You need to use bots because if you are newbie, even if you are writing great posts, nobody will see that.With bots, your article can be trending and more exposed. This should be changed by developers for Steemit become more successful...
Yep. I completely agree with you. As a new user it seems like using bots is manditory to find any exposure. Also writing posts in my local language means almost no one would see it no matter if they are good or not.
I’ve followed you for a while and have often wondered about the contradiction between the work you do combatting reward pool rape whilst simultaneously running a bid bot. I could never reconcile the two. I was almost at the point of removing my witness vote from your account for this reason. (I’m not really that influential but hey! A guy can only control what he can control 😂)
Reading this post though showed me the discussion from a couple of perspectives I’d never considered before. It’s really opened my eyes to a few things. These kinds of discussions fascinated me and I think they are essential to the long term success of steemit. Getting inside the head of someone who is working so hard in the background to make the system better has been great.
Great work @themarkymark. Keep it up please! We need more like you!
Great post!! I have recently discovered the vote bot world. It can be addicting playing the game to get the highest vote possible for the money spent. I also see the value in my reputation growing. I was worried about the use of bots and what people would think, but then I saw a lot of high reputation people using bots. It was encouraging and disappointing at the same time. It seemed okay to use bots, but those high rep people weren't making the money I first thought they were either.
I do one post a day that I spend a lot of time on. It is all original, my writing, and my videos. I think I was featured in your curation digest a couple times. I have a blog with 450 articles, but I don't copy anything from it. I also do my best to share my posts on facebook and Twitter, which have 63k and 24k followers.
To be honest i love reading your posts and without meeting you i believe you are a stand up guy so please don't take this personal. I think the bots are bullshit. I truly believe it takes away from finding "quality content" and rewarding it. It makes it more of a game of , i can buy a big swinging dick and shove it in everyones face. I am very new here but in my 1 month of being here i have totally stopped looking at trending and rarely look at hot because i know they are mostly all bought and paid for trash articles. i stick with new and what comes up on my feed that i have verified are good content providers by following them. I have seen a LOT of good articles in NEW that end up with like $1.25 by the end of the 7 days and you can tell they poured their heart and souls into it. So i give you my idea as a new guy that has a different view point and is by all aspects probably just a dumb ass. My view on it is that the bots are part of our lifes now, no going back. The solution might just be right in front of our faces and you said it yourself in your post. Promotion......We have a promotion section that no one looks at anyways. Why not bump a post over to the promoted section once it becomes promoted by a bot?
Why not bump a post over to the promoted section once it becomes promoted by a bot?
You answered your own question: "We have a promotion section that no one looks at anyways."
Like it or not, bots are advertising, and advertising is everywhere. If there are no bots, the steem power would be used and sold privately under the table using circle votes (which already happens now).
As most people know, I run @buildawhale and the Curation Digest so I will have a biased opinion but I also believe in my opinion.
Well @themarkymark, then, just for throwing something non-flammable in your bonfire. In order to keep in control the height of the flames of your biased opinion and belief in your opinion that bidbots owners are doing a great service to our community. I also believe you prolly would like to read a post of a good friend to complement your bias with something else. Check this out! }:)
Interesting post, not sure I understand all of it as I am still new to Steemit, but I am learning fast!
I agree with your points regarding the need for quality content and pushing out those after a quick buck. People like that will ruin this social platform.
I have mixed feelings about steemit after spending a month on it so far.
I spent a week writing an original peice about the future of money (I am an accountant by trade), got it reviewed by a bank CEO and others. And earned 0.07 SBD
I then copies a tweet about steem being on binance and earned 4 times more.
I think if those like you really want quality content writers to stay on this platform, you really need to find a way to give new genuine people on steemit some help.
I am happy to upvote or flag posts if you want to lend me some steem power. Or any other way I can help. I really like the principles of this network. But we need to make it better of we want people to leave Facebook, Twitter and Instagram and come here.
That means that ppl. should get to read stuff first, in order to upvote... not count on bots, they cunt read... but then again,writers are not readers, someone need to Upvote them
...
i created a bot on twitter @FBPE_bot to help with the stopbrexit campaign. So I am not so keen to totally dismiss them. They can have a part to play, but maybe we need to create a parallel reward system for them to avoid people simply gaming the system and up-voting everything.
It seems odd that every account has unlimited up votes, maybe this can be limited and additional upvotes have to be purchased (with higher score users having more votes etc)
I try to break it down to simplicity, the buying of votes.
This is something you do not want your politicians to do, use the voting power you give them to who will pay them the most. You wish they would use that vote for the greater good and security of a preferred way of living.
Buying a vote is buying a vote, at what point do things change?
