To Bot Or Not To Bot..?
Alright Steemians,
How are you all today? Doing well I hope, I'm feeling extra about myself as this is the third day on the trot I've made time to post here. Well done if you're making it happen too, it's not what we do but how often and why we do it that really matters!
Hard life eating all this delicious food while working on the blog!
So as I was trawling my social media feed today and saw a close friend had asked her following about blogging. She said she's looking to get back into it and does anyone have any suggestions. Of course I jumped at the chance to introduce her to Steemit!
It seems I missed my chance as she's already decided to buy into Wordpress. Oh well, I've managed WP blogs in the past and I still do now. Nothing against them, however they cost money, take a decent amount of time learning to set up, as well as optimize SEO and ultimately drive traffic.
I did my best to explain how Steemit is FREE, we already have great community support here and she'll earn out the gate which of course is the main driver for most people who start blogging these days. Perhaps if this post does well it'll grab her attention and she says she'll still "check it out".. so let's keep our fingers crossed for her.
Now let's get down to today's bidness shall we.. source
The question I was posting in today's team discussion was about the "Bot" situation! What bot situation I hear you say? Wait there's a situation? Well no not really but many don't know what a bot is in the first place. In short Steemit is a welcome place for all internet users, some of which are not of the human kind!
The simplest way I can explain it is, some smarty pants have figured out how to code programs to perform certain actions autonomously on behalf of their human masters. No the robots ain't taking over the world.. not just yet.
Some people are against Bots and it's been interesting to read the differing views here in the mostly libertarian space of Steemit. Actually social networking maestro @Stackin recently posted about it and it's clear there are still very split views on bots being part of the community.
Source: When Steemians Realized 70% of "UPVOTES" are Controlled By "BOTS"
My take on Bots is that they are amazing! I see them as tools to make life easier, especially voting bots to support authors we already love. We could use them to mutually and autonomously support each other, it's not like we won't follow up, read and engage with each others posts now is it(?).
Lightening our "to-do" lists and free up more time to actually read, create, live and occasionally be away from the internet. While I'd love to be an engagement superstar like our man Charles, he's truly a driving force of inspiration for me to do more and hustle harder! Big up brother, for sure there's no replacement for real human interaction. However bots could help us support each others work.
So what do you think, can we responsibly employ bots to help us out? Do they dilute the value or engagement of our efforts on Steemit or do they enhance them?
More specifically to the Mastermind group, would you like a step by step guide to setting up your @steemvoter rules? I can explain how we can automate support for each others posts. Or do you feel that it would get out of control and steal engagement away from our team building?
Lunch is calling now, so back to fatherly duties and stuffing my face with @iamjamie's amazing home cooked food!
@iamjamie makes the best homemade vegan burgers ever!
I'd love to hear your comments and thoughts for us as a group as well as the wider effect of bot presence in the Steemit ocean. If you haven't yet joined our group please feel free to consider yourself invited and click the banner below.
Wholeness.
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what many people don't even realize is that the steemit.com front-end is basically a bot (ie. it talks to the STEEM blockchain via API, just as any other BOT would), so there's really no way to "stop bots", without impeding STEEMIT as well. In fact, when many of the slightly annoying features you do come across (ie. waiting for 30 minutes after a post goes live to get full curation reward, wait 3 seconds between votes, wait 20 seconds between comments), are all meant to "control bots". Of course, as you can see, all these "features" affect STEEMIT.com as well.
Regarding your friend, the best I can say is to keep stressing...
Excellent points @alexpmorris, man it's often easy to forget how useful our bot friends are! Glad you added to the perspective.
Oh and thanks very much for the emphasis on getting new users signed up! I know for sure she'll be looking at this post now and with her following I'm sure she'll do well for herself as well as help spread the word of steemit! :)
and don't forget to mention the 20 cents we each received for each other's comments alone! :D
Haha yes indeed! :)
@alexpmorris, said it all, however i will like to add that steemit is a community, you communicate with people, interact on facts, know things that are outside your field and lastly earn rewards for helping each other stand tall in whatever they blog.
Nice take on bots. Resteemed.
Well I personally don't use them since I love to leave a comment to "explain" my voting decision to the author (like I'm doing it right now :-)). Bots wouldn't be able to help me here. So I'm rather one of these old school curators that vote manually, haha!
With regards to the blog (free vs. WP). I've got a WordPress blog, too, since you can't do any effective affiliate marketing here on steemit. Many of the embed codes from sites like Amazon are blocked by steemit's UI. So if you want to fully monetize your content on all levels, then it's actually a good strategy to have both a steemit and a WP account.
PS: Good looking burgers! Well done, @iamjamie :-)
Wow thanks @surfermarly, you've no idea how much I appreciate your words! I totally get you and the value of the personal "human" touch is priceless. I like old school too, well if I liked school.. but there again perhaps there is something in balancing the new bot enabled school with the manual style?
Your points on WP vs Steemit are interesting, I too have a WP that I've kinda neglected since Steemit came along. I had no idea about the Steemit UI blocking thingy.. very interesting as I haven't had a problem with it and I did a bit of affilate marketing on here. Hmmn perhaps I shouldn't mention that? Any bots listening?
Anyway I appreciate you very much and pleased to see you didn't leave after all, I think I saw that the last time I wandered over to your timeline?
Thanks for nudging @iamjamie too lol, the more mentions the more encouragement for her to hit post! :)
I use a bot through steemvoter. However, I use it to upvote my friends post so I won't miss one. I am happy to support my friends and so to give them my consistent upvote.
