Let's Reawaken the debate on Auto-Voting (Part 1 of 3)
We've debated the pros and cons of auto-voting a thousand times already and the conclusions to all the arguments have always come to ... [queue cave-man accent please]
"Bot voting good .... Limitations bad ...."
But since we've been on steemit a lot longer now, I'd like to bring up some serious potential issues we are having due to the rampant auto-voting of the blockchain. I know, I know, oh god she's whining again... But look. This experiment has only just begun. With all experiments it's very important that we analyse the results of certain conditions. There's bound to be problems that need addressing and I consider all and any discussions about them to be a healthy step towards progression.
What's the problem?
Bots and trails are a great way to keep our curation rewards coming in without even needing to log into steemit. We can spend our attention elsewhere and the users we follow will still get our votes as a reward for posting! We don't want them to feel like they've been forgotten and their content ignored.
It's only fair that we all get to auto-vote if whales and programmers do it. They already have a huge advantage over us and we should all be competing to spread the reward pool as far and wide as we can, even when we're sleeping.
Reality Check
Social Media thrives on the attention economy. Every social network and social media platform's success depends on their ability to keep their users engaged enough to attract investors and advertising revenue. Aside from advertisers, many of the greatest artists and content creators live to have their content appreciated by human eyes and interactions.
"Attention is a resource—a person has only so much of it." ~ Matthew Crawford
Unlike steemit, most social media platforms monetise the attention of their users to pay their stakeholders - well not so unlike steemit actually! On steemit it is the users who become the stakeholders, therefore it is the users who get paid for their own attention.
But is this attention real? And if not, does it matter?
If I can give any small amount of attention to the content on steemit, then set up an upvoting automation bot for the authors I choose to support, then I haven't really monetised my attention which is what the buyer wants. Instead I monetised an automated upvote bot. Now we could argue that the buyer is the content creator we vote for and perhaps all they wanted was your vote, and they can make do with the 2 or 3 supportive comments. But in reality the buyer is still the advertiser, who in the future could help monetise the many different windows to the blockchain, e.g. steemit.com , busy.org , the esteem app and the other 100+ apps built on the blockchain. If we get paid not for our attention, but for automated upvotes instead, then what is there to incentivise us to pay more attention?
The Trending Page
Now before you imagine my whiney voice I'd like to say that the trending page has been looking miles better over the passed week or so. There are less regular authors than usual up there and the content is becoming more diverse. Maybe this is not important to you, but for me I see the trending page as an important shopping window (for non-steemians) to see how easy it is to make it on steemit! And my personal opinion is that it should look hard!
But not rigged!
That content should mostly be made up of quality content backed up by talent and maybe the odd cute kitty and steemian selfie ... jk lol. The trending page is an opportunity to tell non-steemians "any type of content can do well here, whether it makes over $100 or less than $50". Unfortunately there have been many times where you would see the same author 4 times on the trending page and when a non-steemian goes away and comes back to check out steemit again to see if it's worth trying they could see the same thing again...
I'm not here to tell anybody how to vote. I would just like people to think more about how they vote, and to consider what auto-votes incentivise authors to do. Does it encourage them to make their content better? There have been quite a few cases now where a well-known and talented author was caught plagiarising out of character. When somebody goes from posting once a day (or week) to four times daily, there's bound to be some loss in the quality of their work. So that begs another question.
What is more important for readers? Quality or Quantity?
image source
Not to say that auto-voting is irresponsible voting, but I think we can all agree that manual voting is more responsible. Lets be honest with ourselves. If being a responsible curator means seeking out content to reward and encourage for the benefit of the steemit community, then bots that vote on the same authors all the time do not do that.
Many debates on this issue have been shut down in the past on the basis that "not all bots are bad" but if we could come up with a way to make it easier for people to compete with bots without becoming bots themselves some of the biggest problems steemit is facing could be resolved!
Benefits to finding a solution
- If we could disable bot curation completely - which I'm not suggesting we do - the curators who spend time on the platform choosing content to curate manually would be the ones to gain the curation rewards. In fact, it would not be possible for a stake-holder to take a week off steemit and continue to get paid for their "time-off" just for voting for the same authors continuously, incentivising them to post as often as profitable.
