My thoughts on bidding bots as the owner of @buildawhale, a minnow, and a Steemian

ogochukwu (68) · 7 years ago

Hello @themarkymark

I have always told my readers in my #blockchain-blogger series that the purpose of post promotion via bots is not to make money, the purpose is visibility.

I have been on this platform for ten Months and I can boldly say that Steemians appreciate quality and when they mark you out as a person of quality they will follow you and support you.

Now with the population Of Steemit, there is that sense of scarcity when it comes to upvotes, but the truth is that Cream always rises to the Top and when you are consistent with bringing people value, you will get reawarded for It.

Most of my upvotes come from Curation trailing and those people put me on their Steem Voter because they loved my Content, that is what anyone can achieve over time.

Now with services like @buildawhale and @minnowbooster that journey can be made even faster since upvotes increase visibilty.

I find it disheartening that people still choose to abuse an utility that was created to help them. Boosting rubbish content is simply boosting your level of ignorance for the whole world to see.

themarkymark (78) · 7 years ago

I feel like a majority of content is created purely for the largest roi with the lease amount of effort. We all want to make money, but at least work for it and provide value so people want to reward you.

$0.03

3 votes

godrules (49) · 7 years ago

I have a question for you TheMarkyMark. I had someone post on my D.Tube account claiming you put my channel on some "blacklist". I own a channel with almost 200,000 subs on YouTube and was having censorship problems so I put the videos being censored over on D.Tube and for some reason some guy claiming to be your curator is putting me on a black list claiming I did not create the content I actually created.. Would appreciate your thoughts on this matter.. I own 4 channels on YouTube and I am friendly with a few of the top Contributors on D.Tube (Press4Truth and HighImpactVids are two people for example). My channels on YouTube are: Godrules, Saledaddy1, Sanity4Humanity and Godrules 2. Would appreciate not being put falsely on a black list by some rabid contributors who claim to work for your blacklist. Contact me directly: [email protected] if you would like.. You will see a couple thumbs up from Press4Truth on some older videos here on D.Tube which should be evidence enough, seeing I was talking on the phone with him as well.

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myeasin (57) · 7 years ago

I feel like this comments its really good comments @ogochukwu

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whatsup (75) · 7 years ago (edited)

@themarkymark I see the voting bids as the great equalizer for minnows and dolphins to earn while we give the whales a reason to hodl.

It doesn't mean I don't get annoyed with the way the voting bid bots are used. I think the combo of a small user base with many who spend more time minding other people's business than their own. There will be a new topic next week.

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4 votes

shello (62) · 7 years ago

while we give the whales a reason to hodl.

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shello (62) · 7 years ago

Hello @themarkymark,

I used to use upvoting services as I felt that sometimes a post I worked hard on could use a little more exposure, yet I digress, my views began to devolve into becoming dependent on them to an extent. I thought that buying upvotes to create good exposure is a good idea, and I still do- but there aren't any hard stops as to what can be voted on.

These "garbage posts" you speak of are everywhere, and although it's liberating to be able to share whatever we wish, a lot of times I feel that people only post to get rewards, not to communicate a message, nor share an experience.

I got interested in curating recently, but have found myself lost in the new tab for over half an hour, looking for something I wanted to help get more exposure. Either I was met with a picture and two lines of text, or the nicely written article got cheetah'd. At this early stage I feel like I'm at a loss.

There's nothing wrong with self-promotion or the bots, just people's constant misuse of them. I know that by running build-a-whale, you come across these issues a lot, and everyone has their brains racked on what to do about this. I feel if enough people did their best to be a good Steemian to fellow users, that the tide may turn at some point. How soon that will happen, depends on everyone taking an active initiative with themselves first... or at least I think it does.

With love,
shello

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6 votes

nicnas (66) · 7 years ago

I agreed completely about the vote bots being great for promotion with a mix of gambling (less so with web apps) through in the mix. The steemit promotion button has never been a good option. I remember when whales started offering free promotion to promote it, but it never caught on b/c the value from it wasn't there. No return. There is only one good thing about it, it burns the steem used.

