The Daily Coverup -- Transparency Under Attack.
The following voters have downvoted the bidbot summary comment left by @Transparencybot.
For more information on this project, you can the introduction post here.
What is this report?
One of the reactions to the summaries being left by Transparency Bot is to downvote the comment in an effort to hide it or at least put it at the bottom of the list so no one will notice it. Of course, the voter probably also hopes to degrade the reputation of this project and associated tools.
This report shows the largest voter (per link) who downvoted one or more of Transparency Bots comments and also provides a link to that comment to allow you to restore its visibility (by upvoting the comment) if you so choose.
- Voter = The account that cast the heaviest downvote.
- VIS = The remaining visibility of the comment. Zero means the comment is no longer visible.
- DV = The down vote weight cast by the voter.
- REP = The reputation of the voter.
- Link = The link to the comment that was downvoted.
The list updated routinely. Many of the comments are now visible again.
Thank you upvoter's for your support!
If you believe in transparency on this platform, then please help out by casting an upvote on one or more the links above so they remain visible.
The wonderful thing about Steemit and the Steem blockchain is everything is transparent!
Transparency allows all of us who care about this platform to know what is going on, directly see how it affects us, become more educated as to what can be done and then; hopefully, act in a way that protects our platform for years to come.
@TransparencyBot needs your help, this must be a community effort or it WILL fail.
Transparency bot is a non-profit initiative, all funds received by or delegated to will be used directly for this mission only. Please consider supporting it by upvoting this post and/or the comments left by @transparencybot.
If you would like to delegate direclty to @tranparencybot you
can do so by clicking on the following links. You can remove your
delegation at anytime. Be sure to leave at least 50 SP in your account.
50SP 100SP 250SP 500SP 1000SP 5000SP.
@bycoleman
https://ColemanAir.us
Craig
The bidbots are not free, they have been setting for you to use it! You have to invest your money to get back with little! Let me calculate that for you,from 100% what you invest, the bidbots take 50%-60% , 25% for curation rewards to the voters, how much you got left form that!!??, a 15% from your original amount from what your invested? How much time that you spending out for you work? Have you ever read what the post's content and purpose? All my posts's purposes are supporting the minnows and help Steemit Community growth. Right now, I am giving back amost $350/month from that 15% what I have earned from my post. Check my posts out to see how it works and how many people are come and enjoy playing it. For me this is stupid bot ever, never look inside post's content to see what is the post about! This bot just want to get more votes = free $ from followers without reading anything from the posts! I feel bad for someone who give this bot a free money!
Conclusion, as long as Steemit site allows bitbots alive then this useless spammer bot should be in cage!
In all honesty what you are doing with the contest is unfair to those who are writing quality content and receiving little return. You've posted the same contest for days and reaped huge returns, once you wrote the initial contest and rules for it there's been little work on your part outside of posting the same article over and over again and writing down people's guesses and you've hauled in hundreds. Yes it's frustrating trying to get people to click on your post, as with yours before you started using bots indicate, we are all in the same boat. I've seen plenty of people using the bots but most use them for a sensible amount after a lot of quality effort.
Did you see how I calculated the % of return? Dont you think that I have keep posting the same post and do nothing? Let me tell you that, I have to change new logo, date, calculate who is the winners, replying all the comments for 12hrs/day, I didnot do it straight but still ate 4-6hrs/day. And another important thing that you may no know, if you have no money to invest, you will get none back from the return, so it is fair for the investors/poster spend more money than you do to have some small profit back from what they invest, does that make sense? Just a example, if you have enough money to spend $100, then get back with total $115 (15% profit) then you give back to the players as rewards for $5(33% from that total 15% profit), is that still unfair with pool poster? I just used heavy bid bots with some first posts to get some more extension from players, to make sure that they see my post in the beginning, I wont use much after that, players will join in my post for the contest routine.
I suggest that you just come and join in my contest to enjoy the fun with free reward from me then. Or if you think that can do something better to help the minnows than what I am doing, just go ahead do it!
