If We Want to Slow the Use of Voting Bots, We Need to Meet a Market Need - Here's a Possible Solution
There's been a ton of discussion lately about the use/abuse of voting bots. I'm not going to get into the nitty gritty of it here but I do want to point out a real market need that the bots fill at the moment. The truth of the matter is that if you want to stop something that you perceive as having a negative impact, you need to create a new solution that meets the underlying need in a way that makes the old way of doing things obsolete. What need am I talking about in this case?
Good Quality Posts Need Visibility
Currently, one of the frequently voiced benefits from those that use the upvote bots is the fact that it gives them a way to get eyes on their content. It's a clear need and one that makes sense. If you're new to the platform and spend a large amount of your time creating an amazing piece of content and only have a few followers that may see it, that's an incredibly frustrating experience. Especially when you know that you've created something that others would likely find value in if they saw it.
Steemit's current solution to this problem is woefully inadequate. The "promote" feature does not deliver a reliable enough return on investment to make it a viable solution to the market need and thus we have other solutions that have stepped in to meet that need.
Why the Promote Feature is Failing Us
I can only offer my perspective here, but I see the promote feature as pretty much useless. The fact of the matter is that you are guaranteed no metrics in return for your investment and promoted posts are relegated to their own little section of the site which is hardly frequented. To top it off, only those that spend a huge chunk of money end up at the top of the page, thus it renders the system useless for those with a small amount of funds and just starting out, which are precisely the kind of people we want to make sure have this solution.
Why would anyone want to promote their post when they're not guaranteed to get any eyes on it? This problem left a huge gap for upvote bots to step in and fill. Now, you could not only buy a vote and gain visibility in the system, but you also weren't risking taking a loss on the move. It's easy to see why bots have quickly become so popular. This, of course, has introduced some pretty big issues due to the downsides that come with upvote bots. Mainly in the form of rewarding poor content, providing unwarranted reputation boosts and gaming the system.
A Possible Solution, Can We Kill Two Birds with One Stone?
I believe we need to change the promote feature so that it meets the current market need and gives everyone a clear path for how folks should properly be promoting their content on Steemit. This gives the community a way to maybe let the new minnows know when their actions may be seen as abusing the system but also allows them to give a clear solution that meets the need they're looking to fill.
So how do we meet that need?
I think we should change the promote feature so that your payment buys you a certain amount of views or clicks. These are the kind of metrics used on many of the big advertising platforms and they make sense. It allows you to operate within a budget and guarantees you a return on your investment. Both of which are non existent in the current state of the "promote" feature.
The second critical piece would be to get rid of the promote tab and have promoted posts appear within feeds. If people don't want to see promoted posts in their feed, then an option in settings to disallow such posts is an easy solution. But if we do it right, people will leave that feature on because promoted posts actually can be used to help support the growth of the system. This change would provide the kind of guaranteed visibility to promoted posts that is currently lacking and make them actually worth paying for.
How can promoted posts be used to support the growth of Steem?
Currently, the money used to promote a post is burned by the system. Instead of burning that money, why don't we put it to use supporting the platform and community initiatives. We all know that there is a ton of money in advertising (I'm looking at you Google), so how amazing would it be knowing that instead of lining pockets, that money is actually being used to improve our community! If the promote feature actually delivers and meets the current market need, we will have a large source of revenue to turn around and use to make this place better.
@jerrybanfield just wrote up a great post with a solid plan to add value to our community. In it he's looking at ways to provide funding for such an initiative. Why not use the money from the promote feature to do just that?
So, now, not only does the content creator get their needs met by a solution that guarantees them a return (eyes on their post), but the platform also gets a boost because that money can now be invested to make the community better. And because the community knows that promoted posts are actually helping the platform and community, there's more incentive to allow such posts to show up in their feed rather than turn the setting off.
An added benefit to this type of change to the current "promote" feature is that it would get the crappy content in front of a guaranteed amount of eyes. This would mean the likely hood of it being flagged is increased and would discourage promotion of content that isn't quality, because ultimately it would hurt the user to promote poor content due to the likelihood of it getting flagged by all who see it. This prevents the type of abuse we see from the upvote bots at this point where users can can abuse them and hide because a certain amount of views is not guaranteed thus the reward is never seen or presented to users for flagging.
Looks like a win, win, win to me!
We would now have a legit solution to the current market need that would reward all those involved and encourage behavior that is in line with supporting the type of community I think we all want to see and be a part of.