- If large stake holders really did stop voting to take a break well the reward pool wouldn't change. Instead the voting power of smaller stakeholders would just increase while they haven't been voting. However, it is unlikely for that to happen with the introduction of proxy voting which offers these same stake holders the option to give their job to other steemians instead of bots.
- With the necessity to remain active on the site to curate, potential advertisers of steemit or busy won't have to see those embarrassing ratios of "200 votes with 10 views" on posts. Anybody who wants to get paid for attention will have to actually pay attention! SP could be just one way of having more influence. Authentic participation could be another.
Previously suggested solutions
@steemitblog post on rebalancing power to human users and away from bots
@l0k1 post on a possible bot voting solution
Please add more in the comments if you know of other posts about this
My suggestions...
I've had 2 different ideas on addressing these issues and one of them isn't really about bots at all but it might incentivise bot users to change their supported authors more often. As part of this post from 2 weeks ago I suggested that the ratio of curation rewards to author rewards could depend on how many followers an author has.
image source
Currently curators get 25% of the rewards from any post payout. I would consider a lower curation percentage for established authors with over 1000 followers for example, as these authors have enough community support to succeed without being auto-voted by whales. Currently the user with the most followers is @dollovigillante with 3500 followers and there are only 40 accounts with 1000+ followers. In order to create incentive for curators to seek out new talent on the platform the curators could get 50% of the rewards from an author with zero followers. This would really encourage lesser known authors who come at a disadvantage. Authors are incentivised to gain followers still, because the curation rewards take less of their post rewards and curators are incentivised to find more new authors to gain a higher percentage of the curation reward.
Now I am unsure that this would resolve the "bot-problem" completely, so I would like to encourage other suggestions. I'll be writing another post on the second idea I had but I can promise you all you are going to HATE it!!
You've Been Warned!
This post is
Native speakers only.
Google translate not permitted.
Interesting thoughts, thanks for the good read. However if we where to discuss disabling bot-voting, how do you propose we would do _while_ keeping the blockchain decentralised?
Good question and it's difficult to answer. I'm going to try to answer it in the next post but just be warned it could sound like a whole load of fairytale, charlie the unicorn, if pigs could fly bollox..... It could be impossible to implement (I'm no programmer) but I think it's worth putting out there in case the idea can be expanded on by somebody smarter than me.
Very insterested to hear :) or read I guess. Also thank you for facilitating discussion on chain I very much appreciate the value you add here @beanz
This post has been ranked within the top 50 most undervalued posts in the second half of Jan 07. We estimate that this post is undervalued by $7.09 as compared to a scenario in which every voter had an equal say.
See the full rankings and details in The Daily Tribune: Jan 07 - Part II. You can also read about some of our methodology, data analysis and technical details in our initial post.
If you are the author and would prefer not to receive these comments, simply reply "Stop" to this comment.
you know, the reality is in just about any situation is you start at the bottom and work up. If you not able or willing to work up, you don't rise. For some, the system will never seem 'fair'. I really don't have a problem with the system for voting as it is.
Yeah, I would like to see more engagement on people's posts but the fact is, some people just don't provide enough meat or stimulation to feel the need to comment.
I read a pile of posts every day on here. Some are really good and they get you thinking and trigger comment. Some are pure drivel or thrown together so disorganized that if they had a cohesive message, you'd need to rewrite the post. Most of the time, those get few votes.
So, even with bots, the system is managing to work. Not everyone is going to get rewarded until they earn it.
From your post, I may at least have a look to the trending page again... :D
The suggestion you proposed that I really like concerns the tuning of the curation rewards as a function of the user's reputation, number of followers, etc. That sounds potentially very good to make new users known (or at least getting more votes).
Hi beanz,
you wrote
I had the same idea, but I suggest to calculate the Curation Rewards as a function of the Reputation of the Autor. Means a new Author with Reputation 30 or 40 will generate higher Curation Rewards for Curators as our well known Trending-Page-Stars and Bot-Vote-Darlings with Rep 70+
Steem On.
That would also be an interesting idea.... Although I wonder if it would incentivise people to look for flags.... Perhaps if not the reputation system but a similar number that indicates how frequently the user is being supported.
Then they post, make $0.00, get disappointed and leave.
