Boosters -- Why They Are Bad For Steem and Steemit
It's been about 4 months since the first 2 boosters came online. @randowhale and @booster. At first they were a pretty neat idea. Quick way to get some extra SBD. Originally the only issue was them resulting in some people that didn't really deserve it getting a higher rep fast. As time progressed more and more abuse scammers started to use them. They have become a quick way for scammers to both make money and power up accounts. Some post seemingly legit content such as memes and videos. Others just mass post copy/paste and plagiarism. Even others made mass amounts of comments and had those upvoted to try to hide what they were doing. Thankfully this last one was eliminated by some of the boosters. For a couple of weeks it became such an issue that it was impossible to counter. Here is an example of one account:
As you can see many payouts all over $4. I've seen some as high as $30 on these posts. In this case they are done by a scammer who is already on cheetah and has been for quite awhile. Here is another example of the same behavior:
Same pattern. There are many of these accounts. They are probably all owned by the same person or a group of related people. I've personally put over 2 dozen accounts that match this pattern on cheetah's blacklist. But being on cheetah doesn't fix this problem. The owners of the boosters haven't added the few lines of code it would take to prevent these people getting upvotes to their bots. This lets the scammers continue to rake in the SBD and build rep. This not only results in the scammers profiting but takes those funds away from the reward pool so they don't go to legitimate content creators. It also has the domino effect of encouraging more scammers to take up this behavior. Other people with steem power see the SBD going to the booster creators and make their own. There are now dozens of these boosters out there. @randowhale and @booster have been joined by @minnowbooster, @drotto, @minnowsupport, & @bellyrub just to name a few.
Something needs to be done by the community to ring in this abuse. We need to not only put pressure on the abusers by removing their payouts but the owners of these boosters. Get them to check who they are voting on. Get them to add protection for voting on accounts that are on @cheetah. Get them to not vote on posts that have been identified as abuse by @steemcleaners. Get them to not vote on low rep and especially 0 rep and under accounts. Get them to remove votes on posts and accounts identified as abuse.
Now the real question is how can we achieve this. Well the biggest way is being proactive and downvoting any of these posts you see that are on cheetah or have negative rep. Take away the rewards of the abuser and that takes away 2 things: The curation reward from the booster owner and the reward the abuser can use to pay for more upvotes from the booster owner. Another way is to not use them and encourage others not to use them either. The only other way I can think of is to call them out on it and put public pressure on them like I'm doing now.
This is a serious problem that is only going to get worse... Like you, I'm not sure exactly what to do about it yet, but awareness is step one.
The people who operate these bots needs to take responsibility for the issue and do what they can to curtail abuse. If they won't, then those providing the SP should withdraw their delegations...
IDK. You've got me thinking, I will try and find a tangible way to help with this issue in the near future.
I totally agree with you! Minnowbooster is working hard to prevent abuse as much as humanly possible and I would love to hear your input on how to improve there.
We hope that other bots feel the pressure and also work on combating abuse. So if you can, raise the awareness :)
Thanks for responding @reggaemuffin, I appreciate it! It's great that you are aware of these issues and working to make them better.
In the short term, putting you and other upvote bot operators in touch with each other (perhaps through discord or Steemit Chat) could help. Whenever a spammer is found on one bot, the other owners could be alerted to blacklist that person...
Just thinking out loud here - Are you open to something in that vein? I may reach out to the other owners of upvote bots and see if they'd be receptive to the idea. A "Steemit Bot Council" or something :-)
I am definitely up to that! I would even go so far to offer other bot owners api access to our blacklist and give them the option to suggest new users to be added onto it. Should @berniesanders and @fyrstikken be interested, they know where to contact us :)
Awesome! I'll poke around and see if I can help get this ball rolling.
Sounds good, we at @minnowbooster can work with the @steemcleaners to provide a public blacklist for all bot operators to utilise, I give it my approval also.
