)

ps... I decided to give a preview of the week ahead once my Play 4 a Newbie contest is over! ;)

That's a grand list of games you've managed to find taking place Dave!

haha.. thanks :)

Haha, @davemcoy I was just thinking that @paulag was already teamed up in a witness role that I voted for, then I saw your tag. I didn't realise that the Asher everyone was talking about was @abh12345.

Now I know, and knowing is half the battle.

edit:

Sorry, I thought I was on @profanereviews. I just went and voted with this account too.

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and right now you can install one called SteemPlus that will make an accurate guess as to weather a commentator on a post is a 'bot/spammer/human'.

well... not too accurate most of the time to be honest, the training data leaves a lot to be desired...

Am I revealing who I've spotted doing this? Not yet.

but damn am I curious for the reveal!!

Yeah... the efficacy of that one showed itself to be of dubious merit. Or, at least, the algorithms will need a LOT more tweaking...

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  ·  7 years ago (edited)

Who will create the content for the Bid-bots to 'promote' in the future?

Probably bots.

Reminder: you can use @heimindanger's clean trending toy to voice your disapproval of this anti-social industry.
https://steemwhales.com/clean-trending/

  ·  7 years ago (edited)

The smart ones don't boost their posts that high. No need to bring attention to others when you have your own little empire on the go.

Exactly!

Uncool behaviour!

bots of the bot owners bots?

Eventually competition for bids will be so low that probably yes, bidbot owners will compete with their own bot customers to try to make back the money they lost from lack of userbase.

  ·  7 years ago (edited)

They already are :)

Who will survive depends on what price (if any) they are paying for the delegated SP.

And we wil have driven good investors out of the platform and call in the scammy ones mining and extracting steem

That is how my country lost it all... to the Chinese and the Russians

Yes, bots created by the bots that the original bot owners created, Everyone feared Skynet when they should have been fearing Steem bots all along.

Who will be the John Connor of our time.....?

Wow - that's a great tool, thanks for the link. Especially like the 'downvote the trash' link!

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Bots 4 Bots

Well, I’m sure some people will or already are creating bots to post to the bots for the bots to upvote? It’s a bot world and some of these people just don’t want to interact with humans. I’m not sure what kind of sad world some of them live in but I don’t want any part of that!

The biggest issue will be for how long will these people still be getting the ROI on both ends? What I find interesting is some of these people are delegating just about all there SP to a bid bot than spending what they earn from that and their rewards to buy more bids. What kind of hyperinflation world do these people want to live in?

I would just love to see more control in how trending and hot are presented.

Should they be doing more for communities around them?

When I look at bid bot system and how easy it is for anyone to exploit it I just wonder why they don’t try and protect themselves more. If all their investors suddenly decide it’s no longer worth the steem they make every week for the amount of damage they are doing and take back there delegation they start to become rather powerless.

One thing I’m a bit shocked by and perhaps I’ve just never noticed. Why are they not giving out free votes to high-quality undervalued content/creators? If that is the “purpose” of these things like some people claim. Should they not be the ones every week going out and showcasing 10 posts a week or more for free? Surely their investors can’t get upset about that as its showcasing the true power and lead by example of what is considered a quality post at different price points.

If we think about it from an “advertisement” standpoint. Then they should all place themselves behind a paywall and kick bad actors. It’s one thing for these people to have their vote pulled or be downvote on a couple of open posts they have. It's another thing if they are out 20-100 SBD they had to pay for membership on top of buying votes.

When people don’t feel invested in something they have no reason to respect it. There a reason why if a site runs annoying bad ads people block them. Even more so when some of these ads on sites have malice intent. They get removed as soon as discovered. It just looks bad on the advertisement providers if they don’t create an end-user experience that people are willing to put up with. Which is why people started to create ad-blocker extensions in the first place.

When I look at bid bot system and how easy it is for anyone to exploit it I just wonder why they don’t try and protect themselves more. If all their investors suddenly decide it’s no longer worth the steem they make every week for the amount of damage they are doing and take back there delegation they start to become rather powerless.

Many have earned enough to a decent-sized bot with their own SP.

One thing I’m a bit shocked by and perhaps I’ve just never noticed. Why are they not giving out free votes to high-quality undervalued content/creators?

