Steemit Crypto Academy Contest / S10W2 - Bots in the STEEM Chain

Assalamualaikum everyone.

Welcome to this post. I hope that all of you will be doing well and enjoying the time with the grace and blessings of Almighty Allah. Today, I am here to be a part of the wee 2 contest in our beloved SteemitCryptoAcademy community and the topic of discussion for this week is Bots in the Steem Chain. So, let's start the discussion without any waste of time.

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What is a voting bot in Steemit?

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We all know that Steemit is a decentralized social media platform where the users can interact with each other by sharing their posts and casting votes either upvote or downvote on the others posts. This process is actually organically done by the humans.

But, there are many accounts on the Steemit platform which act as the bots because they are the automated controlled accounts and are able to cast the votes (upvotes/downvotes) to other users by using the Steem Power that they have in their account or either delegated to them by their followers.

So, in simple we can say that on the Steemit platform, voting bots are actually such automated bots which are capable of upvoting or downvoting on others posts. Now, there are two types of bots, the first one is the bots which upvote other users posts in return of their payment or delegation to such bots.

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The bid-bots have become a very important part of the Steemit platform and many of the users are using the services of such bots. We can be eligible of receiving a particular percentage of upvote which is totally based on our payment or our delegated amount, the more the payment or delegation, the more will be the percentage of upvote that we will receive.

The votes that are gathered from such bots are actually called the paid votes and we know that such paid bots disturbs the level of content discovery and decentralization on the platform because the votes are limited to only those users who are paying/delegating the tokens to the bot services.

On the other hand, there are some other kind of Good Bots which are actually those who don't require any type of delegation or payment to upvote the posts. They do curation by judging the quality of the posts and cast votes to only those posts which are of good quality and contributing something towards the platform.

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How does a voting bot works on Steemit?

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The working of the bots on the Steemit platform is a very simple one. As I have already said that the bid-bots on the Steemit platform which cast votes to only those users who have paid to them either in the form of liquid rewards or in the form of Steem Power Delegation. However, the following process is followed by a voting bot on the Steemit platform.

First of all, the user who want to use the voting bot service has to make payment to the bots. The amount of this payment depends on the will of the user who want to take the service or the pre-defined fees that is set by the bot service.

After the payment to the bot, the user will get the information regarding the percentages and frequency of the upvotes that they will receive for their payment or delegation. The users who have delegated large amount of SP are likely to receive huge votes and probably more times per week or so.

_{Credits Goes To}

There is a particular criteria that a particular bot service follows while casting the votes to their delegators. The bot is always active and monitoring the posts that are published on the platform. So, whenever a post is published on the Steemit platform, the bot scans that post and find our either that post meet the criteria of their service or not.

If the post does not meet the criteria of the voting service, it is skipped. When a post meets the criteria of the voting service, the bot cast a vote to that post and the percentage of vote may depend on the factors like the amount of delegation, the tags that are used, the reputation of the user, etc. Remember that different bid-bots have different rules and regulations.

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Is it worth using the bid bots to get upvotes in Steemit?

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According to my views, the use of bit bot services to get the paid votes on our publication and earn juicy rewards in return is not an organic and original way. The authentic way to grow on the platform is by perform all the activities by our own and publish high quality content to get support from the curators.

There is no doubt that by using the bit bots we can improve the visibility of our content on the platform and also earn good potential rewards but after all, we are doing wrong with those users who are actually publishing the content which is better than the quality of our content. This is because the paid votes are not casted by juding the quality of the posts.

So, I woulld never prefer the voting buying services rather than the original and organic engagement, interaction and smart work on the platform. Remember that, Steemit is not only an earning place but it is also a great learning space where we can learn number of things. So, this is only possible if we are doing original work and interacting with other users rather than using the artificial methods for our growth.

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Why are bid-bot upvoted posts still getting downvoted on Steemit and why does Steemit still punish its users for upvoting with bots?