When I see areas that I believe can be improved to make this community better, I like to try to find a way to do so. With all of the discussion about bots lately I wanted to do more than give a yay or nay vote on the matter. This is my contribution to the community, an idea that may help bring the system more in line with what our community values.
So what do you think? See any obvious flaws? I'd love to hear your thoughts!
Some of my other recent posts:
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While I use them myself to give me that small propell towards exposure, Bots is a dangerous thing for steemit. The fact that they are needed is outright a clear symbol of something is wrong on steemit and its system. That it all comes down to who got the most steem power or have been lucky enough to catch the eye of a whale. While that is said just like any blogging website steemit is in my opinion still faster to gain any kind of reward than if you were to start your own blog website. Just my humble opinion. I have seen myself some great success that have proven quality posts with or without bots can reach the top, with a pinch of luck.
I agree that Steemit is the best true blogging opportunity to come along yet. It truly allows you the opportunity to blog and earn without having to deal with hosting a website and trying to drive traffic to it. It's special in that regard. I too use bots now to fill the exact need that this post is about and I can also see the downside to bots. That's why I wanted to propose a solution that could possibly meet the market need and improve the community at the same time.
Just looking to help make this place better, little by little. Thanks for stopping by!
Discussing solutions is the only way to make progress, just like you are doing and hopefully some clever minds can take the solutions that proves to be the best for steemit further and integrate them! Always a good read on your articles
This point of your seems to be the sentiment a vast majority of Steemians are coming to.. It is quite a poor state of affair at the moment which is drowning out smaller content creators and a net negative for the Steemit ecosystem as a whole..
I have just found this post through referral of another Steemian, and am astounded by how closely the sentiments are to that which I have just posted a few short days before. I outlined the same issue and created the some solution in the form of a proposal on utopian.io. You can find them here :
Growing Unhappiness with Upvote Bots on Steemit
Proposal for New 'Promoted' Function
As of right now, the proposal has not reached enough of the Steemit community to have any real effective impact on a solution being implmented. However, it is really important to me that it does, as I believe the implementation of my proposed solution, or at least a variation of, would solve the issue facing Steemit right now. As this post has clearly outlined. If the proposal makes sense to you, may I kindly ask for it to be resteemed so that it may see the light of day.
I am trying my best to get it out there.
Thank you!
From economical standpoint voting bots is an elegant free-market solution to a problem. As an economist I see them influencing positively on the platform and its value. They provide ROI to whales so incentivise them to buy steem and delegate to voting bots.
From the content standpoint they are obvious harm.
So, i'm not so sure we need to fight them. More likely we need to build more sophisticated content-managing system. For example, personal preferences - when the user downvotes anyone, the posts of downvoted user become a negatively scored in his personal feeds. So after a few downvotes, he won't see user he downvoted no matter how much SBG he throw in upvoting bots.
I too, feel that the rise of Upvote Services are simply a free market solution to the demand of the service in the market. I agree as well, that Upvote Services are harming how content is sorting and is upending the entire means of how the sorting algorithm is created to serve.
I have created 2 in-depth posts on this very matter, of which the almost exact same points that @raised2b has pointed out are highlighted as well. 1 post as diagnosis of the problem, and how it is majorly affecting Steemit, and another as a proposed solution to the issue. You can find them here :
Growing Unhappiness with Upvote Bots on Steemit
Proposal for New 'Promoted' Function
If you have read them and agree with the proposal, may I kindly ask that you may resteem it so that more Steemians may know about it, in hopes of actually implementing the solution.
Thank you!
That's definitely an interesting perspective. Thanks for taking the time to leave your thoughts on the matter.
I obviously agree that the bots are feeling a clear market need, the problem is they're causing harm by doing so. I also agree that they fill a need by delivering an ROI to anyone wanting to invest in Steem without wanting to participate in the platform directly. That's not a need to be ignored.
Using downvotes to eventually kill someone from your feed is an interesting solution, but ultimately I don't believe it meets the underlying need I mention above, giving users a way to get eyes on their post. In your downvote example, the person could flag the behavior and then not have to deal with seeing that kind of content but I don't think that would matter at all to those using the bots to game the system. In fact they'd be happy they weren't being seen.
It's more about giving those folks that are using bots for exposure a way to do so without having to resort to using bots, because they do come with consequences that can be seen to harm the system.
Hi there @raised2b, I was brought to your page by @perceptualflaws who recommended you.
