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Yesterday @Heimindanger published a post called "Operation Clean Trending" which you can read here where he presented us a solution to fight the upvote bots.
The problem with bots is that they have made Steemit "Pay-to-win". Instead of posts of great value in the trending section, you see advertisement there or demands like "Make me a Logo"...
This destroys the trending section and makes it impossible for new Steemians to reach the trending section even when they are writing very good & well-formatted content because they simply do not have the SBD's to boost themselves up and because of that drown in the masses.
One could now say that new Steemians shouldn't reach trending but I find that ignorant because just because you are new on Steemit doesn't mean that you haven't written game-breaking content somewhere else.
"So how and where can we use Heimindanger's website to fight against the bots?"
On the website https://steemwhales.com/clean-trending/ you can see a table with trending posts that were boosted sky-high with bots as you can see in the screenshot below.
On the left, you can mark which post you want to downvote, the author and the title. On the right side, you see how much SBD they invested to boost the post, the number of upvotes from bots (in %) and the percentage of the downvotes.
You simply have to login with your Steemit name and your private posting key, mark what you want to downvote and click on "Downvote the trash" and you will have done something really important for Steemit!
Note: Every downvote will have a vote strength of 100%, so do not mark too many posts!**
Fear of Receiving Downvotes Back
Of course everyone will be thinking "What if they downvote us back oh my god". If you fight there will be casualties of course, but if you are a minnow you will not be among the casualties because you have nothing to lose.
They can downvote your $1,00 posts, that ain't anything, you will do far more damage to them because every "-" in the Authors total payouts that used bots is a message that the people are tired of that shit.
That will put pressure on the bot-owners to either stop or to adjust their bots. For example that they hire people to keep the blacklist up to date!
This also motivates people to simply write better content and also to start understanding that networking is way more important than posting to increase your total payouts.
So if you want that cash you simply have to become a part of a Steemit community and make friends here.
So do not be afraid, Steemit warrior, fight the good fight and use your downvotes to show the bot owners that the people are tired of that shit.
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My ultimate goal as a Steemit Witness is to improve the quality of the content here on Steemit and to maintain the Steem blockchain.
If you value what I do I would be happy if you would vote for me at the bottom of the Witness voting page. Simply scroll down, enter "valorforfreedom" click on vote and that's it. If I am in the top 50 you can also just vote for me there.
You can also vote for me by clicking on the picture below with my account name in it. Afterwards you simply have to log in with Steemconnect and I will receive your vote.
SteemSchool Website: Website
SteemSchool Discord Community: Discord
Just found your awesome post and youtube. I am totally with you. I immediately made a new blog entry urging people to support the downvoting effort, citing your youtube, etc. I will now upvote, add this link to my blog and DIE TRYING (if I must) TO GET THE TRENDING POSTS TO REFLECT OUR BEST WORK. Congrats, Philip, and THANK YOU!!
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Thank you too Patriot. 👍
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I have been campaigning for someone to create a "black" or "dark" curation trail that we can follow like steem auto with variable votes and they just go around downvoting trash just like a curation trail. Noone has bit yet. it should be very easy to do i would think.
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Everyone can create a downvote trail if they want.
They just have to invest time to downvote all the stuff.
That is why heimis solution is superior, people do not have to look and they can downvote en mass.
Just gotta do it once per day, ezpz.
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i have started to manually downvote a few. I am going and reading them and if i decide they are pumped up trash i downvote. i am prepared for the negative rep i guess.
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Some people have to do it, otherwise it will never change.
#warriorclass
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A downvote trail can be dangerous and damaging Steem. Downvotes need to be taken seriously not in an automated way.
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I think the bot abuse has got to a boiling point. People are sick of it. Trending is the face of steemit and it looks like a dumpster fire. If I were to look at it today there is no way I would join.
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Then people should go shout at Steemit Inc’s door and request a better filtering system. The solution needs to be internal to Steem to be effective or else it’s just a work around which can be worked around
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So if you are a Witness isn't that kind of your job to help maintain the integrity of steemit or what is the actual purpose of a witness if not that?
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That does not mean I will perform what ever solution someone throw at me. Secondly witness or not I only have about 200SP which would do nothing in downvotes, we maintain the integrity of the Steem network, the trending issue is an issue of Steemit which is just a graphic interface for the Steem blockchain. Witnesses have been trying to fight for better interface and solutions but Steemit In has not done things. People needs to wake up and flood them with requests.
Because Steemit is just an interface that reads the blockchain, if something is not right, just leave Steemit.com and use something else maybe another company can build a better interface, like busy.org for example. Maybe someone can build a website that has a better trending filtering algorithm
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Or if you want a trail you may want better rules in the script. Instead of following anyone and downvote whoever they downvote, make the script only downvote for specific blacklisted bid bots and where the total amount used on the bots for the post exceed a certain threshold.
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You cannot do anything wrong by automatically downvoting boosted posts.
Not even the official Steemit blog got into trending.
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If a downvote trail exists, it can be abused. How can you make sure you’re auto downvote is always downvoting the correct post. I would not trust anyone to downvote on my behalf
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That is exactly the point
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Good solution, but what if a person writes great content and also paid for bots? Shall his post also be downvoted? Or this downvote solution only for who has non-sense content but used bots?
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I agree..something should be done about this
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the use of bot much abuse of them obviously because it has the resources to do it .. is incleible that a few days ago a memes have $ 300 in reward .. and was in trend .. that unfortunately ..
