Bid bots Pros and Cons
So the time has come to have a sensible discussion about bid bots. If you don't know, this post is for a mock debate with @son-of-satire over the issues with bots and the effect that no bots would have, and it's a mock debate because nobody wanted to make an argument for bots when he made the invitation a few days ago. To begin I'm simply going to mention the best reason I can think for bots and have heard so far: It's the free market, bots are a service or product which is here because of the demand for them, a demand which gives way for people to be discovered should they spend the money, or invest the money into their own words and ideas and in turn it equalizes the exposure in between those with a lot of stake and those with little stake.
It's good of you to do this, but I do not believe it necessary anymore. My goal was to find someone with a respected voice who is an advocate for bidbots and to debate them publicly. That appears to have kicked off on this post with @whatsup so, if she intends to respond again, which I expect she will, there's no need for a mock debate when the real thing is going on elsewhere.
If for whatever reason she does not continue the debate, however, I will most certainly do it here instead, for I have realised while writing my first response that I have even more to say on this issue than I had imagined.
From the last response she offered it seems that she has no interest in anything you pointed out but is only interested in semantics, and the wishy washy nonsense of "I believe Steem is for, while you believe it's for.. " that comes with it and the disagreement won't resolve anything else until she's willing to actually mean what she says here:
If she doesn't clarify whatever she wants to say there it's going to be an exercise in futility to understand what it is she thinks let alone why and how.
Yes you are right. She has declined to respond to any the points I raised in my comment, and every response seems to contain more points that need addressing; which I don't see the point in addressing if she is then going to respond to me again ignoring my points, and again creating new ones.
It's a never ending road to nowhere.
We shall see, you might have challenged her enough for right now so give her some time to mull over the numerous points you've raised and implicated, all of which are genuinely unassailable and logically sound. At the very least she's made for a great adversary, which is a spotlight I step into for you can only get better at any game if your adversary is challenging you in any one respect. I tried to have a discussion about the proposed changes with her but the prejudices she has been holding that are evidently contradictory to her motivation and vision of the platform keep her from even entertaining what the changes are for, as she won't entertain the fact of her redundant reasoning of "bidbots are good and bad", as I think it's similar to "nobody will admit they are wrong, not even to themselves" ego rules.
While agree with most of this from what I can see, I have heard - and written - the word "she" enough times to now be aware that we've reduced ourselves to gossip.
I don't want to say anything else about whatsup unless it is directly to her, but if you would like to propose a debate structure then we can have a go at this properly tomorrow.
You can either make a post outlining the response you gave in that thread or post it here and I'll try to think of well reasoned contentions to it, let me know what works.
I like the sound of a back and forth, with perhaps three to five posts each, over the course of two or three days. This is because of the length I expect the portions to be, the fact that it will give us more visibility on people's home feeds.
Either way I will do as you suggest and rework my earlier comment to whatsup, then make a post tomorrow for you to respond to.
This is more difficult than I had thought it would be. I don't really know where to begin, because everything I can think to say just seems to overwhelmingly obvious. That worries me a tad to be honest, because I don't think any of should be so set in our beliefs that any opposition to it just sounds nonsensical, but no matter what I write it just seems like I am talking to a five year old.
Can we try this a different way? How about you send me every reason for vote-selling you can imagine, to which I will attempt to debiunk them all, but not before sending you any other pro-bidbot arguments I can think of, so that you can also rebut all of them yourself in a post of your own?
If not that then you should just start a new post with a title that will get noticed, where you can layout some points that support bidbots, and I will responde, then you do etc.
Honestly what we are trying to do though is to have a moral argument while people think this is a technical problem that needs to be addressed with code changes so as to align incentives, yet at the heart of it is the fact that the so called technical problem is about abusing a function, abuse which needs simply to be dealt with exactly along the lines of @transparencybot and calling people out for turning a blind eye to abuse or outright painting abuse as a service or product that regardless of the fact it's abusive they think it's a good enough way to socialize and be part of the community or promote those ends, and which ought to be dealt with by the function that would most effectively curb the abuse, and that's the large accounts flagging it, yet the dilemma that the advocates won't address is that flagging as it is will never work, right now haijin could be spamming porn on everything and he wouldn't run out of bandwidth and he won't lose any reputation, which is another dilemma we will need to address, so to try and have a moral argument seems almost irrelevant now that the bidbots are at haijin levels of unstoppable and the only position is the lack of any meaningful action that we can take to curb self-voting AND vote selling, both of which invalidate the premise of curation, which seems that no advocates even want to acknowledge, so will they even consider the position we as a community are in, in regards to stopping the rampant abuse of the curation function and rewards and our utter lack of any meaningful action that might curb it, because obviously we couldn't curb one relentless self voter, which is what all the bidbots could emulate even if by some miracle we get the code changes for a curve to incentivize stake concentration and dissuade stake splitting into bots, along with a more powerful flag to deal with abuse in an incentivize way and a even break between Curation rewards and author rewards to promote more organic curation and content discovery, self voting and vote selling will still be rampant as the stake is concentrated in those that care about short term profits instead of socializing, and nobody wants to acknowledge how fucked we are while they keep suggesting proposals that have little to anything to do with curbing the abuse directly and others pat the abusers on the back with "it's your stake".
