Circle-jerkers, bidbots and the 2nd Amendment
Hey, hope I'm not bothering you but, but I am putting together a dolphin pod. It's just going to be 10 people that delegate 2000 SP each to the ************** account and then everyone will get a 100% upvote everyday. If someone leaves the pod we would fill the spot to keep it at 10. One of the reasons I approached you is because you fit the profile of the people I want in the group. just a thought. Let it me know if you're interested and wanna chat about it!
This is a Discord message I got from someone in their high 60s rep and who has been on the platform since near the beginning. "One of the reasons I approached you is because you fit the profile of the people I want in the group." means, I have the SP, because they have obviously never read any of my content.
Surprisingly, this is the first such express invite I have received in my time here but this kind of thing is quite common. It is called circle-jerking, collusion, vote-trading or, as I would affectionately call it, being an asshole. My thoughts on this are open so this is likely I have never been 'invited' before.
It is a way to keep votes and self-vote in a tight group without having to actually look like self-voters. Yeah, I have to self-vote to cover my delegation and the more the price drops, the more I have to. So be it, I will openly do it, people can judge me for it but I am doing my best and have done in the past and will do again support others more heavily when I can.
Know your audience. This person didn't know theirs.
My response was:
Not really, I think this kind of thing is 'almost' as harmful as bidbots.
When I say almost as harmful, at least doing it this way doesn't actually cost other platform users their liquid SBD to help me grow my account. Other than that, these circles are a big part of the issue and before delegation and bidbots, they were one of the most talked about problems on the platform. These and auto-votes were why the same authors appeared in Trending every single day and why those same authors now are among the big users here now.
This was the next message, and last.
Thanks for your reply. It's actually a response to that situation. I expect that answer from the type of people I approached. It looks like you're killing it anyway. Steem on sir.
The 'response' to bidbots was to do something almost a harmful. Well played. Instead of dropping Nuclear Bombs, shoot everyone one by one instead.
It looks like you're killing it anyway.
For a little perspective about 'killing it', last night I had a look at some of my old posts from when Steem was just over 1 dollar, I had less than 1000 followers, my SP was under 10,000, I paid for no delegation, didn't always self-vote and rarely got large votes from anyone. My average was the same, in fact, I am getting less now than then.
This is not complaining about support, it is what it is and I have always accepted it. What this shows though is how much affect the bidbots and circle-jerks are having on the platform. I am voting with 4 times more SP, I have 4 times more followers, Steem price is 70% more currently and yet, I am getting less. That is pretty incredible is it not?
What this means is my stake isn't as valuable as it could be if the bots weren't draining the pool. It means that everyone's vote is worth even less than the STEEM price indicates as there is so much of the pool being commandeered for such narrow sets of recipients. The pool is a limited resource each day and the draw on the pool dictates how much goes to each vote.
But, this message I received is part of the problem, a response of long-term users who are used to getting more deciding to take matters into their own circles. It is a poor response indeed but, it is understandable as people are trying to increase their stake at a time that their personal stakes are under-powered due to the bidbot drain. It would be the same of course if all whales self-voted 10 times per day too but in an organic environment, that doesn't really happen and, when it has, there have been flags flying.
The bidbots remove the ability to flag this kind of behaviour though since, there is no target. You either flag the users who despite their content are largely innocent and using the platform 'as it is designed' or... what? Can't flag the bidbots.
I don't know much about laws but in the US and especially at Steemit people talk about 2nd amendment rights.
"A well regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed."
Ever wondered about what that actually means? I am sure you have. It means that the people have the ability to rise up against the government if they overstep their bounds. Americans fight heavily for this and argue a lot but, what government, what face will they actually defend against if it is faceless?
This is the same with the flag system here, it is a 'right to bear arms' but, to use those arms requires a target. The bidbots take away the target. No matter who has the arms, the only way to fight them is to attack the users of them, collateral damage, human shields. It is akin to an army fighting through the streets as to fight back means to harm innocents and that is no way to win hearts and minds. Even if one does 'win', the damage done might be irreparable.