A very cool idea! But why do that when you can upvote your alt. accounts?

If we think about it from an “advertisement” standpoint. Then they should all place themselves behind a paywall and kick bad actors. It’s one thing for these people to have their vote pulled or be downvote on a couple of open posts they have. It's another thing if they are out 20-100 SBD they had to pay for membership on top of buying votes.

Worth exploring as an idea but > Time/management/costs = reduced ROI.


Thanks for the comments, I hope others add more ideas here :)

One of the trends I’ve been noticing over past few months is I’m getting smaller votes from the same people. It’s not that they are giving me a lower percent. It’s that they have delegated a large holding of their SP. In their wallet you see them being paid out every so often for doing so. Which makes me wonder. How self-made are these bidbots when compared all other delegations they get?

As far as lower ROI. They have lower ROI every time they have to pull votes or the community as a whole downvoters what they have upvote. Not to mention if someone with massive SP decided to just target one bidbot over another due to “ethical reasons” people will start to go elsewhere. ROI will drop as a result for the owner/investors for not being a good Steemit citizen.

Meanwhile if someone was playing the field onto a more “I’m an ethical” bidbot service they could charge the premium of a membership fee if they could prove posts are less likely to be down voted when compared to their competitors. Not to mention if people who were delegating to them where getting a bigger return than well they just have more of a reason to keep doing business with them.

Granted I’m not sure why I’m saying this here. I don’t want them to make even more over the long run. I would just prefer since we are stuck with this situation that overall the platform gets a better experience than we currently are.

I Just find it odd if I go and post something right now with just the letter A I could give one of these places 40 SBD right now and they have no issues just using there voting power to up vote that. You would think that would be reserved for their top customers who they have not had many issues with in the past and are not going cost them losing out on that curation rewards along with getting called out by the community for upvoting that post by so much.

In the long run the more users who get sick and tired of it the more someone going do something about it. At some point there got be that breaking point where certain types of posts only show up in promoted section since they are in fact being promoted by buying the votes in the first place.

One of the trends I’ve been noticing over past few months is I’m getting smaller votes from the same people. It’s not that they are giving me a lower percent. It’s that they have delegated a large holding of their SP. In their wallet you see them being paid out every so often for doing so.

I've seen the same happen and read others reporting this.

At some point there got be that breaking point where certain types of posts only show up in promoted section since they are in fact being promoted by buying the votes in the first place.

I think this is on the cards down the road, we can hope :)

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The way we are going we are more likely to see content dry up and bots used just to farm Steem!

It's the worse case scenario but can't be ruled out completely!

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  ·  7 years ago (edited)

curious, how about the scenarios where bot filtering can't be identified as the bot business farm out upvotes using accounts of legit voters and having access via steemconnect with active key request:

Example: smartsteem and minnowbooster

these are also the 2 more successful profit making business on Steem right now, they can upvote a post $500 to $800 using Steemians with 200 SP or 2 Million SP, they can make it looks like you got 1000+ legitimate upvotes, and looking at the blockchain you can't tell any different.

With the Steem blockchain wallet owners willing to give away their active key openly and liberally to business websites like this, won't all the other 100+ (and increasing) bot-owners just all evolved to do the same thing as this 2 big "Steem-Coorporation?"

Even worst....why are we not rewarding legitimate flagging? Perhaps mechanism to take away the rewards of big bot farming (pile on and trending view) and self-upvoting (not getting flags) must be part of the solution moving forward.

  ·  7 years ago (edited)

I can run a query and check everyone's wallet to see if they are being paid for their 'daily delegation' to these services.

Similiar to what I was doing in this post: https://steemit.com/utopian-io/@abh12345/how-much-available-sp-is-there-for-steemit-com-content

Everything is tracked, so it's just a case of having the will/need to get stuff done.

Thanks for raising this :)

Even worst....why are we not rewarding legitimate flagging? Perhaps mechanism to take away the rewards of big bot farming (pile on and trending view) and self-upvoting (not getting flags) must be part of the solution moving forward.

