Do I Like Vote Buying Bots? No (Just to Be Clear)
By reading the title of my post yesterday, some people may not even have read the post, and assumed I am in favor of buying votes. My title was to state things in a free market way (Steem is a Free Market, Therefore Buying Votes is Voluntary and Not a Problem) which is the argument many use for why buying votes is acceptable and not a problem.
If you did read it, you can tell what I think buying votes does to the image and integrity of the platform by reading the 12 questions I asked people to think about as users of the platform.
To be clear, no, I don't like the idea of buying votes. I don't want this as a method of operation on the platform because it goes against the "spirit" of social media to honestly evaluate content and reward it because someone else appreciates and values the content to want to give it support. Buying votes for support seems dishonest. Look and think about how buying votes is looked at in the real world -- it's also seen as dishonest. But why is it perfectly OK when applied to Steem?
I have not used vote buying bots.
I have not used auto-vote bots.
I have not used curation-bots.
I have not used curation trails.
I have always chosen to manually upvote posts because I want to choose what content to support and give monetary value to.
The vote buying bots seem to be here to stay. Many witnesses approve, support and are part of the behavior with their own "services" for buying votes.
If we can't use the free market and causality to demonstrate if something is creating negative consequences for our individual and collective interest, then what are we to do?
Letting a few people do something that only has a minor effect to the whole community in the short-term won't get us to realize the problem in the long-term. If a majority of people do something that has negative consequences, we can see those consequences manifest quicker and more visibly. We can't seem to argue our way to a consensus to accept or reject this behavior, so how are we going to deal with the issue as a "community"?
Try to think of how voting works in different ways in society, where you can vote in board rooms, vote for a consensus like in a jury, etc. If you could just buy votes about a discussion or to determine the consensus (which is what buying SP and having SP votes applies to your content), then is the conclusion honest? Buying votes is not allowed in the real world for a reason. It produces results that are not reflective of an honest evaluation.
Buying votes in the real world is called vote fraud, isn't it? Why is it permissible on Steem, because people make money and we aren't voting for an election? Buying returns is all that matters? One person makes money, and the other person makes money, so that's all we need to think about to determine it's validity?
Thank you for your time and attention. Peace.
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It’s not even that many witnesses approve , many of them have their own bots running on this paltform and everyone has mixed feeling about it . WhT about when there were no bots at all?
There were bots almost as soon as steemit came online. Voting bots to auto-vote and not manually vote.
The way I see it, voting bots are where you go to advertise. You’re not guaranteed a positive return but you can get noticed. If anything we need to have a mechanism that more quickly distinguished between “organic & paid” votes. It’s similar to how they say sponsored on Facebook. Then we can simply filter our feed based on preferences. This seems like the best solution. Give the users of the platform options as to how they want the make their way on the site. Personally, I don’t use voting bots. I’m my own voting bot! Lol But, I’m not necessarily opposed to voting bots. Thanks for the post! Resteem
Good Point. Great way to get your post to trend and get lots and lots of comments and new followers! Love your comment, following YOU!
If you want to assess if a behavior is viable in a community, you should think about it being applied through the community. So in terms of advertising, ok, if everyone paid to push their article to the top, then it doesn't matter. But this sin't the main purpose. The main reason people use it and continue to, is because they get a financial benefit, and not loss. If this methodology of buying votes was applies to the whole paltform ont he primary basis of making money on your posts where you wouldn't otherwise, then the votes would get saturated and buying votes wouldn't get you money. The main reason this works out for people is because few people use it. If it was implemented throughout as a behavior, then regular votes would not be given, and everyone would charge for votes. What does that look like for a platform? Success or failure?
Thanks for the reply! I do see your point. I even considered selling votes (not that I have much to sell), but to see if it could make sense. I think only more financially motivated people who have the will to overcome the management would sell votes. I think the average Steemit user probably won't be looking to sell their votes. I could be wrong, but I do agree that a platform full of vote sellers wouldn't be good! Thanks again for the post!
I see only failure. Especially when the flood gates open and all the people everyone is waiting for start to arrive.
Besides, isn't there a promotion option for content, anyway? I guess the potential of getting a return on your bidbot, if you figure out the math, find the right bots and time it correctly is a greater draw than a fixed amount or range? If it's truly about getting the post out there, than promotion would seem to be the way, but from what I've read, it's looked down upon.