I'm really glad to hear this. I recently stopped my delegation to minnowbooster because I share some of the same concerns mentioned in this post. I enjoyed the daily SBD rewards, but at what cost? I don't want to think too short-term here. Even if it means I lose out on some nice returns, I'd rather not see any old post being voted up by booster bots when other great content goes unnoticed. Ideally, we're out the curating the best content to the top to promote the value of this website for everyone.
@raggaemuffin Good to see you here providing open dialogue! That means a lot!
Always looking for ways to improve :) Would love to hear your take on the topic!
I do have some thoughts....
But as for improvements..... Seems for anything Steemit wide, any change or improvement I think of..... I then think of how.... "Yep, then they would game it like ___ that or ____ this."
But I have been thinking about this a lot. So I will get with you sometime. Here or maybe on discord if I catch u there sometime.
Thanks
Yep totally agree with you ;)
I feel that this is the smallest of all the issues. Besides, boosters and upvote bots are crucial for the survival of the minnows and present an opportunity for their posts to be seen in the first place. Without them most users would have no chance of getting anything at all from their posts. I do agree though that the bot owners must incoporate a better mechanism to weed out the spammers.
The first and foremost major issue today is that low quality posts made by the same authors feature on the trending pages day after day, and week after week, for months. There seems to be no end to it, and it can stop only if the cartels and auto upvote bot owners who are behind upvoting these posts are confronted and dealt with.
If all the major content sites can do it, why can't Steemit constitute a team of curators who manually highlight the top 100 posts each day, out of all those that are trending so that at least the posts on the real trending page are genuine high quality posts?
Some positive action will mean that the owners and stakeholders of Steemit are indeed serious about it, and not just playing around with a beta for the fun of it.
Also, I think if Steemit as a community drives the upvoting of high quality content as a rule than a personal preference, things will change for the better.
Hey Maxabit,
You make some good points. You're definitely right that a lot of minnows are able to get early support from upvote bots whereas they may otherwise give up, or struggle. I'd argue that some of these users are actually shooting themselves in the foot though - the Curie project, for example, offers HUGE upvotes ($100+ at current rates) to minnows with great content - but people who use upvote services are generally not eligible for this support.
For me, curie was the most important part of my early steem career. If I'd used upvote bots, I would not have ever gotten curated by them.
You mention that you'd like to see the "top 100 posts per day" curated by professionals - Curie basically does that, except it's more like 10 per day, and get them onto the top trending pages for their categories.
Here's an example of a recent curie-supported post: https://steemit.com/music/@dimitrij/seine-concert-in-slovenia-third-tour-belgium-and-france
So - if you see what I mean, users actually do have access to what you are describing - but only if they do not use the upvote bots.
It's not a perfect system - but it may be worth it for you to consider an alternative view. Perhaps upvote bots, while they feel good in the short term, are actually circumventing the kind of quality curation that you hope to see on our platform.
You have stated these points very eloquently and I whole-heartedly concur.
I've seen a few of these. My opinion is that they don't seem to benefit users too much. There were people complaining about receiving upvotes worth less than they paid. These services should not be allowed on Steemit.
It always depends on the type of booster. Randowhale is random, booster has a sad ROI and minnowbooster should always give you a positive net plus.
id like to give a point of view from someone who uses bots. I am an artist/writer who puts a lot of effort into my original content. Every post I put up features original artwork. Unfortunately if I didn't use bots I wouldn't get seen at all. So much content is getting produced by users like you pointed out who post nonstop all day and then use bots themselves that even after using multiple bots I am lucky to get two or three views from non-bot users. And yes, I am actively upvoting and commenting on other people's work.
Do I find this discouraging or surprising? Not at all. As a studio artist the past 15 years have been a desperate struggle with very few rewards to just get a venue where one's creativity can be witnessed. It costs money in real world art shows to get one's work displayed, and it's only the lucky few who turn profit.
As far as profiting off of bots, I can say I am not. You can check my wallet and see all the transfers from outside exchanges it takes to keep my account fueled.
So what tools do we have left?
I put 15 SBD into post promotion for my curation bulletin (featuring steemian minnows I feel deserve more) and it made it to the second page of the "promoted" section for an hour, gained no more votes, then vanished.