See https://steemit.com/@steemflagrewards and https://steemit.com/@flagawhale. It's happening :)

  ·  7 years ago (edited)

I understand you can track who gets paid by smartsteem and minnowbooster, but we can't correlate an upvote done legitimately and an upvote that was done by the bidding company when a user Steem Power went up past a certain %-percentage, the bidding companies they transfer the funds payment internally, and they user move the SBD lump sum into the their account later, could be weeks, or months later.

i've thought about this:

  • monitoring clusters of upvotes with no correlations but are regular payouts on smartsteem or minnowbooster (and mark that bids cluster if say it exceeds >$1.0 so it's removed from trending total)
  • just mass exclude all upvotes from all people who subscribe to smartsteem or minnowbooster or receive payment in the last x-number-of-day (eg. 7 days if they got bidding payment all the upvotes don't count for trending)

find a solution, let me know, I look forward to seeing your feedback.

i have visited both of them before, but I didn't know you were driving and supporting them, will go upvote https://steemit.com/@steemflagrewards and https://steemit.com/@flagawhale both sounds like very healthy initiatives. i like the names and the spirit of the initiatives!

you got my witness vote:

  ·  7 years ago (edited)

I was thinking just to rule out anyone currently delegating to / receiving payment from one of the services mentioned. It's a bit hardcore and perhaps the communities can come up with something better before we reach that point.

I'm not in the driving seat with those initiatives, but I do like what they are trying to do - https://steemit.com/abuse/@anthonyadavisii/dailytop10open-s-spam-downvote-campaign-final-results-new-mmorpg-ranks

Thank you very much for the witness vote!

  ·  7 years ago (edited)

can't remove everyone from that service, will make it too exclusive a trending list, i notice from interaction with others that 30-40% using those service not to gain bidding income but to not waste their Voting Power when it hits near 100%, so they set it at max 99% to upvote, or say at 96-98% for the smaller steem accounts as there is no 100% guarantee that smart steem or minnow booster will use the smaller one when it reaches near 100%.

also another problem, i've seen 1 guy who does not even take minnow booster earning at all, but 100% cycles the earning to self upvotes to raise his Rep, we can't even filter out those cases, he's unique, not many doing that, very specific goal he's trying to achieve.

It's trackable.

Read minnowbooster/smartmarket wallet for transfers of money with a website link.
Cross reference timing of upvotes on person's account by people who allow those services access to post on their behalf.
these services usual return funds not spent on upvotes. so you have a window of voting, on a specific article and have a list of people known to sell their vote.

Until they change the method... this will work.

  ·  7 years ago (edited)

only if they transfer the SBD from the Steemian wallet to the minnow booster / smart steem wallet, if they use the internal SBD accumulated, there is no wallet memo..... not that I can see any

even if there is a link to the memo from the SBD, how would you correlate lets say my upvote done at the same time, it could be genuine, how would you know it's part of the bid upvote, there is no true timing correlation, they could use 2 accounts to give $10 or they could use 200 accounts to give $10, how would you differentiate on a popular post with 1000 different accounts upvoting

this is how the yel'pap does it he uses the shill minnow upvotes and let the view rackup from trending viewers who won't upvote to justify making it look instantly popular when it's really majority paid upvotes

i did appreciate your feedback about using that timing and memo, it's tricky to catch all these creative ways of bidding

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I remember this user who at the time that I joined Steemit was someone that I aspired to become like because his posts were earning 50 dollars and more and he was already in the reputation 60. So wow this person was someone trusted by the community. Or so I thought.

My rude awakening was when he started posting 5 times a day with just Marvel characters and I commented on a favorite character of mine and he replied with absolutely no fucking idea what he was talking about.

I revisited his posts and saw the pattern of 1 paragraph to start the post, which talks of the origin of the character, 1 image, usually the hero, and one ending paragraph that states the powers. He even placed a sourced link of where he "allegedly" got the info so that if Cheetah comes knowing he can say he properly cited.
Yet I know where he got his info and he changed a couple of words so it wouldn't be seen as outright plagiarism.

That was it I discovered he was a golden shit poster that tried to outsmart the system by following upme's protocol on what is considered a shit post.

Imagine that 5 posts that were 50 dollars and more a day. 250 a day for something that he took off a wiki on Superheroes.

I tried frontrunning his bots for awhile and collected a sizable curation reward but posting 5 shit posts a day used up my SP and decided to stop and just forget about him and focus on upvoting posts that I care about even if i get less curation rewards.

