Paying for Votes: Fundamentally Insane

clayboyn (70) in steemit • 7 years ago (edited)

View this post on Hive: Paying for Votes: Fundamentally Insane

7 years ago by clayboyn (70)

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d-pend (73) · 7 years ago (edited)

I'd love to keep having these discussions and keep becoming more educated on the underlying dynamics of the system. As a newer Steemian, whenever I joined the platform, I was instructed by most of the posts I was reading from my first day to use @randowhale and others to get my posts traction. I used randowhale on my introduction post! It wasn't until much later that I encountered a lot of negativity towards this process, which initially surprised me as a new and naive user.

As I used the site more, I learned how many ways there were to "milk the system" and went through a lot of phases in how I used different services. I began to go through phases where it seemed very distasteful and strange and didn't want to use them. I still have mixed feelings about the services. However, I think you have missed a couple aspects, or perhaps you are seeing them and don't consider them worth of mention. These are:

Using bidding bots helps to reward your curators if you use the services after at least say, 12 or 24 hours. The lower SP holders that are your real supporters will receive a bigger chunk of curation rewards than they would have if you did not use the service. Also, this will be compounded if you don't upvote your own post until quite later in its life. You will increase the rewards your followers will get by waiting. I consider the rewards my followers get to be of equal importance to my own. Therefore, I still consider it profitable even if I don't technically "break even" myself. (Note: I realize that bigger stake weight get proportionately bigger returns, but it is my understanding that this greatly diminishes with the order of votes that occur. Correct me if I'm wrong here.)
Bidding bots don't drain the rewards pool. Could you explain how you come to this conclusion? The whales that are running these services would be using there SP on something no matter what, because it makes no sense to not use hundreds of thousands of SP to get curation rewards. Actually, they would be probably using it on other whale's posts. So the same amount of power would be pushed through the system either way. I can't wrap my head around your idea that you are somehow lowering the value of other posts by increasing the value of yours.
Sending to @null to use the promoted feature is also technically pay-for-votes, which generally benefits the Steemit ecosystem by "burning" SBD (thus increasing its value.)
You neglected to mention the @frontrunner component of @booster. It can make the investment incredibly profitable, at times. It seems to function somewhat like a slot machine, so many times it doesn't make a big difference.
Pay-for-votes also increases the reputation, a major benefit of bid bots. No one seems to take you very seriously on this platform until you are at least at 60. Now, once could argue it's not a "real" reputation, but what about personal friends of @ned and @dan who get voted to hundreds of dollars arbitrarily because of that connection or get to borrow hundreds of thousands of SP of delegation from them?

As far as your other points, especially the last one about missing out on real, solid followers, I feel that. I've noticed that, to a degree. On the other had, if what you create is unusual, niche, or not desirable to many dolphins or whales, you can be banging your head against the wall for weeks/months and not getting much support, or you can spend your own hard earned cash to strong arm your way into the system.

One could argue the latter method is a bit crude, however, those who actually purchase and power up STEEM help the platform more than those that just expect payouts from no investment. (Of course, time and energy spent on creating content is an investment too, I get that.) A different method is to buy SBD and send it to bid-bots. It's just a different way of investing in Steemit, from that perspective.

I guess what I'm saying, in a nutshell, is that to view pay-for-votes as a completely black-and-white issue strikes me as rather perplexing. You may have already seen this (and if you have I'd love your thoughts on it!) but @inertia wrote a bit about the benefits of pay-for-votes from his perspective (also listing some cons, as well.)

Anyhow, I value your perspective, your posts on this topic have provided me with food for thought over past weeks, and I figured I should type up an in depth response. I want to continue to study this area and become more educated on all sides of the issue. Will be writing some articles in this area in the future. Namaste and have a great one :)

$0.14

3 votes

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clayboyn (70) · 7 years ago (edited)

1.) Having a large vote come significantly later does in theory help the curators. I don't think there is any massive curve on the curation voting process after the 20 minute mark, but there is a curve which does most heavily reward those closest to voting at the 20 minute mark.

2.) Solid point, the whales selling their voting power can just promote their own content or have circle-jerk votes to feel more justified or whatever. The goal I would push for is to have them actually using that voting power to promote the platform. One of the methods I think works best is I have seen pharesim and goodkarma trail vote people they know are quality curators. It let's them keep their curation rewards without delegating out their power and helps to spread their stake weight around.

3.) Using the promote feature on steemit is kind of a gamble. I think we need more usable features to burn steem and reduce inflation, but many people (myself included) never look at the promoted tab. The people I'm usually trying to promote are making under a dollar per post and have solid content and are usually new. There may be some whales that value burning steem and hunt for those posts, I honestly don't pay enough attention to the trending or promoted tabs to say.

