Are Bid Bots The Only Way?
😎 Bid Bots 😎
Lots of people hate bid bots
We wanna know if they’re ok or not
Cause every post on the trending page
Is only there cause someone paid...
A bot, a bot, a bot, a bot
Is that ok or not?
Are bid bots the only way?
The SteemBirds hit the trending page
Paying STEEM to get votes back
Will this plan bite us in the ass
In the ass
In the ass
Is this a way to promote ourselves
Or just another way to give whales more wealth
Maybe when the future comes
Maybe everyone will run...
A bot, a bot, a bot, a bot
Is that ok or not?
Are bid bots the only way?
The SteemBirds hit the trending page
Paying STEEM to get votes back
Will this plan bite us in the ass
In the ass
In the ass
That was hilarious. So...is it ok to use bid bots..or no...LOL
Is it okay to run bid bot... or not?
Exactly lol, let's get the discussion rolling. What does everyone think?
personally i don't like or use bid bots. it's like walking into a pub of people you don't know and buying everyone a drink so that they like you. just my 2 cents.
It's more like paying the landlord for the best table and a loudhailer so everyone has to listen to what you say. The rest of the pub don't really benefit.
I still can't believe how Steemit Inc totally screwed up when it comes to post promotion - Now we have Trending list that is full of posts with bought votes and only select few benefit from it while the normal users get the short end.
Every third spot should had been preserved for promoted posts on the trending list (Tweakable but probably better than now) with clear indication of promoted post, the funds used to promote then would have been burned and this would had benefitted everyone in the Steem ecosystem.
Has anyone done any research on how many of the top 20 trending posts has been bought votes each day? Would be interesting to see the data
There is 1 post (@kingscrown) in the top 20 that has not had bought votes added.
So trending is just full of bought ads now if we're being honest. Thanks for info.
Yes, it's been mostly that way for months.
The quick solution is to rename it to 'Promoted'.
Interesting to see down-votes from bot owners personal accounts, and no removal of vote from the bot they manage: Well do you agree with the content or not? ahh I forgot, money.
I'm new to steemit and I was always wondering about this. Do these ppl really earn from their posts that lack much information. Now I know why. Sad days ahead for real UGC
It's a circle jerk post instead. Arguably worse IMO
Apparently, there is a 200 SBD prize for the most popular hunt by size of potential payout........
Don't get me started Neal!
lol
Maybe I should have specified, 1 post that has not bought votes prior to posting.
They can change the algorithm for trending at any time. I don't think they anticipated the vote selling business on this scale. I think various people are analysing the posts. There's this alternative trending page
They don't even need to change trending. Steemit Inc easily have the stake to police this. They choose not to.
I'm not sure they want to get involved as they need to try and stay fairly impartial.
Ya they don't vote on anything anymore either... Trying to stay neutral I believe. I think they are working on solutions tho.
Account Based voting will probably solve this and many other issues soon enough.
Yes, me neither but it's been going on for a while now. Might as well adjust and correct the system. I did see @noisy developing something to battle this as well if I saw correct. It gives me hope for Steem that there's people working on fixing this. I'm sure we all have our own visions on how the system should work and as your link shows, we can all try them out also which is great.
Interesting algorithm on that site, never thought of valuing the posts by the weight of their resteemers.
There is so much potential in all creations, I like how a funny song, brings me so much information about what's going on over here.
And half the other posts are telling us that everything is fine, it's not so bad.
My opinion on this is still swaying from side to side, I guess it will be fine as long as people develop alternative algorithms to view the content on the blockchain.
But I still would prefer to have this same system embedded into the blockchain or steemit.com in which funds used to promote would be burned, sharing the profit between everyone.
I'd also prefer the Trending contain something else than just "ads". This current change has very likely impacted efforts towards finding quality content a lot. We would do a lot better, if we aim towards finding quality content and rewarding it rather than encouraging and forcing everyone to buy their way into the spotlight.
At least that's how I feel on this issue today, might be different tomorrow. But we should aim for something better.
There is that system already, it's called the promote button, where the funds sent are going to the null account and there's no inflation of reputation or curation as a result.