I am all for system reform in interest of fairness but when it comes to any social media I think it will always be a matter of everyone fighting for more visibility and using whatever available tools to get it.
Upvoted and followed. Thank you for taking the time to start a valuable conversation.
Thanks for giving your point of view.
I was about to wade in on this with these exact and specific points. Hell, I just posted up my entire first book for free, and will go on to pop my band's debut album here as well.
In the experiments I've run between upvoters, resteemers, and nothing at all I can't even get on the hot/trending page despite meeting the criteria. Hell, as of late I'm wondering if I'm getting the full amount of the upvotes and the declared cash thereof.
BUT, that's not to say I'm not having quite the positive experience here on Steemit. Like you, I crave an audience, and it's murder trying to find my 1000 True Fans, y'knowwhatImean?
The bots and upvoters have been nothing but a boon in getting what little exposure I have gotten, far more than "sub4sub" ever would have.
Thank you for putting it as succinctly as you did - I don't think I would have done so as well!
~Thomas Duder, Author of the Things
Thank you for starting this discussion!
MinnowBooster is currently trying out a blacklist program and will most likely soon check for cheetah comments. If there is any way how to programmatically check if a user is banned, that would be extremely helpful.
We want to make a useful booster and spammers using it saddens us. I hope that this discussion will continue and raise general awareness of the responsibility boosters should have.
@reggaemuffin,
Programmatically checking the user status is still little hard! Actually it's not a problem of boosters! It's a problem of people who wish to abuse respectful systems!
Cheers~
Definitely! But Minnowbooster is sophisticated and is now watching cheetah flags, so abuse of it will become harder and harder.
@reggaemuffin,
That would be a great + mark!
Cheers~
The easiest way to look for cheetah I think is to just look for a cheetah downvote on that post. Should be possible to look for the comment too but I haven't tired either myself yet. I know others do check for the vote though. Has to be a simple command to list all votes on a post or steemit would take forever to scan the user history every time you click the voting history. I'll try to check tomorrow if I have the time. Too much spam to wade though tonight.
Edit: Forgot I still had the docs open. Piston has a get_comments() function that returns all top level comments so there you go. p=Post("@author/permlink"). If cheetah or steemcleaners in p.get_comments(). I would assume p would contain the list of votes as well.
That is a good idea! Thank you, I'll try that out in a minute.
Be aware that minnowbooster is pretty fast so if cheetah is lagging behind, this can mean we miss the vote.
Edit: @minnowbooster will now stop voting on cheetah flagged posts.
I'm surprised you didn't see this coming from the beginning, I applaud any efforts you're making to mitigate self reward abuse. Unfortunately you are profiting greatly from these abuses so I won't be holding my breath!
I'm surprised you did not notice that we were seeing this coming. We have a daily and weekly limit that slows down abuse. We have a blacklist for minnowbooster specific abuse. We are in contact with the steemcleaners and report spam we notice while checking minnowbooster votes. Multiple team members are even helpers in the steemcleaners discord. We disabled voting on comments as the first bot. And I am using a big chink of my personal voting power to combat abuse by flagging away rewards.
We may not be shiny perfect gods who see all but we are putting in the work. And I will gladly listen to any suggestion you have for us to improve in that regard :)
Meanwhile, you are still up voting @zer0hedge, the most notorious and successful scammer on the platform ... Thanks for your support on my posts in the past, but it's very hard to take you seriously on the subject of fighting abuse. Praying you don't flag me, but had to be said.
On what grounds do you allege @zer0hedge is a scammer?
For real? It is unashamed copypasta. New users are nuked for it day in and day out, but that account gets away with it because it has whale support and is too expensive to take down. I asked a friend the other day to help with some flagging Fubar sent over and the first thing he said said was "Why do these little guys get fucked on by everyone while that @zer0hedge guy gets away with it?" ... pretty much
I wasn't aware of that. Why isn't it getting picked up by @cheetah then?
I did a quick plagiarism check on their latest post which of course links back to their main website but it seems to be original writing, the check didn't turn anything up. In fact several other sites used them as a source.