If we let the current trend that bid bots go rampant then we will look into a future that it is all crap.

The funny thing is these shitposters don't care for engagement and their post is like a bot graveyard of the confirmations from the bots that it has been upvoted but no human read about it.

Haha so true. Some of those posts you get to bottom and into the comment section and I'm like "nope I'm getting out of here." Nothing but bots leaving comments. That has to be so depressing.

I know that user, I was also following him until he started to make a paragraph posts on Marvel character and boosted it to 80-100 USD.

Yup. Much to agree on here.

I've front-ran a few obvious bots/big votes for a little while, it's about as rewarding as sitting in your own pee and i've since stopped trying to earn anything extra from doing that.

Onwards we go!

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I think the problem is we have forgotten that BOTs are meant to remove repetitive tasks from humans so humans con be free to create an thrive.

What i mean is that BOTs at least on STEEM platform have been poorly used for self profit and not to help us use the platform for what it was meant to.

Greed is what drives bot owners...

I'm an automation engineer and i have an army of bots running behind me and my proyects but them all are used in a responsible way to promote the principles of the platform.

Many people is unable to see that BOTs properly used are there to help us, and instead of fight all BOTs we need to fight the bad bots...

But well, that's very difficult to achieve because no one agrees what the platform is about... And while we try to educate and show all the possibilites to have the many understand what is wrong with some of what the few do...

The greedy bad boys are smiling and taking it all...

Yes, I think there are good uses for automation and I'm not against all the bots - @transparencybot @grammarbot @duplibot @badcontent, @cheetah, etc, etc.

The worst offenders are the non-contactable bid-bots, that have no black/whitelist, and seem to never remove any votes that are clearly placed on absolute crap.

When they know it's crap, but wont remove a bid because they'll lose 2/3 SP for the curation..... money over content/platform.

I was making a non profit BID-bot designed for the Spanish language reality (500 K SP curating 4000 active users)

But i dropped the project as it will not call the greedy ones and the rebelious ones would not support any bid bot.

The way i see it:
As long as there is no ethic and responsible counterpart to something the sheep will keep using blindly what there is...

As a extreme simili example :

Western societies have been Secular for a few hundred years, in France being a Catholic is a sin against the State, that is what has allowed islam (especially bad part of it) to pierce and attrack the ones looking for alternatives because they are nor secular... So their message is join our religion, join the social revolutions... (I dare say this here... in france i would go to jail for saying this in a bar)

PS: I am an agnostic and have nothing agaisnt responsible religious people of any creed

I just like to match block-chain problems to society problems (Maybe we can work out solutions to both)

I just like to match block-chain problems to society problems (Maybe we can work out solutions to both)

I like your thinking and efforts to do this as it sounds like the promised land we are seeking.

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Quite frankly @abh12345 when that option to "filter them out" is implemented it will be like a bloody breath of fresh air! There are FAR too many authentic and passionate authors on this platform that honestly never even see the damn light of day - and whilst it may not rid the platform of them completely, I do think it will make a huge difference... for the better!

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  ·  7 years ago (edited)

There are FAR too many authentic and passionate authors on this platform that honestly never even see the damn light of day.

Totally, and a real shame.

Let's just hope that when these authors are finally surfaced (via removal of the rubbish) there is a reward pool left to compensate their offerings.

Absolutely!

So is this filtration actually on the cards or is it just wishful thinking?

I mean as things stand bid bot voting probably won't cause the platform to collapse altogether, it's more likely just to result in a wildly fluctuating price of steem as the capitalists variously follow each other in out of steemit as the ROI dips and rises and dips again, rather than it just being a a steadier increase if bot returns were 'invisiblized' (or just got rid of altogether).

However, don't the anarcho-capitalists who run this platform (please pause to appreciate the oxymoron there) relish that sort of instability - because in post-modern capitalism, capitalists make their money from boom-bust cycles, leaving the 99% reeling in the wake of the chaos they cause. And as you say, such people don't give a shit about us.

So do they have any motivation to change anything? In their eyes Steem fluctuating is opportunity, not a problem. Despite the re-branding, money talks after all.

Filtering out bot voted posts would be welcome addition for sure, although I effectively filter out everything by just never visiting the trending pages, so that's not a problem in my eyes anyway.

