RE: A look at transparency and hiding beneath the surface
I don't see anything wrong with using voting bots per-se, given the economic environment and the broken "promoted" functionality on steem it is a legit way to advertise posts and make a decent return that helps building a minnow account.
If the post isn't deserving of the amount, it shouldn't get that amount. The promotional aspect falls down very quickly if the posts don't hit trending. 50 dollar posts don't unless they are in an obscure tag and then, who checks them?
second, bot operators need to fucking start being more responsible, establish reasonable usage limits and quality inspection procedures to blacklist serial abuse.
code is law <<< which means, we can do it, no one can stop us. kind of like 1940 Berlin or slavery in North America. Law is law.
back to the topic... transparency should be created wherever possible, especially on a "proof-of-brain" blockchain!
This is the crux, and it isn't the reality.
But that's after all a very subjective matter, we can't embed quality standards in "code". For all I know some people might think a re-posted meme is worth $50 just because it made them laugh a little. On the same matter, nothing speaks against down-voting such posts either.
but really is code law? I believe consensus is. But yeah, ultimately it's the same as with Berlin or Slavery... the question is will enough people stand up or will the sheeple follow in fear of missing out or getting in trouble?
It's really just the tragedy-of-the-commons playing out all over again, too many shortsighted individuals focused on short term gains without any appreciation of longer term sustainability-risks.
I for one see plenty enough reasons to buy votes for profit and for visibility (sub $50 still gets you into "hot" for a lot of popular tags etc and if nothing else it's still accelarating account growth - also the voting power is for sale, if I don't buy some, these shameless people like this "artist" will just take an even bigger share - etc etc etc)
I see a bigger threat in other aspects of this ecosystem like the growing "dept-ratio" with SBD never being converted into STEEM via the on-chain mechanisms etc... but that's a completely different discussion...
If someone asked me what to do about it -> fix the damn promoted feature and peg those SBDs!!
but I digress... transparency on paid votes is without a doubt a good thing... I believe the bot should maybe even lower the threshold and start reporting 5$ and up... If someone buys votes, they should own it, and too many vote bots went stealth "to avoid being spammy"...
well... spam is another discussion yet again... many things are in dismay in steem-topia!
https://steemit.com/steemit/@tarazkp/worth-it-or-not-lessons-from-zuckerberg
they have to be seen to be reviewed for downvoting, indroduseyoursel, or whatever it was probably isn't going to get seen. Plus, there has to be the will to flag without earning (which historically has been left to bernie and now grumpycat etc) and the spare stake to burn (which is 'tied up' currently). If this was less widespread and the old large curators were still in the waters, the chances of many more flags would increase but, many of the old curators delegate to the bots.
Doesn't this tie in with the bidbots taking SBD?
It would have 3000 comments a day. ;)
Too much done via stealth here.