Hi mate, apologies for the tone of my original response too - I thought it was a loaded question.
That user isn't Zero Hedge/Tyler Turden, as per the disclaimer at the end of their posts, that user simply copies posts from the Zerohedge website and pastes them here. I'm not sure as to why cheetah doesn't pick them up though.
@personz
I am trying to get in touch with you...
PLEASE contact me!
Thank you!
@fubar-bdhr,
A good topic to discuss! According to my knowledge most of the boosters are not profitable! Personally I am recommending MinnowBooster and RandoWhale as respective booster services in present days!
According to my knowledge, boosters is a good concept, but Boosters need to have a limitation like Rando and Minnow has post limit or daily limits! Then it might be worthy enough and abuses of booster services will be dis-creased from certain level!
Cheers~
Thank you for the recommendation :)
@reggaemuffin,
You are welcome friend! Yeah I recommend those services! I know they do great service and most of the time customers are in the profit! But others... Actually I won't talk about them :D
Cheers~
I used to agree with this and be against bots for similar reasons but after learning how the Rep system works and existence of closed voting groups and how difficult it is to begin on steemit i dont think this is too much of an issue currently or at least the cost is much to high to abuse successfully without significant investment.
And removing would would take something of great use to new users,
I dont think the comments do much good though and discourage engagement on posts.
A more important feature bots should have is restriction caps so they remain a tool for small new users and once thresholds are past either payouts are capped or stopped altogether especially with biding bots as new users couldn't hope to compete with any users making say $200 a week when they make $20.
Say for example to receive the same amount of Rep elevation from bots compared to say a $40 full vote from a 65 Rep user i think you would need to pay maybe 5/6 times that to receive from bots when a user could do for multiple others at no cost to themselves only to pull from system.
I do think Rep system needs a overhaul of sorts with something in place to discourage self voting too much and continuous up-votes between the same users in closed voting groups.
With each consecutive vote within certain time period Rep increase and value given to the same users also to self decreases and to restore would need to spread votes out around 3 times the weight with more restored for new and unique users to the time period, this would discourage closed voting groups and encourage curation of new/different users
for 30% of selfvoting within the time period to restore.
I think there is a need some for an easier method for fixing Rep both up and down maybe without effects on value because once users reach high enough or low enough it is not feasible and near impossible to fix.
About the people abusing voting system like this and with fixing being difficult shows problems with flagging system even without bots this can be and is done with closed voting groups and as the site grows will become an impossible task to even monitor.
I think there needs for some sort of incentive flagging system with maybe elects from witnesses given either rewarding or flagging capabilities to get encourage more users to actively flag there is plenty of a resource pool in terms of working humans here who make very little on posts which they could benefit them help steemit at the same time.
I've been critical of these upvote bots for some time, and it's good to read the assessment of someone like @fubar-bdhr, who is working on fighting abuse for many hours each day and sees the patterns.
I consider these upvote bots, the pay-for-vote ones as well as the vote-for-free ones like MSP, as an invitation for abuse, and have witnessed them being used abusively several times.
These upvote bots may not only be bad for steemit as a whole, but sometimes also for those using them, at least for those producing good content. If used early, they discourage upvotes by real users as they make posts overvalued and destroy possible curation rewards. So there are cases where users don't get upvotes precisely because they are using these bots. I think for many of them it would better to produce quality content and wait until they get discovered, because that's what curators are looking for: undervalued quality content.
As I see it, the ones who profit the most (apart from the bot operators) are on the one hand abusers, and on the other hand creators of low-quality content who don't get upvotes for a reason.
I consider it the responsibility of the bot operators to find ways to curb the abuse, and not of the people from steemcleaners who already do a lot for the community.
Further, there is not only the responsibility to curb abuse, but also to make sure that the overall activity of these bots is beneficial for the community as a whole.
And there is something that can be done apart from not upvoting and downvoting: not voting for witnesses who operate bots that might be harmful. I make it a personal policy not to vote for such witnesses, including those involved in the heavily promoted minnowsupport project (MSP), before I see some evidence that the overall effect of these bots is positive.
