Since I have been in a few comment chains surrounding bidbots and downvoting today, I thought I would add some additional thoughts in respect to those who think that bidbots don't only do harm. I agree, they actually did something great over the last 2.5 years and that was / to force through the EIP which introduced the all important downvote concession so that we as a community are even more incentivized to clean the steem streets. There was always the incentive there for Steem holders of course, but there was no will.

@theycallmedan mentioned something kind of concerning this in his latest post where he talked about buying a million Steem and not being able to feel like he could do much with it to affect content positioning in the age of the bidbots, because even with that amount of Steem Power, his vote couldn't compete.

This is the same problem with downvotes pre-EIP as for example, even with 50k+ Steem Power my downvote is 50 cents, so it can't compete with a $50 upvote alone. And it would be alone in most circumstances as most people just wouldn't use their downvote capabilities as it cost them upvote potential and as a result, those that did downvote attracted retaliation that could single them out easily. Because of this, there was an even heavier cost to downvote abuse. So, we as a community let it all slide until enough was enough and the EIP was introduced.

And once incentivized and most of the cost removed due to the 2.5 free downvotes, the cost of retaliation was also reduced as not only is there a great deal more stake willing to downvote, because it doesn't cost upvote potential, they are also more likely to heal those who are victims of retaliation. I say victims in this case, but they are not actually victims because as we all know the Steem on a post is not owned until in a wallet. "Pending reward" means unallocated rewards from the pool.

However, despite the semantics, those who are doing the downvoting of abuse are also usually those who are more willing to mend the harm caused by what they consider unjustified retaliatory downvoting. And these days, there are some pretty large stakes out there who are willing to both curb abuse as they can and heal those who they consider harmed by trying to do the same. Sounds like a bit of a community is forming.

Once upon a time I called Steem The Musketeer Coin, something I still believe today where it performs best as an all for one, one for all kind of scenario. This is quite an interesting however when it comes to those who for the last 2+ years have been buying votes on their posts and have continued to do so post-EIP as very few had anyone come to their rescue once the downvoting started.

The reason is of course very simple, for while they may see the downvoting as unfair and the community should support their vote buying position in an all for one scenario, up until the point the downvotes started, they cared nothing for the community and didn't show the one for all. The reason no one comes to their rescue now is that rarely did any of them build up a real network that cared anything about them or the content they delivered. All that "visibility" and "advertisement" amounted to what of their brand value?

The EIP has shone a light into the streets of Steem and the downvotes have cleared the largest of the trash and given rise to many authors getting their first real taste of having their content discovered and supported, some of which have been on Steem for a long time. In my opinion, Steem should never be easy to earn and getting discovered is part of the process if unwilling or unable to buy-in to Steem directly off the markets.

Discovery however is a game of chance and comes with no guarantees of happening, but in order to be discovered, one has to first offer to the all something of value. It may be a very long and expensive road to discovery.

For example, Rovio, a Finnish company and I have a few friends working for, made 51 mobile games without success but their 52nd has been downloaded 500+ million times, has spin offs, a Movie or two and merchandising that has generated billions. How many people would have lasted through the first 51 fully-coded games to finally get success with Angry Birds knowing that it was highly unlikely to succeed?

Off the back of Rovio's discovery, SuperCell (another Finnish gaming company) was able to dvelop their games and last year had around 100 million daily gamers. Discovery was easier for them in man ways, not easy.

This is where I see Steem going though as while some might now be worrying about their content earnings, Smart Media Tokens are going to be the real drivers of adoption as they are going to push out thousands of instances of Steem with different use cases and eventually, some of them will be discovered. Once one is, it improves the chances of more being discovered until the point that the Steem blockchain is ubiquitous and the go-to platform for building blockchained experiences.

But, this wasn't likely to happen under the reign of bidbots because the community wasn't forming at a great enough rate or at a deep enough Steem stake among those who cared the most about Steem, whatever position they held. In the last 2 months since the EIP has been introduced, the platform has been invigorated with many of those who were once keen on Steem's future returning, and those who always were like myself, feeling pretty good that the last years of effort I have put in aren't for waste as there is still an opportunity to succeed.

Honestly, I don't care much about investors big or small selling in a huff at the "state of Steem" now, because if they don't see the future potential, they are unlikely to add much value to the ecosystem and instead use it to extract all they can at this moment.That is fine, people can sell the Steem in their wallets as they are entitled to do and I will support that always, even if I think it a poor move. What I won't support is people filling their wallets that they will empty onto the markets through paid votes.

@acidyo has talked about honest curation, but I would like to also have those who are still buying votes consider honest earning. The EIP has shone lights into the streets and uncovered a lot of abuse and, a lot of value hiding underneath.

In time, Steem will be discovered for what some of us already know and treat as valuable.

Taraz
[ a Steem original ]