Steemit: Huge Engagement! Massive Bid-bots! Plenty of Down-votes! and Monster Un-delegation!
This post has it all - Or at least the one i'm going to discuss does!
Find out why @lexiconical's recent blog enters new ground for Steemit......
If you haven't read this post by @lexiconical, I suggest you do. With over 300 comments (many worth a read also), and heading towards 2000 views, it's one of the most engaging posts of the week.
The content of the post sparked a huge debate. The term 'Social Justice Warrior' is alone, enough to rile and rally plenty of people for both sides.
Anyway, I have no further to add than what's present in many of the replies. This post is more to do with what happened after the 'Post' button was hit.
Holy Bid-bots Batman!
Shortly into the life of the post, @lexiconical chose to bring in the services of some of the larger bid-bots. Almost as a 'suck this one SJWs', he sent a total of 131.873 SBD to @minnowbooster, @bellyrub, and @buildawhale.
Now these are some pretty hefty numbers to send to a bid-bot - you need to know what you are doing to 'risk' these amounts - I've seen some fails (including from a witness) just recently regarding over-sends, so I commend @lexiconical for his skill in this regard.
Do want to see the result?
A grand total of $202.5 in votes, leaving these bots currently (and surely not going to be toppled) at the head of the vote pile for this post:
Pretty epic bids. I've not seen a total so large from 3 bid-bots, ever.
So things are looking pretty sweet at this point, the comments and votes are flying in (and still are because it's a solid post for sure), and then...
Let the flag trail commence
A few hours into the life of the post, some members of the community took a dislike to something. It could have been the content, a disagreement over rewards (my guess), or something else but, the blog was flagged - not once or twice, 55 times.
This does look like a (down)vote-trail to me - and so you just need to scroll to the bottom of the image to see who was the instigator.
I'm going to assume that the reason for these flags were because of a 'Disagreement of rewards', the top listed reason in the flag pop-up:
Bernie and friends are entitled to their opinion for sure, but is @lexiconical to blame for these 'high rewards'? I think he saw the opportunity (which was open to all at the time) and took it.
So who's at fault here if anyone? The bid-bot owners? Or, how about the vote sellers to these bid-bots?...
The Bid-bot accounts
Later that evening, and perhaps the biggest point of discussion for this blog, is what happened to the accounts of the bid-bots discussed above.
I'll mention @minnowbooster first, just because they seem to have escaped an 'account restructure'. What they have done is more of a user restructuring and have blocked bids of anything over 0.09 SBDs to anyone who isn't currently registered on a 'white-list'.
200 accounts have been registered, and this registration period is now closed. This is an interesting move, but seemingly has not stopped these sizable bids going through:
With @buildawhale and @bellyrub, things turned out a little differently the other day. Chief delegator to both these accounts, @freedom suddenly cancelled the leases:
Just like that, 1.2 million delegated Steem Power was take from from @buildawhale, and a whopping 2.4 million d-SP was taken from @bellyrub.
As these delegations were being paid for on time (as far as I can see in the Wallets), I suspect this relates to @lexiconical's use, highlighting the size at which these bots have grown and the payouts they can(could) give.
Summary
Firstly, the post by @lexiconical is a cracker in many people's eyes including mine. What you want to see is a blog that incites interaction, and this effort certainly does that.
As far as his use of the bid-bots, for me it's a case of 'hate the game, not the player'.
I can see where @berniesanders is coming from if the flagging was due to a disagreement on the rewards. $300 is a huge sum in the current climate, and the method of reaching that figure is not going to please all (see the post for details of that!). Again, is this not the games' fault more than the players?
Anyway, it seems a the post and fallout has sparked a rule change - we'll have to see how that progresses.
My final point is with regards to @freedom - This account holds 7.7 million Steem Power and clearly has a 'voice' on the Steem blockchain.
I've often seen whales criticized for taking action, taking no action, not voting enough etc etc, but this to me is a sign, and a good sign. Something like, 'whoa, hold on a minute - time for a re-think here!'
Have we reached a limit on what larger stake holders are happy with regarding bid-bots?
And I'm pleased to report one of the most recent delegations by @freedom has been to @spaminator - This looks very promising indeed.
See, who said the whales aren't trying to look after this place?
Thoughts, opinions, down-votes?
Thanks for reading!
Asher
Thanks for a great summary. I did not get a reply from Bernie (last I checked in chat) to my question about his flag, so we can only guess. I would have thought he'd think it was a cogent defense of Randowhale, and I mentioned him favorably in the comments, but he might have taken the Laura Banfield image personally.