We are held to ransom, as is our stake. They have formed a decentralised government who are taxing other users by making the system a pay to play environment. They are restricting the use of stake by drawing large gulps of the pool for a narrow band, those who play their game. This is similar to net neutrality, throttling internet speeds of some users and only opening up bandwidth to 'preferred' sites, those who pay.
There is nothing to be done. If you had an idea that at least here you had a little freedom, you are mistaken, you are governed, what you own here is governed, how you use it is governed and how much of it you use is governed. You might want to complain but, to who? They are faceless and for the most part, silent. They don't need to campaign, they weren't elected and the only reason they exist is for profit. You thought democracy was bad, this is a bidbot dictatorship.
By the way, to the person who sent me the message. If that is your 'response' to bidbots, perhaps you should stop using them yourself.
Taraz
[ a Steemit original ]
"The bidbots take away the target. "
You are right I hadn't looked at it this way. It's the decentralized node system. To take the blockchain you need to take out all nodes, in the case of bidbots, take out the users.
Sad thing.
More sad is that this person in the rep 60 reached out to you for this. How greed can motivate people...
As for your more frequent posting, I can understand that you don't care what other might think, seeing all these abuse going around makes me think if this platform can be taken serious in encouraging good content or behavior.
Either way not all of this commnity is best. In fact from what I have seen, made me believe in a decentralized community.
Safety to centralize as ghosts on a decentralized platform. Like terrorist cells. ;)
You increase your stake yet your reward has reduced despite the fact that there is an increase in the price of steem compared to when you first joined in? That is a wawu!
If this is how it is, then what is the point? To me, this is diminishing returns on investment and makes no sense. There has to be a better way to manage the reward pool
My stake has over doubled since that time but I am voting with 4 times more with the delegation.
Good question.
I don't know what to say. Yet we seek to bring people in, to come an enjoy the freedom prophesied in the white paper, we onboard and encourage people and we do not even see the freedom we are shareing flyers about.
I feel like ranting, so i am going offline, look for food to eat and watch some butterflies. Their lives are simple. It's a lovely day out here.
Enjoy it. There are no butterflies here now. I do miss watching them in the tropics though. So many colours, so much innocence.
The bid bots are draining the pool to an extent but one thing I noticed was when I look at older posts and more specifically who voted on them and then for example I go to smartsteem and look at the delegators I see a lot of familiar names. This gave me pause. So many people who used to vote for free are now delegating to bid bots.
Some say that is the future of steemit, I disagree but sometimes I wonder
Yes. That is indeed the case except with a big difference. Before those big names might have given 50 x 20% votes in a day to 50 different users. Now, all of their stake is going to those who pay, no matter the content.
Absolutely and everyone suffers from it
They are so hard now
I am one of those naive people who never use or has used a bot and only vote for posts that I read and like. Of course I have seen that the reward has decreased and I have thought, is it still worthwhile to keep writing? But the contacts make it worthwhile and as long as that is the case, I will continue to write, to read and to comment.
Nothing wrong with writing and making contacts either but there are many platforms designed for exactly that. The uniqueness here is the pool so it is largely unacceptable in the long run that there is a narrow band benefiting financially supported by a large user base who keep bringing people in. That is Youtube, or Medium or any other centralized service.
Let there be no misunderstanding that I fully agree with your observation. I wish it was different, but if it is not different then I choose to stay for the reason I mentioned. The money for me is secondary, although I like it very much to have 'an apple for the thirst' as we say it here in the Netherlands.
:)
And that's how we should do it all @Clio. I did use some flat rate bots, so see how it works, to see if it was possible to make a profit with them. But due to my low SP, I decided to use all to increase my SP. This way I can make my own little footprint here on Steemit. By upvoting content I do like and read. Always find it hard to comment without upvoting!