I was wondering where the 'human' etc. bubbles had come from... good old SteemPlus, cracking add on that one!

So is this filtration actually on the cards or is it just wishful thinking?

It could be coded in to an interface today, but will be easier I think when the HiveMind features are released for the deleopers of the tools we view the Blockchain with.

You are right with the money men loving the cycles, it's always been a great way to create more profit - especially if you can cause the swings yourselves.

Filtering, or just staying away from trending, is ok for our eyes, but the bots were up to around 30 million SP, the last time I looked. They use all this, 10x a day, with total efficiency, on a lot of garbage - garbage that in some cases is being produced by bot owners. This ain't right!

Holy crap, 30 million SP... that's unreal.

There's a lot of stuff I still need to think through about this platform. Thankfully for me it's currently still very much philosophical as only 1.1% of Feb-March income came from Steemit.

Although it'll matter more once that % jumps when I quit work.

It is wrong. But what can we actually do about it?

Yeah I tried to have a look at the numbers here: https://steemit.com/utopian-io/@abh12345/how-much-available-sp-is-there-for-steemit-com-content

What can we do? Umm, good question. It's for the big boys to change, I'm not sure we can do much in the short term apart from talk!

A. Thanks for the link, I'll check it out, but the answer seems to be 'very little'

B. Do you have a strategy for bookmarking posts about all of these issues? It strikes me that it would be a useful project to go back through some of the debates and summarize some of the arguments: but some of the best are in comments, which I don't think you can bookmark easily?

C. I'm saving some SBDs to have a crack at accessing the database to make various inquiries, is it still $10SBD/ month to @arcange for the privilege?

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I have said several times I think, the only content needed is a post that says:

"..."

All the bot needs is a target address created. It doesn't care. So, it becomes an auction house on votes for blank posts. It mostly is now and the only reason any content is there at all is to try and mitigate the chances of flags (and therefore profits).

Maybe everyone else's final posts will just be crying emojis.

Maybe everyone else's final posts will just be crying emojis

ha!

Well the meme's i'm seeing are showing tearful people.

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The making friends and influencing people continues, I see. :)

I think you established quite well that there's really no end in sight for the bid bots. If people use them, they will continue to exist. If people stop using them, they will come up with various ways to keep going.

The only way this ends is if bot owners decide to walk away, and somehow others don't make any to take their place.

Like that's ever going to happen!

What kind of incentive exists to do that? When the only effort is to build the bot, tweak it occasionally, then sit back and watch the SBD roll in. I can't think of anything. The only thing that takes less effort is to delegate SP to someone (no bot needed), sit back, watch the SBD roll in.

One thing I wonder about. If all this community filtering that you bring up actually does happen, and the bots are regulated to the darkest corners of Steemit, wouldn't it also make it easier to identify them. And if, as you say, someone creates a creator bot so that the bid bots (including the creator's own) start bidding on it, wouldn't they, eventually eat each other?

Also, I actually did read the very subtle shot across the bow you made at the end. :) The art of the teaser is not lost on you, sir.

What kind of incentive exists to do that? When the only effort is to build the bot, tweak it occasionally, then sit back and watch the SBD roll in. I can't think of anything. The only thing that takes less effort is to delegate SP to someone (no bot needed), sit back, watch the SBD roll in.

Yup. It's a tough life!

Although in future, they may need to up the meme output a little :)

One thing I wonder about. If all this community filtering that you bring up actually does happen, and the bots are regulated to the darkest corners of Steemit, wouldn't it also make it easier to identify them.

Yes.

if, as you say, someone creates a creator bot so that the bid bots (including the creator's own) start bidding on it, wouldn't they, eventually eat each other?

I think there will be increasing competition and a reduction in bots but when the delegations fall, most of the owners will have enough SP to self-vote like a goodun'.

It's something to speculate on for now, we shall see.

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I'm reasonably new to the platform and I'm really just stumbling my way through. I see stuff about bots but I don't use them. I get the general consensus that they're not great for steemit but they're great for individual personal gains, yes?

I've heard the term witness but I have no idea what they are yet, what they do and if their purpose is good or bad?

I just choose to sit here, make connections with real people, have fun and make a little $$ along the way... am I using it wrong?

Hi there, and welcome :)

No I think you have the right attitude!

