Vilifying Bots

in #steemit8 years ago

In my last post I gave notice to bot spammers that we will take actions to mitigate the abuse and keep Steemit a place that people can enjoy participating in.

User @williambanks responded with an insightful article. I was going to reply to him in the comments, but thought that it deserved a full post.

I will summarize my primary take aways:

  1. Don’t vilify Bots, there are real people behind them
  2. For many people this is a “game” to make money while they can
  3. For other people this is an “investment” to make a lot of money long term
  4. Incentives create the bot situation

I saw several proposed solutions:

  1. Restrict access to web socket api
  2. Remove stake-weighted voting (use hot rather than trending)
  3. Help people improve their bots

Here are the primary things that william was missing:

  1. Sybil attacks - bot operators are already doing this by creating a large number of accounts and vote spamming
  2. Evil People - these people wish to do as much harm as possible because they enjoy hurting others
  3. Stupid People - these people harm others while getting no benefit for themselves

Strong Reputation and Identity

The only solutions to Sybil are Reputation, Identity, and Stake Weighted voting. Once we solve the identity / reputation issue then it becomes much harder to create dummy accounts.

Conclusion

I have a ton of respect for the stance william made and will certainly attempt to incorporate what I can from it into the solutions we deploy. Nothing in life is ever as easy as it seems, and william’s proposed solutions would be at most a short term issue.

There are people who are motivated to act in ways that break other peoples toys just because it is fun.

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I am a firm believer in Freedom of Speech. I even believe people should have the right to do stupid things, as long as other people are not harmed. Hence the need for rules.

@dantheman thank you for your persistence in fighting the good fight. Some bots put at risk the very humanity which forms the basis of the Steemit community by drowning out real peoples opinions and undermining original content. As the tip of the spear, it is up to you to lead the charge. As mere users we too have the responsibility to share our concerns and ideas whichbalign to our personal vision of the platform.

You have a great grasp on the technical and behavioral challenges the system faces. I look forward to the controls and balancing you will Institute.

In my opinion, bots which post repettive comments with no regard to the material, is caustic. Accounts should be banned and the vale of their accounts forfeited. Leveraging the social nature of Steemit, a peer reporting structure could be established where usres who flag such bots get to share the forfeited value of the bot. Make it so a certain steem level must be reached to boot an account.

Conversely, some bots are healthy (ex Cheetah) which users should be able support with votes (that could play a role in upping what it wouldntake to downvote it off). I would also recommend a structure to register a bot. It becomes a quick way to find good/bad bots with those who register get a higher barrier to being voted off. Make a rule that all registered bots have "-bot" appended to their name for recognition. Such a system is good for beneficial bots and empowers the users to police bad bots as a community based on thier collective steem power.

@mrosenquist So you mean we should implement civil forfeiture?
Somehow I don't see that working out so well.

The bot registry was part of the STEEMBOTS proposal, I'm glad to see people agree with it.

It wouldn't work on it's own though. You need something for the bots to do that pays enough that the incentive balances the risk / reward proposal for building a bad bot.

However my topic was never about vilifying bots. It was about explaining that proposed changes make life harder for human users and provide incentives for players to game the system.

@williambanks Penalties and rewards are key to any set of social rules, even in virtual places like Steemit. Rewards should be bestowed upon bots which enrich, improve, or benefit the collective user-base as it aligns to the goal/vision of the platform. Alternatively, penalties should clearly be established for those who are caustic and breaking the rules. I think my point is, instituting system guardrails and checks-and-balances is incredibly difficult. My heartfelt sympathy goes out to @dantheman and his cohorts who must achieve and somehow sustain the optimal balance for the growth of the community.

When looking at this challenge it is important to recognize the strengths and available resources to apply to the task. The power of a social network lays in the people. But there are limitations as well. People can create multiple accounts, upvote or downvote as much as they want, and game the system in many other ways. Many of these challenges were obviously considered when Steemit was designed. We have Steam Power for a reason. I see it as an authority rating. Everyone has some and collectively we can use it to make decisions. By leveraging the greatest resource we have, the user base and their willingness to participate, we might establish rules to reward those creative bot programmers who make Steemit stronger while at the same time put in place penalties for malicious bot programmers, set on causing harm, which invalidate their work. Basically making their effort to cause harm, largely ineffective. There would not be a penalty for creating an annoying bot, but if the system worked, it would quickly become irrelevant. What kind of programmer wants that?

A system where the steam of users can be applied by a community in such a way to ‘vote-off’ bot accounts. Let’s call it a tipping-point(TP) where the account would be suspended. Members could vote up if they liked a bot (ex. @Cheetah) or vote-down if they felt the bot was harmful (ex. @isaac.asimov). Just using these account names for illustrative purposes.

When users upvote the TP goes higher. When users downvote it goes lower. Once it reaches zero, the account is suspended, put in the penalty box, or whatever the dev’s want. Registering a bot also adds to the TP, making it tougher to suspend. Members with low Steem Power (SP) won’t be able to move the need much unless there are a lot of them doing it. Those with more SP will have a greater impact, which aligns to the involvement and commitment to the platform.

Again, this just an idea. We all have them. It is up to the Dev’s to really figure out what is best to support their vision of Steemit.

