Trending posts, but what are they really contributing
Not a new topic
There has been already written a lot about the trending topics on Steemit. At the beginning there were only posts that were really trending by the views and upvotes they got from people actually reading them. But that seems to be history at the moment.. At this time is is a new type of shop window where you can advertise your posts by (mis) using bidbot's or other way's of getting artificial upvotes.
I picked out some posts on the Trending page of 'All tag's':
Excel seems to have a problem wit the word Revenue, it's removing the E everytime lol
As you see in this post the poster paid 410,6 SBD to bidbot's and got a revenue of 719,33 $ (111,30 SBD, 183,15 Steem and 266,71 SP). Although the figures have to be adjusted on the hight of the SBD and Steem, you can tell that this post was worth investing.... Is it fair? That's up to everybody to decide, I don't think it's fair. Wat it the intention to get the post read more because of the trending, I don't thinks so. Looking at the history of this particular poster he or she uses bidbot's all the time, so the motives for Steemit are (to me) not integer... But who am I to judge....
The second post has put some more money into BidBot's but got less revenue on his investment. (although it's still counting). he invested 1021 SBD and get's in return 1007,5 (156,63 SBD, 257,73 Steem and 375,32 SP). So he loses about 13,5 SBD (?)....
Why am I pointing this out
My prior reason is because I think this use of BidBot's is wrong in several way's. Although people are of course free to use them it has a bad influence on things. (my personal opinion).
Mis-use of Trending page
Because of the masive upvotes by bidbot's the trending page isn't for the real trending topic's anymore. people who get a lot of exposure and upvotes in the 'natural' way won't ever reach the rewards (anymore) those bought posts have. So quality stay's hidden...
Getting 'Fear of Missing out Votes'
With that I mean is that the Whales and Dolphins (mostly) misusing the BidBot's have a great group of followers who are there only in the hope they get a 'big' upvote from the Whale or Dolphin so they upvote the whale or dolphin (again) with precious (often low) votes. So other people much more deserving these votes are there empty handed and won't get recognized...
What is the purpose of bidbots
From origin bidbots where invented to help the minnows getting exposure, so it was (and for me still are) intended to create more visibilty for hard work posts. In order to create a broader and following. It never was intented to be cashcow's for the (already) fortunate steemians... Doing so in my opinion is abuse of the tools and not respecting the other (less fortunate) steemians..
What is the trending posts contributing
In my honest opinion, nothing... I really don't bother looking anymore because of the majority of bought posts with no value.... I won't mention names, but there is a musician who has a lot of trending posts. He joined Steemit not so long ago only talking about the things in life that matters...Some (to me) floaty posts as "Believe in your strength", "Discover your weaknesses and use them" , "How I got succesfull" and so on. Not the kind of posts I expect from a musician, but at the other hand mostly they are creative arti people.. No reading some of his posts he got rid of all the other topics and presents himself now as a absolute expert on Crypto with dito long posts about crypto... To me it means that's something stinks......
What can we do about it
Well, I don't think we can and to be honest I don't know if we should. I still think it's a pitty to see this happening but it is (after all) possible and permitted, is it moral ok? No (although, not my morals), for that the least we can do is leave the trending for what it is... And that's just what is happening I think. Perhaps we can introduce a new hashtag #alternativetrending :) at the end it will consist of the most trending posts in the tag...
But then, how do we get exposure for our posts?
Well that's an easy one (sort of speak), just put out your great content like you always do. things won't go fast, but you shouldn't expect it will.. You can of course join multiple curation groups like @smg or @qurator where you gather with other steemians sharing your posts and helping out others... And be conitinuious, with that I mean, post on a regular base but also read and comment the posts of others. I think the last is even more important because that's all part of (my opinion) of being member of a community... Care and share, be involved, but most of all Enjoy what you are doing.
Thank you for reading
They are the creators of Steemify, THE notification app for your Steemit account for IOS.
The first thing new people see is the advice, 'check out the trending page' when they create an account. As I created the 'chops' one recently I noticed this. Until Steemit Inc, decide to do something about it, then nothing will happen.
If they decide to advise newbies to look at the #alternativetrendingpage and omit trending from the main menu, then that would be progress.
That would be a big progress indeed... lets start it :)
When you mentioned the musician I knew immediately which one you mean. That person spends a lot of money on the bots.. I dont even bother looking at the feed anymore, and especially not the trending pages.. A shame yes, the abusers spoil it for the others..
Yes agree,that is often the case...
Too bad, right?
The overuse of bots is a massive problem on Steemit! I think there should be some kind of limit on how much your aloud to spend on each post - atleast that way it would be abit more even - at the moment anyone can get to trending if they spend enough
Totally true , they spoil it for the hard workers on steemit..
Some are abusing the use of bidbots. You will read a post, see the upvotes and the payout is really huge only to notice that all the votes are from bidbots and the funny thing, you will realize that that caliber of post is not supposed to that payout. And a minnow who has a quality content far beyond that post and will not be receiving that payout thereby discouraging him and dimming his spirit.
It's good that you have written about this, at least I know I'm not the only one who is concerned about this.
No , I share your concern 100% . I hope the make a short term solution for this... i think people using it in this way are really grabbers...
I look at trending posts occasionally to look at hash tags, formats, new ways of presenting things.... I think it is useful but one simply has to enjoy preparing and creating your own content, and not worrying too much about bidbots and who is getting more than us. As long as your steem journey is growing, and as long as you are contributing and being your best self, the people WILL find you and support you. Our job is to be clever about how we use tags and formats and to simply create great blog posts. Often. Everything else flows from that.
True that !!
I think the trending page gets a bad rap when really it is just people upvoting poor content. I think some of it has to do with bidbots and the like, but people tend to jump on that bandwagon and that artificially inflates the value as well.
True,a bit of golddigger attitude 😂😂
Sell your votes https://steemit.com/news/@bible.com/6h36cq
I wrote about this too a few weeks ago , and I understand that is the way for now. But its one thing I dont like about this platform. It should be a different kind of platform so the rules have to be changed. Till than I Will do the best I can and hope for the best trending blog I can make I guess