These issues with spam, reward pool hogs, etc etc will probably never disappear but I think the only solution that is reasonable to bring back a sense of curation is reducing the effect of upvotes to the 25% of the past (10 to 40). This has been the worst change to Steem that I can think of. Damn HF 19. I was completely for all of the changes in HF19 except this one. Boy was I right. But I was, and still am, a minnow. Maybe because of this change actually.

While I cannot blame the system (platform) for this because I am in no way entitled, the share of profits from the reward pool is greatly flawed. By changing the amount of votes a day, as you suggest and I have many times whenever possible, you just might see more posts being viewed and curated on a daily basis. This not only forces the spread the rewards, and thus longevity of the platform, but I think also fights spam just by recognizing good content. There is little benefit these days to producing high quality content and I have been struggling with this reality since the HF.

Thanks for you take. Hopefully we can make some changes soon. I hear rumors of some HF19 changes being reverted.

$0.27

3 votes

guiltyparties (70) · 7 years ago

The tone of your post is pretty apologetic. You created a tool, you also have manual curation associated with the project as far as I recall from our conversations, and there's nothing wrong with any of that. Nothing really to explain. Any tool is misused when someone is malicious or opportunistic enough. No matter how many safeguards you put in, there'll be someone who figures out how to exploit it. All you can do is blacklist the assbags; doing anything else will impact the general utility of the bot. If the community in general has issues with your bot then nothing prevents them from not using it.

I'm personally less likely to vote on a post when they've been upvoted to high hell by a bot. That author clearly doesn't need my tiny vote for 6 cents but the guy down the list with no upvotes does.

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carterx7 (65) · 7 years ago

@themarkymark hey hows it going @themarkymark? I've been using @buildawhale ever since i started posting on steemit as a regular and i must say @buildawhale has always been fair to me just know i appreciate everything you do on here to help steemians out.

I noticed in your post you mentioned that it costed around 8500 steem a week, is that to pay for delegated steem? Or a server to run your bot? Just curious.

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themarkymark (78) · 7 years ago

It is to pay for delegation. I have additional fees (but minor in comparison) to run the hardware.

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carterx7 (65) · 7 years ago

Well just know I appreciate what your doing. Thanks a lot.

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bronevik (61) · 7 years ago

Oh man!
8000+ steems a week! Why such a high costs?

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themarkymark (78) · 7 years ago

Because I am leasing 2M steem power

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bronevik (61) · 7 years ago

Well, you could pass sbd earnings minus your management fee like other bots do.

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themarkymark (78) · 7 years ago

I send almost all my sbd for rent and many times more. Not sure what you mean.

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mikenevitt (62) · 7 years ago

I don’t know why people can’t just vote for what they like instead of using bots, it’s meant to be a social network site, thanks mike

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saywha (63) · 7 years ago

Is there a way to limit the same person purchasing a vote multiple times over in a day? maybe they can buy 1 vote a day (or whatever the reasonable number is) to cut down on spam (atleast within your own bot)??

I think blacklists are something all bot owners should take serious consideration on. This may not look good for the wallet immediately, but I think more people would be okay with vote bots if they saw some filtration going on

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fitinfun (71) · 7 years ago

Minnowbooster has a daily, weekly, and monthly limit - or they used to. Right now those limits are set so high that they are not relevant.

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Proposal for New 'Promoted' Function

bitopia (54) · 7 years ago

The bigger issue I think that needs to be addressed is that Upvote Services are affecting how the sorting algorithm works, as you already know. I feel, as a minnow, that there is a massively uneven playing field for minnows, especially who do not yet know that Upvote Services are basically a must to get your content seen at all on Steemit.

This causes the situation where tons of newer users to leave before they can even get a chance to grow. I think a better solution would be to have a revamp of the 'Promoted' platform where there would be a more appropriate way fro minnows to have their content seen.

I have written and in-depth proposal on the revamp of the 'Promoted' platform which I believe will aid in the overall growth of Steemit.

If you are interested you can find it here :

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onart (55) · 7 years ago

Very informative post. Thanks for share!

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tbnfl4sun (68) · 7 years ago

Hi @themarkymark
I really like using your service and noticed that I get a lot more up votes from people that follow your bot.
I'm one of those people that use the bots for exposure and don't even look at the bid weight. Bots in general make a huge difference on my exposure but I only post once a week and try to spend a lot of time on my post so it's not considered trash.. I also noticed an up vote from MarkyMark that made my day because I spent most of a day driving, paying for parking, upgrading my phone for better pictures and then many hours putting my post together.

