View this post on Hive: Vote Bots and Most Auto-Voting is a SCAM
Vote Bots and Most Auto-Voting is a SCAM
7 years ago by clayboyn (70)
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I share your sentiments, as you know. But, a couple things I would like to add for any readers out there who are making use of pay-for-vote bots, is that;
The whales are still earning on curation rewards after selling their votes. The whole point of curation rewards was so that people could earn from the Steem power by voting on quality content. Now the whales who are doing this, are earning curation rewards for seizing and auctioning off a portion of the rewards pool.
Because so much of the reward pool is now reserved for "pay for vote bots," the whales that would previously have been voting on the content they come across anyway, are no longer doing so anywhere near as much. So, people have essentially started paying to ensure that the whales stop voting for good content, and instead vote for whomever is willing to pay them. This is driving a lot of the self-voting that is going on because people who are not using the bots are having an immensely hard time making any money worth the time they're giving to Steemit because the whales have stopped curating correctly.
This is killing Steemit. And very fucking quickly.
Decent post, @clayboyn and thanks for raising some awareness of this, because everyone seems to have their head in the sand on this one.
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Solid points, I thought about going back and adding in the whole "You only get 75% of the bump you are paying for" part.
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"Network and get better" absolutely what other way is there if you truly believe in the steemit platform. I find the most contentment In curating awesome posts I've found hidden in the feed that are undervoted. Feels great to give recognition to others for mutually beneficial content!
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Well, unless someone DV this, I just added $3 to your post - and will send you something again like before if needed WRT this and or the post being under valued like I usually say with your content.
I work hard at engagement here, and at helping new people.
Both things you have done also and I know, because I have seen it.
You and I have both spoken out against some of the practices here and it has cost us both in many ways.
I have always looked long term at things here.
I wanted you to know also that the Steemit Dev's have contacted me.
They have looked at one of my series I run, and using it to take all the user feedback for ideas.
The "Steemit Needs Series" --- I compiled a bunch of data and the posts from 9/13 posts in that series I could reasonably find and emailed the overview to them today.
That was 2 hrs of solid work trying to do what I hope for here--- see Steemit survive and prosper and do it the right way.
You always make good posts and I am glad we are friends.
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You're my boy blue! <3
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The people behind the bots are the ones making the bank!!
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Nice post, and I can definitely see where you are coming from.
How do you feel about minnows using the bots as a #payitforward initiative rather than simply self-voting actions?
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I did that some but it still just adds to the problem and destroys the reward pool. Better option is just send the steem/sbd to the person.
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But if adding value of a upwards of $5 or so to a post does attract others to add value as they see there is value in the content by just glancing. Minnows often cannot afford to send 5 SBD, so sending 1 SBD that boosts another minnow and gives them a better opportunity to generate more income from the post seems like it does more to add to the community than take away.
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It's all perspective, but I've been doing this for a year and it's got to be the most garbage state I've ever seen the platform in. I honestly prefer the days where everyone was just flagging each other and no one got paid to this bullshit. If the only reason people are voting on a post is because they think other people are voting on it then odds are they aren't reading it anyway. You can scroll through my feed and see how many people I try to promote that I can't even get up to a dollar anymore and it's pretty ridiculous because we have plenty of people posting plagiarized content getting insane payouts. Everyone is entitled to their own approach, but if things don't change I'll go back to the old way of using all of my voting power to flag instead of increase rewards.
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I flag the fuck out of plagiarized content at 100% every time I see it. And I agree the state that the bots are in is currently out of control, but all things in flux. I'm sure it'll pass as all things tend to do. I definitely understand what you're saying though. :)
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The plagiarizing post that make lots of money is extremely discouraging for me to try to produce any original content. I've seen people repost a youtube video, news stories off of websites and had nothing to it and make than my account is worth in a single post.
I don't know if this is related to the steady decline in the price of STEEM over the past few months.
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Great question, I'd like to know as well.
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I agree. Bots are like a nuclear arms race and it's sacrilegious to suggest that we would be better off with regulations on the, to any witness or whale. There are two reasons why steemit is unstustainable (I think it'll have a good long run though, however corporate and fake it becomes). I'm just enjoying all the awesome people here right now and the fact that my writing is finally being read where at patreon I was at a loss as to how to get it out there, hopefully, the big fish get their act together and focus their energy on growing the small fish who create quality content, and not just the first seekers but people like us as well.
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I have seen one user where the same six people vote on every post and it nets about $20/post. I assume they all do the same and earn a tidy sum that way. Drags the system down
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Had a guy with 1400+ new accounts with no value doing similar shit and they had no investment in the platform. Appealing to greedy people to stop being greedy is mostly a waste of my time, but I hope explaining how it mathematically fucks all of us will wake up a few of them.