Heck, it's like paying one of the pub's lenders, even the landlord isn't seeing much from it.
that's another interesting way to look at it i guess ;)
It's the vote sellers who really win from this game, but I know some pay out some of the profit to those who delegate to them. People are trying different business models on this platform.
open market theory i guess. at least, that's how we describe it.
Didn't Ned say he thought vote sellers were 'an interesting business'?
That's a great analogy.
Yes me i am the same. By the way i even dont have money to pay them😂 also same with the vote for vote posts. And the worst when they just copy paste something. I just wrote a post about it. Crazy😂
Presently until whales and dolphins starts curating new babies with quality post the only way to survive is to use the bid bots.
I write motivational /inspirational post yet I have no audience and there are those who doesn't write up to me and they have enough attention.
So tell me if I have enough money why wouldn't I use bid bots?
Or what's your say? Let's keep it rolling
Because you are cheating, plain and simple. You earn an audience you don't buy it, but if you have the money we have a sensible function to promote, it's under all active posts called aptly the Promote Button, and all the money goes to get burned thus increasing the value of SBD and in turn Steem while you aren't effectively buying your reputation and curation and only benefit in the exposure of being promoted, thus not invalidating the function of curation or rewards in turn, or the basic principle of earning your audience. If you use vote bots you're paying for what people ought to give for free, or their vote.
In my opinion, the Bots have taken the enjoyment out of Steemit. I wanted to Post and share some activities I enjoy and build up a following and maybe make a little money. It seems like nobody up votes and more and almost every time I use a Bot I lose a little bit of money.
I do not understand how a system, Bots, can survive by taking in more money than they pay out
Unless you are already famous, or ultra patient to build up a following... I'm not quite sure how else to go about it...
What's worse IMO is that these bid bots seem to be taking most of the curation rewards as well...
Maybe the bid bots are here to stay
It seems like a game everyone wants to play.
Great work indeed :D
Thanks! I imagine it's just another Steemit phase... but who knows lol
You had me at bots.
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HAHAHAH, funny you used bid bots on this to make a point. . .. ;).. . .. oh WAIT. .. .
Yeah lol, we thought that would be funny. Also, it's been very interesting going through the experience of learning about them over the last couple days... for instance, I did not realize how much they were being used.
yeah massively. see it's a tough one really because i can understanding someone wanting to get the message out and being PROUD of something but when it's just because you want to acquire more wealth to take out of the eco system then the argument kinda falls flat for me.
personally you guys are worth GOLD then just 1's and 0's -- but i guess that's just another rare mined resource too :)
We've all come across content we've probably thought deserved way more rewards than it got or, perhaps should have even been trending and of course it wasn't. And then on the other hand, we've all also seen total shit hit the top of the T-PG.
It is good to know that if you strongly believe in apiece of content you've created... there is at least 1 option to help it get noticed... Unfortunately you need to spend several hundred $ to promote it using bid-bots.
and that's the quandary, the belief is in the eye of the beholder, especially when it comes to promotion.
Hehe 😎
I personally don't hate bid bots.
It all depends on how you use it, its only bad when its abused. I see it as a way of promoting your content( good and creative content) . When you are on board no one knows and at times the babies usually have quality content. If you want to wait without using bid bot you might never be recognized.
The bottom line is this: If you have good contents and you have the money I advice you to use the bid bots.
NOTE: NOTHING THAT WILL NOT BE ABUSE IN THIS WORLD. MONEY SPEAKS THATS WHY MAJORITY ARE ABUSING BID BOTS
D is for Decentralized.
The platform will look exactly in a way YOU make it.
You said in the comment that's because of "whales simply upvoting themselves".
I'm not a whale, I don't even post much, and I've never used a bid bot... (and just recently I flagged few cases of excessive bid bot usage with my negligible SP) but the reality is not that simple as you are saying.
Look at your own voting example: ( 65.96 % self, 47 upvotes, 13 accounts, last 7d ) (source: steemworld.org). Saying that "others do that" is a really bad excuse. Especially that deeds on the blockchain stays forever.
And yes, you are right, there are no evil tools, it all depends on how you use them, that includes various paid voting services (actually calling it "bidbots" is very unprecise, as that's just a subset)
I think that the best alternative for voting bots when it comes to content visibility is a cooperation of a professional and honest manual curators and high staked investors powered by some ways of automation like curation trails on steroids.