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ebargains (68) · 7 years ago

Very good points raised @themarkymark.

I personally think that most Steemians do try to contribute positively to the platform, either by posting quality content, curating, or promoting good content on Steemit as well as other platforms on the web. I personally created a few FB campaigns to promote Steemit as a platform, all expenses paid out of my own pocket.

On the topic of voting bots, I do think they bring tremendous value to Steemit in order to gain active followers and fans. If one actually calculates the ROI per bot upvoted post, net of 25% curation rewards, the ROI is only about 10% on average. And that tiny % gain does not account for the risk of getting downvoted into oblivion by the troll flag bot armies out there, which instantly generates a huge negative ROI.

What I find immoral is the fact that some people find it their God given right to downvote into oblivion some posts from people that actually are beneficial to the platform, resulting in financial damage to those users. This happened to me

personally a few times, and I did not appreciate losing over 100 SBD (NET loss, not potential reward loss) due to this. The flagging system does need to be revamped in order to prevent abuse/trolling by flag bot accounts.

I do hope that @ned and @dantheman are looking into this issue.

Some people do prefer to remain in the role of master nodes and/or ambassadors/promoters of the platform, not content creators, and they absolutely have the right to do so without being targeted and damaged financially!

We are all stakeholders on this great platform, and the only way for Steemit to succeed is to make sure that users do not get penalized UNJUSTLY for choosing their own BENEFICIAL role on the Steemit network.

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leveuf (67) · 7 years ago (edited)

I've learned that small bid bots are a better option to reach the goal of geting attention and proportionaly they give more just because they have not so much, let's say it, sharks!! I agree with you! Cheers

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fitinfun (71) · 7 years ago

I have not used your service although I have used minnowbooster and still do sometimes. I put some money on 6 day old posts if they are going to pay out less that $1 and I catch them. I hope this rewards my real voters a bit better and it gives me some enthusiasm about my efforts when I get the payout. I'm not using them in minute 29 to drive traffic, get on trending, and all that nonsense.

A few months ago I searched the steemcleaners report to see the "bad" posts so I could learn something. To my surprise - a good portion of the steemcleaners posts also had bot votes - good ones!

My suggestion for your blacklist (for all you bot people) is to coordinate with steemcleaners and cheetah. If someone is on those lists as a criminal - the bots should blacklist. I have no idea how you would do that, but I think you would wipe out a lot of steemcleaners and cheetah troubles if the bots did not payout for those posts.

Thanks for helping minnows here - we need it! I have not used your service only because I get to the word "bid" and lose my train of thought. I'm on steemit overload and sometimes learning one more thing is more than I can take :)

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abh12345 (76) · 7 years ago (edited)

Hi Mark

You write well for an evil bot owner. 😛

Can you explain your reasoning behind this statement?

Increasing the number of votes per day would dramatically reduce the amount of garbage showing up in trending and being pushed to $100+ payouts for 30 seconds of work.

I'm really starting to feel a growing dislike towards the bid-bots. They have served me well over the past 6 months but recently the ROI and general negative vibes have made me stop 'advertising' for the most part.

You could argue that in doing this (and I know I'm not the only one), the bidding round is left even more open for the crap to be boosted.

I think all the bidbot teams should be working with the likes of @spaminator @steemcleaners @cheetah @sherlockholmes and perhaps @berniesanders.

If the job of managing spam/autoposters/bidbot abuse etc becomes too much then I think we are in trouble.

Thanks for your honest approach, this should greatly aid discussions here to find a good solution for Steemit.

Asher

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themarkymark (78) · 7 years ago

Can you explain your reasoning behind this statement?

Increasing the number of votes per day would dramatically reduce the amount of garbage showing up in trending and being pushed to $100+ payouts for 30 seconds of work.

Right now you can do 10 100% votes while not going negative voting power daily. Prior (before I was around) you could do 40 votes. The result is each vote carries less weight, but you can vote more often. As I wasn't here, I can only assume this would encourage more voting as you have more voting power to work with, but more importantly no one vote can take someone to trending.