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Don't think it will. If you have the time to create all the accounts, scripted or otherwise and gets them all voting then any gains might drive some.
I have seen bots? or people with high power clean that sort of crap up with huge downvotes killing all profit. That stops people :)
Saw one person spam a load of copied stuff and they got hammered
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BTW, seeing your avatar, you might like my current series, just started. Building a roguelike from the ground up. :)
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Ya I was checking it out earlier. The problem with flagging that kind of shit, and some of us do, is that it drains power that we normally use for rewarding new users. The people that control most of the voting power are the ones selling their voting power and that leaves people that actually give a shit without enough power to do anything really.
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It looks like there are many of us who are in agreement about this fact. I'm glad to see it's not just me :)
I posted about the upvote bot scheme .. 8 days ago according to my blog. I thought the title was clever "The Epic Failure of Steemit, and Why you Should Care", but apparently 66 views resulted in 22 upvotes, so only 33.33% of people cared.. not a very promising result. I even tried to promote the post, but still nothing stuck.
As long as enough of us continue to post about this atrocity, hopefully it will eventually get enough exposure for a conglomerate of whales to actually do something about it (other than build more bots).
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I'd rather build awareness than bots. :)
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It's a good thing I never deal with the bots lol. I did think they were a good thing at one time but I was too lazy to join and didn't really know how.
How much have you invested so far into steemit and why?
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@clayboyn, I find myself more susceptible to relying on bots when I am not seeing fruit from a post. I have preached that patience is key on steemit, and I need to practice what I preach.
Thanks for the great reminder. Convicting!
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Hi @clayboyn, this post was super interesting since I was just discussing bots the other day. I had no idea that they were being used this way and I'm still not informed enough to have a opinion on it.
So far I have only encountered voting-bot as a tool to automate my curation efforts for those I follow and want to support while not online or busy with life stuff.
What is your opinion of those bots? As a service is that harming the platform in any way? I'm interested because I value your opinion and experience and I feel I have been encouraging other users to use this, perhaps very naively?
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In my opinion, auto-voting a specific user that you know puts out consistent quality content that you are going to go back and read or just want to support is fine. Curation trails where you basically give your vote to someone else is almost always a bad idea. I thought about starting to ask for people to follow my votes because I do spend the majority of my power on promoting new users, but that really isn't a solution either because the point of promoting the new users is to help keep them on the platform and gain an audience. If you do follow a curation trail, I highly advise you to check into who they actually vote for and if they are just paying themselves then it's actually better to not use your voting power at all in my opinion. Not using your power grows the reward pool and increases value in the platform where as greedy people taking your voting power to continually drain the reward pool lowers the value of the platform.
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Thank you for the response. I'm glad you feel that there is space for benevolent bot use.
I had no idea what a curation trail is so thanks for the warning on that. The voluntaryist in me always wants to let people do their own thing. However I've recently join in the flagging plagiarizers.
Here's one question you might be able to enlighten me on, how do we find out what the total combined reward pool is actually worth and now that the reward window is not 24hrs anymore how often does it refresh?
Really appreciating your knowledge and experience.
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There is a certain amount of steem created with every block added to the blockchain. On average a new block is added every 3 seconds. Here's a solid and fairly easy explanation of how it works.
https://steemit.com/steem/@penguinpablo/til-how-much-steem-is-added-to-the-reward-pool-per-day
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Mega! Thank you so much, you're explanation is clear enough to me, but I'll go study further. Blessings :)
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You bring up some excellent points. I was thinking along the same lines but couldn't figure out how to put it into words.
I use steemit mainly for research. They say the best way to learn is to teach. I always learn a lot when post because I double check myself and get my thoughts together the best I can before I post. And of course stumbling upon people like yourself that have more experience and knowledge than me is extremely helpful.
Like minded people have a way of finding each other and supporting each other. I bring that up because that's the advantage that humans have over bots, and so I am optimistic that steemit will survive and thrive for a long time.
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I hope so and I hope you have a successful steemit career!
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I've always been sceptical of the voting bots. I used @discordia a few times, mostly on other peoples posts I wanted to give a little boost (more than my own voting power allowed). Last time I used it the payout was less than the vote however, as it got oversubscribed. If it wasn't for the trending boost, I'd have been better off just sending the author the SBD directly.
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network and get better.
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:) Thanks for checking this out!
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Great idea! I hope to succeed
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You are doing awesome!
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Quack!! Quack!! Followed !!!!!
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I've fallen for the vote-bot thing. It makes me feel dirty. I honestly am at a loss. I know my material has gotten better, I have nearly 1000 followers and I can barely get an upvote.