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Yep, this ain't good mate.
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Appreciate your step.. No one should allow to defraud real deservants of reward pool... keep on moderating the platform...
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A problem I can see with minnows with low reputation being downvotes back is a loss in reputation which can be hard to recover. Imagine a reputation 0 or negative, all your posts will be invisible
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Yes, that would suck, but we still have to do it.
Can't just let this problem exist because of fear.
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I’m just not convinced if the current solution
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It will certainly help a bit.
Better than just talking and doing nothing.
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I’m happy to be proven wrong but I don’t think it will make a dent and they will still be there in the tending until people really get fed up and make Steemit Inc understand and change their software.
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Just to be clear, I’m not against downvoting the shitty trending posts. I just wanted to add an extra info to the “Fear of receiving downvotes back” paragraph, minnows don’t only loose their tiny SBD but they also can loose a lot of reputation. With that in mind it is up to anyone to do as they wish.
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Good addition mate, Minnows need to know that.
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I had a user named "bunnychum" downvote all 140 of my blog entries, completely wiping out about 10 of them yesterday. All because I wouldn't kiss his fat behind and remove my SINGLE downvote in trending (from using the downvote tool.) Just thought you should all know. He also knocked me back about a quarter of a reputation point. I am not going to be long for this site if they continue to allow these abusers the power to wipe out the blogs of good people who object to their corrupt practices. I have far better things to do with my time and effort.
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This is a good I initiative and I definitely will join the fight.
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Call to action: It doesn't matter how high your downvote is, the "-" on the total payouts of the authors that use bots matters.
The message is what matters.
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have noticed a difference lately its a few of down voting bots out there now. so good stuff is happening. but up vote 97% wtf
its so stupid. a did some research one of them he just transferred over 110SP to bots yesterday. wtf.........its one thing to down vote spam comments but these is way more important
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100% my friend.
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One man's trash is another man's treasure unfortunately. I agree with you. There is unfortunately so much trash out there. Why are people liking it, or why do they see this as a treasure? due to people's reputation and due to possible curation rewards. I have looked at the trending posts. I ALWAYS see people upvoting before they read posts.
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There is an autovote function on Steemauto.com and friends that like to support you will do that for you.
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Wow thanks for sharing. Didn’t run into that article until this video.
I stopped using bots a few weeks ago. I used them before to get like a 1-3 dollar boost.
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Hi Vince!
The majority starts to be against bots.
It is good like that, I want to see high-quality on Steemit and not low-quality.
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Wrong assumption in my case. You downvoted my recent article that did add value in the network. I write all my articles with the intention of adding value.
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This will happen way more often to you now.
I suggest you stop using bots, the people have started downvoting way more than before (& we hate bots).
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Fair enough. But bots can also throw the baby out with the bathwater. Anyway, I am learning a lot with your video-lessons. Thanks. 👍
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I never look at the trending page, I noticed it was a load of rubbish quite early in my steemit life (basically it's like the paid ads on Facebook which used to piss me off intensely, so if I've replaced fb with steemit, why would I go there?)
I also read one of your blogs about keeping the people you follow to a minimum, so that there is sufficient time to interact with them & read their posts. This is a difficult one and I'm not as brutal as you in this regard, but I make a point of evaluating now and again to ensure I see the posts & people I find value in.
Having said this, I am of the opinion that Heimindanger has created a great tool that would make me stop & think before upvoting a post that is highly bot rewarded.
I may not go as far as downvoting, even if I am a minnow (plankton actually) I value all the little 0.001 sbd's I have, their sentimental value is far greater than their monetary worth, and they don't come from bots.
However, I know there is a responsibility, as a user of the platform, to be accountable for its health and wellbeing, so IF I do downvote based on this list, I would only do so if I read the post and found the quality highly questionable.
Thank you, as always, for the high quality you add! <3
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Great comment EH.
Indeed, so far Heimindanger didn't add a link to his little script so that we could take a look at the posts.
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Ah, well, it wouldn't be difficult to work out: username + rewards ;)
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I hate these upvoting bot users, not only are they losing money because they are buying upvotes, but they are also decreasing the long-term potential of steemit!
The only problem that i see with this is like you mentioned fear of someone flagging back... i can already see people creating bots that auto detect flags and flag back the user, in a few months we might see a full blown steemit war, which can be good or back for steemit depending on who wins, if this actually happens we will see steem and sbd price increasing by much!!! because we will see a decreased supply of steem and sbd
BTW what do you think of the new steemplus human/bot thing?
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That Steemit war has to happen anyway. The powerful people do not give a shit about Steemit. No major update in 1 year is total ignorance.
I love it so far.
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The problem is that i've seen some people that are considered bots but actually create content, so i don't understand that new feature... for example if you go and watch @callmefib3r it says that he is 25% bot, damn guy is a cyborg, 3 quarters human 1 quarter bot :P
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Hahaha!
I am sure it will be adjusted soon.
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A good initiative if you ask me and I'm in full support. However, my fear is that this open an avenue for abuse too. For instance, I have heard a guy complaining of a fellow who was always jealous of his post. He makes good posts always, but had a jealous fellow downvoting him for reason best known to the guy downvoting. So, this is why I said it could be abused by haters who would do everything to pull you down. My suggestion is that, there should be a mechanism to check abuse on the site and not make it an avenue for someone who wants to settle a personal score.
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that's great, no one should allow to rape reward pool.. But it needs courage to get back downvote..
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