Overall the votes are smaller but more frequent.

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abh12345 (76) · 7 years ago

I wish i didn't include asking this because it wasn't the key point of my comment! Anyway, I agree that more votes with less power would grow the circle (jerk) wider, extra tissue required.

So what about working with the spam teams and Bernie to manage a Steem wide blacklist?

If this list grows faster than can be managed we are danger of being overrun!

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themarkymark (78) · 7 years ago

So what about working with the spam teams and Bernie to manage a Steem wide blacklist?

There is already something in progress.

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abh12345 (76) · 7 years ago

I like the sound of this. Cheers.

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techslut (70) · 7 years ago

If bernie's involved in drafting that blacklist, I am jolly well fucked.

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https://steemit.com/steem/@smartsteem/smartsteem

abh12345 (76) · 7 years ago

I wonder if Mark knew about this?

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edje (69) · 7 years ago (edited)

lol, the post you refer to is bashing on existing vote bots and bashing on coming in with high value SBD bids, and uses a 30%+ on buildawhale to boost the post into HOT and whatever other channel; That must have been a pretty high SBD bid!

In Steem market everything is allowed what is not prevented by technology, but I find all of this paid self voting and the way the owners of the vote bots are trying to talk themselves out of the mess they are creating kinda sickening.

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abh12345 (76) · 7 years ago

Code is law, apparently.

Delegation introduced in HF19 has its pro's and cons for sure ;)

techslut (70) · 7 years ago

Okay, this is... this is everything.

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abh12345 (76) · 7 years ago

I've signed up just to see what's cooking. I could well be rejected.... lets see :)

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Show 2 more replies

lucylin (67) · 7 years ago

lmao - Don't panic ( and be very, vewy, quiet )

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techslut (70) · 7 years ago

I not very good at either of those!

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lucylin (67) · 7 years ago

I'd noticed...lol

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https://steemit.com/steem/@smartsteem/smartsteem

abh12345 (76) · 7 years ago

Like this?

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apsu (65) · 7 years ago

So are you a evil owner of a bot, or owner of an evil bot? This is confusing to me.

But otherwise, this is one of the issues with Steemit economy. I assume, even if upvote services will start limiting their customers, the people will find a new service which offers upvoting without daily limits.

I think one of the biggest reasons competition to randowhale started to appear - it could only give small upvotes and they weren't enough for the most.

Services like this are born from the demand.

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googlee (63) · 7 years ago

@themarkymark, hii, it's first time that I know that you are the created of build a whale and your system is expanding continuously. Even some time I also do use your buildawhale bot. But sir it's an issue , I know that your intention is not wrong but at same time you can see; because of you Don't have any scanning system to find the Quality of content, it's give chance to all spam creator person to get upvote from you. And no Matter what so ever being the content. So at same it also give boost to those content to this platform .... And as you know it's happening, plz sir try to improve your bot so that a good content will be promoted rather then spam.

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themarkymark (78) · 7 years ago

It is much harder than it seems. Spamcleaners have a million steem power to solve this problem and the platform is still plagued with spam. I don't have the financial or physical resources to police everything coming in.

In an ideal world, users who create garbage content will be identified and flagged to zero so buying votes would be pointless. In reality, this is far from the case. I have been reporting a lot of things to Steemcleaners, but it's an endless job. As fast as you report something, 5 more show up.

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googlee (63) · 7 years ago

Welll you are right sir ... If I really asking for an advice that you can give, that would work on this platform then what was that ?

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minnowsupport (70) · 7 years ago

Congratulations! This post has been upvoted from the communal account, @minnowsupport, by Malcolm Reynolds from the Minnow Support Project. It's a witness project run by aggroed, ausbitbank, teamsteem, theprophet0, someguy123, neoxian, followbtcnews/crimsonclad, and netuoso. The goal is to help Steemit grow by supporting Minnows and creating a social network. Please find us in the Peace, Abundance, and Liberty Network (PALnet) Discord Channel. It's a completely public and open space to all members of the Steemit community who voluntarily choose to be there.

