RE: The HF19 Maximum Curation Rewards Strategy!
I don't think this is right. This is gaming the system. It destroys the point of Steemit entirely to auto vote things. It's not sustaining and it does nothing for the good of Steemit because if their content sucks, you shouldn't up vote it. Why go through the trouble of creating a network where good content is rewarded and move to an auto system that just targets curating rewards and to collect up votes. How many times do people just circle jerk up votes just to get money and Not bother reading the content? I'm getting my content squashed because I'm getting beat out by guys with followers auto up voting is a bit absurd. I've thought out using those services to grow my account. But I really don't want to because it just seems wrong on many accounts. Someone tell me I'm not crazy for thinking that way.
You're absolutely right! Auto upvoting does game the system even to the point where manually upvoting a post earlier than 30 minutes earns lower rewards because of the "bot penalty" applied which deters users knowing about this from voting amazing posts up early while often the very best posts either go unnoticed or get upvoted first by a bot network which then takes the majority of the earnings on curation while those discovering the post for the first time get little. I had the same debate and in order to promote change I am taking the "let's make it so bad we have to change it" approach because this seems to be what many of us respond to in our lives. Perhaps this post will contribute to helping us find ways to minimize bot upvoting in future updates without having to let it get much worse!
making it so bad that it must be change is the wrong attitude. Human beings will do everything to optimize. bot voting is optimization at its best. Optimization does not care about intent, or whats wrong or right. So you have to first think about how you want the best version to behave. It would be such that people's vote needs to be genuinely based on the content. The only way to do that would be to require that people scroll down the entire thing before they are allowed to vote. People will try to optimize this routine as well by creating code that does this automatically. But at least it slows down the time allowing real readers to get a chance to get in line. but then that detracts from the users of feeling freedom to vote however they wish, so perhaps you allow people to vote from the homepage, but that vote is worth less.
You're not crazy. I have a similar philosophy. I hope I can earn my place on Steemit using hard work and enjoy making my posts and interactions in a manual way. I agree with Jerrys response that things will probably get worse before they get better. I fear that if this is not fixed all the humans will leave Steemit and it will be a collection of circle jerking Bots. Elon Musk will have a great laugh.