In case anyone is curious, I wasn't trying to make any point with the bots on that post except "read this post with the big numbers on it". As you noted in your bid audit, I did pretty well on those, but I have taken losses in the past!
In an odd change, the bidders have not adjusted enough to the lower SP on the bots. They are now routinely overbidding, making the bots vastly more profitably on a percentage basis, if not less on a gross basis.
I had to unvote your article (from my autovoter) to give it a full vote!
Good job! Thanks to @abh12345 you have planted 0.13 tree to save Abongphen Highland Forest in Cameroon. Help me to plant 1,000,000 trees and share my Steem Power to the others. Selfvoting is prohibited, but that should be the reason to spread the world to protect our precious environment. Check out profile of our conservation association @kedjom-keku and the founder/coordinator @martin.mikes to get more information about our conservation program. My current SP is 14286.40. Help me to plant more trees with your delegated SP.
Thanks a lot,
your @treeplanter
www.kedjom-keku.com
Thanks for the response and filling in of some blanks.
The huge bid-bot numbers complimented the post for me, driving some points home nicely.
As you can see, whilst kindly replying to other responses here, I'm a bot user because, why not? Like you, I feel that the hours spent are worth the boosts (although you don't always win I agree!), and it's a free market and space for the most part.
The prize fund or pool, consumed by the bots each day is a pittance compared to the available slush (need to work some numbers here), so I'm not worried about that side.
I'll continue trying to scrape a little from them, especially as you say there is now a better chance of a profitable prize.
Finally, thank you very much for the effort to re-vote with a larger prize!
@minnowbooster has also stopped taking bids in the about $1 - $10 range meaning that there has been a massive reduction in supply at this mid-market bid level.
I think that, in terms of demand, there are lots of people who just want some exposure for their posts, and will accept anything down to 100% of upvote / bid, or even lower, on amounts up to a few dollars, effectively paying for the promotion, which is actually pretty rational. But we've moved to a position of excess demand from one of excess supply and so prices have moved correspondingly.
Oh wow, this is super interesting. I thought @lexiconical raised some excellent points and him getting flagged did not come as big surprise to me (or him).
I didn't know that the delegation to buildawhale and bellyrub had been pulled. I'm quite glad about this since they were offering such massive payouts. I hope that steem power will be better used elsewhere to support curation projects/guilds that actually reward good content rather than people with a decent amount of SBD and good timing skills.
Also, I'm not implying that @lexiconical writes shitposts by the way, in fact his posts are quite the opposite and I'm glad he's getting good payouts even if they are bot-boosted.
=)
I work very hard to make sure I earn any rewards I take from this platform, and I have never withdrawn any. Most have been delegated to MSP.
Thanks for your support!
deleted
Absolutely. And I forgot to mention that he didn't anywhere complain about the flags, and has just carried on.
@minnowbooster still have theirs, open to a private audience so expect to see some huge votes coming from that account over the next month.
Thanks for your comments and vote :D
nice post, well no doubt his post was fantastic and the content of the post is also nice, but how can someone rated his own content with 200$, i think it's far better to make a post and let the steemians do upvotes on it rather than using voting bots, it's ok to give a kickstart to a post by giving it 3 to 5$ of upvotes by selfvoting or voting bots but if you using big amounts on voting bots this surely falls in disagreements on rewards. thanks for sharing
" how can someone rated his own content with 200$"
For the record, I didn't, it's much closer to $60. Compared to the time and effort that went into the post, and my extremely high level of knowledge and writing skill, it's a pittance. The post is underpaid if anything.
"i think it's far better to make a post and let the steemians do upvotes on it rather than using voting bots"
I felt this way until a week ago when I realized I was getting slaughtered by much worse content by refusing to promote my own. Voting bots are promotion and advertising. If they are also +EV, that's not my fault, it's the markets.
"disagreements on rewards."
That's currently a valid reason to flag and I haven't complained, no do I begrudge anyone it.
I don't think it's generally a good idea, however, to flag on something so subjective. It starts flagging wars.
It's open to debate, and you can debate in text, or with a vote/flag.
Other users did flag the post, but clearly not as many as up-voted it.
His profit with the bots, before curation is removed, is about $80, so $60 without - I wouldn't say that is huge, but certainly a large amount compared to average post earnings.
Thanks for your comments :)
Well i only read his one post and i agree with his points steemit is decentralized platform and in order to make it a beautiful social media platform we all have to welcome the new steemians, encourage them and give them a greed less atmosphere, i think he is a good author and i hope he should learn from his mistakes and don't repeat such mistakes in future.
" should learn from his mistakes and don't repeat such mistakes in future."
I didn't make any mistakes.