I think it's more about reasonable expectations and responsibility. Would you be able to put one hundred dollars in a bank and the next day get a fifteen percent return? There's a reason people don't make that kind of return on a hundred bucks even if it sits in the bank for a month. Everyone would be doing it and the bank would eventually lose money on such ventures....just like the rewards pool. Some do, but I definitely am not going to get down on people who use bots for a moderate rate of return for their work or to gain more exposure....but the saying is: everything in moderation and the simplicity of running the same contest over and over while making minor adjustments as you claim to reap hundreds of dollars is not moderate. Most people I see using bots are making anywhere from ten to maybe twenty five bucks a post depending on the number of followers who also contribute to that amount, there are bigger accounts out there that make much more but they have been at it for awhile, have more power, followers or are up higher in the chain, like a whale, most of them are working hard at developing different material all the time. I think what you are doing is just fine, you've found a niche that works for you, gives you exposure that your are craving just like everyone else, I don't think people would think a more moderate approach to your use of bots would be as biting as this post that brought notice to how much you were making using so many bots. I wish you luck on your journey to find prosperity on Steemit, slow and sturdy wins the race, as they say.
If you are a Crypto or Forex Analyst or a trader, you will know how risky the others and I have been facing with our real money when convert to coins. Nothing is easy, all coins could be gone in the next day, no1 knows until its over. Everyone can try to create their own good post with great content then hide some bit bots out there, its been setting for us to use but they have to take the risky by converting their own USD to coins. They will get the money back little with that risky invest but no1 wants to take that risk. They just want to spend their money somewhere safer such as bank so they will get less interest though.
Believe me or not, when you are in our position, you will get our feelings. We are earning little from the our risk.
Just think this way, you invest 25k and get 10-15% from that 4k/5k per month, how much you will get over all while you spending 6hrs-8hrs working per day?
It is not even 1k/per month.
Nice to talk to you!
Thank you @sunlit7!
Hi @transparencybot (@bycoleman), while I can appreciate the effort you're putting into something you believe to be worthwhile, there are some major issues with what you're doing. Allow me to explain my downvote and to provide some "transparency"...
I recently started an initiative called @minnowfund which aims to help new Steemians grow through education and SP delegation. I created an article about the launch and purchased votes to get a little attention to the post, and get it in the eyes of those we might help.
(This initiative is 100% supported by an upvote bot btw)
A few days later I see your comment on my post which is announcing that we need more transparency on Steemit about upvote bots and the detrimental impact of said bots. You go on to ask for upvotes in your comment (see below)...
This is seen as spam here on Steemit and I'm sure you probably know that... which is why you've changed the text on your new comments going out. So why not mention this in the article above before starting a war with other users? No worries, I'm here to provide that "transparency" to your followers lol.
I also would like to point out that your opinion of bots and transparency.. is just that.. your opinion. You may share the same opinions with others and I feel that those opinions should be respected. But it really doesn't give you the right to go around and spam people's posts. At a minimum, I would recommend adding an opt-out response so people can reply with "stop" and your bot will not send out further spam on their posts.
Now.. I won't go into the whole debate about upvote bots. There's a million different opinions on what we should (or should not) do about them. I personally run an upvote bot service and I spend a lot of time each day manually going through posts to see what my upvote bot is supporting. I blacklist several users a day when it comes to plagiarism, spam, abuse, or just crap content. I also don't allow last-minute votes, or certain tags to be used: nsfw, steepshot, or dmania. I'm against abuse on the platform and the promotion of those who put in little effort.
But my opinion (and yes, it's just my own) is that upvote bots are perfectly fine when the bot owner is taking steps to ensure that they're not promoting complete garbage to the community. And until any changes are done on the blockchain level, they are here to stay. I personally feel that with the introduction of Hivemind/Communities all this talk about bots will fizzle out. For the time being, I guess the "Trending" section will be full of articles all about what's wrong with the Trending section lol. What's funny to me is the amount of people complaining about Trending and using upvote bots to boost their complaints. Anyways, I digress.
So let's talk a little about transparency. This I find rather funny. I mean, we're talking about the Steem blockchain right!? What's NOT transparent about it? To say that it's hard for somebody to find out if upvote bots were used to promote a post is downright silly. It doesn't take but one click on a post to find out. And I don't feel that people are really trying to hide it in the first place anyway. It's become part of our ecosystem, whether we like it or not. But transparency has always been here and we really don't need a bot to go spamming around on people's posts to figure that out.
And although I don't have any plans of boosting a post over $50 worth anytime soon, I want to let you know upfront that I do downvote spam on my posts, including the @minnowfund's articles. So if you need to, go ahead and put me in a list of channels not to comment on if you need to. It's nothing personal, but I downvote all spam on my posts no matter who they're from.
