What Do You Think About Bid Bots? 🤖
Hey so there are many concerns about bid bots and how it's privatizing the exposure and reach on the Steem blockchain. Someone had previously suggested occasional upvote captchas, but I'd like to hear from you what you think. It would essentially disable all autovoting and curation trails and make life a lot harder for anyone with more influence which obviously would ruffle the feathers of people with the actual influence versus the people that would benefit from a more even playing field. At the end of the day bid bots serve as a barrier to beginners to ensure they actually produce quality content consistently and prove you've put in the work to figure out the Steem version of how advertising works.
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It helps with exposure and I think small votes on decent content is fine. It is the people who produce spam and then throw out huge bids who ruin it. In the end I think your SP your choice so better to make more bots like buildawhale or cheetah who call out the abuse.
Yeah it's just that it's essentially privatized something that was supposed to be decentralized
Although I don't fully agree that privatization and decentralization are directly linked, I do share your concerns with how most of the bid bots work in reality. If Steem is to be successul, a community driven approach is necessary. I think given time, this will happen.
Yeah, I mean I don't fully cast out bid bots, maybe there is a way it could work, but I don't know what that is yet
Hi sir, I saw that you are supporting the user bigdude and sending him money for the fundition projects, I wanted to inform you that said user is a serial plagiarist (if you check his profile you will see 12 cases of plagiarism in the last week of activity, all commented and flagged by steemcleaners)
Additionally I would like to inform you that fundition itself unvoted and blacklisted said user because he tried to scam them.
I kindly ask you to stop supporting this serial plagiarist and charity scammer.
Thank you in advance .
Noted, I sent everyone on Fundition money, so I will only continue supporting projects that appear there
His projects appear there because of technical limitations, and anyone can publish there, even serial plagiarists and scammers that are blacklisted from the support of Fundition, so the fact that they are there is in no way an assurance of legitimacy, as this case clearly exemplifies.
A good option is for you to support the projects that fundition itself votes, as they thoroughly audit the projects before voting for them.
Thank you for your consideration.
Will do, thanks for the update!
Yeah, I agree bidbots are a barrier... I used them for about a month and grew fed up of them.... They was no real human interaction.
Now a days I use tag #nobidbots... If you are interested you can also join.
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I mean to be honest like I said I still use them, you almost need to for a decent reach and since you get most of it back I don't mind doing it. I don't think omission is enough, I think we'd need a captcha or something. Refusing just makes less people see your content imo
🤔 I'm against it, but what service is reliable in your opinion to extend reach?
I use steembottracker.com for checking profitable bids
Yeah..you have a point. It seems to become a necessary evil...
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Yeah unfortunately
I think captcha is a good idea @scottcbusiness! 😊
Cheers, it's one to be built upon for sure
Get rid of em
@ihashblox, I'm with you on that. I'm a bit of an IT generalist and have a few ideas about forking Steem to remove the overpowered bots and their primary sponsor, @freedom, who coincidentally has enormous influence as to who the top 20 witnesses are.
It's almost like a cycle of power and I don't see that changing. I think the only reasonable solution for the common man is to fork 'em off and build a new type of Steem. Starting point would be to reappropriate @freedom's stake to something that is actually beneficial to the platform. Currently, I see that account as an overgrown parasite that gets paid to sponsor selling votes and earn curation rewards from accounts that are not actually curating.
Anyways, I haven't really disclosed these ideas to too many and, it sounds crazy. There would be a lot of challenges as much has been built on Steem already but I think there is some potential in the idea. One of the prereqs would be to have a bot that is able to identify vote selling and have a mechanism to counter.
Well I mean it wouldn't be that simple, we'd need a solution like captchas or something, but it would affect more than just bid bots
Captcha is good idea, that can still hinder though other groups like dlive right?
However, abuses are pretty rampant with bots.
Yeah there is no perfect solution it would affect any automated voting
Tough call @scottcbusiness.. @steemauto is a good service.
Maybe Steemit or one of the Dapps can add a captcha and then add a special code for approved bots that can automatically vote like @steemauto.
It might be better to regulate bots based on the platform instead of making changes to the Steem blockchain - then the people can decide which platform they enjoy more.
True, but if it's by platform then if a major platform allows it people will still continue to have the same issues just maybe slightly less
I absolutely hate the bots on this site! I honestly got so discouraged after putting in real effort and time into writing a few posts a few months ago (I'm only back on because I figured I should try my hand at steemit again, still without using bots) that I said screw it. But here I am. Anyways yea it's an extremely uneven playing field for beginners on here, and just lets trash posts rise to the top.
Yeah at the very least I'd like to see spam filtered better by bid bots
Yes, exactly! I agree wholeheartedly there!
Cheers!
I have mixed feelings about bid bots. I think the site would be much better if there were no bots at all except like cheetah bot for bad users. The way it is though, I think it is in the user's best interest to use them; especially new users who want to gain organic followers. Also, most steemians only think about the financial incentive of upvoting which posts they think will be most profitable and have no regard for quality. No one who bought steem power when it was $4 is wasting an upvote. I'm planning on using upvoting and/or resteem bots for my future posts until I gain an organic following. I think all my followers so far are bots. It's terrible when you spend hours and hours on a post (videos in my case) and it shows 1 or 2 cents all week but goes down to zero at the time of payout. You kinda have to use them.
Yeah as I say it's a necessary evil at the moment unfortunately. Hopefully it becomes easier for minnows
I particularly will not issue any verdict, so I'd better prove it
@scottcbusiness,
I don't have time to watch the video right now but I'll tell you. I absolutely believe vote selling will be the demise of this platform. People aren't dumb and they see what's happening with the witness / bid bot business collusion.
Witness ranks are becoming quickly centralized by one very prominent stake which is probably growing faster than any other by sponsoring and receiving handouts from bid bot owners. Have you heard how HF 20 is going to reduce the rshares of lower SP in a higher percentage then high SP accounts. Who do you think that benefits? It's the same thing happening with corrupt politicians working for big business interests rather than the interests of the people.
The more naïve users don't understand this and they have no problem feeding the beast but they don't realize how they are feeding into a system that continues to disenfranchise them by implementing forks that render their votes less effective and promotes increasing dependence on the bots. Unless the vote sellers wake the hell up, I don't think this platform will ever get out of the rut. SMTs may bring a pump but, as I said, unless it changes I think Steem is going to continue to bleed especially when viable competition rises which is already happening.
Also, I'm toying with the notion of forking Steem into a non-vote selling alternative with decentralized moderation / quality control built in from the git-go. I think the first order of business on such a chain would be to snapshot, dissolve @freedom's stake and reverse all bid-bot transactions and votes retroactivity. I think if I can figure out the Gateway part that I could possibly use Bitshares Dex to exchange the new token.
I think it's possible but would be a hell of a lot of work. The lazy passive investors can stay here. I think the regular bloggers will be glad to take their chances with a platform without the vote sellers.
you are probably right, let me know when you find that platform my friend and I will join you there
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