Thank you for your take on this matter.
Minnowbooster is always looking to improve, so I would like to ask for your feedback on what we need to change before you consider our service worth a vote on my witness :)
I think the very concept is problematic and it's not so easy to mitigate negative effects.
I'm not an expert on what exactly has to be done to prevent abuse and negative overall outcome of these voting bots (in some cases something has been tried like blacklists, voting only on posts and not on comments, ...), that's the responsibility of the bot operators, and I'm not sure if it's possible at all.
I appreciate that you are open and interested how to improve your voting bot @reggaemuffin. If I see some specific abuse of your minnowbooster I'll let you know, so far I didn't notice your bot being used in an abusive way. (My critique is mostly general, not directed at any specific voting bot operator. And recently I saw you active in helping the community in different ways, like promoting important science posts and helping with security issues.)
But sometimes it's annoying if I have to use my time for reporting abuse of voting bots, and even more if I have to use my own voting power to cancel out problematic upvotes, while others profit from them.
In general I think the bot operators should be proactive in fighting abuse and in making sure their bots are beneficial, not only reacting when problems arise and can no longer be hidden. Maybe a regular abuse report: what is already done for abuse prevention, listing recent cases of abuse and what has been done to help in these cases (like retracting upvotes or using the bot operators own voting power to cancel out problematic upvotes, in particular in cases of borderline abuse where steemcleaners downvotes would be problematic), and what has been done to prevent and detect such abuse in the future.
So concerning the witness votes I hesitate to vote for voting bot operators and prefer to spend some time observing activity of the bot before. In the pay-for-vote cases the bot operator is already profiting from running the bot, so there should be good reasons why he should in addition profit from running a witness node, apart from some evidence that the bot is not harmful. In those cases where it is used to promote witness applications, as it is the case for some vote-for-free bots like MSP, I'd like to see some evidence that the bot is actually beneficial (which I haven't seen yet).
Thank you for your opinion :)
I made minnowbooster to give the botting world a good example of a bot. And that includes proactively mitigating abuse of it.
In the end botting is not preventable, so instead I am trying to establish a well-meaning bot. should steem change in a way that makes voting bots stop working then I will be glad. Until then I hope minnowbooster is the better alternative.
To respond to your witness comment, I would never advertise my witness in a minnowbooster comment, that feels weird. I am funding the originalworks bot with more than I get from running a witness, so the author decided to put a mention of my name there. I also use a big chunk of my profits from minnowbooster to support community projects and contests all over the blockchain. I think this month alone I spend well over 2000 STEEM on that (I get probably 100 STEEM from my witness each month and that covers roughly the server costs).
So I hope you evaluate my witness work separate from my minnowbooster work. And should you decide against voting for me because of minnowbooster that is something I have to live with :) Should you ever be in need of support or if you have any questions about how steem works in detail, I am available in my duty as a witness to assist you :)
Thanks for your answer @reggaemuffin. You seem to be someone who takes these issues concerning abuse seriously.
And I agree: if voting bots are here to stay, then better a voting bot whose owner is serious about fighting abuse than a voting bot whose operator doesn't care. If you really manage to built a good example of a voting bot which solves some of the issues, it can positively influence the other voting bot operators.
Also you mentioned another important point: transparency on how the income from the voting bots is used. If voting bots are here to stay and it is not clear to what extent they are harmful, then transparency would give some incentive that at least their proceeds are used in a beneficial way.
Definitely. Transparency is a huge goal at Minnowbooster and their parent @buildteam and we are always looking for feedback on how to improve that.
Since minnowbooster is crowdfunded, most of it's earnings are actually going to all the users who invest in us and how much they earn is all visible on the blockchain in daily payment transfers with detailed memos. We plan to develop graphs that show earnings and daily payout in a parsable format (json) and in a human readable format (plots and tables) so you can see everything without having to query the blockchain. But that process is still undergoing.
We show all upvotes the bot did on our website: https://www.minnowbooster.net/upvotes and offer other features there that should improve transparency. Obviously the blockchain is the tamperproof way of verifying what our website displays.