Thanks for taking the time to read!
Thank you for the reply, it is very much appreciated.
The message as been changed and no longer asks for an upvote or delegation.
The bot does nothing more than enumerate the use of bidbots on a particular post that has received bidbot payouts in excess of $50.00. The amount received from each bot is not easily obtainable by the average visitor to a post, therefor this enumeration does expand on the available information to aid in the user experience.
This is NOT a judgement of your work or any other post, just information presented in a way all Stemian's can use it as they see fit.
I truly believe that this will help your mission as much as it helps the platform, as quality work such as yours will be curated manually and organically by your followers and new comers, while articles that do not have community curation will drop from the trending list.
I hope you will give transparency a real shot.
Blessings
Transparency's posts are not spam. It is extremely interesting to be able to easily see that a poster is gaming the system by purchasing votes. You people who want to keep the rest of us from seeing that you game the system are like people who are caught masterbating. Very embarrassing for you. Hilarious for the rest of us!
Some of us are investors. Steemit does not need transparency since it is a blockchain (LEDGER). I'm not going to go to a tropical island to bring salt water and sand. If you spend 4 hours or more researching and putting together an article then use $20 of YOUR hard earned money to promote it's visibility, what have you done wrong? "I don't have $50 on MY posts so now I want to say it's not fair that you forked over your own cash to?" Who is gaming the system in a world where it takes money to make money? You DO realize that steemit is a crypto-CURRENCY and without investors you can have this platform back and everything in it because every steem in existence won't be worth a dollar put together... Without money, steemit might as well follow facebook and start giving likes.
It is technically spam. Defintion of spam. Provided by the all knowing wikipedia.
"Electronic spamming is the use of electronic messaging systems to send an unsolicited message (spam), especially advertising, as well as sending messages repeatedly on the same site. "
While I don't mind it when it ends up on my posts, because I am fine with people knowing if I spent money on a bit-bot. It is still spam nonetheless, I did not request it to be added to my post, so by definition it is unsolicited.
Just because you like it doesn't make it not spam. It just means you like spam (and apparently people who get caught masterbating?). Nothing wrong with that I guess. We all have our things.
Thanks for the humor; I like you already. I've been online since way before the Internet, and disagree strongly about @transparencybot's comments being spam. However, they would be less intrusive if they just stated the bottom line and included a link for people to click into the detail.
The fact that anyone could research the information doesn't make it of no value. I'm not going to research every poster that I follow. I like having the information right there, under the post.
Motives do not make something spam. What makes an item spam is that its presence degrades the experience rather than contributes to it.
I have been using Bitcoin since 2011. Doesn't mean I am significantly more knowledgeable than someone who found it in 2013 (when most other people did), and spent more time than I have researching, and building actual applications on blockchian. Time != wisdom. Time + knowledge = Wisdom.
Still spam by the definition of the word.
As the bottom part of the message has a built in solicitation.
"@Transparencybot is a non-profit initiative, please consider supporting it and the transparency it brings to our platform."
I agree and have already suggested to @transparencybot that he/she remove all of the spammy parts and put all of the detail and the verbage onto web pages, to reduce the comment to a single line that contains two links.
Your definition of spam is incomplete, as relevant comments to posts aren't spam. @transparencybot's comments aren't spam, as they directly comment on the post's relevance to the community, and part of that relevance is that they are advertising.
Buying botvotes is advertising, which is closer to the definition of spam than you should feel comfortable with.
Just because you didn't ask for comments relevant to your post in ways you would prefer not to discuss doesn't make them spam. That position hints at a desire to censor opinion you disagree with, rather than support as free speech.
Just because you don't like it doesn't make it spam. If you post on social media, you are inviting relevant comments, and comments on your ad strategy are relevant to your post if you are advertising.
So, your projection of masturbatory spam-loving on @ideafarm is just revelatory of your own 'thing'.
If you would have read the entire context of the conversation you would have seen that I don't mind the posts that transparency bot leaves. I just provided the definition and said that his was incorrect. I actually followed him because his response to others is quite entertaining.
I don't mind a difference of opinion I do mind uninformed responses.
Either way doesn't matter much now as I have muted you and won't even know if you respond.
I note that people incapable of conforming their conception of reality to the actual thing end up incapable of dealing with it.