Hey, how can I join the Mastermind group? I have 468 spots on my Steemvoter that are going begging and I'm still paying 3 SBD per month. Please give me some more people to add! Plus I'll post every day and upvote and comment on everyone. OMG do I sound overly eager or what? Never mind. I'm cool. Just hanging out here. I can take or leave it.
As for your friend, maybe after the initial thrill of WordPress has passed, she could be persuaded that sometimes doing both is better than choosing? I originally joined Steemit back in June with the idea that my friend and I, who are writing a blog together, could test content out here for the blog. Of course, what happened was he lost his job, got another job, quit that job after a month, had a baby, and then got another job, and I got swept up in 5 different things and in the end I've ended up writing over 1,000 posts on Steemit and 0 on our actual blog and neither has he.
Ps. I like big bots and I cannot lie.
@clemdane I LOVE BIG BOTS AND I CANNOT LIE!!
You are awesome haha, oh and you've joined. We're still brand new and we're all just like you. In it to win it together and help lift each other up. So of course your voice is welcome at our table and we would very much value your contribution. Thank you.
Ha! Thank you! I really appreciate it. We have to stick together.
You got it! Absolutely and I can see already you will be an asset to the group. I realize you're on EST but just so you know we'll be pinning the next daily discussion tomorrow GMT and it will be your post. So I'll fully intro you to the group then and we can get to it. Until then have a look through the other topic threads and feel free to contribute where and when you like! :)
Oh wow, thanks! Are you in London? I'll check in in the morning.
Yes we are at the moment. I envision as we grow the threads will provide engagement and the community will grow and interact organically. Thanks for joining 🙏
I'm on another FB Steemit group and they have each of us submit a maximum of 2 posts per day to the FB thread for the others to upvote. It seems to work well. The guy running that group is a bit of a tyrant, though, which can be amusing. There's a bit of a language barrier and he writes things like, "you have 24 H to Upvote if you don't you will get out and be replaced by other steemers" and "if you kicked of from the group you will never return!"
Recently he said to a new person, "write a larger article, next time i will remove your pôst if you don't respect the rules. Also, you don't engage we other members post, you already break two rules." I'm usually laughing too hard to be bothered.
Haha nice insight 😂
Let's hope nobody thinks that of me when I clean up our topic threads.
I support bots because they represent freedom of choice.
It mirrors life: We can be authentic, build connections, and love people or we can chase money unscrupulously and burn bridges along the way.
Bots give us the freedom to decide. We can use them with honor or we can use them only in self interest.
To me the beautiful thing about the Steemit community is a lot of this comes out in the wash. My hope is that over time the community aspect wins out and we're incentivized to use bots for good.
I love Steemvoter to upvote some of my favorite authors. It makes sure they get my support even if I'm not around.
Cheers. Thanks for your time.
@happymoneyman You speak the truth man! FREEDOM OF CHOICE!
I'm with you all the way brother, I be live that we can and will find our way to welcome bots in our steemit lives and for the good of the whole. That's exactly why I want to use steemvoter to support authors while I'm offline!
That burger looks good...
Thanx! Will be sharing the recipe soonish! ❤️
Oh yess.. I forgot to mention the thick cut, perfectly ripe avocado slices too! Dang I could eat another right now! Here's a tip: we always bulk our burger mix and freeze extra patties for future munchies! :)
I love that you love my cooking! Makes my heart happy! Oh and thanx forctakibg such gentlemen eat pictures of everything!
I used to use bots for curation, but after a while I wasn't satisfied with the "set it and forget it" mentality.
The main point is that there is a rich experience to be had if you can follow the right Steemit users. You can make your daily news as diverse as you want to.
When EOS came out I shifted more towards following users like @sandwich and @joseph. Now I have shifted towards folks who write good quality posts often and retweet good quality minnows, the latter being extremely valuable for all parties involved.
@rubenalexander True true, the set it and forget it can become problematic especially when the humans start over filling their rules and loose track of their bots lol! Will check out your recommendations for sure, thanks man! :)
i see you love burgers, both photos u eat burgers haha. Problem with people then they see steemit they think its ponzi scheme or something like that and dont trust that they can earn money from it )
Yes sir, these homemade burgers are amazing!
I've heard people mention they think it's a ponzi scheme and I always ask them how does that work when it's free to join? Lol zero risk and yet some people are just way too fluoridated! :)
I support using upvoting bots especially on your posts that you have put some time in and feel strongly about. It is a way to give it a boost. You are still contributing to the community with your quality content. It is when you copy and paste something that you shouldn't be using the upvote bot. If you take the time to create something yourself, then reward yourself.
This is interesting @ptmikesteem, I'm not sure we are talking about the same type of bot here? The ones I was referring to in my post are those that help you post upvotes to designated users if and when they post new content. I feel that seems fairly benevolent.
However it only just occurred to me, through the wording of your comment that of course there must be other bots out there that do other less stand up procedures like "boosting" your posts or something of the like? Perhaps by deploying a army of fake accounts or something like that? Not sure if that's real or not, hopefully not giving any dodgy coders any ideas now lol.
Oh and btw fellow PTI here too, I served 7 years with 1PWRR as a class 2 instructor and trained with the PT corp under the Army Boxing Team. I'll check out your feed, happy to meet someone else in the biz of helping others succeed! :)
i am a regular upvote bots user. becauss this bots that gicing me a good worth of upvote. 😃😃
but making a good friend and engaging is also important.
Is that the bot upvote in steemit that much? 70%?
Yeah I don't know if that figure is exact or where Charles got it from, however it would seem right to me that a lot of users at this early stage of adoption are using bots in some way to help keep up with the growth and support authors they like.
As @summertooth said though, there's always those looking to game the system somehow.