When whatever happens around the world in politics we call it corruption, but in US we call it lobbing.. When u understand ...then you get the answer...
I am not against you, I follow you as a personal choice. My opinions can be controversial and outspoken. This does not mean the things I write are for or against a position, merely an opinion.
If everyone used the same bots all of equal amount, everyone would get the same advertisement for their post. This would leave everyone with the same level of exposure for their post. However, the use of a bot does not reflect the quality of a post. Been automated it will vote on anything. Something typing good morning in the AM , Afternoon at midday, evening and later goodnight while using bots can generate as much as another who spends time writing the content sourcing images and compiling those things to fit together. will get the same. Bot's offer the chance for easy money, expecting this system not to be abused is blinded vision?
I have no problems with not liking bots, but I just didn't think it had any comparison to politicians (assume there was some reference to witnesses here) as it isn't quite related is my point.
As for bot and easy money, right now they are not profitable. So using them is best for content you believe is quality and will gain organic upvotes (which is how it should be).
If people spend their time and effort on the content they post, than they should be entitled to reward themselves with upvote bots.
The thing is there are lots of tutorial on Youtube that promises people that they could earn 100$ a day by posting article upvoting, spam commenting. It damages the credibility of the platform.
Really?... "If people spend their time and effort on the content they post, than they should be entitled to reward themselves with upvote bots"
That's like saying... If you have a hardon.. ur entitled to jerk off... Makes bunch of sense, It's like I'm gonna write a letter to myself... then I'll read it, and I'll cry, but I should make money on it..
My idea behind it? If you have to use a bot to upvote your posts, that automatically tells me that your own content just isn't that good. If you pay for a bot to upvote your post, that also tells me that you personally down even believe your own content is worthwhile.
It is a different story if some other user entirely uses a vote bot to upvote your content, provided you're not also said user as an alternative account trying to game the system. If someone were to really like something I wrote, as to decide to not only reblog it but also vote it and use a vote bot to vote it up as well, I'll consider it a good job.
But I'm only able to tell if said bot is being used on me, because I only control this one singular account, no access to any others. So if a vote bot happens across me because someone paid or bid or whatever, it tells me they think my content is good. But alas, to your perspective, it could very well be me using an alt to vote myself.
That's how I see bots. I'm very iffy on them. And since nobody can personally tell if I own an account that's using a bot to upvote something of mine, I'd personally rather them simply not use a bot to upvote my posts.
Yes, I'm fully aware. From what I've seen of the community at large is that using bots is considered a huge no no. Some people worship bots, some are ambivalent, others it's just outright toxic that fuel flagging wars and I'd rather not get involved in any flag war.
Except for the grumpycat incident, I have yet to have a single person come up to me and say they were flagged for using a bot in over 6 months and ~1000 votes/day.
People getting flagged are generally posting low effort, spam, stolen content or in some sort of feud.
I'd rather be safe rather than sorry, what with all this talk about how terrible BernieSanders and Grumpycat are, among others here and there, I don't want to risk my presence on here. Granted I'm not solely here for the money, but it is nice.
It's only this week and a half they went negative, they almost always were positive ROI. Still are for many windows, the demand is just so high right now.
That means they're no longer profitable. And in long term, they won't be: there will be way more demand going on.
However, how is it possible that some bots have more voting power than bids yet they end up with neg profits? Thanks.
Because the bot tracker site factors in curation % (25%). So profitability is based on 75% of the vote. I still see lots of windows still profitable on the site.
It's not 90% of the windows anymore though as it used to be.
Excellent write up, and I'm with you the whole way.
Not sure completely, but it's my perception that bots are getting much more difficult to "come out ahead" and that's a good thing. It means it's really not worth it for you to shit post, you need extra momentum. It's not entirely true since there are times where I think you can make profit still with bots, but I suspect that because more people are using it, it is less reliable.
Also, is it just me, it is the trending and hot pages an improvement over what I've remembered in the past?
Thank you also for the extra work you do in dismantling abuse networks and publicizing their existence. I actually think the bots are the wrong focus in general, in terms of abuse priority. The priority should be eyes on the highest earners, if they are clearly abusing their stake on (comparatively) crappy content. But I think you are already on that as well. Cheers.
You need to use bots because if you are newbie, even if you are writing great posts, nobody will see that.With bots, your article can be trending and more exposed. This should be changed by developers for Steemit become more successful...
Yep. I completely agree with you. As a new user it seems like using bots is manditory to find any exposure. Also writing posts in my local language means almost no one would see it no matter if they are good or not.
actually, I'd say, actively participating with other peoples content via the comments section is a much more effective way to get noticed, here.
True,but many people are not patient. You need to invest time and hard work to advance and at the end, hard work will payoff.