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edje (69) · 7 years ago

What you seem to forget with promoting the idea of vote bots, that:

it is THE way for lazy curators to maximise their income on SP by renting their SP to bot owners > therefore anybody renting SP, helps the lazy Steemians to maximise their income by doing nothing else then hit the delegate button from time to time and spend a little time to make a rental deal; without possibilities to rent their SP, they would have to work much harder in terms of hours spend to get the same amount of curation rewards
promotions of posts into eg the HOT channel does not give the result in terms of votes, not in those tests I done myself. You may have different data; When so, please share it was us > my soft conclusion for now is: Vote bots do may support the idea of post promotion, but in fact without results therefore such promotion is meningless
I would even argue when calling in vote bots to your own posts, will prevent manual curators to give votes, it may even drive away auto voters who like to give their votes to authors and their post in a way a human social network should work; I have not data myself, but I do know that when I see a couple of vote botes called in by the author, I don't give a vote to those posts
why are all vote bots promoting themselves so heavily through all these long replies/comments to the post it voted for while it was a paid vote? I would argue, vote bots are actually promoting the bot service rather then the post itself
any auto vote service will always have the issue of voting for shit posts, any measure to counter it through additional work with flags or whatsoever seems to try to find a cure for a problem that should not have existed. My argument would be: We shall remove the possibility to delegate SP, to try to tackle the problem more closer to the root

I'm really wondering why you told in your post what your costs are; Are you trying to get sympathy? There are better ways to support the community than running a vote bot and trying to let the community believe it is a good tool. In fact, since we have vote bots in our community I see the community falling apart and I see many Steemians powering down. It may be coincidence, it maybe the the trigger to many of us to understand Steemit may become a bot dominated network pushing the human factor out; Who knows, but I have my suspicions. And before you make comments on power down, also I am powering down, for different reasons.

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bellyrub (60) · 7 years ago

This Kickass post has received a bellyrub 2.20 % upvote from @bellyrub. Please make sure to vote for my pops as a witness @zeartul,Here, So he can continue to operate @bellyrub! Also Want to earn 45% APR on your SBD or steem, Deposit 20 or more into the @bellyrubbank and be placed on @bellyrubbank's steemvoter rather than it collecting dust.

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sostrin (55) · 7 years ago

I am not sure if anyone knows this but Steemit is a decentralized platform. Why do people have a nees for a " govenment" that sets rules for them? Do you know that in real life, out there in the world tbere are people who take advantage off, an game the system? Are there not more worthy causes here on steemit than ending votebots. As far a deciding what is,and what is not quality content, if you feel its plagerised or spam then dont vote for it, or downvote it. A decentralized community works out its own issues without need for government. Thank you @themarkymark for providing a service that allows a minnow with low sp to give a nice sized vote to. another minnow that inspired him with a great post. Dont like vote bots, dont use them. Spend you time more wisely by curating more,commenting more , creating more content and adding value to the community. The world us not an ideal place and neither is steemit. Regardles this is an amazing platform and there is nothing else like it. I have enjoyed reading posts by somany creative talented people

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cocoland (45) · 7 years ago

Hi @themarkymark. I know this post is 5 months old. I found this on google while I try to get more info about bid bots that can help the minnows. May I know if @buildawhale also started with 0.10 SBD min bid?

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themarkymark (78) · 7 years ago

I believe $0.25 was our initial bid. It raised as we gained SP.

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cocoland (45) · 7 years ago

Thank you! I didn't expect you'd see my reply :) I thought, perhaps you created something that's similar to @buildawhale with a lower min bid?

I know you're busy, so if you feel I'm wasting your time with my questions, please feel free to ignore it.

Thanks again.

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funatoz (63) · 7 years ago

Hay sir I think you upvote system is great and I use to and it's really help my post to get an attention from other .

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themarkymark (78) · 7 years ago

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lucylin (67) · 7 years ago

A very novel idea, I know....

Get rid of all bots, of all kinds, and let people find the content...

Radical, uh?

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spydo (58) · 7 years ago

Nice Information shared by you sir really I do not know that @themarkymark you are the leader of buidawhaleI do not have to proper sbd now to send to your community so I will give your service when I get it and thank you for sharing your experience of making a famous botreally there is too much things in your post by which the users get motivated thank you for sharing this post

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qurator (76) · 7 years ago

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