[ Housekeeping ] Resteem services and Lockout voters
I thought I will start a new series called Housekeeping where I give some advice and complain a little about some aspects that could be useful for people to know. I offer the 'useful' so then you are kind of obliged to listen to the 'complaints' too. Win/win. This will likely be a little more lighthearted even though it could look at some serious issues.
First up, the useful.
Resteem Services.
The first thing you need to know about Resteem Services is they do not work, do not send them any money as no matter how many followers they have, they are useless. This isn't Instagram where numbers of followers mean something (even though they can be bought). You have to ask a couple questions.
- Who are those followers?
- How many have muted the account because of too many resteems?
- If they haven't muted, what are the chances of them seeing your post?
- Do you think that is how the larger and interested accounts discover content?
- Who wants random content from random posters pouring through their feed?
- Did you check how many accounts the resteemer is following?
Ok, ask yourself those questions and you will likely find that the promise of having 32,000 sets of eyes on your account is more likely to be 8 eyes, spread between 6 people who are new to the platform and didn't really know what they were doing yet. These accounts are very unlikely to help your cause at Super Steemit Stardom (SSS - everyone loves acronyms) as the types of accounts and the clutter of the accounts makes a resteem from them pointless.
I just saw one that is 80 days old and has 32477 followers, 17667 posts, 353675 following. The followers are about 10% of the following. They are follow for follow accounts. I am guessing not many whales are in that 32000. The post count means they are posting about 220 times a day. What do you think the chances of a normal person who cares putting up with their feed plastered with that? If they haven't been unfollowed or muted, it means the followers don't read their feed anyway as they are probably too busy spamming to ask for votes and follows themselves.
Get it? The resteem services do not work. At least the ones in this type of category. There are some like @ocd who resteem a few a day and have a curation team to find and ask if they can resteem which are valuable. @ocd also votes heavily on those resteems to. They are an account to follow.
Next, the complaint.
Large lockout voters
It has been an increasing trend recently that large voters are either self-voting or voting on their 'friends' accounts very early with large votes. These accounts are already highly rewarded and supported. What this does is locks all of the little minnows out of gaining any multiplied curation return.
If you don't know about curation, there is a multiplier effect when you vote before others but a penalty for voting early. If you vote at 0 minutes (self-vote on posting for example), the penalty is 100%. What that means is 0 curation return. This doesn't go back into the pool though, it goes to the author. It is a straight line to 30 minutes which means the penalty at 10 minutes is 66% and at 20 minutes is 33%. Voting after others multiplies their return.
There is no problem in voting after but understand how it works and know that for the curation value, voting on a post that already has large amounts on it will reduce the return significantly. My general advice is still to vote on content you like regardless of curation return.
The people who are self-voting or circlejerk high-voting early, absolutely know what they are doing as they are some of the largest accounts on the platform. All of the little voters that come after however might not. In my opinion, one can't call themselves much of a 'community leader' if they don't even give their hundreds of small voters and supporters a chance to get a slightly higher return by frontrunning the large self-vote.
As they say, it is the thought that counts so pay attention to who consistently does this (or has their friends do it for them) and consider if they are the kinds of people you want to bump up higher in the community. This is just my perspective but I think they are taking advantage of people who don't know better.
When I say large votes, these are in the 30 dollar and up categories yet they can't even wait until 15 or 20 minutes? Some will say it is to stop frontrunner bot accounts but they are often also the ones who say distribution at any cost is important and don't mind using and supporting bidbots to prove their stance. This is a way for them to maximise their return, not distribute value.
Anyway, that is the first Housekeeping episode, I hope it helped.
Taraz
[ a Steemit original ]
There was so much new stuff for me in this post, I need to read it a couple of times more :D thanks Taraz for sharing this. I feel I need to find more posts like this to even get close to understanding everything going on on this platform! At this moment I'm still fresh and hadn't even started looking at these resteem things. So thanks for the headsup :) Atm I'm consistantly posting as high quality content as possible at least once a day, hoping for it to get some momentum.. posts like these are really important! I'm gonna follow and Thank you
No worries. The most important part if trying to build momentum is to go out and find people who are interested in and writing similar content to your own. Learning about the platform will also help to understand how various aspects and actions interact with each other.
Okay! Good advice! It's also superimportant to find inspirational and informative steemians like you, because a lot of what newbcomers hear and ofcourse understand at them moment is that everything stands still beacuse of the lows in pretty much all economies..
Agreed, and agreed.
These are two things that really get my goat.
I did any analysis on one of the more famous resteeming services a few months ago and yeah, false advertising at its best.
In the past I've pleaded with a few large accounts to quit the 1 minute vote and suggested it may bring them more followers/respect/votes overall - I don't think the advice was heeded.