That, plus maybe changing author reward split from 75%/25% to something towards 60%/40% or even 50%/50% can in a long run make original, high quality contnet stand out from the crowd and improve the platform.
Low quality content on a trending page makes us look silly.
If we say to the world (through the trending page) that some garbage is worth 1000 STEEM on our platform, then how much they can value STEEM? What profit you will make earning 1000 STEEM if STEEM itself would be worthless?
Also @baah is making a fair point with highly undervalued PROMOTED feature, which needs some more love.
I think 50/50 split would be a great experiment, but this idea has been already discussed for some time and based on my observation, a majority of users like it (dunno if a majority of stake tho).
So I have a question - when should we expect this change? I assume it requires a hard fork (correct me if I'm wrong), so maybe HF20 would be a good fit?
Yes, it's not a new idea, however I'm not sure if that can get into HF20 (I would rather want to keep that separate from other changes), especially if that would mean delaying HF20 even more.
Would it really be that hard to have 50/50 split like you said and a SBD/SP payout option for curators that mirrored author rewards... would be cool to see that option.
Yeah, it's nice to know that if you believe you have good content, there is a way to get it seen. That was never the case before bid bots
Yes because there was enough content curators then.
Now we just have a bunch of whales simply upvoting themselves
You are damn right @orisfina I wish to be a whale someday curating other people. My vote is too small to do a damn thing :(
You are trying your best @tngflx . Imagine if everyone has the same mentality as you and all trying their possible best to curate. Steemit will be a much better place.
Nevertheless i wont give up, i will keep doing my best even though my SP is low. Just wish i could lease some SP because i have seen new babies we need to support
You cannot abuse the Promote Function that is built into steem, regardless of how much money you have, because it's designed to be a net benefit, but when you buy what people give out for free, and help such a demand increase you're abusing the function of curation, which is supposed to reward people and not used for people to reward themselves, that is why we have a flagging function, when people vote themseves they deserve a counter flag and the line between a self-voting is thin, either you're doing it to move your comment up for visibility, or undo a flag that wasn't warranted, or you are doing it to pay yourself, and if everyone did that there wouldn't be any more sense to curation, it will only be voturbation. Vote selling, vote buying, and self-voting are all abusive, and many times it's as obvious as day and night, and if you're here primarily to make money or buy your friends and connections than you've missed the point of it IMO.
You aren't getting my point...
You are taking it personally.
We are only sharing our personal thoughts towards the issue, lets not be sentimental .
It hasn't gotten to that
I didn't take anything personally and I do get your point, and I never was "sentimental".
Ok now you are getting what am driving at
I don't think there is anything wrong with self voting your content. Especially if you spent lot of time creating it and it's "good." I would have a problem with it, if for example you never voted on anyone else's content...At the point as you said "the line" has been crossed.
"If you have the money you can stay and do well here. If you are one of those people that tries to do it with just hard work and passion...good luck with that." says Steemit. We will burry you until you can pay.
I have to admit it is my least favorite aspect of Steemit. A high pay for play staked game.
I liked it when the social aspect had more of an effect instead of just throwing money at it.
I liked the content more when it was about quality instead of bought votes.
Personally, I think it effects how the platform is viewed from the outside. People coming in could be looking at work that got to the top on public opinion alone instead of a weighted wallet.
I try not to use the bots unless it is for another user or for a contest otherwise it would not be seen.
On another note where is my #freethenipple song😋😘
Yeah, I personally think we're just going through a "bit bot" phase. It's not my favourite Steemit phase but it is interesting. I really like the idea of moving toward account based voting... that might be the best solution.
It is kinda interesting watching different seasons of steemit evolve. One always has to be up with the times ha ha. One moment something can be good - but two months later and it is crippiling something we didn't expect. Steemit is a delicate beast at times, it never seems to know what it wants to do with itself.
Now you put me in a quandary. I love the song, oh those harmonies, but I don't generally support posts that trend on paid bots. I'd love to see the trending page with posts that the community actually liked. There are alternative trending pages.