Thanks for muting me, so I can display my true character in my response, knowing you won't be seeing it.
Others will, and that's the point of social media.
Not advertising your posts to your peers, like a business to it's customers.
I note that your character is revealed by your actions, and treating your peers as business opportunities speaks volumes about your exceptionalism in your own eyes.
Bullshit. The comment is directly relevant to your post, and discusses it. That's not spam.
IMHO, paid promotion of posts without openly stating it is spam.
@transparencybot is working to prevent that spam, which is overwhelming the platform. If we recognize that people conferring with one another is the basis of society, then what place has paid advertising or promotion of such commentary? Essentially, such paid promotion is a form of lying about the validity of the PoV of the commentary, by elevating as if it were widely supported by actual people.
Which it isn't.
As the platform is already perceived by many as so impossible to so confer organically with actual people that buying botvotes is necessary to converse, the value of the society to the people conversing is being degraded to utter pointlessness.
You are basically converting a public forum for people into a cryptomining scheme.
@transparencybot is right on the money when it comes to the long term effects of bots voting.
You are just trying to protect your mining with whatever you can conjure up to divert attention from the harm you are doing to the platform, and the society it supports, so you can keep mining the rewards pool, taking rewards from content creators that it should be going to.
This pretty much sums it up.
https://steemit.com/funny/@mrhanky/howwwwdyyy-ho#@transparencybot/re-howwwwdyyy-ho--bidbot
Hah, surprised to see me on this list :)
It's a little unusual for me to be considered as a "big voter". Honestly, I had no purpose to hide the comment or put it in on the bottom of the list. If I were shy of what I was doing, I just wouldn't do it. I just wanted to express my dissatisfaction with the bot.
As I've already mentioned you would better consider looking for real shit posts which are pushed into trending by bidbots instead of posting under every post and annoying authors ;)
P.S. Respected your decision to stop asking for an upvote and SP :)
Thanks for the reply,
This is of course just an automatically created report based on downvotes. There is no method for the bot to know why exactly. Each voter has their reasons and that is fine.
I hope you and I both find that in the long run, this project is regarded as an asset.
When I started @introbot only a few months back there was hundreds of spammers "introducing" themselves daily. I received a massive amount of belligerent and hateful comments, but in the long run it was worth it. There is no longer a problem and @introbot is an overwhelming succuess.
It just takes a little time and community awareness and support. I hope you will keep an open mind. The platform is worth fighting for.
Blessings!
Yep, @intobot was really useful, thank you for that. I myself posted under #intorduceyourself topic 5-6 times until I got a message from your bot, in that case, I really didn't know that this tag is for one-time use only, and I agreed with your opinion, so I stopped posting there. But you can't convince me that bidbot usage is actually that bad as you presented.
You seem to have touched a nerve!
If I used a bidbot, the only reason I would be bothered that you commented would be if I didn't want people to know that I used a bot and how much I spent on it. Can't be pointing out the psychological crutch of paying to get a bot to cast a vote!
As it is, you are probably going to get these people more views than the bidbot votes anyway. I would never have looked at most of these posts if you hadn't commented on them. You know, seeing as bidbots don't really being in many more views.
Amazing how people are all of a sudden no longer fans of free-speech, and happily break out the censorship hammer, if someone says something inconvenient to their worldview.
A nerve indeed.
Thanks for the support
Barely have any SP, my upvote worth little. Best I can do is give you an upvote and resteem. Sorry they are downvoting you. Not sure why really as the info is there for anyone to see just by checking the arrow next to the amount of votes. Maybe that you are adding the amount they spent, which anyone with time could also find out just by checking their wallets.
Keep fighting the good fight. Wish I could be of more assistance.
Thank you, the upvote is very helpful. Consider upvoting one of the links if you feel like splurging.
Yes, the amounts are VERY concerning to these authors on the list. They are receiving huge payouts and taking this money from the rest of us.
Blessings!
No need to be politically loaded.
BTW I'm a big fan.
I have considered such changes. The bot now has sufficient awareness that is for sure. Anyone that wants to know more, will certainly know where to find it.
Really appreciate knowing you are a fan! I do believe there is a real battle ahead.
For instance:
https://steemit.com/steemit/@transparencybot/re-introducing-minnow-fund-assisting-minnows-through-funding-and-education--bidbot
Even removing the the "with 50$ of payout" would make it more classy.