The bots will boost your posts to be more visible, rewards will look more, but end up the same when you take the outlay off the payout. The will bring you followers though.

As a new user, I would look at what 'curie' upvote, you can do that here: https://streemian.com/guild/curie

This team of people look for content from newer accounts. Be active on others posts, and each week, really put your back into a killer post that is of similar quality to those in the link above.

You don't need to worry about witnesses just yet :)

If you produce something you are particularly proud of, drop me a link to it here or somewhere :)

Have fun! :)

Thank you and thanks for the info, that's really helpful!! I'll check out that link.
To be honest I have only written a few things when something comes up but I mostly join in the photo competitions and games. I've met a wonderful community group in this area and I'm having a blast, as well as learning along the way which to me is most rewarding!

Thanks for that offer, I'll be sure to keep that in mind! : )

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Thank you!!! : )

you might not be naming names, but I do know the person doing this is very quick to name names lol

Hi There! You have just been upvoted by @justinadams Witness. You will always recieve a free upvote on every post you make on steemit as long as you keep your witness vote. Thanks For Your Support.

Well everyone deserves a second chance, right?

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  ·  7 years ago (edited)

Hey! I'm a 16 year old student who develops bots for Steem.

I would love to develop a Chrome plugin which blocks bid bot upvoted posts! If you are interested as well and want to contribute, contact me on Discord!

wil1liam#8715

I think the link that I provided in the post to steemauto does something similar - maybe contact these guys?

Can't find it could you send a link please?

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I said something in a comment the other day about how these bots are creating a schism on steemit.

There will be people who use steemit to authentically create and create content. And other people who use steemit to game the reward pool.

We shall see what happens, but the community is already mobilizing.

@shayne

We shall see what happens, but the community is already mobilizing.

Slowly, but it's happening...

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I have never used those bots and I never will.

A solid stance - I wish I could say the same.

It does help that I only started last month, so I never had to bother with the temptation after I read its problems.

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Am I revealing who I've spotted doing this? Not yet.

I have known few :)

Yeah I think we could all name someone, sadly.

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I have been asked a few time by new users what I think of bid bot, vote bots and bots in general. When it comes to vote/bid bots I tell them, the owners of those bots run them to make money. That when you "bid" on a vote bot, you are just wasting your time, money and effort. If you have money to throw away on a bid bot, then "tip" a friend. Best use of your money though if you are new is to convert it all and power up to increase your SP, and grow your account. Bid/vote bots do nothing other than steal your hard earned post rewards.

Power up is sound advice :)

Occasionally I see a 'community' or new application post that's been boosted and I think yeah that's a good one to promote.

Boosting your alt. accounts with your own bots? errr, no.

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Stinc wants things this way.
Its why they made selfvoting attractive and delegation a thing.
They couldve changed things on any given day, but they choose not to do so.
Its a clue.

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  ·  7 years ago (edited)

Priorities!

We have enough condensers to be getting on with, what we are lacking are the features in the HiveMind and SMTs. Only Steemit inc can work on those - busy.org I think, will be the first to utilise the new features and roll with the communities..

I stopped holding my breath when that porncoin decided to fork instead of wait for smt's.
We've been led on about comunities for too long, too.
Better we go back to the n2 and the whale experiment, at least then folks would be happy to be here.
Doesnt hastags do what communities do?

https://steemit.com/steem/@steemitblog/update-communities-hivemind

Hive focuses on posts, relationships, social actions, custom operations, and derived states.

communities: mod roles/actions, members, feeds (in 1.5; spec)

reactions, bookmarks
comment on resteems
indexing of custom profile data
reorganizing of old posts (categorize, filter, hide/show)
voting/polls (democratic or burn/send to vote)
modlists: (e.g. spam, abuse, bad taste)
bot tracking
community bots

A sub-set of some of the features mentioned on the link which could help.....

A better source would help.
That one has proven itself unreliable.

Have you looked at the github?
Its greek to me.

Not yet, but i've just found and bookmarked it.

I shall take a look and possibly report...

That would be great, more daylight, less bs.

A bounty of 3.330 SBD has been set on this post by @abh12345! You can read how they work here.

Good issue to keep discussing... the bots are everywhere in all social media. Maybe in the future their will be a way to prove 'authentic' human content... or it maybe just something we have to always judge and determine... just as we always have to assess truth.

