Closed Beta of Smackdown Kitty begins
This
afternoon, we are beginning the closed beta test of @smackdown.kitty. She has been loaded up with 197SP from me, 500SP from @personz, and 500SP from @the-ego-is-you, and we will now be doing a little self-comment-voting to test that she is fully functional.
Myself, @l0k1, @personz, and @the-ego-is-you are the users in the initial closed beta and it will run for a few days as we watch her vitals and check that everything works as intended, before we expand the test, which I think we should do, depending on whether we have test subjects, please comment and notify us that you want to be involved and we will add your account to her list of targets.
You will see all my comments get flagged now, and the other two also, if you are wondering what's going on. We will reset the database after the testing, because we won't be having her upvote us 1% for not doing it because we are already motivated well enough to not need this, since this is what she will do to you, dear self-comment-voters, to you, if you stop.
(this just made me realise one could theoretically delegate to an alt account, and then set up a bot to autovote yourself - is there any impediment to this?)
PS
Note that right at this moment, the RPC server we are using is almost an hour out of date. So the flags will appear at random times without even having to code this in.
PPS
The kitty is working just fine, and there is numbers next to the thumbs down on busy.org, but at steemit.com, nix. I can manually place a red flag, and then the interface shows it, but not the bot. I am very curious to know why this is the case.
This is why we are doing the beta, things like this may even show that we cannot in fact do this with a bot delegated power, but only with actual SP from the same account. I was not aware of any distinction previously, and any clarifications from those who know would be useful.
This could be a bug in Condenser. Here is a screenshot from my logged in account:
And when I log in as @smackdown.kitty in an incognito window:
Well, isn't that different.. another fine creation. Glad to see things are working out. :)
Still very much in testing. We'll share our findings soon 😺
Cool! A-n-t-i-c-i-p-a-t-i-o-n!
I like the concept.
Also, I just learned from upvoting this post and observing my voting power on SteemNow that upvoting posts set to "Payout Declined" still takes away voting power (which, as a Red Fish, indicates to me there may still MAY be a payout to the upvoters).
@smackdown.kitty teaching this new fish more than it realizes already (I am no longer upvoting my own comments and most of my own posts now for the benefit of the community, thanks to the posts about smackdown.kitty I have red so far).
She's actually a big kitty, so the minnows won't have to worry about her. She eats bigger fish, in the 1000SP range =)
I believe the reward you decline returns to the pool.
Education is the goal! Thanks for your comment.
It was testing without claws before, just logging outputs now, but it's going now, so I will upvote this one 1% to see what happens.
Gimme a smack Kitty =D
Come get the yarn
It should be live now, @personz was testing it without the downvote transaction enabled.
woh kitty kitty kitty
This is why it's a beta... In general, we should not behave any different from usual, just fix a 1% upvote to all your posts and @personz will be monitoring and work out if he needs to make changes to the code.
(this just made me realise one could theoretically delegate to an alt account, and then set up a bot to autovote yourself - is there any impediment to this?)
No, and this is why attempting to stop self-voting is pointless. New accounts (which costs the platform resources), vote trading, curation trading groups, bots, etc. I think you'll only ever get the minor offenders. I'm more concerned about the monster whale-paid ads, since one of those is worth thousands of self-upvoting minnows.
It's still a whole lot less easy to delegate to a separate account + manually upvote/produce a bot and it will look very different.
We know we'll only "get" the minor offenders, but the idea is to "shame" so to speak the behavioiur of sloppily just directly upvoting your own comments when they're not even interesting.
It is about revealing a hidden element in the interface for everyone to see, because we don't think, and many many people have been responding to affirm their agreement that self voting is not just ball-licking but also destructive to the platform. I also think that it is happening a lot with new users because of that little pip you get when you see your POWAH... yes Steeem POWAH... it's addictive, and leaving that lying around is like leaving matches laying around in a household with 3 year old children, who have seen you use it.
That's a good way to describe it
I have said as much repeatedly. As I looked into this more, this is actually for the benefit of new users more than anything else, who are burning their votes with automatic post upvotes and upvoting their own comments. I haven't done the analytics but I bet the majority of accounts under 500SP have also under 20% VP remaining.
Again, the delegation source can be a condition for rejecting the vote. You can't stop everything automatically, you can do a lot, however, if you try. I also have talked about using AI and fuzzy logic analysis and traffic analysis to, for example, discover the destination of a steem transfer to shapeshift, then also be watching the bitcoin and ethereum (and other) blockchains, for an amount to appear out the other side that is precisely the amount, minus the commission, and then watch where that then goes. It might go into a tumbler, though then you would be piling on top of a 2% tx fee plus BTC tx fee plus 5-7% tumbler fee, I think that adds up to about 15% cost to evade simple algorithmic analysis.
These are not very expensive countermeasures, and there is plenty of people so motivated to do these investigations manually, that you can find a post about someone investigating the movements of steem between users on a fairly regular basis.
"Follow the money"...
The possibility of evading even very comprehensive measures is there, but the chances of getting caught are fairly high too. It's not fraud, it is an attack on the loyal userbase of the platform, syphoning from the collective pool.
Nobody owns that pool until it's paid out, but that pool is the property of ALL steem users.
So funny
Sadly you don't get red flags yet. We are still in testing.
Attention, self upvoters! Little kitty can became a Steemit policeman. 😎
Well thanks, but not police, just another citizen tapping you on the shoulder
Kitty why you no flag dis ^ ?
It may take a few minutes to appear, but I'm more than happy to have a red flag appear on my comments. Because I mean to do this, to test the bot. But I doubt that many people are gonna be happy about it, and just like a splash of cold water in the face, it's going to snap them out of their complacency, and seek an explanation.
