RE: I Don't Want to Write for Bots that Don't Consider Content. Response to @dantheman latest voting/curation post.
Yes I wrote something similar in my response which I think got overlooked in the swamp of people trying to congratulate Dan on a fine post and the discussion of whether it was worth the money it earned.
The bot problem cannot be programmed out of the system but I do find it troubling that we seem to have reached a stage where the platform seems to have become an experimental lab for perfecting bots and the team have given up on even trying to fight them.
These bot are mostly controlled by whales and they make a mockery of the whole idea of curation. I don't care how "intelligent" someone's bot is it is not going to read any content or derive any benefit from it. The only reason which this works at all is because the people who get on the bot list get money out of it.
If these bots were simply giving the equivalent of facebook likes with no monetary value I suspect everyone including those on the receiving end would be against them.
Right now they have a financial incentive not to be and money is good at silencing people.
Another point is that those that aren't on those bot lists not only lose out on money that could otherwise go towards properly curated content but also lose out on votes as real voters then start to follow the bots in the mistaken belief that they can earn big curation rewards doing this.
This is because most people don't understand how curation rewards work and they probably never will because they won't take the time to read up on it. It's just simple human nature.
I think we will see this with any system that is sufficiently complex or opaque from the end user stand point.
As I have said many times before I am still not going to be too negative about all this. To me these are teething troubles which will gradually be resolved. The team, including @dantheman are constantly adjusting things in response to community feedback so there is reason to be optimistic.
I believe that ultimately Steemit will get over these hurdles. I also believe strongly in the free market. If Steemit somehow isn't able to overcome these hurdles something else will come along that does and will take its place.
Careful now. Somebody's going to see your comment and just accuse you of being "jealous" of those making money. (I really do get sick of that rebuttal.)
I think your points are very spot-on. It isn't a problem that there are bots searching for "quality content." The problem is that the bots - especially those from the whales - are upvoting posts, regardless of the actual content. This is a problem because of the massive payouts of whale votes. This is what all of the defenders of the payouts refuse to acknowledge. It isn't just a problem because it's an actual problem, but it's a problem because of the perception of the platform, both internally and externally.
Writers and original content creators are getting frustrated with the system because it is blatantly abused by whales (when they upvote their own posts and comments knowing that they will give themselves a very large payout) and the whales/bots are the ones that are creating the trending topics. And these things are happening while really great writers are being drowned out by tons of noise - not getting money, but more importantly to most of us, not even being seen.
The problems are real, the perceptions of those problems are real, and real people who hoped that this would be a great platform are being discouraged. If these things are not addressed, this experiment will fail. I truly hope that the founders and developers take these issues seriously.
Yea, the jealousy accusations are there. And I'm sure there will be some that take it that way due to not reading through the post. To me this is a motivation and user connection issue versus money.
It reminds me somewhat of Manna by Marshall Brain where the reader is exposed to the workplace being run by a un-empathetic managerial software program. Regardless of the efficiency, I feel most people find they react and communicate differently when interacting with a human vs a machine/program.
I absolutely agree! In fact I think we talked a bit about this on one of his threads (which makes it easy to get lost.)
I'm with you in not being too negative about this, and that the site itself and the bots (I assume) will get better. I really don't have an issue with there being curator bots.
But you hit the nail on the head, the issue is that while we are in this in-between state of development, I find little motivation or value (from a minnows perspective) in an algorithm that is currently unable to factor in the content itself.
Hooray for the optimists! :)