Why You Shouldn't Buy Votes & You Should Flag Those Who Do
If you've been here more than a few days, you've likely heard about the various ways that you can pay for votes on here. There are some that maybe aren't quite as bad, where there's some sort of qualifying factor and then there are places where they don't give a fuck. There are communities where you pay with your vote, either on a community bot's posts or on other members posts, and then there are bid bots, where everyone competes for the limited votes of a bot, often with insanely high SP.
After you've been here any length of time, and you start to realize maybe you won't get paid well for the amount of effort you put in, you might start debating if you should use bots to boost your income a bit. You've likely already either been using them or have decided not to. But why exactly?
When we all got here and started reading up on how this place works, a social contract began to form in our brain. All of Steem relies on this social contract to function correctly. While "code is law", this social contract is instrumental in keeping this place working.
so·cial con·tract
noun
an implicit agreement among the members of a society to cooperate for social benefits, for example by sacrificing some individual freedom for state protection. Theories of a social contract became popular in the 16th, 17th, and 18th centuries among theorists such as Thomas Hobbes, John Locke, and Jean-Jacques Rousseau, as a means of explaining the origin of government and the obligations of subjects.
From Google
We've already started to see it fall apart as more and more people use bots. Trending is full of shit posts that have insane payouts, where we don't even know how much they're actually earning. It's one thing if some shit post is in trending because of a lot of people liking it and quite another if it's in trending because the writer bought votes for a good ROI.
The social contract of Steem is that we will all try to find good posts together and upvote them. (curate) We are all supposed to be working together to ensure that quality content is rewarded and rises to the top. So many people are violating the social contract and there's no recourse because people are afraid of flagging.
For example, putting a user on auto-vote is a violation of this contract, but only a small one if they consistently post good content, and continue to. But it's one of the current tools we have to try to ensure we don't get up to 100% VP and lose votes, and it allows us to continually support an author, so right now, it's a necessary "evil".
Following a vote trail is a bit better than this because you are entrusting your vote to another, but it can still have problems if that person accidentally votes on the wrong post, or intentionally votes on shit to sort of embezzle through the voting system.
The true violations of the social contract though, is selling votes. You are intentionally ignoring your responsibility as part of the system, to curate, and even going against it, by selling your vote to people who don't deserve it. There needs to be some sort of recourse for this.
It may not be written into the code that you have to curate good content, but it is part of the social contract.
One might even argue that the large accounts that aren't voting on anything are violating the social contract as well. By not voting when they have such a large stake in the platform, they are allowing the shit to rise to the top. They should be using their VP or SP in some way, rather than just letting it sit there while the platform suffers. The large stakeholders could solve the issues of bid bot abuse and voting rings very easily, by just choosing to follow the social contract that the community conforms to. While I would prefer they flag some of the worst violators, and upvote a few awesome posts occasionally, they don't necessarily have to curate themselves. They could delegate some of their SP out or entrust their vote to an individual or community. Or they might task a small group with finding posts for them to vote on. Or simplest of all, they could simply follow a vote trail.
Might I suggest following the #SteemSTEM voting trail? They have pretty high standards and help ensure Science and STEM-related content is rewarded on here.
Whales have huge votes that to a certain degree are not even being used right now. Entire new communities and curation groups could be formed around finding good content for them to upvote. Their votes shouldn't go to waste, or worse yet, their votes sold or SP delegated to bid bots.
The worst violators of the social contract are the bots with seemingly no standards and no one who checks what they are voting on. At least @themarkymark checks his bot and removes votes on plagiarism and the like. Without anyone to check to determine if the content should be rewarded so highly, they're just ignoring their responsibility to the community.
Those who create giant bid bots to violate the social contract for their own profit and those that buy the votes aren't the only ones that are ignoring their responsibilities though. So many members of the community are. Every time you decide to not flag a post that is utter shit yet highly rewarded, you are ignoring your responsibility. How someone votes is their own choice, but when it is a violation of the social contract of Steem, we are all responsible for correcting it, so that Steem doesn't turn into an absolute shit show.
Until tools are made to better curate and some form of solution to the bots is found, we all have the responsibility of setting aside at least a bit of VP to flag the violators of the social contract. This place survives due to the social contract that we are all ignoring right now,. We have to seek out the best content to upvote, and flag the worst, to ensure this place is the best it can be.
![agreement.jpg](https://steemitimages.com/DQmXnpBhwdM9mz7xtkqZXFhHNSc2at8JV3L8K9KSP6VjoCZ/agreement.jpg)
Image by Nick Youngson/Alpha Stock Images CC BY-SA 3.0 (source)
I have been on the fence when it comes to bots. As a minnow, I have seen other minnows get higher payouts using bots. I was under the impression this community relies on eachother and not a bot to get somewhere here. I havent used a bot yet because I feel it should be earned thru quality. Youre right about shit posts on hot or trending... It takes time to get thru it. Those that deserve my upvote really do deserve it. I comment on most of my upvotes because thats the whole point of this. Great post and thanks for helping me feel more secure in my choice to not use bots. Resteeming
Thanks for your feedback. It's good to comment on posts you upvote. I still struggle with that myself. XD
It's also good that you intrisically realized the social contract of here, which some seem to ignore.