Thanks for sharing your thoughts and while inertia and I have had our disagreements, I won't claim to know better how he should use his own ability and stake. I'm just sharing my thoughts and how most of these services have an overall negative net impact from my point of view. Then again it's unlikely the people offering them are going to change and it seems to already be resulting in another flag war as of today. Booster got targeted and counter-voted heavily on several posts. I'm curious to see how this plays out.

$0.07

2 votes

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d-pend (73) · 7 years ago

Wow. As am I. I wasn't aware of that (the recent flag war.) One of the powerful aspects of this platform is that it is such an experiment and allows freedom of choice through up and down voting. Fascinating. I have no clue how it will play out.

I also wish more whales would behave like @pharesim, @good-karma, and others like @ripperone, @newhope, @alexis555, @mangos (which I suspect are alts for some other whales, though I've no clue who) I know I would certainly feel very urgent to support more low-power accounts if I were a whale. It's part of what led me to borrow so much SP out of frustration even though I will likely not break even from it. In my opinion Steemit is supposed to be about giving first and foremost, and a graceful give-and-take. However, it is really an open forum, a mirror of the level of consciousness of those who use it.

As we well know, selfishness/greed/scarcity consciousness is very prominent on the planet right now, so it has naturally become manifested in Steemit as well. I wish I had been around in the early days. I hate that the place is filling up with spam and all these services too, but like I mentioned, it also has always been a part of Steemit as I've known it.

Anyway I really value your perspective as well as those of others who were here much earlier than I was. I hope we can still use Steemit as a platform to catalyze the evolution of human consciousness. Since I am a cosmic optimist (and also quite stubborn,) I will not give up trying. AND if Steemit burns to the ground, it is okay, we will create something better! No matter what I'll be grateful for the people I met and the way that it's helped me be more productive creatively.

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1 vote

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enjar (69) · 7 years ago

Honestly the only reason I see it is to help promote a blog you feel is worth spending money on. Some people think these services are for every single blog they make.

People even spam them on spammy comments they leave. In which case I can only hope people notice, downvote, and make sure they lose money doing that stupid stuff.

One of the only saving grace I have seen is most of them at least leave a comment that the blog received a paid upvote and from who. As a way to better understand why the blog is valued in such a way.

It really is so tempting to use these services even more so if you spend 5 to 20 hours on a blog. If a blog not in hot in first 30 minutes and trending in an hour or two it just feels like it’s already dead. Maybe you get an upvote here or there from someone who is following you later on. It’s sad to think so much work can be dead that fast in how fast Steemit moves.

I’ve used them a little bit when I first started on Steemit. Once in a while, I’ll try out a new one just because. Other than that I have been staying away from them. I prefer to create organic growth even if it means having to work harder for fewer eyes to see things. Otherwise, it just feels like paid promotion. In which case I might as well go full sellout mode and be running the blogs I write on a site that serves ads with some scummy referral link at the bottom trying to recover costs.

Scary thing is when you read someone's blog and you notice there 5 or more comments stating it has received a paid upvote. Everywhere I look there are more and more and more and more of these kinds of services poping up. Even free ones that just vote anything posted if you follow them and then spam resteem all day long into peoples feeds so they miss out on important things to them further compounding the issue.

The Bigger issue seems to be how landlocked we are in 5 tags. People just use tags to find things and that’s it. We just need a better way of thinking of how to search for content or better tools on the site to do just that. I’ve been tempted to use search engines outside of Steemit to try and find better results on things still open for upvotes.

So much great content out there that will only ever get a person or two viewing it.

$0.08

3 votes

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clayboyn (70) · 7 years ago

I agree, and I would love to find a real solution to these problems, but as long as people think they are fixing the problem by killing the reward pool, they aren't worried about finding a solution.

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enjar (69) · 7 years ago

I’ve head of people talking in the past about just creating a bot to downvote all these people paying to try and even things out. None of these people will ever have enough SP to do so. I forget the names of people who have thought about it and its clear they never did anyway.

There are so many things going on as it is on this platform that need downvotes like spam and plagiarism that this issue is just too big to handle.

Only thing I could think about is just start muting the bigger offenders. I have no clue if that would remove them from you seeing them on top lists or not. That would also be a lot of work to always be doing.

I even spend time commenting and engaging in posts that have heavy paid their way up in ranking. Its just where people are talking and it’s just how I get views on comments I spend a fair amount of time writing. Not happy about it but I do try and grow by commenting and its just where people are.

The only real change is if the people running these services limit how many times a day someone can receive an upvote and not allowing it to be on comments. I don’t ever see that happening as they make a lot of money from selling their vote.

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1 vote

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clayboyn (70) · 7 years ago

The funny thing is you could rent the SP from the same people and then use it to run those bots. Makes you wonder right? All it takes is one person willing to burn some steem to sabotage a voting service to use greed to combat greed.