Thanks, it will remain on the table for a while yet I think :/

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Interesting. That information seems juicy. Linear rewards were a very bad idea and that hasn't changed. Dan was always very clear about that and very public about it too. It's not clear to me how many people understand this nowadays. I plan to post about linear reward when I can find the time and strenght to write about it.

Juicy and perhaps not even surprising news. I think the rewards curve, greed, and jealously towards others have turned people down the wrong path.

It's part of the reason I wanted to be a witness - to try to be a good alternative to the ones that seem not to have STEEM at heart.

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Interesting... It seems like the battle of the bidbots rages on! New tools will be created to bypass (ignore) them... but will they still earn and benefit? Capitalism runs rampant on the blockchain (I don't mind it).. It's fun to see the new tools created and watch the community come together to try and halt the bad actors

Perhaps the bids from non-bot owner/delegators will drop, and we'll find out what break even is as they prop them up with their own bids. Certainly are interesting times 😁

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Those are some excellent points you're making and I can't wait to see the day that everybody is using tools like these. I don't think they will ever get implemented into the Steemit website itself though, but maybe alternative interfaces like Busy will implement an option to filter out promoted content.

I do think they will arrive on steemit.com in time, but it is more likely that another interface will implement the community features mentioned recently by @steemitblog, before they are implemented on the flagship site.

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Who is this mysterious person who's a witness, a bot owner, a blogger and a shit poster?

Still working out if/how to present this. Just look at some of the trending/hot memes and you'll probably spot something..

eemespleasm -> E promoti -> euildawhalb -> khemarkymart?

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I must commend whoever brought about the Steemplus, that's a wonderful project and innovation. Concerning Bidbots, if you would ask me, I will say they should be scrapped out of the steem blockchain, they do more harm than good to the community at large.

When I joined steemit, I got to learn that you get rewarded by the decision or opinion of the community and not by the decision of bidbots. The oppression and level of corruption already created by bidbots, their owners and the users is undeniable.

It should be scrapped, the disadvantages outweighs the advantages. Well done @abh12345 for your views and opinions

They will unlikely ever be scrapped - nor will it be possible to stop alternative account creation.

Things need to change in the mindset of those with the Steem Power...

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In fact,,you can use Bot Creator Software to create the custom bot , which could buys stuff online automatically.

Anything you do online can be automated with Bot Creator Software such as for example youtube comment bot,accounts register, content material scraper and content post etc. It can help you to acquire and analyze details information, synchronize on the net accounts, upload and download data, end any other work that you may perform in a browser, and beyond.

True. But when you have no eyes on your work, this isn't an issue - you will be taking up blockchain space, but not taking much from the rewards pool.

If this method is deployed by those with a lot of SP, then things could downhill very quickly.

bitcoin is in the public eye, the technology powering it could outlive any ... You can give the coin to someone, and they can decide

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How would a system that filters bot votes differentiate between bot votes and services like minnowbooster/smartmarket that sell user votes instead of huge bot votes?

Guessing it can just read the orders and target and then filter the post based on that.

The services will adapt, for example instead of buying the votes after posting, they can just deposit the balance on the site and request votes on a different day, so no memo to track a request of service.

  ·  7 years ago (edited)

Whitelist only for community listings.

So, the community area is only available to you if you pass inspection and are added.

And who will decide whether you pass inspection or not?
Back to square 1: politics come into the game...

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Perhaps reward distribution should factor in "views" as well as upvotes.

Sadly, views are easily faked. If i refresh this page (steemit.com/chrome) I get another view :)

That would complicate the issue somewhat

heh :D

Plus the array of condensers/entry points don't talk to each other. Views are a non-starter at present.

I'd be lying if I said that didn't go straight over my head

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Education wonderful and very great well done, my friend
You are a wonderful person and really successful

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images (54).jpg

Mr @abh12345, for current steemian averages using bidbot.

I'm sure you can do that

I'm not sure I understand?

bid bots will exists forever but creative content creators will be there no matter how much pressure is going to be they will always find a way

i think bot, because there are already some people who have made bot to post from bot to bot.

Yep and the good bloggers will just leave.. the place is a joke.

that you right

someone recommended me checking out your profile and I see that we've some similar interests. Cool.

