The cloak of visibility: Bidbots and other lies

It is no secret that I am not a fan of bidbots and the reasons are varied but one of the main ones is that it can create large gaps in distribution relatively quickly. From what I have heard, even now the smaller bidders are being pushed out of the market and are less and less likely to get a positive return on their bid. So much for helping minnows grow.

But, there is another claim that has been made and I have heard from all sizes and reps. People are saying they only use it because of 'bidbot for visibility' but, is it true? Does using a bidbot get you more views?

Yes. But, those views are not likely to be the kinds of views you want or need unless you want the people who trawl the bidbot orders looking for accounts to frontrun. Generally, they aren't going to be the high rep whales some Claim to be looking for.

Even if you do spend 100 or more SBD and vote it up enough to hit trending, do you know who checks trending? Newcomers who have no idea that trending is useless and people with 15 SP who think that voting on a post that already has 200 dollars on it is going to help them get rich.

The follows one might get from being in trending are largely the same, people who follow trending posts, not people who are looking to engage with the content at all. People who drop generic comments hoping for a small upvote without having read the post at all.

Is that the kind of visibility you are after?

Even when content is decent and someone of any value either personal or of SP does come across a post, are they likely to give it a serious read considering it has only hit trending because of the bots? I am unsure but speaking for myself, I skip over bot content quite quickly due to my opinion of them.

I had a look at guitar guy's profile today, someone who has been in trending for a month or more pretty much every day and besides one of the bots that follows him, after the first 5 or 6 follower, there is no one over a 1 dollar vote and after 50, they are in the 1-2 cent range. This is someone with over 2000 followers and as passe as his content is, it isn't that bad and nowhere near the worst overall on this platform. Unlike Selfi guy who after 2 months of consistent bidbot voting trash pictures (mostly of himself), has just over 100 followers.

From what I can see, the argument of visibility just doesn't hold up to any kind of worthwhile visibility and the ability to attract quality followers is laughable. What this means is that unless someone has any other reasons to offer, all that is left is profit. The only reason to order the bot votes is to make money. I am fine with that, but why hide it? Why have excuses that just don't seem to hold up under the slightest scrutiny?

I was listening to a talk about bad behaviours and the incentive to stop them and something interesting was said. For someone to feel that they must step in and act, the behaviour has to be obviously breaking of social convention and someone else must have seen that the person has witnessed it. In other words, unless you see me, see the bad behaviour or if it is 'borderline', I am not obliged to act. Add social proof into the mix where 'if others don't act, I won't' and it means a whole host of harmful actions can go unchecked.

Bidbots are only borderline when people do not do the basic thinking required, do the math or if they buy into the idea that 'the system allows it' so it is okay.

For anyone wondering @penguinpablo puts out stats on lots of Steem related numbers and has started adding known bidbot votes. There are 'blackmarket' and voting pools that are unknowns too. In todays's stats, we can see that for the last week, bidbots make up only ~1.5% of votes. Not bad right?

From another set of his numbers (4 days ago) we can see the value sent to bots and their worth.

He estimates that over 100,000 dollars worth is being sent to the bots every day. That is about 50,000 SBD. The system prints around about 50,000 Steem per day (including what goes to witnesses) and an 'unknown amount of SBD. That means that the value of SBD sent to bidbots currently covers the entire STEEM portion of the pool.

$ 8,874.26 ( ~ 11,900.08 USD )
( 1.226 % of total reward fund )

*Taken from @steemchiller's steemworld.com site.

In case you are wondering what the numbers above are, that is the estimated value for the week for one particularly overpaid Trade Analyst. For the week. The bidbots are getting 10 times that sent to them every day and they are voting only 1.5% of all votes. On top of that, they are collecting curation rewards and most small bidders are still losing value.

On the 12.3.2018 this was created by the blockchain for rewards
STEEM 47698
SBD 47958.43
source

On the same day: 2018-03-12 was sent to the known bidbots.
7,328 STEEM
47,245 SBD
source

That means on that day, only 700 more SBD and 40,000 more STEEM was created than sent to bidbots. Those bots than voted more than what was sent and collected curation.

What this means is a massively disproportionate amount is being distributed to a very small minority of users under the guise of helping small accounts grow. If the small account bidders are losing value, how exactly are they growing? Oh, that's right by getting more valuable eyes on but, that isn't happening either is it considering long term users have so little 'real Steem power followers' following them.

Is this obvious enough to act upon yet? Is the behaviour and harm still borderline? What does it require for a community to act then?

I have tried many ways to present what I think the harm of the bidbots to the system creates but the arguments are always the same excuses, visibility, followers, the system allows it. Because of these, the poor behaviours can go on in plain view and because no one does anything, no one will do anything. Social ignorance? Is that a thing?

When I write my various texts I try to do a few things and one is to entertain but unlike a game, I don't want to distract the mind, I want the mind to entertain itself by thinking somehow differently than it did before. I am by no measure saying I am correct in my views, nor that I see everything that goes on but, I am hoping that when people stop by and have a read of my overly long articles, they find something of value to either think about, discuss, argue for or against or perhaps review their own positions. From these discussions, we can clarify, reformulate and rebuild better and better systems.

Yes, the system allows bidbots and I am not in any position to stop either the sellers or the users but, I would be a pretty poor human if I didn't at least try and present some different perspectives and instead turned a blind eye to what I think is not beneficial for the community.

Oh btw, the value that is going to the bidbots each day? That is the value of a whale account created. How much is going to the users and how much is going to the bots. Do the math. Now, how much value is left in the pool for the other 98.5% of votes cast? Do the math again.

Taraz
[ a Steemit original ]