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RE: Rethinking The Position of Upvote Bots in the Steem Ecosystem (without SMTs)

in #steem7 years ago

I agree that bots are an issue. Why bother with quality posts when you can just buy votes. Ned was questioned about this at Steemfest, but he didn't seem bothered. I don't think they want to regulate too much. Some of these boys have a lot of power and it will take a big whale to counter their votes. I wonder if that will happen. If steemit can't show that quality wins then it may die off. I'd hate to see this opportunity get lost.

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I was the guy who asked him that question. His response was exactly the same as a year before, when I asked him about SteemSports: "it is interesting" - and actually this is interesting :D

I think we as a community need to figure out our own way how to handle this situation. IMO we need to reimplement "promoted" feature on steemit. If people want to spent money to promote their content - we should not forbid him doing that, otherwise people will still use bots.

Facts

  • no one is looking into "promoted tab"
  • "promoting tab" is not effective, therefore people are looking for more effective solutions

Solution?

  • Promoted content should be mixed by default into trending page
    • fact: artificially promoted content is already mixed into trending, by voting bots, but right now it is much harder to check how many of paid votes some article got
  • starting from 2nd or 3rd spot on trending, every 10-15 entry on trending should be filled by promoted content
  • with only a few spots on trending page, people will get proportional number of displays (impressions) in comparison to amount of SBD spent on promotion
    • this mean, that if @fknmayhem would spend 50SBD on promotion, and @steevc would spend 100 SBD on promotion, then article of @steevc will appear twice as often on trending page as article of @fknmayhem
  • even with spending just 1 SBD you will have a chance to be displayed on trending page. If you will have some luck and your content will be good, some whale will vote for you!

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I came to this post as I am doing my research right now in crafting a proposal for exactly the solution you are recommending. I have highlighted your point :

artificially promoted content is already mixed into trending, by voting bots.

My intention is to bring a complete solution in a proposal to replace the existing 'promoted' tab as you have the same sentiment, is poorly implemented and inefficient as hell.

What I also what to bring light to, is that all of this rewards being funneled into bots could have been burned to lessen the inflation load on the Steem token.

More so than that, I would like to link my proposal with @jerrybanfield's project proposal whitepaper wherein the funds generated from a system that you have outlined, shall then be directed towards funding projects for the improvement of Steemit itself.

I am currently sourcing all of the important thoughts and points, then moving into the actual mechanics of how it would work.

I am intending to adapt a solution based on Google Adword's auction model mixed in with Facebook Ad's Optimized CPM model, where the higher your Impression to Click-thru ratio is, the lower your cost. As such incentivisizing promoters to focus on garnering impressions by targetting users who will be most likely to be interested in their post.

The promoter should have the ability to have certain function of targetting, choosing specific topics, or even down to users which have engaged with a post of the same topic from another author, or a list of authors even, to see the post, therein increasing the laser targetted focus on who would most likely want to see that.

A system as such would more or less negate a majority of user who utilize the likes of upvote bots as it provides a better platform, all while having the funds they are spending go into projects that may very well aid in the growth of Steemit as a platform as well.

Do you have any thoughts you'd like to add to my rough thought process so far? I think you have outlined essentialy 75% of what I was intending to propose.

God SPeed Brethren.

This. All integrated in the blockchain, completely with transactions mechanism, in order for it to also work on alt-interfaces and, of course, for transparency.

I think we as a community need to figure out our own way how to handle this situation.

I indeed think that's what @ned, and Steem Inc, expect from us. We, Steemians, are to make this happen via the democratic governance structure of the blockchain. Steem Inc does not want to interfere there, and to be honest they shouldn't either. I have previously referred in comments to how governance happens in kingdoms in MMOs... or doesn't.

We, the citizens, define our future. This was also emphasized during @sneak's talk when he mentioned the roadmap.

That said, I hope we can come up with something slightly more novel than every x-th post. :/

It should be native advertising though and also properly disclosed as boosted.

Actually, this will be not very bad - funny thing is, when new people will see that on platform, they will think, that this is a source of all rewards of other users.

And to be honest - I think a lot of users will be less suspicious about that Steemit, even if they will later learn, that Steem works in a different way, and funds from promotion just helps reduce supply of SBD.

That said, I hope we can come up with something slightly more novel than every x-th posts. :/

We do not need to have something perfect. We need to have something better. If this will not work, this can be removed or changed.

This will work. I've done that since 2010, managing a blog network. The behemoths also do it.

Ebay has done it ever since premium listings.

Sometimes we don't need to reinvent the wheel. But boy can dream nevertheless. :D

The promoted tab does seem to have failed. I rarely visit these days and promoting my own posts did nothing much. I have thought there should be a feed that have a better mix and it could include promoted. Trending tends to be the same old people anyway. This is just a site issue rather than the blockchain. Others can create sites with a mixed feed

Guess he wants to see the community band together and overthrow the bots ourselves. A battle is brewing it seems... Hmm maybe it would make a great story...

6 seasons and a movie!

Netflix is about to greenlight it.

I heard u like mudkipz they have some vacant slots to fill in.

I have just the idea boys! Why don't we create a bot to fight the other bots?

Say...a bot that looks through posts and writes a comment with how much the post was contributed to by people vs bots. It can do a calculation and spill out numbers like "This post is 80% artificial with 20% human vote"

A Bot-Fight-Club? 😆 Step right up, Place bets for the bot-battle this evening.

pshh you think i joke but soon enough you guys will see my frankenstein!

Bot wars!

This is a fantastic post, I'm glad you resteemed it or I wouldn't have seen it!

War of Worlds or All Full of Love type of slogfest?

What is All Full Of Love? Let's go with war of worlds

Time to call upon The League of True Steemians to do battle with the bots.

Put on your capes everyone, it's time to save Planet Steem...

I think this social experiment, much like many a MMO game, is expected to self-regulate. The witnesses structure makes this possible.

But that's like politics.

Upvote bots need to be banned and there should be more curation guilds like @Curie. Curie is a great example of a working system that helps people with great content but also reward people who curate.

These guilds should have upvoting power of 1$ so it will split posts that are spam/copy from original work and motivate people to post more on Steemit without a need to use upvote bots to get engagement.

I doubt anyone plans to ban any bots. People will find other ways to seek votes. Desperate people will pay. Steemit is still very small. Let's see what happens as it grows