"Who will create the content for the Bid-bots to 'promote' in the future?"

I will for sure. Why? I use bots for other reasons that most people do. I use them 1day after I publish post because I want to make sure that all my followers/currators will be rewarded. I figured that if I want people to stick around then they need to benefit. Simple as that.
So I dont self-upvote within 24h either.

"Sadly, I don't think so."
So we're on the same page.
I think we will have more bots operating on steemit but demand will also grow.

"Will the deadly efficient raping of the reward pool still exist? :("
Dont you think that people need to find a way to build reach and exposure using either money or some other resources?
Good content alone is not enough. We need some tools to promote our content. Without bots noone new would succeed here. That's sad reality. without them always same people (who are on steemit long enough to build follower base) would be in trending page. Without giving other people chance.

followed and upvoted! :)

Great post.
I like this steem.

nice info
and when the bidbot are gone, then will we now have a new baptised steemit community

These are old news. I know already lots of people who made a lot of profit this way..

Lucky you. You?

No, I haven't. This account is all the steem I have.

Who then? :)

You want me to point names?

Not if you don't want to.

I would prefer not to.

And to be honest, today bid-bots do not provide profit, as in the end of the 7 days pay-out you receive a lot less than you've invested.

Maybe the only benefit is building reputation, but nothing more.

The only people who benefit from this are the creators of the bots.

The situation in which we were very deplorable. I, for the time being, do not see any way out of this situation. Good luck to you and Love.

Ситуация в которой мы оказались очень плачевная. Я, на данный момент не вижу выхода с этой ситуации. Удачи Вам и Любви.

It's a very complex issue @abh12345, with much more than meets the eye.

In the red corner, we have developers and blockchainiacs for whom content on Steemit is mostly window dressing... in a very general sort of sense. In the blue corner, we have bloggers, content creators and social media users. They care about content and building "Brand Me;" the other stuff is (nice!) window dressing... in a very general sort of sense.

Meanwhile, in the white corner, we have "long term investors" whose objective is to keep this thing prosperous and alive for many years to come. If someone has $10K to invest, their objective is to turn that $10K into $500K.... over a period of TEN YEARS. In the black corner, you have short term profiteers, who want to maximize EARNINGS (not "wealth") today, tomorrow and next week. If someone has $10K to invest, their objective is to double it by next week —by whatever means— so they can make next week's Lambo payment. Again, in a very general sort of sense.

Part of the challenge — from a purely "Human Reality" perspective, is that nascent industries (like cryptos/blockchain tech) will draw more short term high rollers than long term investors. The high rollers often live by an easy-come-easy-go philosophy — and there's nothing wrong with that — in which if something fails, "we'll just start another one next month."

In reading between a few lines, there's already a subtext among some heavy hitters (and witnesses) here that "I'm not too worried about Steemit. Someone will create something better on EOS and we'll just move over there." Nothing evil in that, it's just a very short term view... ironically, often held by people who became "instant millionaires" by accident and don't fully understand such things as "wealth building" and "preservation of capital."

So the role for US... where "us" means people likely to use #giveashit as a tag... is perhaps two-fold:

We build our own base; our own sub-community around mutual support and highlighting the kind of content and community that matters to US, in the long run. In a sense, we do our part to create the sort of place that will be the "Yahoo" of our day, rather than "I'll-never-forget-that-site-dot-com" that vanished when the tide turned, during the "dot com bubble" 20 years ago. In the meantime, we try to quietly "flow into vacated space" when those with a destructive short-term view grow weary and leave.

OK, so this turned into more of a post than a comment but it belongs here!

=^..^=

just wow

Go ahead and reveal the person making those spam posts for money. What's it matter? That's what so many people do on this site anyway.

I don't have the investment capital necessary to make a proper voting ring. But I've seen them on this site. Can I blame them? Idk. It's frustrating to find poorly written drivel get $100 and great posts get nothing. But hell, that's the structure of this leaderless site. Don't hate the player, hate the game.

Bring on communities already. I want to see the shit posts fall to oblivion. Bring on proper competition!

Until then, this place is a money launderer/criminal's wet dream.

This cross-post - apologies.
I found a vote from what I'm told is a non-account ¿
@fuguo ?