We are fucked and our choices are trying to get people who either don't want to look at the problem or outright deny or marginalize the problem, to simply consider the problem by this mock debate where by presenting their perspective as best as we can and evaluation those consequences they in turn can recognize what is glaringly obvious to us, so that through their switching sides we can effectuate meaningful change and curb the abuse through our unison, yet I think that a direct way would be by addressing how helpless we are to curb almost any whale abuse, let alone rampant abuse, and how the promise of self governance fails in circumstances where the abusers are the only ones that can stop each others abuse yet they are competing with each other at best!
Whew, one long thought which leads me right back to bringing up what I said in the post as the most reasonable contention for bidbots, and to which there's hardly anything to add besides maybe that these trying times will strengthen our community in the end, maybe bidbots are the rampant abuse we need to overcome with a real moderation system and stop playing with people that haven't any interest in anything social and are here for all the wrong reasons. Usually an admin boots the abusers, and you don't have to change the entire game to keep them pseudo playing, yet here we are at a crossroads of another round with cheaters or implementing arbiter positions.
I think that is accurate, yes... I mean, no practitioner of honesty can say the current system is ideal by all means.
The solution however, can't be to remove completely the whole reason why speculative investors are buying into the coin.
Against BTC, Steem has always been on a downtrend. This is verifiable, you can look this up on coinmarketcap yourself.
So, if the solution to the current broken system eliminates investment, it can tank the coin. And yes, we would collect more Steem, possibly, but it will be worth pennies. Who does that help?
That is my position, yes, let's talk solutions, but they can't robinhood investors or they will just leave.
Actually that's a really good point @son-of-satire made to @whatsup regarding the types investors we are inviting with the bid bots and the vote selling and self voting that is presented as acceptable and a good enough way to stake a stable value in our token with.
There were many more great points, but it's looking like despite the inherent agreement that @son-of-satire found with @whatsup over ones obligation to stand up against abuse, the points only remain as an apropos to her semantic disagreement, but as always, it's really simple to recap the points and bring them up again and again, as is everything that's sensible, and funded (no pun) through integrity, both morally and logically in turn.
100% actually 120%
My point about investors to her was that Steem isn't an "investment" or retirement plan, but then again I'm not saying what people ought to consider as such, only that it wasn't designed or intended as such. Stake based delegation is not why steem was created, it was created to provide a certain type of tokenized public forum, for the purpose of resisting censorship and inviting in turn anarchist fundamentals for participating in its governance. Steem pandering directly to investors is clearly the interpretation of a few, but clearly Steem is here to pander directly to community building and long term goals along those lines, such as a stable token and a platform where abuse isn't reeking from every nook and cranny in turn, Steem then in turn will attract inveators who won't speculate with our economy but put their skin in the game for the purposes outlined above. The whole sentiment of "we must pander to investors" is exactly what will allow abuse and in turn even condone it as "it's a product, what right do you have to say what others can and can't sell!" and then who's gonna want to invest, and is that who we want to invite?
You still only have $192 in your wallet - how are you so bad at earning money on Steemit?
I'm not trying to start anything, but this question does relate to the bidbot debate...
I had over 600 sp last summer, got about 80 stuck in my h3ro account on bitshares and lost 36 or some to poloniex around the same time, so I had cashed out when my account was worth 1500 and that came in handy, and I believe I started again with about 30 Steem in January this year after a 3 month hiatus and considering that very few people want to hear the truth, let alone reward it, and that most of the sp is delegated to ruining curation I've built up about 50 sp on top of that, but honestly I don't know how much was dusted and how much of my votes had been dusted, so obviously despite being one of the most critical thinkers and speaking the truth the rewards aren't falling out of the sky, and obviously I don't Blog and that doesn't help. Also, I'm not the regular internet user that gets attacked by observations others make or their opinion or assumption about me, I appreciate your interest in why I suck at making money, and I'm in it for the long haul, we'll be kicking it, you and me old man style in 2040 and beyond, as long as we survive these freaking crazy times.