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enjar (69) · 7 years ago

You would need a very large amount. I imagine a few hundred thousands just to get started. Some very powerful accounts are behind these services

Otherwise if someone who the community respects, has some reputation to weather the storm and gaint balls wants to come out and just start publishing top 100 paid upvote offenders every week or something.

It sounds like Steemit suicided to me. I’ve seen what happens when someone pisses off one of these services.

Even if an anonymous account was created to post the lists you would need some heavy hitters to upvote that sucker to get it seen. Even then these people will find out and get their revenge for lost income on anyone they think is related to it.

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1 vote

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artwithheart (43) · 7 years ago

I have been preaching this almost from the beginning of my time here...two months and counting. I want real people seeing my work and voting on its merit. Unless I buy Steem I will probably have a low reputation score for awhile, but I am okay with that. Money is not a motivation for me here...or anywhere else in my life. Thanks for giving attention to this issue.

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1 vote

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tinypaleokitchen (59) · 7 years ago

This is a great article. Food for thought, for sure. You also made it understandable. My two brain cells and I would not have figured it out on our own.

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1 vote

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old-guy-photos (73) · 7 years ago

I know I am totaly in the minority on this and thats fine. I have never used and dont intend to use in the future. The whole idea of paying for attention always rubbed me wrong.

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1 vote

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clayboyn (70) · 7 years ago

I was trying to avoid that whole aspect of it, but that part does way on my mind when considering how to approach this topic. You are not alone in that line of thought.

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shello (62) · 7 years ago (edited)

This is a great topic, on one hand people feel the need to get noticed, on the other hand- everyone should be treating bot upvotes with the same responsibility as their own votes.

I personally used to upvote my own posts (stopped about a month ago!) Because when you are new to Steemit, it really sucks to not see votes.

I do see where everyone's experience is coming from, I also used bots to upvote my own content, but ended up stopping that too. I could be using my time to better my long-term experience by interacting and planning instead of using it on immediate satisfaction. Buying votes dosen't help nearly as doing other things in the overall picture.

I did like using the promoted feature at one point; it does help raise the value of Steem, half of the payment adds to the post reward, and it affords me that extra 6th tag. I would imagine that a lot of people dont curate through that tab, but there are people that do. Still a risky measure, but the best way if buying a vote.

I still use bots to reward posts that I already voted that I feel are good, but maybe I can be tipping users as well. I believe that bots can be harmful when they are abused, but ultimately comes down to our methods and reasons for using them.

Plankton Steemian weighing in her opinion! c:

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1 vote

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jawilder (48) · 7 years ago

I totally agree with the ROI aspect of this post. I find that largely in the crypto community that investors are making the mistake of not calculating true cost; this included. Because of this they make all these strategic moves (i.e. buying votes) thinking they are in profit when in actuality they are slowly eroding away their capital. It is extremely important to capture ALL cost and understand how things work so you are not unintentionally making bad decisions. Also, why would anyone ever buy a vote? Steemit is a system that pays you for the perceived value of your contributions. Buying votes does not train you how to craft valuable materiel. The beauty of this platform is that once you acquire a following and the skills you can MAKE money out of your creativity... that is much better than making money out of money.

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1 vote

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stephen-somers (63) · 7 years ago

Totally agree. The only one making money is the owner of the bot.

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1 vote

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macchiata (70) · 7 years ago

Since, I guess everyone have almost covered it, I'd just add a little thing about my understanding with voting service and things revolves around it.

First and foremost, There's re-steem button. I think that the sole reason of it, is to help people who still have less viewers to gain more exposure and giving them a chance to earn more.

Additionally, from the beginning, my stance on using bot service was in a gray area, because I personally do not want my post to be cluttered with non-human notifications saying I've voted myself. I've also tried sending some to @null for my own experiment. I bid really low and get a little in return, but that was still worth it. However, there are some, who burned hundred only to get a few cents. I don't know what's with that, but that's insanity. Unless, it's some kind of important message which they want to deliver and stay on promoted page.

Once, someone told me " voting bot works like tip jar". It attracts people to fill in more and come to check. Yet, these days it's no more working like a tip jar, because often I see people's comment section is cluttered with bots. Atleast, facebook is better at this point - they have no bots ( not that I know), but spammy human tagging each other.

In conclusion, it's still in gray area atleast for me, and I'd better support projects which help users growing organically together, creating a community. It's just the way I see it, steemit is again between art and business. Some choose to do pure business, some choose to do both, some choose to do art.

Likewise, I do agree with @d-pend on this one,

AND if Steemit burns to the ground, it is okay, we will create something better! No matter what I'll be grateful for the people I met and the way that it's helped me be more productive creatively.

Just a cent's of thought for the day 😊

Namaste 😇 and have a great day !

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1 vote

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clayboyn (70) · 7 years ago

@macchiata the truth. You are wise young grasshopper.

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