I'm not crying in my beer, but those stats make one ponder where this is all going. I would prefer to put in the work, be consistent, but I can barely justify the time it takes me to put in the time for these articles I write.
I know I'm just stealing from yesterday to pay for tomorrow with the vote-bots, but I can hardly stand watching two hours worth of work generate a nickel.
If networking means sitting in a chat room, I doubt I will succeed on the platform.
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I have that same issue. Glad to know not the only one. But it will change. Stay optimistic.
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I'll stop being such a pessimist. Yet, I believe the noobs are being taught that 10 votes a day should be their max. It's jamming up the culture of the platform. Being vote and comment stingy takes the community out of the community.
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I agree. I came in before that and you either have people saying noobs vote for everything which is bad, so I held off voting . Then I see an article daming newbies for not voting. Lol I said fuck it, if I like what you write I'll vote for it
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Any comment of value, attached to a comment or post, that I write, receives a 25% or better upvote from me. That's how I drain the rewards pool.
@jpinka, for that comment, I am now following you. My new focus is to engage with people that are into engaging. I'm struggling with the concept that I will cross the 1K follower barrier this week and maybe, 40 or 50 of those people ever interact with my account. It feels pretty hollow.
I am looking for active steemians that are of similar mindsets and want to find success thru the platform, on a personal and financial level. I think steemit can happen on a grander scale, but the spam and dead accounts need to be purged.
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Hell, it doesn't cost you anything.
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@wakeupsheeps
I agree, I am surprised that out on hundreds of people 4 people upvote. Now, I don't complain because I know it will pay off pretty soon I might complain that I have to respond to too many comments lol.
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Voting for what you actually like is what everyone is supposed to do. The problem with the 'voting for everything' was that some users were just upvoting everything whether they liked it or not, just to get in on the curation reward.
The ten votes thing is about voting at full power, and probably isn't aimed at newbies, since newbie votes aren't worth much anyway, and you need 500SP (I think) to get the slider bar to adjust voting percentage. At 25% you can vote 40x at full power like you used to be able to.
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500 SP 😓 I have like 30 I think lol
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Nearly 34 now! So long as you don't power down, it will keep rising. SP is stored in a currency called VESTS. VESTS are fixed to increase in value compared to STEEM slowly over time. Plus you will earn more VESTS from your posts and comments.
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I remember it took me months to get to 100 followers at first. I started going on other peoples post and engaging in their content and I never asked people to check out my content and linked my post on theirs and all that garbage. If you actually talk to other people and they know you have a similar mindset and share similar content they are naturally going to start following you, if not then stop engaging them and don't promote them. I try to vote on people that vote for my stuff regularly to return the favor, but most of my voting power goes towards promoting new users until they develop a following. The fastest way to get me to stop voting on your content is to pay a whale to do it. It's just making my job harder and not helping anyone.
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I can see now that I am breaking clear of the pay-for-play crowd. I will see how that approach works.
I engage any post that I find interesting, so that would count towards networking.
In reality, I need to keep a list of accounts to check and make sure I'm not missing too many posts from people I already know. That has been a failing of mine.
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It happens to me all the time, but usually when I explain to people that it isn't like I stopped caring about your content, I just keep moving on to the next people that need my help more, they are pretty understanding. Plus the other problem of trying to keep up with 800+ people, and I regularly unfollow people that spam garbage or start to, it gets to be a lot. I always enjoy your post though when I have time to catch one!
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Your last sentence is the type of reinforcement that brings me back.
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Me too. I appreciate your presence on the platform. I try to wrap back around and catch all the people who have impressed me with their writing in the past. It's hard but you start to see that relationships are two ways, even on steemit. It's not just I'll scratch my back if you scratch mine, it's like "oh fuck, I forgot to check his posts, he was cool".
I am trying to pull together all the people who are for creating and curating quality content and a sense of community and believe that making bucks should come from such things and not from pyramid schemes and bot armies. It's not a formal initiative but rather just a 2 degrees of separation thing because I'm informal and because I want the power to be fluid and flow easily between people and taking on a leadership role stifles that a bit.
This was part of my reason for starting the Be Awesome chat. You are on my list of people who I'd like to get in there. @clayboyn is there already. It's not that busy but it keeps growing slowly.
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I know, it's hard to keep up with all the people that have impressed you along the way. I am keeping a "friends" journal, starting today, to help me get in a habit of checking out the cool cats.
Where is Be Awesome hosted? I'm not much of one for chat rooms, but I'd be happy to check it out.
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I link it in 95% of my posts. Discord. That's just as easy a second my finding a link and linking it here X-D
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Good post! I'm going to follow you to see more post like this and for support us!
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