Let's Smite Bots With reCAPTCHA!
The first time I ever saw this reCAPTCHA I was blown away. REALLY?! All you have to do is click a button? No more:
Amazing... but it's not being used enough. I don't know how much bandwidth and processing power this thing takes, but couldn't we be using it for everything? Upvotes, Downvotes, Follows, Posting, ETC. If that's not a viable option, couldn't we just use it on suspected bot accounts and low reputation accounts?
Bots
99% of bots are a nuisance. They bring nothing to the table. They are annoying and they are trying to exploit the rewards pool. We should get rid of them. So far, I've only seen one interesting bot: @fairlotto. @fairlotto is kind of amazing because it's a lottery that circumvents gambling law. Because no rake is being taken from the lottery pool, @fairlotto is not gambling. @fairlotto only makes money on upvotes, pretty cool if you ask me.
Bots do have a place here, but only 1% of them. Bots should have to be registered and useful, while not being annoying and trying to exploit rewards. The most obvious indicator of a bot is an account following a massive amount of people. a-a-a is almost following 200,000 people. Disgusting. How is there not a limit or flags in place for this kind of behavior? Also, I'd like to point out that @fairlotto is following 2 people... 2. Whoever is running that account is awesome.
Oops I take it back, there is a 5% fee on @fairlotto. So it might not be entirely legal but whatever, it's still a valuable service and 5% isn't terrible. Also, the decentralized global nature of The Blockchain often circumvents pesky bureaucratic laws like gambling.
Totally agree that it's something we should try to stop. I've been very skeptical about bots as well, but did briefly use @smartmarket to give a couple posts more money. But to your point, that doesn't add any real community value, it's literally just a transaction.
The reCAPTCHA notion is nice on taking actions that affect the rewards pool. Simple, not too hard for users, but if it thwarts most bots, great. Maybe there is a small window where once you do the reCAPTCHA as a human, there's 5 minutes of time that it won't ask you again. I'm moreso thinking about introducing friction onto Steem platforms if they are going to compete with Instagram and FB. On those, people Like stuff often, and I think we'd still want to encourage that from actual people. Not sure if a reCAPTCHA cool down makes sense though...
Side note, and apologies for pimping, but I just wrote yesterday about a bot idea for DTube where the bots upvote based on views, nothing else. So creators have a floor of earnings so long as they get X amount of views. Long post + video here: https://busy.org/utopian-io/@gyrosean/how-dtube-could-use-voting-bots-to-refocus-emphasis-on-views-and-scale-creator-monetization