BOTS, PAY FOR UPVOTE, SELF UPVOTING: Chiming in on Steemit controversy..
We all wonder what the next hard fork on steemit will look like..
Issues many people have had are:
1. Self Up-voting
2. Bots
3. Buying Votes
So let's go through the positives and negatives of each..
#1. Self Upvoting
I am not hypocrite. I give myself a few cents to get my posts started. However the question is what would I do if I was a whale. My 0.06 cents don't take much out of the reward pool. However a full whale vote could go north of $20-$100. Now that's all good and dandy.. some steemians earned their Steem Power, and some got pre-mined power. What is wrong? Not really sure.. I mean sure it may seem unfair; but the early bird catches the worm. Sometimes you have to be at the right place in the right time. In fact steemit was free to join and I earned a few hundred bucks to gamble on the exchanges.
A hard fork may get rid of self-upvotes, or it may not. In either case I am kinda neutral. I try to put myself in both positions. In a perfect world we wouldn't upvote ourselves. However steemit is full of greed and am I a hypocrite? Would I self upvote if I had 20,000-1,000,000 SP? Just being honest, I probably would do it. I am not a jealous person by nature. So in a perfect world we would just upvote others; not ourselves. Since it's not perfect it's here to stay unless it's hard forked.
MY ONLY PET-PEEVE IS PEOPLE COMMENTING ON YOUR POST, NOT UPVOTING, AND JUST UPVOTING YOURSELF.
NOW THAT'S CHUTZPAH! That deserves a big thumbs down, as it's insulting, raping rewards, and HURTING the steemit community.
# 2. BOTS
I have no idea where I stand on bots. I don't know how to make or use bots. Bots are around and can do enormous good or damage to the community. I don't like them personally, but that's due to being insecure about really understanding their purpose. Some monitor the site for plagiarizing, some give upvotes.. so again it's kinda a dark vs light concept. I think not having bots and curating and voting manually isn't such a bad idea. I don't like the fact some steemians have HUNDREDS if not THOUSANDS of steemit accounts that can be synchronized. People make flagging bots, upvote bots etc..
This is steemit where technology allows us to transact. So perhaps this is just a normal platform where this goes on. Again I am neutral, but side more on the bots that help maintain the site.
Using a bot army to downvote are weaponized and that's not a good environment for steemit or steemians to see.
#3. Buying Votes
I have no choice but to buy my votes. @randowhale has helped me get some exposure and I don't really earn/gain much from it.. but I still like it. Why can't you buy votes? I mean you earned the SBD/STEEM. It's your currency here and you should do what you want with it. I am a minnow so my psychology is just about growing. Perhaps if random whales upvoted my content I would change my thinking process. Until then, I'll be buying some upvotes. I have a few trusted followers, but they aren't whales. I appreciate their support but if I just got 0.10 cents for every post I probably would give up after a while.
So leave the upvote services go. I know it might not help the reward pool and keep good content left to the bottom, but as a minnow I can say I have written really good content, and without that whale upvote I would just STOP BLOGGING.
what's the difference between buying votes and upvoting yourself.?
That's a very good point! The examples of @tamim and @mindhunter being the top earning authors last month well illustrate this similarity, as well as the sole difference. @tamim self voted with a large stash of SP, while @mindhunter simply bought votes from @snowflake, who had a large stash of SP.
Didn't know that.
It looks like the whale in question 'bought in' , twice,
when Steem was worth very little ( $326 @ $.08 each) and then again ($70,000) after it had gained in value some
...then made out big time($400,000) last June.
Can't say as I can fault him on this...can you?
If it's true that the dolphin in question is doing what you say he is (how do you know that) then he's just using leverage to achieve the same effect as the other person you mentioned.
lookit all those 'curation' rewards the whale in question has been pulling in.
hmmmm.....I wonder....what's his percentage?
Why is this a bad thing....either way?
