I share your sentiments, as you know. But, a couple things I would like to add for any readers out there who are making use of pay-for-vote bots, is that;
The whales are still earning on curation rewards after selling their votes. The whole point of curation rewards was so that people could earn from the Steem power by voting on quality content. Now the whales who are doing this, are earning curation rewards for seizing and auctioning off a portion of the rewards pool.
Because so much of the reward pool is now reserved for "pay for vote bots," the whales that would previously have been voting on the content they come across anyway, are no longer doing so anywhere near as much. So, people have essentially started paying to ensure that the whales stop voting for good content, and instead vote for whomever is willing to pay them. This is driving a lot of the self-voting that is going on because people who are not using the bots are having an immensely hard time making any money worth the time they're giving to Steemit because the whales have stopped curating correctly.
This is killing Steemit. And very fucking quickly.
Decent post, @clayboyn and thanks for raising some awareness of this, because everyone seems to have their head in the sand on this one.
"Network and get better" absolutely what other way is there if you truly believe in the steemit platform. I find the most contentment In curating awesome posts I've found hidden in the feed that are undervoted. Feels great to give recognition to others for mutually beneficial content!
Well, unless someone DV this, I just added $3 to your post - and will send you something again like before if needed WRT this and or the post being under valued like I usually say with your content.
I work hard at engagement here, and at helping new people.
Both things you have done also and I know, because I have seen it.
You and I have both spoken out against some of the practices here and it has cost us both in many ways.
I have always looked long term at things here.
I wanted you to know also that the Steemit Dev's have contacted me.
They have looked at one of my series I run, and using it to take all the user feedback for ideas.
The "Steemit Needs Series" --- I compiled a bunch of data and the posts from 9/13 posts in that series I could reasonably find and emailed the overview to them today.
That was 2 hrs of solid work trying to do what I hope for here--- see Steemit survive and prosper and do it the right way.
You always make good posts and I am glad we are friends.
But if adding value of a upwards of $5 or so to a post does attract others to add value as they see there is value in the content by just glancing. Minnows often cannot afford to send 5 SBD, so sending 1 SBD that boosts another minnow and gives them a better opportunity to generate more income from the post seems like it does more to add to the community than take away.
It's all perspective, but I've been doing this for a year and it's got to be the most garbage state I've ever seen the platform in. I honestly prefer the days where everyone was just flagging each other and no one got paid to this bullshit. If the only reason people are voting on a post is because they think other people are voting on it then odds are they aren't reading it anyway. You can scroll through my feed and see how many people I try to promote that I can't even get up to a dollar anymore and it's pretty ridiculous because we have plenty of people posting plagiarized content getting insane payouts. Everyone is entitled to their own approach, but if things don't change I'll go back to the old way of using all of my voting power to flag instead of increase rewards.
I flag the fuck out of plagiarized content at 100% every time I see it. And I agree the state that the bots are in is currently out of control, but all things in flux. I'm sure it'll pass as all things tend to do. I definitely understand what you're saying though. :)
The plagiarizing post that make lots of money is extremely discouraging for me to try to produce any original content. I've seen people repost a youtube video, news stories off of websites and had nothing to it and make than my account is worth in a single post.
I don't know if this is related to the steady decline in the price of STEEM over the past few months.
I agree. Bots are like a nuclear arms race and it's sacrilegious to suggest that we would be better off with regulations on the, to any witness or whale. There are two reasons why steemit is unstustainable (I think it'll have a good long run though, however corporate and fake it becomes). I'm just enjoying all the awesome people here right now and the fact that my writing is finally being read where at patreon I was at a loss as to how to get it out there, hopefully, the big fish get their act together and focus their energy on growing the small fish who create quality content, and not just the first seekers but people like us as well.
I have seen one user where the same six people vote on every post and it nets about $20/post. I assume they all do the same and earn a tidy sum that way. Drags the system down
Had a guy with 1400+ new accounts with no value doing similar shit and they had no investment in the platform. Appealing to greedy people to stop being greedy is mostly a waste of my time, but I hope explaining how it mathematically fucks all of us will wake up a few of them.
Ya I was checking it out earlier. The problem with flagging that kind of shit, and some of us do, is that it drains power that we normally use for rewarding new users. The people that control most of the voting power are the ones selling their voting power and that leaves people that actually give a shit without enough power to do anything really.
It looks like there are many of us who are in agreement about this fact. I'm glad to see it's not just me :)
I posted about the upvote bot scheme .. 8 days ago according to my blog. I thought the title was clever "The Epic Failure of Steemit, and Why you Should Care", but apparently 66 views resulted in 22 upvotes, so only 33.33% of people cared.. not a very promising result. I even tried to promote the post, but still nothing stuck.
As long as enough of us continue to post about this atrocity, hopefully it will eventually get enough exposure for a conglomerate of whales to actually do something about it (other than build more bots).
It's a good thing I never deal with the bots lol. I did think they were a good thing at one time but I was too lazy to join and didn't really know how.
How much have you invested so far into steemit and why?
@clayboyn, I find myself more susceptible to relying on bots when I am not seeing fruit from a post. I have preached that patience is key on steemit, and I need to practice what I preach.
I share your sentiments, as you know. But, a couple things I would like to add for any readers out there who are making use of pay-for-vote bots, is that;
The whales are still earning on curation rewards after selling their votes. The whole point of curation rewards was so that people could earn from the Steem power by voting on quality content. Now the whales who are doing this, are earning curation rewards for seizing and auctioning off a portion of the rewards pool.