Looking forward to more of these honest pieces of housekeeping :)
The never ending series. :)
The 1 minute voters whether self or circle seem to have no shame. Maximisers no matter the cost to the community.
Yep, the curation reward gained from doing this seemss to matter more than the respect earned for waiting half an hour - or indeed more than saving your VP for other content.
the size of these accounts (and votes) they get compared to the relative small curation value shows how much greed some people have. They know their posts are likely going to go into the hundreds and they still lock people out at 1 minute.
A shame and not enjoyable to see.
The next HF will change the vote time to these accounts to 15 mins I think. Whether that helps the curation rewards for others remains to be seen.
sadly I dont think it will matter much as they are still voting so early you can't get in before them. Sure it's set at 0 minutes and then it takes just long enough for the bot to catch the post and vote that it shows at 1 minute.
There were a few whales that I stopped voting for once they started this practice. It really has seemed to increase, along with the bot delegations, once the price of steem shot up and then came back down. Think more then a few people got the idea in their heads that they would be making those huge payouts forever and now are looking at $100 as loosing money.
Thanks for the @ocd shoutout! On steemit, one shouldn't have to pay for resteems... it just seems very exploitative. Great first housekeeping ep :)
I try to get a plug in for @ocd when I can ;)
Thanks, I wonder how long until the house is clean.
Hello @tarazkp I had always thought those resteem ingredients services don't work now I'm certain from your post. I had to unfollow the ones I followed. I had no control over the contents on my feed, all I saw was their resteemed post. Thanks for being truthful. I'd like to connect with you on discord can you pls drop me your discord ID if you don't mind
Sure thing.
tarazkp#5792
So true, vote based on the content and not based on the curation reward!
If was thinking about writing a post about: Why do people vote.
Also here there are 2 types of people, to ones who are in it for the curation and the others who really want to show appreciation!
I do use 2 votes each day, to get some curation rewards. These votes go, to posts from authors from which I do know, that they buy upvotes. But all the other upvotes, like the one on this post, are done because I do like the post! So, my 100% $.02 upvote is done by the heart and not the money part of the brain!
there is nothing wrong with going for some curation rewards especially if thinking long term because it teaches a lot about the platform if you are serious about it. If you are trying to build a profile by being a part of the community, curation alone isn't going to cut it.
Lots of things need to be in balance!
Resteemed for free...the way it should be. Great info and hope that more minnows see it. They are the ones that can't afford to get scammed by resteem services, but are the ones that get taken. Add this to the list of onboarding information that should be shared with new members. Hope you are making a list...lol
The circle jerk 0 minute voters are making sure their paid votes are profitable. Even if the bid would of been break even they are profiting this way because they can get their curation percentage down to 10% instead of 25%.
Yes, but it isn't just the paid voters, it is many large accounts that do this.
And, thanks :)
I've tried once a resteem service and I paid much more than what I earned. Don't plan using this kind of services anymore, but I also had the surprise to find some of my posts resteemed by other users that follow. "Human" support and interaction seems much more efficient and useful for the community.
Human support will have the added benefit of being consistent later also.
Well, it definitely helped me :) I've long given up on the resteem services, because that's exactly what I figured - nobody can read that much, so it's useless.
I wasn't aware that @ocd were worth following, though (my bad!) so thanks for that!
@ocd have manual curators that find content and they put together compilation posts and resteem a few articles a day. it is also worth adding ocd-resteem as one of your tags from time to time to see if they can find you :)
:O
Thank you, really appreciate the info (could I be so bold...informative post, Sir) :D I've seen the tag on other people's posts and I didn't know if it worked (if you really got noticed, I mean).
The resteem services always felt similar to the retweet services spamming the self publishing field. I always assumed that the followers were fake like on Twitter, with a mix of follow for follow. I assume there is some amount of collaboration between the voting rings that have multiple accounts, and it would just make sense from their greedy perspectives to add resteem services for the multiple accounts they have created. Got to maximize that scam and all.
Essentially the same thing without the tools to hide it as well. Most of the resteem services here are very poorly established and rated. Again, I am not talking about the project resteemers, some of those are good.
Thanks Taraz. Good advice. Wasn't aware about the curation with the voting. That is why they are getting bigger. Milking the system.
for them it isn't even a large difference most of the time to wait until the smaller accounts run first. Greed.
They obviously don't see the bigger picture. The more people with bigger accounts the better the system will work. If everyone is interacting and voting you would have a very healthy platform. No need for bots etc. In my eyes if you are not prepared to interact then you are stealing from the community.
but you don't understand... Winning is having the biggest gaps between users. Winning is having as much as possible for as little investment as possible. Winning is being supported by the sweat of others.
There is no platform growth in that. Even on my shitty amount I try and find something or someone to vote on. If it's interesting and has been written by the poster I will vote for them and follow them. Everyone grows.
yep. The people who think they are winning while being assholes are killing the platform.