Which is fine for me. I thought we were supposed to be moving away from pay to play to create/curate in an attention economy. Does that include advertising? It just seems like the marketers or third party folks that we've been relying on as creators in the outside world and trying to avoid here are still the ones in the middle, even if we might have more choice (many bidbots vs. one way to advertise).
I've agreed with everything you said in your post, by the way. Just need to keep moving forward and prove it can be done in a more organic manner.
Did you know that there is a function built into Steemit, called "Promote", that does this for you. The difference is that you're "earning" your promotion dollars back with low risk from a voting bot. So effectively the Voting Bots bypass the existing "controls" of the system.
Also, before voting bots, you'd see people spending $100 - $200 SBD (100 - 200 SBD, when it was worth $1) on Promoting their content. Now if you see someone spend $40 (i'm honestly not sure if it's 10 or 40 SBD that people are spending), that's a large Promote expense.
At the beginning of Steemit, the votes meant the expression of the "wisdom of the crowd". Early on, it was found that the "crowd" was sometimes made up of a few people with a lot of power.
Today, to hide the identity of people, we buy / sell to bots. This is called the free market or artificial intelligence. In politics, it's collusion and criminal!
LOL, funny: free market vs. collusion and criminal... the old steemit was better...
I have seen contents well researched and well put together but with my measly upvote doesn't earn at all. That's a fact. my upvote is worth 0$. I dare not resteem because all 50+ followers don't even watch my content before they upvote if they upvote.
I have seen content that are gibberish pseudo techno babble that earns on 100s.
Steemit has flourished a culture wherein those that are contributing content have no more option than quit doing so or resort to buying bots. Except lucky few.
I'm not at all arguing in favor of buying bots though.
what I'm trying to say is if the good content provider persevere against this culture and patiently improve their content and try to find audience for it they might succeed and in the long run might be the more valuable people than those tangled up in the circlejerk.
Good point you make. People see others get more for doing less, and by comparison don't want to stay around because it doesn't seem to work for them. But it can take work to make it. It takes time to be seen. Other people paying to become popular is like a cheat and people don't like cheating systems that put them at a disadvantage compared to others.
No. Steem should just offer this as a service built into the platform, and burn the tokens.
Interesting, they can;t stop people from doing it, but they could offer the service too ;) Burning it would help the value as well. People might use it more than the whale system as they are making their own share worth more. But then it legitimizes buying upvotes.
I wouldn’t miss all these bots one bit. It takes away from personal interaction.
Like you said, “buying votes is fraud...”
Just post what you want to post, be yourself, and if people like it they will upvote it. Simple as that.
That is the original "spirit" of things... but we have fallen from that original method...
The lovely thing called Greed kicks in, and attempts to ruin things.
Yes, great comment! Following YOU @jlsplatts!
A very wise argument,
In the past I also bought votes from various bots, but now I no longer use bot services, because after I think this makes the spirit in creating quality content is reduced even lost,
Thanks for sharing @krnel
Indeed, I agree. Thanks for the feedback.
Good choice Mate !
You've convinced me. I'm down to try it. How else will people wake up. Otherwise it will just be slow and painful instead of quick and painful like you said about ripping the bandaid off.
I'm still mulling it over, I'm trying to figure out what we can do about this whole thing... :/
I think it woukd take whale support. I'm thinking about writing a post entitled - "Are there any whales that give a shit?"
lmao!
do something quick, or else everyone moves over to OnoSocial !
This is has to be spoken, and thought-well about. I have the same feeling as you and think this has to be done something about.
What are we going to do? Hehehe....
It's not voter fraud because it's a stretched out analogy that doesn't include a comparable metric/qual for whales and their votes. If we had the equivalent of whales voting in actual elections, MANY more than 2/3 of the people wouldn't vote as that would be clearly unfair. Bots are a consequence of the free market effect indeed: there is a clear demand to Promote things on the Trending Page, and that demand is the problem, not the solution that the free market capitulated with.
The primary intent is to sell a service for others to get more payout on their posts, and that's the primary goal for people to use the bots, no? The advertising in secondary.
What is steem if this is applied as an aggregate methodology? Rather than upvote what we like, we don't offer any free upvotes,a nd we all charge for our upvotes. What does the platform look like then? Why give away free upvotes when others are charging for theirs and making money doing so?
It makes for an interesting test of integrity, this is the chance of people to play casino/house.
Great Great Comment! I know someone who is a socialist who thinks rich people should get more votes in elections. Love your comment @baah, following YOU!