Quality Content needs just a few Quality Bot: in my opinion, if you use too much bots, the post's quality will be affected.
My next questioning poll subject will be on freedom and Steem... will you partecipate?
Thank you? 🙏🏻
This is a fascinating post.
I’ve followed you for a while and have often wondered about the contradiction between the work you do combatting reward pool rape whilst simultaneously running a bid bot. I could never reconcile the two. I was almost at the point of removing my witness vote from your account for this reason. (I’m not really that influential but hey! A guy can only control what he can control 😂)
Reading this post though showed me the discussion from a couple of perspectives I’d never considered before. It’s really opened my eyes to a few things. These kinds of discussions fascinated me and I think they are essential to the long term success of steemit. Getting inside the head of someone who is working so hard in the background to make the system better has been great.
Great work @themarkymark. Keep it up please! We need more like you!
:)
Great post!! I have recently discovered the vote bot world. It can be addicting playing the game to get the highest vote possible for the money spent. I also see the value in my reputation growing. I was worried about the use of bots and what people would think, but then I saw a lot of high reputation people using bots. It was encouraging and disappointing at the same time. It seemed okay to use bots, but those high rep people weren't making the money I first thought they were either.
I do one post a day that I spend a lot of time on. It is all original, my writing, and my videos. I think I was featured in your curation digest a couple times. I have a blog with 450 articles, but I don't copy anything from it. I also do my best to share my posts on facebook and Twitter, which have 63k and 24k followers.
To be honest i love reading your posts and without meeting you i believe you are a stand up guy so please don't take this personal. I think the bots are bullshit. I truly believe it takes away from finding "quality content" and rewarding it. It makes it more of a game of , i can buy a big swinging dick and shove it in everyones face. I am very new here but in my 1 month of being here i have totally stopped looking at trending and rarely look at hot because i know they are mostly all bought and paid for trash articles. i stick with new and what comes up on my feed that i have verified are good content providers by following them. I have seen a LOT of good articles in NEW that end up with like $1.25 by the end of the 7 days and you can tell they poured their heart and souls into it. So i give you my idea as a new guy that has a different view point and is by all aspects probably just a dumb ass. My view on it is that the bots are part of our lifes now, no going back. The solution might just be right in front of our faces and you said it yourself in your post. Promotion......We have a promotion section that no one looks at anyways. Why not bump a post over to the promoted section once it becomes promoted by a bot?
You answered your own question: "We have a promotion section that no one looks at anyways."
Like it or not, bots are advertising, and advertising is everywhere. If there are no bots, the steem power would be used and sold privately under the table using circle votes (which already happens now).
that is what i was trying to accomplish was get them to where i don't have to look at them :)
Well said @doomsdaychassis. I concur with your opinion 100%.
Well @themarkymark, then, just for throwing something non-flammable in your bonfire. In order to keep in control the height of the flames of your biased opinion and belief in your opinion that bidbots owners are doing a great service to our community. I also believe you prolly would like to read a post of a good friend to complement your bias with something else. Check this out! }:)
Yeah! Click & Read. Everyday we have something new to explore and valuable tidbits to learn from. :)
Interesting post, not sure I understand all of it as I am still new to Steemit, but I am learning fast!
I agree with your points regarding the need for quality content and pushing out those after a quick buck. People like that will ruin this social platform.
I have mixed feelings about steemit after spending a month on it so far.
I spent a week writing an original peice about the future of money (I am an accountant by trade), got it reviewed by a bank CEO and others. And earned 0.07 SBD
I then copies a tweet about steem being on binance and earned 4 times more.
I think if those like you really want quality content writers to stay on this platform, you really need to find a way to give new genuine people on steemit some help.
I am happy to upvote or flag posts if you want to lend me some steem power. Or any other way I can help. I really like the principles of this network. But we need to make it better of we want people to leave Facebook, Twitter and Instagram and come here.
Kabir
That means that ppl. should get to read stuff first, in order to upvote... not count on bots, they cunt read... but then again,writers are not readers, someone need to Upvote them
...
i created a bot on twitter @FBPE_bot to help with the stopbrexit campaign. So I am not so keen to totally dismiss them. They can have a part to play, but maybe we need to create a parallel reward system for them to avoid people simply gaming the system and up-voting everything.
It seems odd that every account has unlimited up votes, maybe this can be limited and additional upvotes have to be purchased (with higher score users having more votes etc)
I try to break it down to simplicity, the buying of votes.
This is something you do not want your politicians to do, use the voting power you give them to who will pay them the most. You wish they would use that vote for the greater good and security of a preferred way of living.
Buying a vote is buying a vote, at what point do things change?
When whatever happens around the world in politics we call it corruption, but in US we call it lobbing.. When u understand ...then you get the answer...
to call a bribe by any other name is still a bribe. And we are not only talking about the US, There is more to the world then the US.