It should be clear that success takes work. It's that perception that motivates people to work harder on their content.
And I won't even getting into the fact that "quality content" is, and always will be, subjective.
Quality content is what someone likes.
I don't want to trash you, you are stimulating conversation and you're entitled to think the way you do. I just don't find the point, myself.
Have you considered that if new users lose 50% of their reward without consent, what is their incentive to even post or stay? I think if users both new and old are given the choice, it would be wise for new users to designate larger percentages to curators to gain a following, but this shouldn't be forced upon them. This will give curators incentive to vote, and new born authors incentive to post QUALITY content. I can tell you, I know people who have left because of failure to get the rewards they joined to get, and I know that I would have been disappointed when I first joined and made 800 dollars off of my symphony, if only 400 of it was mine because someone forced me to lose the other 400. Manually curating is a lot more time consuming than bot voting, without bot voting half the whales on Steemit wouldn't be giving out big rewards because they have lives outside of reading through Steemit articles. Bots don't just have to vote on a list of people, the criteria they can vote off of is limit less (Key words, time up, amount made, reputation of author, category in, etc).
That would make your vote more powerful. As said in the article - the reward pool stays the same no matter who doesn't vote.
Yes, but I don't deserve more influence on authors. I have less steem power, and have worked less to gain what I have, than the whales. What is the point in gaining Steem power if when you become a whale, a minnow has more influence than you? The system was designed so those who make more of an investment have a larger say. To try to take away their voice discourages investment, and lowers the overall value of Steem, meaning I have a smaller impact.
I'm not sure what work you think the whales did.... Not to sound bitter, but many of them (some of the biggest ones) were at the right place at the right time and just started mining... Which means pushing a button on a server and going about their day without doing anything again..... Those with more SP would still have more say, but they would be required to do as much work as anybody else. Nobody is taking away their voice. They take away their own voice if they choose to be inactive. That voice will still be there when they come back.
The whales worked by investing their money, time, and computer power in Steem when it was a HUGE risk (Not to mention it took my dad a week of work to get a miner running with Abit's instructions, and when they joined they had to learn to make their computers mine from scratch). If they didn't have to work, why is it they have benefited more than you? Being in the right place at the right time takes instinct. They wouldn't have more say because you are proposing that we make it so they can't vote however the heck they choose. Last time I checked it's their vote to give, not yours. You think it's easy programming a bot? They can't use a list because if they always upvote the same authors the same authors would abuse it, so they need to make their bots unpredictable.
Some of the whales have families and jobs, they don't choose to be inactive, it is their responsibility. They won't have their voice if this plan goes through because the price of steem would plummet, and everyone who invested would pull out to salvage what little money they can, and Steemit would go out of business.
So what you're saying is steemit will be just like facebook. The largest stakeholders are the only stakeholders who have a say. -just like all corporations. Why would anybody want be keep their SP if the little bit they have never matters?
Name me one corporation that succeeded by giving a say to people who have no interest in investing in it. What you are saying is those who have sacrificed little should have more of a say than those who have sacrificed a lot. "Facebook and other corporations" are multi billion dollar companies, and for Steemit to succeed it needs to make profit as well. Meaning it needs experienced investors who have something to gain by it doing well. Those with little want to keep it because of supply and demand. Here's a link if you are unfamiliar with the term: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Supply_and_demand
Time is another form of investment. So is attention. I'm suggesting (since Ned has been talking about this too) that people who invest their time and attention could get paid if we limited the ability of bots to outvote humans.
I'm not sure you understand the concept behind steemit. I suggest you go and watch some of Neds interviews.
I don't think Ned is asking to have his vote matter less, but I don't know. Steemit is a business, so the concept behind it is always to make profit, how they do that is debatable. The concept behind any job is working hard to get what you want, not cheating to get it. Time is an investment that is why interest is paid over time. I pay attention to new posts, even though I also run a bot. You are trying to tell people how they can and can't vote, last time I checked the reason why you stopped liking bots is because Steemvoter made you vote twice in a day rather than once. If you don't like it when steemvoter tells you how to vote, why are you trying to tell other people they can't use a certain method of voting. I am going to go shopping with my mother now. Thanks for the discussion.