It is rather uncanny, as I read your suggestion that, I have basically created your exact words in my own. Almost down to every single point. I post my diagnosis of the issue as well as a proposed solution to utopian.io on Monday.
You can find them here :
Growing Unhappiness with Upvote Bots on Steemit
Proposal for New 'Promoted' Function
I think you will be surprised at how parallel our thought on the matter really is.
As of right now, it seems the proposal isn't really catching on really, and hasn't gotten the amount of eyes it requires for any serious action to be taken. But if there is one thing that I know will bring massive positive impact, it's obviously the proposal I wrote.
Right now, I am trying to bring more attention from the Steemit community to the proposal in an effort to see it take effect.
I hope that after your read the proposal, you may give it a resteem so that it may reach more Steemians.
As of right now, I think it is necessary to create a proposal 1.1, as such I am going around asking Steemians what ideas they think they can add to the pool as well.
Please let me know what you think.
God Speed Brethren.
I just went and read your post, it was well done. I feel like there's a lot of us that would get behind these kind of changes if they knew the solutions were out there. I love that you did a utopian proposal up, definitely a smart way to go.
Wonderful, wonderful, wonderful!!!
I am so glad I found you. I needed a way to undelegate SP to Minnow Booster and took to Google for help. Your post appeared in the results and I absolutely loved the ease with which my problem was solved. I left a comment there.
About This Post, Voting Bots and Promote Tab
I absolutely agree with you on this subject. There is a need that is being ignored by Steemit and filled by bots. For votes from bots, content does not have to be of top notch quality. It just has to be content. A link only. (Although some bots have announced flagging bad content if found).
Solution in My Mind
Building on what you have incredibly pointed out and suggested, I was thinking of a way too and it occured to me. Let me share it with you.
Thank you for this post. It enhanced my perspective. I loved the way you think and write. I am glad to be connected.
Hey there @ilyastarar, I have to agree with @raised2b about allowing the free market to decide for itself which piece of content is valuable.
I have just found this post today, and found it incredibly similar to a proposal I have created and posted on utopian.io on monday for this exact issue with the exact same solution.
In it, I too cover your point about the funds being sent to @null to be inefficient and gave 2 other solutions to where that money may go. You can find my diagnosis of the problem and my proposal to the solution here :
Growing Unhappiness with Upvote Bots on Steemit
Proposal for New 'Promoted' Function
So far, it has been 3 days since I posted it, with my experience of the sorting algorithm of Steemit, it is basically not going to get seen very much more. I do think it is super important that this changes be made to Steemit for the overall growth of Steemit itself, as such I am on a campaign to bring more awareness to the proposal right now.
If you do read it, and agree with my proposal, may I kindly ask that you resteem it so that more Steemians may see it and push forth to having the proposal being taken seriously and hopefully implemented .
Thank you!
Thanks for sharing @bitopia. I will surely read the whole proposal before commenting on it.
I too agreed. Because the solution presented by @raised2b is better than what I had in my wild. Wild imaginations though.
Thanks for such a thoughtful reply, lots of good ideas!
I'm probably more partial to not upvoting promoted posts at all. I kind of look at it as something the community should be doing, same with the filtering piece. I think that if you spend the money to promote your post, you shouldn't be guaranteed anything but views or clicks. Whoever views or clicks on the post should be the one to decide if it's worthy of an upvote. This method doesn't create unneeded complexity and leaves the risk that a promoted post still might not hold much value to the community, thus it would not deserve an upvote.
For the same reasons as above, we wouldn't really need to filter promoted content because it would also not be guaranteed any kind of upvote and if poor content was promoted, because it's guaranteed a certain amount of views or clicks, it's certainly going to end up flagged by the community.
Those are just my thoughts though :) I think we have to make the solution as simple as possible to implement and yet still incentivise behavior that adds value to the platform.
I tend to rather agree here. I already agreed with everything you said in the post. The perspective you have on the issue is
Great post! Thank you so much!
Thank you for good post and am also agree with you this the they have change some in the promotion section as any one can see his work are statics let us hope will come soon and use full for us and every he measure the hi work with graph not with money is important need work in area where he/she laking thank you.
Great article man! I totally agree with the bot issue and i think u definitely have a feasible answer.. ive wrote an article or two about bots and how some of them were less than honest before the bot website was formed by @yapabmatt .. this was a great solution, thanks for sharing it.
