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RE: Open Discussion: Fix Trending & Stop Promotion Abuse
Things to Think About
21000 SP is now useless on this platform because of these bots.
- There aren't any incentives to curate manually now.
- If I vote for a post with my 21000 SP, all it takes is one bot vote to flag away my efforts. We might not call the paid votes "flags" or "downvotes" but the paid votes have the same effect as a flag. The post I voted for gets pushed down into oblivion, that member suffers while those who paid to vote for themselves hog the spotlight. The problems aren't reserved to the trending page. It's system wide. Even the most popular post on Steemit right now that majority enjoy when they see it, whatever that is, gets pushed aside and flagged away by paid votes. We might as well just ban quality content because it stands no chance of going viral here. Nearly all content producers here now get pushed aside.
- People pay for votes, others get pushed down and this is called "promotion." They're paying for visibility, yet a robot can't see. Those who delegated to the bots are being paid to look away, so they can't see either and even if they could, they don't have SP to help a blogger succeed organically because they gave their vote away.
- 1000 accounts that delegate away their SP equals 2000 eyes all looking away and centralized into one paid vote. "Visibility?" "Promotion?" How?
It's your mess, you clean it up.
- Paywalls don't work.
- Pay to play is hated.
- Bloggers/Vloggers typically help generate and earn ad revenue but instead they come here, they see a sign that says Free Money! Then the blogger gets tricked into paying someone else to earn ad revenue while they make next to nothing and sometimes even lose money.
- Nobody likes to feel as if they were ripped off.
- Content producers on any platform come first. All it will take is one competitor who's paying attention to the issues being ignored here and all of the quality content producers along with their money will move there. Who, in their right mind, would come here to pay you guys if they've been offered a level playing field, for free.
- This model of paying for attention strips Steemit and all related apps and websites running on this blockchain of attracting big names in the industry because they are already setup to EARN. Coming here to pay is bad for business and their brand. They don't need to fake it until they make it.
- Amateurs are paying for overexposure because they do not understand the business they are in. Much like hearing the same pop song on the radio ten times per day, nobody wants to see the same blogger hogging multiple slots on the trending page. Some members here were lured and trapped into "promoting" their content to the trending page multiple times per week and will now suffer from overexposure. Their reputations within the community; ruined. Pop songs don't last forever and that business model is designed that way for a reason.
To see where this pay to play model is headed, simply listen to the radio.
- The reason why radio sucks now is because those with money pay for their music to be heard.
- New performers with a great sound can't get airplay because the slots are all bought and paid for already. It's not hard to find information about that situation.
- That's what's happening on Steemit because of these "promoters" and their bots.
- Seems like people in the music industry are uniting to stand against that system because it's obvious, after this many decades, how content producers have suffered. Why attempt a broken business model here on Steemit?
- This broken system will eventually lead to a top 40 system or something similar.
- The Steem blockchain cannot be a disruptive technology if only a handful of people can benefit from using it.
- Payola is illegal for a reason yet people can't seem to learn from history and think that idea will somehow work here? That's how you set yourselves up for failure.
The best course of action now:
- Label the posts using promo bots as advertisements.
- Take them off trending and hot and put the posts under "promoted", where they belong. People can still place banners that lead to those promotions on their blogs. Wise bloggers can sell banner slots and earn ad revenue instead of being ripped off by these so-called "promoters" we have now.
- As it stands now: people are placing money beside their post to make it appear as if it's a popular post in an attempt to mislead me into voting for said post. Because those members attempted to trick me, seeing my vote is highly unlikely. I don't support con artists. Many new members aren't even aware of the fact they've been duped by these so-called, "promoters" and much of this practice falls under false advertising.
I could go on for days but I think I'll stop there.
Exactly right @nonameslefttouse. Agreed.
The first set of points is why in general active users is declining now, and why few are willing to invest. (Said it before myself as well.) Amazing how many large steem accounts don't see that . . . If 40K - 100K investment gives nothing in return, who will put in 1K - 10K? And how many around the globe can even afford that?
So price of Steem shall decline, if no further changes are made . . .
A proverb in Japan is that if I'm your shadow and you're just a shadow of somebody else, then what am I?
If 40K is dust, then what's 1K?
What's the value proposition to small users, in other words? No censorship? If that were true it'd be a good value proposition today? But is that true?
Archiving and therefore Voice depend on the value of Steem being high. So that people don't discard the token. Unless other sites happen to censor their particular viewpoint they're currently better off using them. So what is the value proposition? In the long run? Without some major changes, is there one? Even if the platforms gains some new apps?
I hope so. (But hope is for the hopeless.)
Thanks for being a voice Tibra. My 2 cents... The point of curation? You vote and get $0.0000001 back. Might as well vote on your own post and comments. Seems like the rich get rich and the poor stay poor and the poor get punished for doing what the rich do.
Good ideas. Finally someone came with a good solution.
That's a new perspective to see this.
Very old idea but unless people make money from flags no-one cares.
So flags should be rewarded like upvotes?
Why not? Have to keep the biggest accounts the biggest without a level playing field for new users.........
Will be chaos here if flags will be rewarded, because now how people scam upvotes, then there will be flag scams.
I agree with you that without flags, big accounts will keep increasing without a check.
What I am saying is that if flags will be rewarded, the problems here will be double, people will flag everyone just for small rewards.
Glad to see that you understand the future of flag rewards! I wasn't sure which way your thoughts were leaning. We don't even need whale help to make a flag bot, just a bunch of members who will to donate a few SBD to an account of a trusted non-self voter who can then be turned into a paid delegation to hand out flags.
A flag bot should first be used to tackle the main issues we face plagiarism and identity thief. Once those are corrected we can move onto unreasonable rewards some are getting but as it is now, rewards are the last issue we need flags for until the other issues are fixed.
A flag bot makes more sense to me than everyone flagging stuff for rewards.
Agreed, everyone is concerned about what they get only.
A flag bot should be for the people by the people without worry of what they get, solely for the help to the community. It should be used for flagging after a consensus of minnows vote on flags, never should a flag bot be controlled by whales protecting their returns. That is like selfvoters complaining about bid bots. What are they protecting, the platform or their personal returns from the pool?
God! This is the most erudite post I’ve seen on the subject. I haven’t come across you before so don’t know you within a context, but damn! I’m impressed. Likening it to a radio makes so much sense. I don’t listen to the radio for that reason and I don’t read these paid promotional posts in the same vein. Your solution is simple and direct: put them in promoted. That’s at least a first step! Thank you @nonameslefttouse
This is only true if the only incentives that exist are financial. Since that's not true, neither is the statement that there are no incentives to curate manually.
That they are discounted is very true, however.
The underlying problem is stake-weighting, both in RL, and on Steemit. The benefits of society are far more than merely financial, and society is much more than an economy, and far more profitable than mere money.
While you're quite correct in what you do address, failing to acknowledge the actual cause of disincentives will not potentiate solving the problem. Merely mitigating the symptoms doesn't solve the problem, and I expect that mitigation but staves off negative consequences temporarily, and that they'll come back and bite us again.
Thoughts?
One of the main reasons that Bid-bots got popular was the totally broken "Promoted" feature. So just doing the above 2 things should be greatly helpful.