What does this have to do with politicians?
Steemit probably has nothing to do with politicians, However the buying of votes does need a reference.
It's more about advertising than politicians. I mean I like eggs but I wouldn't blurt it out.
I am not against you, I follow you as a personal choice. My opinions can be controversial and outspoken. This does not mean the things I write are for or against a position, merely an opinion.
If everyone used the same bots all of equal amount, everyone would get the same advertisement for their post. This would leave everyone with the same level of exposure for their post. However, the use of a bot does not reflect the quality of a post. Been automated it will vote on anything. Something typing good morning in the AM , Afternoon at midday, evening and later goodnight while using bots can generate as much as another who spends time writing the content sourcing images and compiling those things to fit together. will get the same. Bot's offer the chance for easy money, expecting this system not to be abused is blinded vision?
I have no problems with not liking bots, but I just didn't think it had any comparison to politicians (assume there was some reference to witnesses here) as it isn't quite related is my point.
As for bot and easy money, right now they are not profitable. So using them is best for content you believe is quality and will gain organic upvotes (which is how it should be).
If people spend their time and effort on the content they post, than they should be entitled to reward themselves with upvote bots.
The thing is there are lots of tutorial on Youtube that promises people that they could earn 100$ a day by posting article upvoting, spam commenting. It damages the credibility of the platform.
Really?... "If people spend their time and effort on the content they post, than they should be entitled to reward themselves with upvote bots"
That's like saying... If you have a hardon.. ur entitled to jerk off... Makes bunch of sense, It's like I'm gonna write a letter to myself... then I'll read it, and I'll cry, but I should make money on it..
well said!
My idea behind it? If you have to use a bot to upvote your posts, that automatically tells me that your own content just isn't that good. If you pay for a bot to upvote your post, that also tells me that you personally down even believe your own content is worthwhile.
It is a different story if some other user entirely uses a vote bot to upvote your content, provided you're not also said user as an alternative account trying to game the system. If someone were to really like something I wrote, as to decide to not only reblog it but also vote it and use a vote bot to vote it up as well, I'll consider it a good job.
But I'm only able to tell if said bot is being used on me, because I only control this one singular account, no access to any others. So if a vote bot happens across me because someone paid or bid or whatever, it tells me they think my content is good. But alas, to your perspective, it could very well be me using an alt to vote myself.
That's how I see bots. I'm very iffy on them. And since nobody can personally tell if I own an account that's using a bot to upvote something of mine, I'd personally rather them simply not use a bot to upvote my posts.
You are free to think that, but the entire world works off advertising.
Yes, I'm fully aware. From what I've seen of the community at large is that using bots is considered a huge no no. Some people worship bots, some are ambivalent, others it's just outright toxic that fuel flagging wars and I'd rather not get involved in any flag war.
Except for the grumpycat incident, I have yet to have a single person come up to me and say they were flagged for using a bot in over 6 months and ~1000 votes/day.
People getting flagged are generally posting low effort, spam, stolen content or in some sort of feud.
All the same, it leaves a very negative impression on newbies, and I'm still a newbie here.
"Newbies" typically have a lot of impressions, not all of them are accurate.
I'd rather be safe rather than sorry, what with all this talk about how terrible BernieSanders and Grumpycat are, among others here and there, I don't want to risk my presence on here. Granted I'm not solely here for the money, but it is nice.
Most of bots have negative ROI's most of the hours of the day, -15% to -20%. Why do you say most of them have positive ROI?
It's only this week and a half they went negative, they almost always were positive ROI. Still are for many windows, the demand is just so high right now.
That means they're no longer profitable. And in long term, they won't be: there will be way more demand going on.
However, how is it possible that some bots have more voting power than bids yet they end up with neg profits? Thanks.
Because the bot tracker site factors in curation % (25%). So profitability is based on 75% of the vote. I still see lots of windows still profitable on the site.
It's not 90% of the windows anymore though as it used to be.
Excellent write up, and I'm with you the whole way.
Not sure completely, but it's my perception that bots are getting much more difficult to "come out ahead" and that's a good thing. It means it's really not worth it for you to shit post, you need extra momentum. It's not entirely true since there are times where I think you can make profit still with bots, but I suspect that because more people are using it, it is less reliable.
Also, is it just me, it is the trending and hot pages an improvement over what I've remembered in the past?
Thank you also for the extra work you do in dismantling abuse networks and publicizing their existence. I actually think the bots are the wrong focus in general, in terms of abuse priority. The priority should be eyes on the highest earners, if they are clearly abusing their stake on (comparatively) crappy content. But I think you are already on that as well. Cheers.