Any chance u took a look at lisk before it nearly doubled this week? If not u still should.. i think its gonna be a giant.. id love to hear ur thoughts on it if u do check it out. Let me know.
Take care
Hey there @moderndayhippie, I have just found this post through a referral from a fellow Steemian.
The points outlined in this post were my exact sentiments and I created an in-depth diagnosis and solution to the issues outlined in this post as well. I am trying my best to raise awareness of the proposal, as it hasn't really caught on as of yet. I am strong belief that it will make a tremendous positive impact upon Steemit and am doing my best to let more people know about it. You can find my diagnosis of the problem, and a proposal for the solution which I posted on utopian.io here :
Growing Unhappiness with Upvote Bots on Steemit
Proposal for New 'Promoted' Function
If you do read it, and agree with the points, which are basically identical to the points outlined here by @raised2b, I hope you may give it a resteem so that it may reach more Steemians and push towards it actually being implemented.
Thank you!
I checked out your post and 5 resteems are coming your way my friend. These resteem services are cheap so you should check them out for some of your other articles post promotion purposes. Don't take this the wrong way but I honestly feel like you shouldve waited to drop an important article like this for the weekend. For some reason people don't like to read articles more than a few days old and many users on steemit only visit on the weekends, so you may want to consider that for you next big piece. Anyhow, thanks again for the great article.
take care. :)
Hey @moderndayhippie ! Thanks so much for the additional support! I am quite uncertain to the efficacy of resteem services actually, do you see high value returns from utilizing them? I would love to know more about them!
Thank you for the advice as well! Yes, maybe I really should have.. I sometimes don't focus too much on this optimization factors. Will definitely take note of it however!
Once again thank you for the support! I would really like to see this proposal taken seriously and to it's eventual implementation as I truly believe that it will positively impact Steemit.
I am intending to write a proposal 1.1 with more refined points, as well as knew additions to it, so if you do have any points to the proposal, I would very much like to know and I can add it in to the proposal 1.1!
As far as value goes for resteem services it is really hit or miss, but these services are so cheap i always feel they are worth it, advertisent always cost money. But the right people have to see it to get big upvotes and u never know when that might be. certain days of the week get much more exposure than other days. Also, this post wasnt all that attractive, i honestly wouldnt have read it if u didn't personally contact me. U should have a more catchy headline and first sentence to get people excited to read ur article. Reading dry facts is not generally what i get on social media for so u have to give people a reason to read it. A title and first sentences will make or break even the best written article.
Anyhow, best of luck on ur future posts, hope some of this info helps cuz u sure put out informative content that i feel people should read :)
Definitely advice that I will take very seriously! I will have a deeper look into resteeming services. Thank you very much for your support and thank you for your words of encouragement! I will be working hard to improve !
Congrats on Lisk, I have looked at it before, and liked it. I think it has a bright future. I was debating about that and antshares at the time and I ended up going with NEO. I'm still riding that horse, but I think there's a bright future for both.
Too many good coins, too little money!
Thanks bud, altho we both know a double in crypto space is not really a big deal. ;)
But wow, u caught antshares before neo!? Thats awesome! I picked a decent amount of neo when it dipped down to $20 and im really happy today so i bet ur stoked!
I am still realitively new to the crypto space, only found it 6 months ago so ive missed out on a lot of the current big ones. But like u said there are still a lot of good coins out there so im not to worried about that.. just need to have more money to put in! Lol.
What are some of ur other favorites?
Haha, true, crypto is the wild wild west!
Yeah, I was fortunate to pick up antshares before everyone jumped in, wish I had gotten more, same as everyone, but I certainly can't complain. I have a feeling that Monday's news isn't really going to be worth the recent pump but I'm in it for the long haul so I don't mind just watching.
Right now my big holders are BTC, NEO and STEEM. I've got my smaller bets on EOS and OMG, though I'm probably going to cut OMG soon. My two fave long shot coins are Bitshares and BitBay. I really like BTS and BAY. BAY is my super long shot coin, but I pick up a little more for my stash as it dips into the 300 satoshi levels. It has a lot of churn too so you can flip your stack pretty easily and accumulate more.
Yeah, omg got a lot of hype and did nothing :/ but im still holding out on that one for a bit, i really dont wanna miss that train when/if it takes off.. i had never heard of bitbay before, i will have to check it out.
Anychance u have discord? So we can chat without destroying ur feed. Lol
Yeah, you can find me in the discord groups or steemitchat, same username.