Its a developing community so there will be exploitation. The only way this blockchain style social media will make it mainstream, is if its fair for everyone. This is a long haul commitment and its tough seeing posts not make a payout. Every comment, upvote and post counts. Thanks Again!
I don't use bots for income, but for visibility.
There doesn't seem to be an alternative solution that I can find.
I find this to be true as I have met quite a number of guys who complain that the reason for using the bid bots is so they get noticed. What would you say here?
Yeah, which is unfortunate. I'm sure as more sites pop up it will be easier to buy advertising on them.
It doesn't make sense that the official promoted posts is sidelined off to a tab nobody looks at here
How much visibility would you say you get from bidbots that you don't naturally get? Have you kept track of the difference between the amount of votes or comments that you get with bots versus what happens without them? I'm simply curious, because it seems like in order to be seen fairly high up on the trending page, you need post payouts in the hundreds of $. I'm wondering if the eyes you're getting are coming from the trending on the individual tags maybe?
Anyway, if you have information to share about how the bots have been helping your visibility that would be great to see. Or if you wanted to make a post out of it, that works, too. :)
I wish the view counts were still accessible but I do know my followers count doesn’t go up unless I buy votes. I’ve tried with and without ...
So, followers. Okay. That's something we all want to happen. What about interaction? Do you know if these new followers are regularly voting on your posts now? Or what the percentage of those new followers upvoting you regularly might be? And would you say those followers are newbies, or relatively new, say within the last few weeks, or would you say their a little higher SP accounts? And how often do you think these followers are commenting on your posts?
I like how you put this. Differentiating between the code and a social contract is good. Now, if we could just have people recognize one social contract, instead of seemingly many, with all kinds of variations.
There really needs to be a way for all parties to coexist. Attempting to force a social contract on someone else hasn't been working, and in my mind, nor should it. We're all free to act here. So, that means providing a good argument for keeping the social contract and potential incentives that people can see beyond something like "for the good of the community."
I wish I knew what those incentives were, but I feel like the exist, and that there are at least a few people who are aware of them.
As I posted this, I started to wonder if maybe starting to realized that we're under a social contract might be instrumental in some choosing to enforce it, but perhaps that was a delusion.
I think we're all kind of aware of the social contract, as we all have to go through the debate against bid bots and such, but many of us choose to ignore it, for self-interest. While there are variations in interpretation of the social contract, I think we're all aware that it exists.
It's not necessarily bad if there are variations as well. Many communities exist on using their members votes to help the whole. While that can be a violation of the social contract and your responsibilities, you're sort of trading that vote for helping the members of the community as a whole. If they require you to vote on a member every day, that's not so bad, if you can find a good post. But if they require you to vote on their posts for a newsletter or something, that's a bit worse.
I'm not sure that things like that should necessarily be gotten rid of though, as they are mutually beneficial for the members and usually have some quality standards. The main thing that we need to deal with is the biggest bid bot abusers. We can do that manually but we do need to institute some changes to make it harder to run bid bots.
Even just a few tiny changes might change things drastically.
Like for example, making it so curation rewards were taken from the largest voters first, making it so bid bots earn far less in curation rewards as their posts get flagged.
Or integrating the promo tab into trending.
Or any of a ton of other ideas that people have had.
I think the whole visibility thing is just an excuse. I really wonder how many people actually look at the “bot trending page”?
After a person has been here for a month or so they will soon realize that good content gets hidden behind the vote buyers.
You say yourself, if you don’t buy votes you get hidden
Ya I did, “behind the vote buyers”
Therefore avoid the trending page and search else where.
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I upvoted your contribution because to my mind your post is at least 35 SBD worth and should receive 86 votes. It's now up to the lovely Steemit community to make this come true.
I am
TrufflePig
, an Artificial Intelligence Bot that helps minnows and content curators using Machine Learning. If you are curious how I select content, you can find an explanation here!Have a nice day and sincerely yours,
![trufflepig](https://steemitimages.com/640x0/https://raw.githubusercontent.com/SmokinCaterpillar/TrufflePig/master/img/trufflepig17_small.png)
TrufflePig
Ugh... My transaction history is all spam memos with 0.001 SBD telling me to buy votes from them. My email spam folder is probably jealous.
I got to say thats a pretty good post. Man it"s not easy figuring all this out. I've been on steemit 4 months and thought everyone uses the bots. When you come on to Steemit it's not very clear, I think for me I was just too excited and went post crazy. But time will take care of it. I like bots, however I do see your point. Good post.![Cliff Jump.jpg](https://steemitimages.com/DQmYuYwZTGBAMDee6QENyJ36thkUdRf39z6EvRfHa4tGW9C/Cliff%20Jump.jpg)
Ever though you down voted my post for using bots.
I'm going to upvote you for this post.
Even though you down voted me and didn't explain why ( in order to help a new steemian ) I will upvote this post. Maybe just maybe you'll have a good day. Cheers @geekpowered