I am going to be honest, I'm trying to understand what the function of @Smackdown.Kitty is, but I am a little lost. All I took away from that was that you are in closed beta testing, and you are testing with comments :P Let me know
Her function is to simply mark self votes with a red flag. She keeps a database of everyone who she has caught doing it, and each time the percentage of flag goes up when they self-vote again. She is no whale, but repeat offenders will start to see up to a dollar taken off their rewards, only up to the limit of the amount of vote they place on it, and no more.
I see. So are you talking about if users make a comment and then they self vote it? The bot is looking for those situations and flagging them?
PS. I love it how we are calling the bot a 'her' :P
Yes, this is the algorithm.
By the way, honesty is what we are trying to promote here... And curiosity. Self votes are hidden from the readers, so once she is in 'production' users can identify most self-voted comments by the red flag.
She is not a meany, really, our little kitty. She just likes chasing rats.
So, is it going for anyone that self-votes them self? Because how would you define a 'rat'?
Reason I am asking, is I think self-voting can be used as a tool too.
Like, if you are trying to get the attention of an influencer, but they have a ton of comments, then self-voting your comment to get to the top of the comments is great. It's basically like paying for adsense marketing in Google!
Yeah, I understand those bigger guys who just post one word comments and then they give themself a $50 up vote. That's ridiculous.
If you are catching what I am saying :)
She'll not chase after anyone with less than 1000 SP.
You're right that it's those useless comments with big upvotes that are the worst. I can see the point with selfvoting comments in certain sittuations as you mention, but I think the total harm is currently greater than total benefits.
Okay sweet! Well looks like you're screwed since you have 1001 SP xD What are the odds LOL!
And yeah I suppose one whale (With $50 up vote) can do as much, if not more damage than 5000 other people.. So in that sense, it makes sense.
But I am also not really seeing the giant problem with this even.. Like, it's still their money.. :P
ahhahaha! Yeah, I had to power up 9 steem to @the-ego-is-you because he was only at 991!
No, it is only their money, strictly speaking, when the reward payout goes into their account (or, more precisely, when they claim it, as is the system behaviour now) - it is only potentially their money, according to the vote calculation algorithm.
haha well what are the odds... pretty high since l0k1 sent me the last 10SP for me to be in the test ;)
Yes, well the problem is that it incentivizes very rich people to add nothing good to the platform but instead just "withdraw" a lot of money from the economy to each comment of theirs that only say "very good content I agree" or "follow me I follow u" etc.
Someone might choose to upvote their own comment that says "OK" in response to someone else and because that drained his voting power he didn't have as much to give to a user that actually said something of value. So the focus will be wrong and then all the small accounts will see this big "whale" upvoting himself and think he's being a prick, but maybe not dare say anything. They might even think it's disgusting enough to leave to a more "democratic" platform, which could ironically be Facebook or Reddit. :p
They can do as they want with their money, even buy other users to upvote them or use "sock puppet" accounts, but we're making a slight improvement on the rules within the system.
I get what you are saying, but in the context of the Post HF19 world, this is wide open for abuse, and that's exactly what's happening now. Also, using it to elevate your post for reasons of getting attention is not cool. @pfunk used it to draw my attention to the fact I worded the title of a post incorrectly, that's about the only use I can see being vaguely justifiable.
Even then, as I point out, you can in fact change the sort order of comment threads with a button just above the bottom section below the initial post, to by time, by trending, and by comment rewards, so you are making an assumption (reasonable though) that this will even do anything. Come to think of it, I think the default order should be reverse chronological. Then the vote would not even work.
You have a point.
The thing is, you might know about the 'change sort order' button, but I am certain 95% of other users won't think of it. With that being said, I still think using the tactic to get your comment to the top (If you think it deserves people seeing it) is still negotiable :)
And if we reverse the chronological order, it would be a really good idea for those pesty whales, but not the best idea for those comments that are really good, and being up voted on because of the value they hold..
I think a way around that would be to have all the self voted comments push in reverse. So, if a whale votes himself for $50, he goes to the bottom :D And then all the organic voted comments remain at the top!
The code has been cracked :D
Yes, and the change sort order button is not persistent between posts, like the 'upvote post' and selection of payout option.
Indeed, the interface can do a lot of things to the way it looks. Like the widely hated flag icons. Busy ditched this for a thumbs down.
SELF VOTE!
here kitty kitty
Meeeeeooowwwwch!
😸
Voted on eSteem
Posted via Steemit.com on mobile
I am looking forward to seeing this in action...
LOL sorry hit the upvote....Bad habits already forming over here although This I would upvote because of the content!
You can upvote our posts, if you want to, I will not always be putting silly meaningless posts for the test, and when I do it on any other post, I will also drop the link to this post.
Also, if you support this #project-smackdown, you are welcome to not just upvote but if you, later, once we are in production, want to charge her up with more, I will make another post at the beginning of the live production which will include a short video guide about how to delegate SP to her using @jesta's Vessel GUI Steem wallet.
LOL I am learning this place and have not delved beyond bare surface skimming of anything to do with the wallet so anything on it is speaking greek to me ;-)
You'll learn. It's gibberish to us all when we start out :D
Here's a place you can learn more and hopefully it will contain some guides on these sorts of things, if not now then in the future.
Oh my goodness a chatroom....Hmmm TBA on privacy and rules...
yeah, just lately, the comments on posts have resembled a chat for me, with replies coming thick and fast from two or three people every few minutes. I love it!
Hello my dear friend
You are flattered
Please flood me @haji ♥