Seems interesting enough and quite doable, with some tweaking...
By the way, I just nominated you to take part in the B&W Photo Challenge. I mention you in this entry: https://steemit.com/sevendaybnwchallenge/@binkyprod/black-and-white-7-day-photo-challenge-day-1
Back to finding solutions, I never look at the Promoted Tab and the problem with it is if your budget is 1SBD, no one will see your post at all. But the things that platforms like Fb have, is that, there is no guarantee either.
If we have those promoted posts be at the top, then people we follow will be buried under them. We could have a recommended area, where it's promoted content, but it will show up on that page to people with similar interests without being buried.
What COULD be done is for each SBD, the post is brought back to the top of the page every said amount of hours, until the budget the creator put in is spent. Sort of like Kijiji does things, but without leaving it at the top.
For example: I spend 5 SBD on a post. Then Every 4 hours, it's brought back to the top. So then that happens 5 times, and then it's done. So for one day, every 4 hours, my post is back at the tip, automatically. If I spent $20 SBD, then that goes on for four whole days, about.
This way there is a constant rotation, because it's every four hours from the moment you originally posted. It's not a refresh where everyone is posted back up at that same time. It's if you posted at 7:53:56 (I was going to put frames in haha no frames in time outside of FCP lol), then 4 hours from then your post is reposted, and then 4 more hours from then.
I can be 3 hours or 5 hours, but I think enough time should go by between each. 4 hours seems like a good number to me, for some reason.
Let me know what you think. To me that would seem a bit more fair and gives everyone a chance. But I think a new tab should exist for it so that these "repeated" posts do not take away from the already busy New tab or People I Follow tab.
I think your solution would definitely be an improvement on the situation than what is implemented as of right now. However, it would not solve the issue that the 'Promoted' page will still always be non-relevant to anyone in particular, rather just a hairy mess of whoever is paying to have their content seen.
It is by human nature to rather focus on the things that interest them. As such, once again no one would visit it often enough for it to be effective.
I have created 2 in-depth posts with a ton of similarities to the issues and solutions @raised2b has written in this post and believe it to be an effective solution to solving the problems facing Steemit right now. You can find them here :
Growing Unhappiness with Upvote Bots on Steemit
Proposal for New 'Promoted' Function
If you do give them a read, it would be really cool if you could also resteem it so that more Steemians may know about it in a rallying effort to have a better solution implemented.
Thank you!
Sure, of course. I'll have a read and see if it ignites some additional ideas. Thanks for sharing them with me. We definitely needs solutions and definitely need ideas to help these solutions come to fruition.
Thanks for sharing your thoughts. This would definitely be a possible solution. I think that we're both in agreement that something needs to change in order to make the promoted feature actually worth something.
There has to be some kind of underlying metric that you're getting as a return for your SBD, that's what makes promoting a post actually worth it. We shouldn't have to reinvent the wheel, Google has been perfecting pay per click/view advertising on the net for years. We just have to fit it to our platform and it's an instant benefit for all involved.
I'll have to check out the contest, thanks for the nomination :)
Yes, and that metric that will make it worth, has to make it worth it even for those with little budget and who spend the bare minimum.
Exactly! There has to be something to help everyone at every budget level so that the ability to promote is always there and the return will always have a guarantee that makes it worth the investment.
So who is in charge of these things and is there a group where we can discuss ideas? I'm sure if we put our heads together with some of the people who can make these changes, we can implement something that can please the majority and test a few features as well. We can even have a transition period where we put in place the new feature, but keep the old feature and allow people to test out the new feature so we can fix bugs to it and what not.
I'd be down for joining a group of thinkers to help the development of such a feature.
Honestly, I'm not sure.
I'd recommend starting by posting on the recent Steemitblog roadmap request post and then following up by visiting Tim Cliff's recap post. I'm sure someone on either of those should be able to give some kind of suggestion?
Thanks, I went and wrote a nice long comment lol about the 3 main things I'd like to suggest: your idea with my additional thoughts, my guardian idea and the Steamitboard upvote reward idea.
Nice, go you! I'm glad you went and commented, I think it's important that we all give our thoughts and feedback. Who knows what they'll actually take from it, but at least our voices are being heard.
Resteemed.
Thank you for your post, I learned that the promoted post option would not work for me ;-)
Your solution ideas are win-win-win, it would be nice to be able to purchase on Steemit some guarantees views.
Thank you for stopping by and voicing your thoughts :)