RE: Don't Fall Into The Bots Trap! - Do Your Own Research! - My MoonBot Review
Thanks for the analysis - maths @ana-maria that i also have done myself many times so far for the various voting bots. My comment is for your question in the main banner of your post. In short, bots are a very profitable business for their owners who becoming more and more greedy as the demand increases, collecting the hard earned SBDs of the steemit users and returning almost nothing regarding what they get.
To your main question i would surely say YES to the Voting BOTS because for the majority of the steemit users are the only way to give some value to their posts and get them noticed, but on the other hand i expect a reaction of the steemit community against the way they are working now and the returns they give.
For me, bots must return 2.5X to 3X or more your investment to be acceptable and all the steemit community must act in this direction and require this. Maybe a rule in the steemit whitepaper requiring this, for those who want to run such businesses, could definitely resolve the problem.
Yeah, I noticed long ago that you cracked it down pretty well especially in their somewhat early or earlier phase. 😉😊 And I'm also noticing you are now more and more away from them, using them occasionally.
I don't think the return ratio is the only problem with such bots, although I agree with you when it comes to what would be acceptable return amount. I think the problem is also that those bots don't check what are they voting for, in fact. And from my point of view, it might be even the bigger problem as there would always be some "smart" one with enough money to boost his/her BS.
And regarding all of that, it would be really nice to have some clear rules in Steemit White-Blue or whatever-paper, along with some other missing rules and guidance which absence just encourage people to play or even abuse the system.
I focus only to the voting bot returns because i consider very difficult a fair judgement of the posts, because people make judgements regarding to their interests and voting this way. In such case the good posts related to the interests of the users with big voting power would always get big upvotes, but the other will never have a chance for something better.
What i want to say is that if you do not like soccer and contests you will never give a vote or a bigger vote to my posts, and if i am not familiar with art, i will do the same for the art posts even if a post is perfect. This way the final value of the posts will be directy connected with preferences of the people with the big voting power - in other words to those who have the "money".
I think that paid votes are a solution to this problem but not the way they are working now. Can be considered as a chance for the minnows to give some value (paid) to their posts and get noticed. (With all the dangers that you mentioned in your reply that really exist).
Additionally i also see the paid votes as an investment to the steemit platform, if they give you back a reasonable profit that at the end returns to you as steem power and SBD. In any case, these rediculus returns of the voting bots can not be considered as investment. The only people that profiting are their owners against all the others.
Some things are obvious, but generally the resolution of this problem is not easy, because many things must be considered before any final decision.
I can agree with you. There is only one thing that I apparently didn't clarify enough.
lol - Although I must say that the idea of some art critic reporting the soccer game or vice versa, same as it would probably be when the boxing reporter makes a ballet play critique, really made me laugh.
However, what I meant by "checking what are they voting for" was more in direction of abusing the platform in some obvious scammy or spammy way, not original (copied/pasted) content and other same or similar plagiarism or even copyright infringement actions what from my point of view would be posts like
There are some other spams, scam, fishing or similar things that should be taken in consideration when performing those checks, but above two I find essential if Steemit still is the platform for original content creators.
Besides, if someone wants to make money just for sharing somebody else's work they can easily go to Adzbuzz.com and they wouldn't even have to bother with text formatting and stuff. They can just copy/paste the link (almost the same way as they would do on FB) and they would have a chance to be rewarded for that. If they only seek attention, there is no point in leaving FB, Twitter or similar and coming here.
But if they want to be rewarded for the original content than they should create one, no matter if it's in the form of just one but own taken the photo, painting, some crafts creations, organized challenges, contests, tournaments or pure text articles.
That's at least how I see and understand this platform main cause.
I agree with all the points in your last reply :)