@mrosenquist Essentially we're in agreement. The first way you put it sounded like civil forfeiture. A penalty box would not be bad, but you need to link bot to human first because a penalized bot doesn't care. His owner will though.

Once we know the owners then let them have as many as they want to have as long as they feed and train them. If the bot goes bezerk it's their job to fix it or their account remains frozen until it does. I am totally against forfeiture, but a points based system that locks funds whilst already consolidating them at the owner level and yet allowing the bot to have it's own identity separate from her owner feels like the right solution here.

So yes, this is a good idea.

To be clear, I do think forfeiture is a viable option, one of many to consider. If the TP level is reached, then the community has effectively deemed the bot's action to be damaging. Any acts of the bot which produced gain (Steem, SP, and SD/SBD) would be forfeit to the community, rewarding those who identified the caustic bot. Seizure occurs in the real world all the time. If a thief steals money from your pocket and is caught, they don't get to keep the ill-gotten-goods.

This is one of many penalty options the Dev's can choose. Personally, I think it would be a powerful one. Financial disincentives can be highly effective against financially motivated anti-social behaviors.

Now THAT is how you bring up very potential pain points/concerns in an open way (@williambanks) and face/address them both professionally and respectfully (@dantheman)- hats off to you both!

This openness to discourse is one of the reasons I love Steemit! If we all work together, we will find solutions to all these issues.

Upvoted as I nodded in agreement.

@thedarkestplum Thank you! We may all disagree on what must be done. But I think we're all agreed something ought be done. Now it's more or less a matter of sorting out what that looks like and that comes down to your perspective.

Some people just want to see the world burn. This is true and scary and while we play our little game-theory scenarios some bots seems to be intent on just creating chaos.
Just because something is stupid to us, doesn't mean it's not motivated by some reason and/or evilness.
This is an amazing community and the back-and-forth between devs and users is what could save us all and make this great. Please @dantheman, never close down the dialogue.
That's how they'd win.

"There are people who are motivated to act in ways that break other peoples toys just because it is fun."
Yes, and they are called bullies. The world is full of them. And we need to get rid of them!

that's ONE way to think about it! :)

Stupid People - these people harm others while getting no benefit for themselves

And also

Unwittingly Stupid People - these people don't know what they are doing and inadvertently harm others for no benefit

we are probably all guilty of this from time to time, I know I am

That should always be the right approach. Penalize bots that are useless, if not malicious, and the humans behind them. There are many useful bots that deserve to be rewarded.

In the end, the action taken will be against the humans behind the bots. So similar procedures should apply.

Really eager to see your Reputation system in action.

As usual an excellent comment @liberosist. Fully agree that there are many useful bots. I definitely need to mention @ anyx 's Cheetah-bot which is doing an excellent job against plagiarism.

"There are people who are motivated to act in ways that break other peoples toys just because it is fun."
...
From the Whitepaper:

"Eliminating “abuse” is not possible and shouldn’t be the goal.

Even those who are attempting to “abuse” the system are still doing work. Any compensation they get for their successful attempts at abuse or collusion is at least as valuable for the purpose of distributing the currency as the make-work system employed by traditional Bitcoin mining or the collusive mining done via mining pools.

All that is necessary is to ensure that abuse isn’t so rampant that it undermines the incentive to do real work in support of the community and its currency."

So Dan, where do you stand regarding abuse of the platform?
is it good when it's a certain type of abuse you like but bad when it's another type you don't like?

All that is necessary is to ensure that abuse isn’t so rampant that it undermines the incentive to do real work in support of the community and its currency.
The existential risk to the entire platform (and thus, everyone's value) is the primary concern here, IMO. I think some of the bots are approaching the level of abuse where this becomes a valid concern. If new people are greeted with abusive bots filling their walls with garbage, the growth and reputation of this platform will suffer. "Eliminating" is an all or nothing word, and I don't personally get the impression this is the goal here with the steps being proposed to solve problems the community is concerned about.

why not have an option on your page that says " filter bots on or off" - leave the choice to the end user. If they want bots filtered on their wall they should have an option for it, if not they should be able to filter it out so their blog subscribers dont need to deal with that.

I agree with this. Let the interface be user centric and personalized. Also let the poster have some abilities to adjust how their posts are presented on the Trending or other pages so that unnecessary conflicts may be avoided. This is particularly going to be important as you get into the millions of users.

I agree with Dana, its the only highly scalable way.

@kingjohal #STEEMBOTSTAY to get them to stay out and #STEEMBOTCOME to invite them in. Add that to your post and I know 6 bots that will stay out or come in. This was discussed in the STEEMBOTS proposal, but I won't link it because I don't want to keep spamming.

Bot builders can sort this ourselves I think.

Well, look at the 200 posts with the biggest payouts, the abuse is rampant.

Good start) up

In need a community guideline for bot devs.

@jasonmcz It's called a code of conduct and we're working on it

I have a ton of respect for the stance william made and will certainly attempt to incorporate what I can from it into the solutions we deploy

Recognizing the need for a fix is the first step. Congrats. I'm sure we'll get things working the way they should. I'll keep contributing and one day, the playing field will be a lot fairer, I trust in what you guys are doing.

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