If I do, I'll make sure to learn from them.
Nice post!
I'm really hoping that the @minnowbooster change (i.e. not having any bid capacity between 10c and $10) is temporary while they recharge. It seems odd for a team dedicated to the minnows to give priority to $50 and $100 bids over $1 and $2.
Having quality control on larger bids (i.e. the "whitelist") seems like a sensible approach. I think the absence of any quality control on large upvotes is why those @bellyrub posts got flagged.
Even then I think that $200+ upvotes is going to ruffle some feathers. 4 of the top 6 main page trending posts currently sit there due to @minnowbooster purchased upvotes!
"4 of the top 6 main page trending posts currently sit there due to @minnowbooster purchased upvotes!"
You've succinctly explained why I started using them last week.
Spot on compadre!
Totally!
Is that so. Sigh.... A white-list is easier to manage than a black-list, but yeah excluding users/minnows doesn't seem fair.
It was nice meeting you at the Snooker club in Lisbon my friend! But didn’t Bernie create Randowhale?
You too! Steemfest was overwhelmingly immense! Did you get your phone back?
And yes, i think he did, but i don't think he goes around down-voting every post that uses another service? :)
Trueee. But unfortunately no, that one’s a goner.
Hope to see you at STEEMFest 3.0 !
Gutted! Sorry about that :(
Yes, hopefully see you there - I'll be more prepared next time!
Me too, I didn’t know what to expect but I was blown away by how well everything was put together. It’s all good though, insurance has me covered and I think my work will be getting me a new line so I lose one and get 2 back haha
Winning! :D
He did. I would have thought he'd appreciate the defense of voting bots for minnows, but ah well.
I think that was shady to remove the delegation from those bots. "We can't have people making that much money!" What a crock of shit. Politics.
Would you rather have a huge bidbot, or a huge account fighting spam, account rings, and self voting of comments?
That's a whole other topic. And man, that article you suggested by Lex was no joke btw. I would love some huge bidbots honestly. I mean, I can't spend that much yet, but I know they've helped me expand my audience. As for the other bots...the only two out there that I agree with are cheetah and steemcleaners. These other 'anti-abuse' bots...not a fan of. Political agenda of higher ranked steemians is all they are.
Yeah I see your side. It's hard to ignore for example, a user setting up 50 accounts, and ringing them together to vote each other. Surely no-one is a fan of that?
And yes, I don't think I suggested that his post was a joke at all. I've seen people run off the platform for their 'style' of Steeming - that's not good at all.
Thanks for your comments.
Wasn't implying you said it was, just a figure of speech in my neck of the woods. And yes anytime, you've been writing some stellar ish lately my man.
Understood. And thank you, I've been putting the hours in for sure, appreciated!
"that article you suggested by Lex was no joke btw."
Thank you! If I may channel The Big Lebowski for a moment...I worked, like, really hard on that, man.
That was a beautifully written post. As I was reading it I felt like I was outside of a rally where the democrats were protesting the conservatives, elbows were flying, derogatory names were bellowed and everyone went away angry. And I haven’t even read his post yet. Great commentary!
ha ha, thank you! Just telling it how I see it. It's a great post, but I think of more importance is the de-delegations following these 'mega-bids' - and the follow on delegation to Spaminator, which I think is of far better benefit for the community as a whole.
Cheers!
Yeah it looks like whoever is running that freedom account has a watchful eye
WTF are you talking about?
I am literally talking about what I felt while I was reading the post, I thought I made that clear
me? :D
No Jason. I just saw that comment and thought it had nothing to do with the post. But I see what he means now.
hahaha :D
Thank you for this update. We all need to be aware of what's happening around us and this post just did that for me.
Thanks!
Yes I did feel like a news reporter at times. Stuff like this takes a while to organise (for me anyway), so I appreciate the feedback a lot. :)
Hahaha. Yes, for non-writers like us. It takes a lot to organize our thoughts and put them in an engaging post. :D
Indeed. These posts suit me more than others because of my work background and lack of imagination!
i like buidawhale now, what do you prefer?
Yeah @buildawhale is still big, but i'll use any if the price is right ;)
Wow, I knew something was going on but had not had the time to check it all out. Thanks for the great write-up on this event, it is so interesting to see the politics of Steemit in action. It's almost like some kind of thriller/action/war movie only the weapons of choice are a little different. 🤔
All fun and games isn't it!
Buildawhale has almost 2 million SP again so could be worth a look there right now :)
Cheers!
That's good because @buildawhale has been my favorite option and I included it into my regular growth strategy. I love the fact that there are curators associated with it and that it is not just a blind upvote bot.