RE: The Daily Coverup -- Transparency Under Attack.
Hi @transparencybot (@bycoleman), while I can appreciate the effort you're putting into something you believe to be worthwhile, there are some major issues with what you're doing. Allow me to explain my downvote and to provide some "transparency"...
I recently started an initiative called @minnowfund which aims to help new Steemians grow through education and SP delegation. I created an article about the launch and purchased votes to get a little attention to the post, and get it in the eyes of those we might help.
(This initiative is 100% supported by an upvote bot btw)
A few days later I see your comment on my post which is announcing that we need more transparency on Steemit about upvote bots and the detrimental impact of said bots. You go on to ask for upvotes in your comment (see below)...
This is seen as spam here on Steemit and I'm sure you probably know that... which is why you've changed the text on your new comments going out. So why not mention this in the article above before starting a war with other users? No worries, I'm here to provide that "transparency" to your followers lol.
I also would like to point out that your opinion of bots and transparency.. is just that.. your opinion. You may share the same opinions with others and I feel that those opinions should be respected. But it really doesn't give you the right to go around and spam people's posts. At a minimum, I would recommend adding an opt-out response so people can reply with "stop" and your bot will not send out further spam on their posts.
Now.. I won't go into the whole debate about upvote bots. There's a million different opinions on what we should (or should not) do about them. I personally run an upvote bot service and I spend a lot of time each day manually going through posts to see what my upvote bot is supporting. I blacklist several users a day when it comes to plagiarism, spam, abuse, or just crap content. I also don't allow last-minute votes, or certain tags to be used: nsfw, steepshot, or dmania. I'm against abuse on the platform and the promotion of those who put in little effort.
But my opinion (and yes, it's just my own) is that upvote bots are perfectly fine when the bot owner is taking steps to ensure that they're not promoting complete garbage to the community. And until any changes are done on the blockchain level, they are here to stay. I personally feel that with the introduction of Hivemind/Communities all this talk about bots will fizzle out. For the time being, I guess the "Trending" section will be full of articles all about what's wrong with the Trending section lol. What's funny to me is the amount of people complaining about Trending and using upvote bots to boost their complaints. Anyways, I digress.
So let's talk a little about transparency. This I find rather funny. I mean, we're talking about the Steem blockchain right!? What's NOT transparent about it? To say that it's hard for somebody to find out if upvote bots were used to promote a post is downright silly. It doesn't take but one click on a post to find out. And I don't feel that people are really trying to hide it in the first place anyway. It's become part of our ecosystem, whether we like it or not. But transparency has always been here and we really don't need a bot to go spamming around on people's posts to figure that out.
And although I don't have any plans of boosting a post over $50 worth anytime soon, I want to let you know upfront that I do downvote spam on my posts, including the @minnowfund's articles. So if you need to, go ahead and put me in a list of channels not to comment on if you need to. It's nothing personal, but I downvote all spam on my posts no matter who they're from.
Thanks for taking the time to read!
Thank you for the reply, it is very much appreciated.
The message as been changed and no longer asks for an upvote or delegation.
The bot does nothing more than enumerate the use of bidbots on a particular post that has received bidbot payouts in excess of $50.00. The amount received from each bot is not easily obtainable by the average visitor to a post, therefor this enumeration does expand on the available information to aid in the user experience.
This is NOT a judgement of your work or any other post, just information presented in a way all Stemian's can use it as they see fit.
I truly believe that this will help your mission as much as it helps the platform, as quality work such as yours will be curated manually and organically by your followers and new comers, while articles that do not have community curation will drop from the trending list.
I hope you will give transparency a real shot.
Blessings
Transparency's posts are not spam. It is extremely interesting to be able to easily see that a poster is gaming the system by purchasing votes. You people who want to keep the rest of us from seeing that you game the system are like people who are caught masterbating. Very embarrassing for you. Hilarious for the rest of us!
Some of us are investors. Steemit does not need transparency since it is a blockchain (LEDGER). I'm not going to go to a tropical island to bring salt water and sand. If you spend 4 hours or more researching and putting together an article then use $20 of YOUR hard earned money to promote it's visibility, what have you done wrong? "I don't have $50 on MY posts so now I want to say it's not fair that you forked over your own cash to?" Who is gaming the system in a world where it takes money to make money? You DO realize that steemit is a crypto-CURRENCY and without investors you can have this platform back and everything in it because every steem in existence won't be worth a dollar put together... Without money, steemit might as well follow facebook and start giving likes.