Because so much of the reward pool is now reserved for "pay for vote bots," the whales that would previously have been voting on the content they come across anyway, are no longer doing so anywhere near as much. So, people have essentially started paying to ensure that the whales stop voting for good content, and instead vote for whomever is willing to pay them. This is driving a lot of the self-voting that is going on because people who are not using the bots are having an immensely hard time making any money worth the time they're giving to Steemit because the whales have stopped curating correctly.
This is killing Steemit. And very fucking quickly.
Decent post, @clayboyn and thanks for raising some awareness of this, because everyone seems to have their head in the sand on this one.
Solid points, I thought about going back and adding in the whole "You only get 75% of the bump you are paying for" part.
"Network and get better" absolutely what other way is there if you truly believe in the steemit platform. I find the most contentment In curating awesome posts I've found hidden in the feed that are undervoted. Feels great to give recognition to others for mutually beneficial content!
Well, unless someone DV this, I just added $3 to your post - and will send you something again like before if needed WRT this and or the post being under valued like I usually say with your content.
I work hard at engagement here, and at helping new people.
Both things you have done also and I know, because I have seen it.
You and I have both spoken out against some of the practices here and it has cost us both in many ways.
I have always looked long term at things here.
I wanted you to know also that the Steemit Dev's have contacted me.
They have looked at one of my series I run, and using it to take all the user feedback for ideas.
The "Steemit Needs Series" --- I compiled a bunch of data and the posts from 9/13 posts in that series I could reasonably find and emailed the overview to them today.
That was 2 hrs of solid work trying to do what I hope for here--- see Steemit survive and prosper and do it the right way.
You always make good posts and I am glad we are friends.
You're my boy blue! <3
The people behind the bots are the ones making the bank!!
Nice post, and I can definitely see where you are coming from.
How do you feel about minnows using the bots as a #payitforward initiative rather than simply self-voting actions?
I did that some but it still just adds to the problem and destroys the reward pool. Better option is just send the steem/sbd to the person.
But if adding value of a upwards of $5 or so to a post does attract others to add value as they see there is value in the content by just glancing. Minnows often cannot afford to send 5 SBD, so sending 1 SBD that boosts another minnow and gives them a better opportunity to generate more income from the post seems like it does more to add to the community than take away.
It's all perspective, but I've been doing this for a year and it's got to be the most garbage state I've ever seen the platform in. I honestly prefer the days where everyone was just flagging each other and no one got paid to this bullshit. If the only reason people are voting on a post is because they think other people are voting on it then odds are they aren't reading it anyway. You can scroll through my feed and see how many people I try to promote that I can't even get up to a dollar anymore and it's pretty ridiculous because we have plenty of people posting plagiarized content getting insane payouts. Everyone is entitled to their own approach, but if things don't change I'll go back to the old way of using all of my voting power to flag instead of increase rewards.
I flag the fuck out of plagiarized content at 100% every time I see it. And I agree the state that the bots are in is currently out of control, but all things in flux. I'm sure it'll pass as all things tend to do. I definitely understand what you're saying though. :)
The plagiarizing post that make lots of money is extremely discouraging for me to try to produce any original content. I've seen people repost a youtube video, news stories off of websites and had nothing to it and make than my account is worth in a single post.
I don't know if this is related to the steady decline in the price of STEEM over the past few months.
Great question, I'd like to know as well.
I agree. Bots are like a nuclear arms race and it's sacrilegious to suggest that we would be better off with regulations on the, to any witness or whale. There are two reasons why steemit is unstustainable (I think it'll have a good long run though, however corporate and fake it becomes). I'm just enjoying all the awesome people here right now and the fact that my writing is finally being read where at patreon I was at a loss as to how to get it out there, hopefully, the big fish get their act together and focus their energy on growing the small fish who create quality content, and not just the first seekers but people like us as well.
I have seen one user where the same six people vote on every post and it nets about $20/post. I assume they all do the same and earn a tidy sum that way. Drags the system down
Had a guy with 1400+ new accounts with no value doing similar shit and they had no investment in the platform. Appealing to greedy people to stop being greedy is mostly a waste of my time, but I hope explaining how it mathematically fucks all of us will wake up a few of them.
Don't think it will. If you have the time to create all the accounts, scripted or otherwise and gets them all voting then any gains might drive some.
I have seen bots? or people with high power clean that sort of crap up with huge downvotes killing all profit. That stops people :)
Saw one person spam a load of copied stuff and they got hammered
BTW, seeing your avatar, you might like my current series, just started. Building a roguelike from the ground up. :)
Ya I was checking it out earlier. The problem with flagging that kind of shit, and some of us do, is that it drains power that we normally use for rewarding new users. The people that control most of the voting power are the ones selling their voting power and that leaves people that actually give a shit without enough power to do anything really.
It looks like there are many of us who are in agreement about this fact. I'm glad to see it's not just me :)
I posted about the upvote bot scheme .. 8 days ago according to my blog. I thought the title was clever "The Epic Failure of Steemit, and Why you Should Care", but apparently 66 views resulted in 22 upvotes, so only 33.33% of people cared.. not a very promising result. I even tried to promote the post, but still nothing stuck.
As long as enough of us continue to post about this atrocity, hopefully it will eventually get enough exposure for a conglomerate of whales to actually do something about it (other than build more bots).
I'd rather build awareness than bots. :)
It's a good thing I never deal with the bots lol. I did think they were a good thing at one time but I was too lazy to join and didn't really know how.
How much have you invested so far into steemit and why?
@clayboyn, I find myself more susceptible to relying on bots when I am not seeing fruit from a post. I have preached that patience is key on steemit, and I need to practice what I preach.
Thanks for the great reminder. Convicting!