Why Voting Bots Are Great for Steem
It seems that most of the drama and attention has moved away from voting bots and onto other things lately...namely the @haejin / @ranchorelaxo situation. I think what’s going on there clearly highlights the fact that voting bots are really not the problem.
In fact, I think most of us would strongly prefer that @ranchorelaxo use his SP to run a voting bot instead. That way everyone could have an equal chance to promote their posts and he/she could earn a nice return on his investment as well.
That brings me to my main point, which is that selling votes offers a really nice return for investors, which is a great thing! Find me another cryptocurrency where investors can earn a really nice ROI on their investment without any appreciation of the underlying token!
Not only does the opportunity to sell votes encourage investment in the platform, but it also provides an extremely useful service to content creators. I know this first-hand because I owe most of my success on the platform to my use of voting bots early on.
I’m fairly certain that had voting bots not been available - meaning I would not have been able to get my posts in front of people and grow an audience and my rewards - then I would probably have given up and left like so many others.
The existence of paid post promotion services (a.k.a voting bots) encouraged me to put money into buying STEEM and SBDs, and I think it does the same for many others like me. That’s exactly what we want and what we need to grow this platform.
@ned has said in the past that Steem is the world’s advertising network, and that’s exactly what the voting bots provide - advertising. You may think that SteemIt.com isn’t supposed to have advertising, but that’s not true, and it’s not what we want because advertising brings in money.
The difference between Steem and other content publishing platforms is that on Steem the money that comes in from advertising goes to all of us in the form of increased demand, and therefore price, of our STEEM tokens. On traditional platforms, it all goes to the owners of the company that runs it.
The best part about advertising on Steem is that you typically get your money back, and sometimes more! Imagine if you paid $100 for a Facebook ad and they ran the ad and you got a bunch of clicks and followers and then they gave you your $100 back when it was done!?! That would be unheard of anywhere else but it is precisely what happens when using a voting bot here on Steem.
So the way I see it, the voting bots both encourage investment in the platform, and provide content publishers with a much needed way to advertise their posts. Yes - there are definitely abuses, as there will be with pretty much anything. But most voting bots now have blacklists and other settings to easily put a stop to anyone abusing the system.
So @ranchorelaxo, if by any chance you are reading this - please consider using your investment in SP to run or delegate to a voting bot. I would be happy to help you with this if you want as I have done for many others. With the high prices of SBD and STEEM right now you will earn an excellent return on your investment!
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Yeah bots are great but there are some people who dont like you to use bots and they downvote you. That is totally unfair. Can you make a list of those downvoters?
follow back and upvote @zibonk @cryptokraze
Could you also list @sleeplesswhale on Steem Bot Tracker?
yabapmatt - you said that so eloquently. I'm convinced. Thanks for showing me the altruistic side of the platform. I am especially inspired by it's ability to transform people's lives in the more impoverished parts of the World. I would be interested in a voting bot and what that entails.
If you're interested in running a voting bot you can contact me on steemit.chat or discord.
@yabapmatt I'm ... I would like to put some money on a VPS to run a bot. I read something about Drotto project but isn't clear to me. What would you recommend? Are all of bots based on Drotto? I came from IT Infrastructure so I have some understanding in how to let ops running but less about how to program a bot or to use a language to create some from ZERO. Thanks.
Contact me on steemit.chat tomorrow and I can help you with some options to get started running a bot.
@yabapmatt Raziel is my husband and we both would like to invest to run a bot. Is that right @raziel.com? ❤️😍😍
HAHAHA sure sweety ...
I personally want to thank you deeply for the steem bot tracker. It has been a great resource for me.
I agree with you and think the bots are great for steemit unless they are abused. There should be accountability from both the users and mods.
Thanks for the post and thanks again for your work here. It is appreciated. :)
That's great to hear! Let me know if there's any new features or changes you'd like to see, i'm always open to new ideas to make it better!
One thing you might consider notating with an icon would be whether the bot leaves a comment or not on the post. The comments can read like spam and can detract from the post. Maybe like a comment bubble crossed out in red.
Something like one of these perhaps.
I like this! I will add it to my list.
While I think the perspective makes sense on some level, there certainly are potential challenges, as you mentioned. For me, while Facebook does offer advertising, the recent scandal with regard to potential Russian government/propaganda advertising during the US election raises a major challenge. If people/organizations with dubious intent were to buy upvotes for their "unsavory" content, if might be tough to properly filter for that. And since currently each voting bot would be built by the user, not Steemit, then there is no direct disincentive (beyond personal beliefs) to try to curtail such behavior. If you choose to filter out upvote purchases from some individuals, then others will simply build bots to take advantage of that opportunity.
Understand that it's an "extreme" example, but if you are designing a game system, which Steemit basically is, then you need to plan for such scenarios.
At any rate, it's both an interesting opportunity and challenge.
If some posted ISIS jihad propaganda and then any vote bot up it then I believe this bot will be quickly put out of the game.
Next logical step for vote bot is smart content filtering. Lets do it!
That's what downvoting is for - so not only does Steem provide a better mechanism for advertising, but it also provides a mechanism for the community to choose what content should be trending and what shouldn't.