In a post by @jerrybanfield the matter was under discussion, when @snowflake chimed in, and verified the claim. After some discussion, @snowflake said he no longer wanted to sell his votes to @mindhunter thereafter. That was last month. Dunno what @mindhunter has decided, as he didn't contribute to the discussion. Neither did @tamim.
The reason I think it's a bad thing is that it reduces Steemit to nothing more than finance, or at least directs the rewards to tricks and gimmicks, rather than well written insights.
You have at least had a look at the white paper, and may be familiar with the direct statements of the devs that such is a threat to Steemit.
Such shenanigans reduce the payouts you receive for your excellent writing, for example. There is a pool of fresh Steem minted each day, and payouts are divvied up out of it. The more that is delivered to scams, manipulations, and the like, the less available for content creators.
I have long maintained that whales, such as @snowflake, are penalized financially, in the current VP weighting scheme, if they don't sell votes, or self vote. Some folks think they're greedy, while I point out that acquisition of wealth requires savvy, which not profiting from it once you have it isn't.
If they want to upvote posts on some topic or other, or like an author, or whatever, they must forego the rewards they could reap in order to curate as do you and I. If I cast all my votes for me I'd get less than $1/day. @snowflake would get about $200 (estimate, based on your report of his SP being 400k, while mine is about $500).
That's a significant loss of income that the platform allows whales to reap. I don't care much about a dollar. I live on a hell of a lot less than $200/day. Not saying I'd do that were I possessed of such SP, but I certainly would have much motivation to.
all I'm saying is i'm glad this is such a healthy blog with comments.. now if only I could get past 0.58 CENTS lol
basically a minnow like me doesn't stand a chance..
Chance of what?
well randowhale for one is kind of a gamble and you could make more than what you put in.. the only difference is someone such as yourself voting and giving a nicer reward, or me upvoting and getting a shitty reward.
Some say it gives more exposure (a paid vote from a whale).. I don't know if I agree with that. In either case getting a whale to upvote you for money is never going to change even if the paid services are let go.
Thanks for commenting. It sounds like you are on the side of NO PAID SERVICES.. which is fair and understandable in a perfect world.
As minnows our votes aren't worth a great deal of $. However, votes possess value other than mere financial reward, as they are also means of encouraging creation of content we like, gaining exposure to our blogs, and generating goodwill/reciprocity, which all improves Steemit, and generates far more potential financial rewards through increasing interest in our content.
For these reasons I don't waste upvotes on myself, but try to spend them wisely on others.
Regarding bots, I don't want bots posting and voting, as I do not value the opinions of machines. I reckon people are what social media is about, and it is their opinions alone that matter. OTOH, bots have many good uses that don't involve posting or voting, and I am generally quite supportive of these.
Bots which are used (or may be created) to defeat scam/spam botnets might not be so evil, although I would be very leery of such.
While you may feel it is necessary to fulfill your goals on Steemit, it simply isn't true that you have no choice. You have every bit as much choice as do I, and I do not buy votes.
It is true that I am not focused on financial rewards, and recognize that this is not typical of content creators on Steemit. I just find other things more valuable than money, such as ideas, discourse, and free speech. YMMV, but it isn't necessary to buy votes.
Furthermore, the white paper (a relatively painless read) states that manipulation of the rewards is a danger to Steemit. Rewards are intended to promote the creation of quality content, and thus create a valuable platform, and incentivize creators of such content.
Vote buying doesn't do that. Last month the two top earning authors on Steemit @mindhunter and @tamim were not in that position due to the quality of their content. Rather @tamim selfvotes with a large base of SP, and @mindhunter bought votes from @snowflake. Not only were neither producing content of much value, but both were decreasing the rewards you, I, and the rest of the community received from the rewards pool as a result of their schemes.
Vote buying isn't good for Steemit.
Of course I don't blog for monetary rewards, and neither do I condemn those whose primary motivation is financial, or who find a minimal reward base requisite, as long as Steemit isn't harmed, and I can still find quality posts to comment.
I have to agree with you thoughts here, but I don't like that it comes down to systems manipulation.
It seems that so much of the reward pool is taken by clique-voting, and that another big chunk of it is taken in the schemes that you talk about.