As you know I think about this issue quite often, I'm trying to come to grips that most people are to myopic to understand social worth. It does leave a bad taste in my mouth, I won't lie, but I'm not exactly ready to give up, not just yet.
There is something they fail to calculate
When they design their little circle jerks as people call them, or when they go heavy on the bidbot route and do not mine social worth. Let's use this post and you as an example, because you are someone who interacts with your readers, who cares, if you were to lose your account, or have to power down massively because of a family emergency (hopefully this never happens) this would not have a deadly effect on the worth of your content for your readers... let's even call them your virtual comrades.
But on the other hand, people who rely on these sort of guises (i don't self upvote guys or heavy bidboters) to make any Steem at all, do not have the the social value as to partake on it's inherent protection.
They power down, there goes their everything, they lose SP there goes their everything.
It's like driving around without insurance, you could be fine for the rest of your life.... maybe, but you better hope you never crash.
Social capital is indeed a valuable asset but for it to he worth, society itself still needs to have some value in it other than just moral support if you know what I mean. At the end of the day, life is a war of attrition of sorts but the strong survive and because of humanity's need for social, even the ones who behave badly are looked after to some degree now. There is a lot of cost to maintain a few but very little cost to behave badly toward the many.
I don't know if that makes sense but in my head it 'kinda' does.
Yes it does actually... this falls back to our understanding of meritocracy. First we must agree on what merit is before we try to polish a system that promotes it.
I remember reading somewhere that SMT's might fix some of these issues we are facing, meaning that a community for let's say Philosophy & Literature might decide to part ways with Steem's core blockchain (not technically, but my point stands) eliminating pre-mined stakes and coming up with a healthier distribution.
There are other big challenges of course, many of the people who might be interested in said SMT may not have the resources to get it off the ground.
Man I really should not be commenting 5 minutes after waking up, I had to edit like 4 times... ha!
Mmh, again an interesting topic. I did wrote a post about Steemit being about a friendships circle (don’t know if you are following me, so don’t know if you read it)!
I do agree with you that there is some kind of governance in place. Most of use are to focussed on the money part or to have influence here!
We probably all signed up because we were allured by the money part. But I do see it mere as a nice side effect! I always prefer an genuine comment on my post than only an upvote. Don’t get me wrong, I do like to receive upvotes 😎
The bots and I scratch your back, you scratch my back circles are really undermining the idea behind Steem!
You can take a look at steemspectacles how many of your followers are actually interacting with you!
What is also possible is that a year ago people were more commited to Steem then now and some probably have inactive accounts now!
The inactive large accounts are rarely actually inactive, they just aren't seen acting.
For some this is true. You can easily check their curation rewards. Most of them don't comment or post, they are just raking in rewards. Most of them probably via automated votes!
Interesting, this is the first example I've heard of the affect being had on the reward pool. I recently read a post which also outlined just how much the main 7 bidbot are also raking in from the fees they collect which gets withdrawn by the owners from the system. It was a huge amount, way more than the so called reward pool rapists (it got flagged by the bot owners though). So really what the bots are doing to steem value is twofold.
Unless you can spend enough out on the bots to get it in to trending they are a waste of money anyway. Maybe if the users starting getting the odd flag it would put them off using them, but, like you say, it's punishing the wrong entity.
People will tend to go for minimal effort and maximum profit. While organically play by the system is painstaking and consume a lot of time. So, it is normal to have people opting for such method.
Nonetheless, in Steemit it is more towards engagement with the followers that really interested and care about our contents. While bots are more to help in terms of operational routines. Bidbots do help minnow to hit trending though (some they do produce great contents!)
This post was linked to in today's Official Communiqué from the Church of Piglet, to show our appreciation.
Blessings be upon you.
Yes, this is semi-serious, but still.
I feel exalted, raised above yet at the same time undeserving of such glory.