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As I have already siad that the voting services that are offered by the bid-bots are actually the artifical services to improve the rate of growth on the platform and improve the visibility of our content on the platform. But, this is not the autentic and origianl way to grow.

The bot users are actually using their Steem Power by delegating them to the bots and then earn passive rewards which are actually disturbing the discovery of content on the platform. When a post is voted by a bot, it comes in the trending pages and we are not sure that the quality of that content is good or not.

The bot voting is also a threat for the organic engagement and activity on the platform. The users who are involved in votes buying are very less active on the platform. They just publish their posts and let their service providers to vote for them. But, this thing is decreasing the originality of the platform.

Moreover, this thing is also like the manipulation or misuse of the rewards pool of the blockchain. In this way, the rewards are limited to only few users on the platform who are actually using the bot services and thus this act disturbs the rewards pool distribution. So, these are some of the reasons why the bot users are discouraged on the platform and are punished by the team.

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How did Steemit combat bid-bot accounts?

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Steemit team is always active in combating those bid-bot account which are playing their role in the disturbance of the reward pool, maniouation of rewards pool, decreasing the content discovery and so. Some important measures that the Steemit platform has used to decrease the use of voting bots are as follow.

The Steemit team always discourage the bid-bot users on the platform and this thing encourage the users to work originally and organically. There are some important changes that are made in the rewards pool which is allocated for the bot users on the platform and they get less rewards as compared to the original users.

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Another important thing to mention here is that the Steemit team does not allocate the major roles to the bot users on the platform and this is like some kinda discouragement for the bot users who want to get some roles on the platform. Moreover, Steemit team has initiated different projects like Engagement Challenges to encourage the users towards original engagement.

The downvoting services or downvoting pools are also present on the platform and the original users can downvote the low quality or abusive posts, or even flag such posts which are votes by the voting bots but are of very low quality. Furthermore, the team is active in educating the people about the importance of orignal and organic engagement on the platform.

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Advantages and disadvantages of voting bots in Steemit?

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As I have already said that there are two types of the voting bots on the platform and different bots use different criteria or regulations to vote for the posts. However, some common advantages of using the bid-bots are as follow.

One of the advantages of using the bid-bots on the Steemit platform is that it improves the visibility of the users and their content on the platform and thus allow more and more users to read those posts which have huge votes by the voting bots.

Also, the use of the voting bot services allow the users to earn good rewards with very low efforts in publishing the content. If there is an investor who want to earn good rewards can earn in this way even if he/she has shortarge of time to do the organic engagement.

While, On the Other Hand...

There are lot of disadvantages of using the bid-bot services on the Steemit platform. The main disadvantage is that this process is against the Proof of Brain mechanism. The bot users even post low quality posts and they know that they will receive the votes. Also, the voting bots does not follow the PoB while curation (not curation, actually voting).

Another disadvantage of using the bid bots on the platform is that we are discouraged in the views of the Steemit team because we are not doing the original work on the platform. Also, we are not able to get the valuable roles on the platform if we are the bot users.

Third thing is that, this process is actually injustice with such content creators of the platform who are doing hard work in publishing high quality posts but they don't receive rewards as per expectations.

Also, the voting bot usage decrease the effective content discovery on the platform. We found such posts on the trending pages which are of low quality as compared to the ones which have less votes but are of good quality than the bot users' posts. So, these are some disadvantages of using the voting bots on the Steemit platform.

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Conclusions

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Voting bots are actually the automated controlled systematic accounts on the platform which vote only those people who have delegated their SP to these services. There are different criteria of every voting bot service and they only vote those posts which meet that criteria. Voting bots decrease the better discovery of content discovery on the platform. This thing also disturbs the rewards pool of the platform and thus it is a bad practice, in overall.

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I would like to invite my friends @malikusman1, @sduttaskitchen, @yancar and @f2i5 to be a part of this amazing contest.

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