The whole point is that voting bots are not the cause of any of these issues. As you can see clearly with @haejin and @ranchorelaxo, a whale can easily get whatever posts they want on trending and control large portions of the reward pool and they don't need any voting bots to do it.
On the other hand regular users trying to make it here do need voting bots, so I think it's important that we encourage them.
Fair. Was actually having a conversation about how minnows and new users can gain some traction on a platform that's currently small enough to be manipulated by so few users. If we limited voting bots to users with under (XX) SP or filtered for minimum reputation, that might help.
Another way we discussed was following the recent Viner invasion to YouTube, the idea of creating an automated "voting ring" system that experienced Steemians could use to bolster their friends when bringing them onto the platform.
One complaint I've had about flagging though is that it costs SP to flag too, which could limit moderators abilities in some circumstances. But as a bit of a newbie myself, I'm still just ankles deep in all this.
I think it's important to be clear about what the problem is. Only then can we start talking about a solution. The problem, as I see it, and as do many others, is that Steem Power is poorly distributed and a very small number of accounts control the vast majority of it, and therefore have the vast majority of control over the entire system.
In that respect the voting bots actually help immensely - they give everyone the opportunity to utilize the voting power of those whale accounts. If all of the whales used their SP to run voting bots instead of using it to mess around with the reward pool as they see fit I think things would be a lot better.
Interesting perspective. I think you bring up some valid points. I’ve never had a problem with voting boys, in fact they encouraged me as a Steemit newbie.
Yes, that's exactly what they did for me as well. I think we should focus on making them as easy to use as possible and encourage all new and struggling content creators to use them.
I think the upvote bots are great for new minnows (and even experienced users) to get their post above all the spam. And also as a promotion tool if you've written something incredible and want to advertise it to the platform.
I think there is a question of balance though. If the level of sold votes becomes too high there is a risk that you move towards a system where you mainly get votes by being in a circle or by purchase. That's a very different system from the original set up of the platform. And one which I think is much less attractive.
We're not in that situation yet. But I think there need to be more ideas put forward to solve the issue of economic incentive (it's financially more beneficial to set up a bot or sell delegation than curate etc). I don't think upvote bots are the best answer to that (very tricky) problem, even if I support their use as a general day-to-day tool.
Bots are good until they don't violate or abuse the network.
Vote buyer or bidder can determine himself either the content deserved to be voted or not.
I ask a few philosophical questions:
With voting bots, what gives content its value if anyone can use it with disregard to the content itself?
Considering the first question, why should the platform have any value?
I just want to hear some answers to these. While there is validity to advertising, the question is whether there is value to being able to make money by pushing money upwards through the ecosystem (to get those votes) rather than distribute it downwards through organic voting.
This is a good question - but it has nothing to do with voting bots. On Steem the "value" of content is based on the value of votes it receives. This means that a small list of whale accounts have complete control over what is considered valuable or not valuable content.
Voting bots don't change this at all, in fact I submit that they actually improve the situation. Bots allow regular authors to get enough vote value to get their content seen, and then the rest of the community can decide to upvote it further or not.
I get what you are saying. Steem's value is dependent on voting, but I'm looking at the intrinsic value of posting. What type of posts deserve rewards rather than just giving rewards to people who know how to play the system. While there is validity in the second as a proof-of-work mechanism, I simply don't see the site achieving the mainstream growth with such an incentive structure.
The whitepaper argues that Steem is build around the idea that meaningful contributions will be rewarded, but voting bots allow users go around this. Contributions can now be meaningless if one has the money to spend to promote the post in the ecosystem.
While your issue with whales is absolutely right. The problem is not a "whale" problem per se, but a filtering and exposure problem. While voting bots can help with the exposure issue (which could improve the experience for some), the site still suffers from poor filtering and voting bots do nothing to change that.
It would be nice to see this fundamental issue addressed but I guess SMTs take priority over an intelligent user experience and a system that encourages people to find new meaningful content rather than concoct schemes to make their own content more valuable. The first is vastly superior in the ecosystem that it creates than the second, but right now the second is more profitable.
SMTs and communities will create solutions to the filtering and exposure problems you mentioned. They will never be addressed on SteemIt.com, I look at SteemIt.com as just a rather basic proof of concept.
With SMTs and communities it will allow new sites with their own tokens, and their specific type of content, to filter and expose the content in the way that is best for that community.
The best part is that if you don't like how a particular site or community operates, you're free to create your own that's better!
Yeah, but Joe Schmoe isn't going to create their own website. They are going to go back to Reddit or Facebook. I'm also still skeptical on the value of SMTs themselves. I understand why they add value to Steem, but we'll see how they valuable they are themselves.
I just wish Steemit would focus on communities before SMTs. In terms of business, people are more important than technology.
Hi @yabapmatt!
Can you list @tipU on Steem Bot Tracker?
It's a bot mainly made to send tips but now users can also use him as voting bot :)
More info here: https://steemit.com/steem/@tipu/introducing-new-tipu-feature-tipuvote
Let me know if there are any conditions to list @tipU on your great website ;)
I'm embarrassed that I don't have @tipU on there already! I will get it added asap!
Thank you!