It is technically spam. Defintion of spam. Provided by the all knowing wikipedia.
"Electronic spamming is the use of electronic messaging systems to send an unsolicited message (spam), especially advertising, as well as sending messages repeatedly on the same site. "
While I don't mind it when it ends up on my posts, because I am fine with people knowing if I spent money on a bit-bot. It is still spam nonetheless, I did not request it to be added to my post, so by definition it is unsolicited.
Just because you like it doesn't make it not spam. It just means you like spam (and apparently people who get caught masterbating?). Nothing wrong with that I guess. We all have our things.
Thanks for the humor; I like you already. I've been online since way before the Internet, and disagree strongly about @transparencybot's comments being spam. However, they would be less intrusive if they just stated the bottom line and included a link for people to click into the detail.
The fact that anyone could research the information doesn't make it of no value. I'm not going to research every poster that I follow. I like having the information right there, under the post.
Motives do not make something spam. What makes an item spam is that its presence degrades the experience rather than contributes to it.
I have been using Bitcoin since 2011. Doesn't mean I am significantly more knowledgeable than someone who found it in 2013 (when most other people did), and spent more time than I have researching, and building actual applications on blockchian. Time != wisdom. Time + knowledge = Wisdom.
Still spam by the definition of the word.
As the bottom part of the message has a built in solicitation.
"@Transparencybot is a non-profit initiative, please consider supporting it and the transparency it brings to our platform."
I agree and have already suggested to @transparencybot that he/she remove all of the spammy parts and put all of the detail and the verbage onto web pages, to reduce the comment to a single line that contains two links.
Your definition of spam is incomplete, as relevant comments to posts aren't spam. @transparencybot's comments aren't spam, as they directly comment on the post's relevance to the community, and part of that relevance is that they are advertising.
Buying botvotes is advertising, which is closer to the definition of spam than you should feel comfortable with.
Just because you didn't ask for comments relevant to your post in ways you would prefer not to discuss doesn't make them spam. That position hints at a desire to censor opinion you disagree with, rather than support as free speech.
Just because you don't like it doesn't make it spam. If you post on social media, you are inviting relevant comments, and comments on your ad strategy are relevant to your post if you are advertising.
So, your projection of masturbatory spam-loving on @ideafarm is just revelatory of your own 'thing'.
If you would have read the entire context of the conversation you would have seen that I don't mind the posts that transparency bot leaves. I just provided the definition and said that his was incorrect. I actually followed him because his response to others is quite entertaining.
I don't mind a difference of opinion I do mind uninformed responses.
Either way doesn't matter much now as I have muted you and won't even know if you respond.
I note that people incapable of conforming their conception of reality to the actual thing end up incapable of dealing with it.
Thanks for muting me, so I can display my true character in my response, knowing you won't be seeing it.
Others will, and that's the point of social media.
Not advertising your posts to your peers, like a business to it's customers.
I note that your character is revealed by your actions, and treating your peers as business opportunities speaks volumes about your exceptionalism in your own eyes.
Bullshit. The comment is directly relevant to your post, and discusses it. That's not spam.
IMHO, paid promotion of posts without openly stating it is spam.
@transparencybot is working to prevent that spam, which is overwhelming the platform. If we recognize that people conferring with one another is the basis of society, then what place has paid advertising or promotion of such commentary? Essentially, such paid promotion is a form of lying about the validity of the PoV of the commentary, by elevating as if it were widely supported by actual people.
Which it isn't.
As the platform is already perceived by many as so impossible to so confer organically with actual people that buying botvotes is necessary to converse, the value of the society to the people conversing is being degraded to utter pointlessness.
You are basically converting a public forum for people into a cryptomining scheme.
@transparencybot is right on the money when it comes to the long term effects of bots voting.
You are just trying to protect your mining with whatever you can conjure up to divert attention from the harm you are doing to the platform, and the society it supports, so you can keep mining the rewards pool, taking rewards from content creators that it should be going to.