Buildteam is doing a monthly bidding process for the BUILDTEAM token that allows everyone to invest in the team and get a share of their earnings. We use this token to pay all our team members, who work hard to provide all the services we provide. More infos on this here: https://steemit.com/cryptocurrency/@buildteam/buildteam-bidding-announce-4000-steem-up-for-grabs-in-october
This allows us to fund other development on the blockchain that is not that profitable. For example @mentionator with an accompanying safe browser addon for mentions and resteems. Storing gigabytes of mentions so users can go back in time to view them is costing us a lot and we are paying it gladly.
I am always on the lookout for other projects that need funds. Here is a list of projects where I have offered my support with a donation and the possibility for a salary in BUILDTEAM tokens:
https://steemit.com/steemdev/@armandocat/steemit-more-info-1-2-chrome-extension-firefox-extension#@reggaemuffin/re-armandocat-steemit-more-info-1-2-chrome-extension-firefox-extension-20170929t121405680z
https://steemit.com/deutsch/@quincho/steemworld-challenge-deutsche-version#@reggaemuffin/re-steemchiller-re-quincho-steemworld-challenge-deutsche-version-20170928t125550788z
https://steemit.com/deutsch/@leroy.linientreu/neues-sensationelles-steem-tool-steemworld#@reggaemuffin/re-steemchiller-re-leroylinientreu-re-leroylinientreu-neues-sensationelles-steem-tool-steemworld-20170927t102122524z
https://steemit.com/steem/@jedigeiss/steemworld-is-here-impressive-new-tool-all-informations-at-one-glance-check-it-out#@reggaemuffin/re-jedigeiss-steemworld-is-here-impressive-new-tool-all-informations-at-one-glance-check-it-out-20170927t101054266z
https://steemit.com/steem/@dehenne/lets-turn-steemit-into-a-mmorpg#@reggaemuffin/re-dehenne-lets-turn-steemit-into-a-mmorpg-20170927t103527347z
And there are way too many challenges to count that I am supporting. Also multiple community projects like @stach or https://steemit.com/nigeria/@steem-lagos/steem-lagos-workshop-1-0-taking-steemit-into-the-city#@reggaemuffin/re-steem-lagos-steem-lagos-workshop-1-0-taking-steemit-into-the-city-20171002t082010394z
I am sorry that this became such a linkdrop but just scrolling through my comments and resteems (or transfers in that regard) should show how much I am trying to support other projects with my profit.
Should you have any questions, please ask. And if you have suggestions for other projects I can support, please tell me. I still have 100 SBD I want to pump into 20 minnowbooster upgoats for worthy posts. Suggestions are welcome and I'll offer a finders fee in BUILDTEAM tokens :)
I think it is not a great image for Steemit when i see the comment sections of posts full of comments from boosters saying they are getting a vote simply because they paid for it. This is a very important conversation to be had.. With these bots running i can completely understand why Steemit will attract more scammers. It would maybe be a interesting experiment to disable all bots for a month and see if the reward pool is shared more equally.
Thank you for your take on this issue.
Boosters help new users and motivate them to write better blogs and earn more. Also, as you said, boosters provide reward pool to be shared more equally.
I agree with you that this can be an issue and can be abusive, however, if used the right way people can benefit from the boost if they are creating high quality content. One of my posts was a top 10 post of the day because of help from this community (not a booster) but it got discovered by lot of people
the problem is being identified by experienced steemit users. A minnow like me is a year late in joining early. Some posts are very very good but because we are considered n00bs we lack the attention of some more experienced users. In order to gain that rep we use booster services. I get that some posts shouldn’t be upvoted due to plagiarism etc.. however some posts have nothing to do with it and are completely ignored by experienced steemit users who are just upvoting their own inner circle. It’s not such a black and white issue. It seems clawing to the surface is the status quo.
I understand that there is a problem with content discovery and I face the same problem. It's because of the current tag-based organizational layout for posts and things will change for the better when communities are implemented. I wrote a post yesterday where I talk more about how easier it will be for people to get their work noticed and many other good changes that will come from the communities feature.