Bots
are like bacteria
........................................................................................................................................................
The bad kind. The carry disease for the BlockChain
Unfortunately they can't be banned. Steemit is an ecosystem. The good parts that allow the equivalent of red blood cells
to carry the Steem...the equivalent of oxygen
the ecosystem that allows communication
the nervous system
requires the same conditions to thrive that allows bots to infest them.
So...we need the equivalent of a bacteriophage.
Steemit needs an IMMUNE SYSTEM
set a thief to catch a thief
design a bot to destroy all voting and comment bots.
If voting bots and comment bots can be designed (and they have)..then why not KILLER bot.
A bot to
DESTROY ALL BOTS!
Load it up with a bunchaton of delegated SteemPower and turn it loose.
Make it kinda smart.
when it detects a voting bot it obliterates them...
a steemit Immune system.
An interesting idea but I'm not sure if the powers that be would approve of such a creation and it's their steem power that would be needed to give it the voting strength to make a noticeable difference. Also, it would be used, I assume, to falg any posts that were voted on by bots but would this cause a lot of steem to be neutralised?? Or doesn't it work that way?? :)
From my understanding, the downvotes would take the money that was originally awarded to those posts (by the bots) and then redistribute them equally to other upvotes made in the same pay period. I could be wrong about that though, but the money does not disappear or get destroyed, it's distributed elsewhere.
A single bot wouldn't have enough voting power to handle all the upvoting bots, I don't think, unless it had very substantial delegations.
Thanks for the explanation @trending and that was what I was alluding to in my original comment. I don't think those with the SP to be able to combat these bots would be willing to delegate the SP to the killer bot and therefor it wouldn't have the power by itself to eradicate completely the vote buying bots, I think. :)
you spoke the magic word.
Delgation.
imagine private security agencies.
delegate a certain amount of steem to that agent
and it uses it's voting power to OBLITERATE any bot that downvotes you.
form groups that delegate to the same bot..
amass a YUGE amount of delegation.
it could work how ever way it's programmed to work.
how the power's that be gonna stop it?
ban bots?
awwwwwww
The potential earnings "lost" from being flagged are returned to the reward pool. The only person who loses is the one who used bots to vote on their posts.
Thanks a lot for the explanation @thatsweeneyguy. I'm not in favour of bots, especially vote buying bots and for a time was convinced by the argument that curation bots from the likes of blocktrades were an acceptable evil since they would not be able to manually curate and fairly distribute their votes with such high voting power but I am now much more in favour of delegation from the larger accounts to more smaller accounts as suggested by @stellabelle and others. I think a redistribution of power in terms of SP is a good thing.
Thanks again mate.
redistribution of power?
who's power are you going to steal to redistribute?
I think I might not be expressing my sentiments well enough. I don't intend to steal power from anyone. I think it would be a good idea for those who have a large stake in the platform and it's success to delegate, freely, some of the power they currently have all to themselves to some of the other members of the community who are more able to manually curate content and distribute the available rewards in a fairer way, based on quality of content, rather than for a fee .
It's been a while since I've written anything on steemit but in the past when I have, I have been quite open about my a lot of my beliefs and you have very kindly taken the time to comment and for the most part agree with my sentiments. The last thing I want is to control anyone or steal anything from anyone else.
I don't think I'm disagreeing with you but if you disagree with anything I've said in this comment, then maybe I am. :)
if they want to do that then nothing is stopping them.
if they are forced to do so then it's theft.
I wouldn't force anyone to do anything but I would suggest that it might be in their interest to think long term rather than being short sighted, unless the plan was always a short term thing, to be milked as much as possible til it runs dry. I really don't have the answer but I do think steemit has potential for a lot of good and there are definitely too many bots here already.
In truth, it's leadership that will ultimately win the day. Most of us at least are happy to follow the leader and those leading the platform right now are not doing enough by their example to make a difference.
But who gives a fuck what I think?? :)
I really hope your day is going well, my friend. I enjoyed your post. :)
I don't think that's the way it works.
During the whale wars
when whales downvoted whales....the earnings were just GONE
That's the way I've always heard it, anyway. The rewards for the post don't come out of the pool until the post is paid, so it would make sense that the rewards negated from flags would "save" them in the pool.
hmmmmm
when you put it that way...it makes sense.
so that would be all to the good
DESTROY ALL BOTS
Methinks yon free [blockchain] market might take umbrage :-)
tuff titty.
if certain types of bots are allowed.
ANY kind of bot is allowed.
Picture, old son, the inevitable expression of the censors' delight:
Killer bot designed to kill other bots launched...
Killer bot designed to kill killer bots launched...
Killer bot designed to replace all upvotes with downvotes and kill all killer bots launched...
Killer bot designed to replace all downvotes with upvotes while destroying killer bot designed to replace all upvotes with downvotes and kill all killer bots...bot..bottomest...bottomer...bottomed... steemit grinds to a complete halt as CPU cycles required bot all this botting stuff totals their server.
The Guinness floweth freely.
you just kinda proved my point.
DESTROY ALL BOTS
I would only tweak this in one small way: The bot would flag any and all posts it could, trying to negate the gain of voting bots used on one's own post. It would have to be smart enough to flag with the same weight as the bot's vote, but I would only flag those who are using them on their own content.
I actually wrote a post like this a while back about how a bot to negate the effects of self voting with bots would be great, and essentially just make people waste their money, while decreasing the reputation of said vote bots....
contact a dev...pay him a negotiated amount of steem to build one.
or better yet.
a group of steemers could do the same thing.
DESTROY ALL BOTS.
A "flagging alliance" would be awesome. There are so many voting trails for people to upvote content they've never seen, so why not do the same thing with flags?
exactly
by allowing 'bots (any kind of bots)
they've opened Pandora's box.
if they can use bots to steal from the reward pool
then others can use bots to put it back
It worked in the Whale Wars.
We are looking for Bot Builders
http://shaivitetemple.org/Forum/topic/blockchain-bots-that-benefit-people/