I had publicly resolved (after using such schemes earlier) not to do so, but as so many other people ARE using them, I have been going back on that position lately, and testing some of these schemes out.
I have been looking into several of these, such as SteemFollower, which I'll test out over the week.
Sad facts, and reSteemed
thanks for the support.. if you cant beat em join em lol. Steemit is beta so i'm curious to know what alpha will look like. Perhaps these issues will be tackled.
I really do think it is a problem of human nature, not of platform design.
The only change I would make would be to get rid of rewarding curators based on who upvotes after they do; it really pressures people to be "first" in upvoting posts and makes it less rewarding to upvote older content
While I pretty strongly feel it is a matter of platform design failing to account for human nature, I really agree with your comment regarding curation timing.
I have also seen collusion in chats, whereby an author that can be counted on to trend timed the post with a group of followers, who could then time their votes so as to maximize their rewards. Win/win for the conspiracy, but the author could have posted his bilirubin count and trended, so a dramatic negative for Steemit.
the problem with trying to design for human considerations is that the humans game the design ;>
I'm not talking about the devs as much as the users.
some systems are worse than others, of course, but we saw how fast the system was gamed once the new hardfork came out
actually, we could probably do without the hot and trending pages, as well
Alpha testing is usually internal testing that comes before beta testing. Is there a newer version of steemit that is set to be released into alpha and then beta? I assume that most of us won't have access to the alpha if that is the case.
sorry meant delta lol
I don't have agree with bots having the power to vote. Bots voting diminishes quality control, especially paid bot votes. I don't mind bots that are for functional reason as long as they cannot vote.
Self-voting is an iffy one. My votes are only worth like $0.03 and if I put heart into a post, I sure as heck am going to upvote myself especially when my posts earn like $0.012 total and I see posts are very questionable quality often a single paragraph voted at $20.00 and over.
I do agree it is annoying when people come to your article and don't up vote and just leave a comment and then upvote their own comments. While I can understand someone upvoting their own article that they put time into, upvoting a few sentence comment seems like a skeezy way to earn money with minimal effort.
kind like what's been going on in this thread lol
Yeah, I always upvote the article if I leave a comment. I feel that if it was interesting enough to read and for me to comment on, then it deserves a vote. But then again, it could be more of an etiquette thing and people don't know about it.
I hope I'm just in time to ask a question about this subject 😀
So if I understand correctly there is really no negative aspect of someone upvotes his own post or comment?
Not even when it's total crap? Cause I've seen some worse comments since I joined steemit...
This post recieved an upvote from minnowpond. If you would like to recieve upvotes from minnowpond on all your posts, simply FOLLOW @minnowpond
This post recieved an upvote from minnowpond. If you would like to recieve upvotes from minnowpond on all your posts, simply FOLLOW @minnowpond
I kind of think like you do. Best to voice it now.. and well I am developing my skills in different areas I can use out of Steemit. So it works out well, however if no one sees my post it is very disheartening. It is like why did I put it in here if no one is going to read it.
Then I can go to a post making fair amount of steem money..not whale money but good money, hope you are still with me. Here is the punch line: I look and they got all kinds of votes and made money but few views. What is that about? No one saw theirs either. I am confused.
just look at it like the 1% getting away with stuff that's all. Just a fact of life.. I'm sure there are literally 1000:1 minnows:whales
Congratulations! This post has been upvoted from the communal account, @minnowsupport, by bb613 from the Minnow Support Project. It's a witness project run by aggroed, ausbitbank, teamsteem, theprophet0, someguy123, neoxian, followbtcnews/crimsonclad, and netuoso. The goal is to help Steemit grow by supporting Minnows and creating a social network. Please find us in the Peace, Abundance, and Liberty Network (PALnet) Discord Channel. It's a completely public and open space to all members of the Steemit community who voluntarily choose to be there.
@bearbear613 got you a $3.14 @minnowbooster upgoat, nice! (Image: pixabay.com)
Want a boost? Click here to read more!