But as it's you guys I'll give you a vote anyway. Maybe this song can trend and get people to think more about what they want this site to be.
Thanks @steevc! We definitely don't want to put our friends in a quandary. I also have a hard time justifying voting on bit bot posts lol.
I'm sailing the same boat as Steve but seeing as you guys are original content through and through, you can have a vote from me as well :D
I really feel the need to chime in on this.
I don't pretend for a second that the bidbots don't see a lot of abuse....but not being willing to support content because bots were used isn't really fair at all.
Clearly I have a biased opinion here, but I think there is a correct way to use the bots and I think I am an example of it.
However, your mentality backfires my approach.
I create original content, content that doesn't just cost me time to create....it costs me a good chunk financially to do so.
Through my show, I'm not just creating content either.
I'm onboarding new users from the locations I travel to, I'm helping strengthen communities in the regions I travel to by hosting meetups and I'm introducing the steemit community to the members they share this space with.
With my show, I've created a product, a product that has an overhead and due to that, a need to advertise said product.
However, unlike others, my goal is to use this marketing to grow an organic viewership that will in time replace the use of bots completely.
Can I grow this show 100% organically?
Of course I can, but what I can't do is sustain the ability to create the content.
Using the bots to advertise my material is helping fund the project plain and simple. If I didn't have this tool available to me, there's no way I could afford to do the work I'm doing.
By choosing to not support the content because it's used these marketing tools, simply prolongs how long I have to continue to use them.
If we really want to see great content make it's way to this platform, we need to provide sustainability for that content, but until that sustainability comes using these tools allows me the chance to keep doing what I'm doing and grow little by little.
Content should be judged on the content, not on how the creator managed to get the content to you.
It's not a black and white issue. I can see you are working hard on this. Do the 'bots' make you much profit? Might you actually make more by not using them if it got you more support from whales? So many questions. You have a good following and I would think many of them would be supporting you regardless of whether you are on the trending page. As it is that is not an interesting place for many of us due to all the low quality posts getting boosted.
Steemit was intended to reward good quality content through community moderation. Buying votes bypasses that. It may boost your reputation too, but that's not due to people liking what you do. It just feels wrong to me and I think it harms Steemit in general. I want this platform to succeed and so do many others. Others just treat it as a profit opportunity. I'm not accusing you of that, but the freedom we have here allows everyone to do what they want, with the proviso that others can exercise their voting power to pass judgement.
I wish you all the best with what you do. I may well vote up some of your posts and I wouldn't flag you as I have with some posts that didn't deserve massive rewards. Not that my vote makes much difference.
The bots don't really make me profit (not saying they never have).
They provide me visibility that is allowing a slow but steady organic growth.
If I had whale support...I wouldn't even use the bots.
And...your support and respect has priceless value to me...it makes a huge difference, regardless of the monetary value of that support @steevc
Yea, that was kind of the point with this one. I only recently discovered that bid-bots was the primary factor in what was hitting the trending pg, and also... more interesting, that many of the bigger players i followed and enjoyed content from where also using them.
Great song! I hate that bid bots have become a thing on Steem but as long as they exist, I'd like to see people using them to push good content to the top. That's why we've started using them - because the trending page is filled with garbage most of the time and I'd rather see our videos above that junk. I think it gives a better view of Steem to the outsider when they first come to the trending page.
Yeah, that’s basically how I feel too. I think it’s probably just anothet Steemit phase. And there are totally pro and cons. Like you guys... we will try to use them only in the best possible way 😎
I think bid bots is just for the minnows that need exposure for them to cope up the fast pace of the steaming steem. But many of our fellow steemians including those huge guys are using also bid bots. We just need guidelines and policy on this matter to control the use of bots.
Okay, so I'm "old school." I never vote for myself because, well, it just doesn't seem quite proper... It's sorta like a form of masturbation, which is fine insofar as far as masturbation is concerned, it's cool and all, but not so far as stroking one's content is concerned. Ha-hahaa... You guys rock, man... at the end of the day, it's all about telling the truth as we see it - and I love the way you two go about revealing relevant questions that many of us need to ask ourselves. With that, I'll leave you guy's with this...
Thanks man! So far are asses are fine... but yeah we like to stick them out from time to time.