Peoples don't need to know you arbitrary limited your bot to 50$ or more
Very possibly.
The reasoning is that at $50.00, most articles of questionable quality will not keep themselves on the trending list. They might make it to the "hot" list, but then they will require manual votes to propel themselves further.
We'll need to give it a week or two to gauge the results.
Already, there seems to be less posts that the bot is commenting on .. I have not run the numbers yet.
There are a lot less down votes today.
I'd like to chat with you onto discord, would you mind contacting me here?
https://discord.gg/5u6KW
The entire platform is already transparent. This is just total nonsense! WTF do you wish to achieve? Transparency???already there! I’m blown away with the number of people who want to make such noble actions to bring things back or corrected to their desired vision of the site. Who are you and why are you right? Is there a right? I feel if you don’t have something nice to say then stay off other people’s posts! What you are doing is spam... try providing content..... you can do what you are doing off of people’s comments! 🖕🏻!
First, you're not following your own principle. Second, good. It's a shit principle, that would utterly void the purpose of social media, which is to discuss things and create a society based on the understandings of the people involved.
Your selfvote on your comment speaks far more about your opinion than your words. What it says is that you're here to mine cryptocurrency, and that any actual words you use are little more than an excuse to do that.
The bot in the comment is not a conversation. I can see the hypocrisy... this was a response to unsolicited bot comments. I don’t like any of them. The pro bot or anti bot... just starts to feel like my yahoo Mail minus penile enhancement ads. I upvoted because the bot did same thing on other people’s pages to get to top. To be clear Tran bot never touched a post of mine. I’m done with this topic because at the end of the day it’s in the hands of the money. I enjoy steemit and have nothing against you. Best luck in all that you do.
bycoleman I hope you really do understand this answer. It is because you have created an Anti-Spam "SpamBot" You have not even looked at the posts that your Bot spams on, you just leave BIG, HUGE, COMMENT-SPACE-TAKING messages that get in the way of the great conversations that people are having. I use bidbots... not hiding and let me let you in on a secret... I'm not profiting, I'm losing but getting the desired effect by reaching a larger audience. Let me offer some transparency because try as you might you CAN NOT follow my paper trail. Lets say you buy Ethereum as well as mine it. You bought in at $960 but it drops below $400. You "believe in steemit" but you need to reach your audience so you trade your eth into btc (transaction fees) to purchase sbd with (yep, more transaction fees) to send it to steemit and be put to use (You guessed it... more transaction fees) all with your $400 eth that used to be worth over double but you figure "If I work really hard and get the article where it can be seen, I will reach my audience and hopefully it will be the kickstart that I need but wait.... who is this person spamming my post saying that I used bidbots (so what.. turns out the creator of the transparency bot has used bidbots more than I on a level i didn't even know was possible but moving on) It seems like people who have not spent a single dime investing into steem are just having a sucker-attack because you are mad that you came here, got a FREE account and didn't start making $100's per post. We are investors and I find it HILLARIOUS that nobody on here seems to know what will happen if the investors say "f steem, I'm pulling out and taking MY money with me and with that ALL OF THE VALUE that this platform has gained from my dollars and lets watch the steem and sbd drop till it leaves a burning hole in the bottom of the market charts and THEN you guys can fight over a sbd that is worth about 5cents and steem can return to its original price of 2cents then lets see how big of a problem this is shall we? You know what makes steem valuable in dollars?? Our money, investors.... even the witnesses get paid and if they didnt care about getting paid then riddle me this.... WHY ARE THEY THE ONES WHO OWN ALL THE BID BOTS BATMAN!? (that alone should tell you how this war will end for you and it will be fun to sit back and watch) queue music And another one gone and another one gone... another one bites da dust HEY, we're gonna get you too! Another one bites da dust!
Here's why:
37 whales own almost all the Steem that exists, because they mined it before Steemit existed.
Stinc and the witnesses serve their market, and their market is 37 whales, because those whales have the vast majority of Steem. The witnesses are elected by stake, and if they don't serve those whales, they won't be witnesses anymore.
So all the top witnesses are those most servile to mammon, by design. That's why many of them own or profit from bots.
You're pretty right about how this will turn out, as substituting advertising for the honest opinions of societal members will continue to degrade the society until it no longer has any value except as a mining scheme--and that only has value as long as there are people besides Stinc, the witnesses, and the miners posting and commenting.
Steemit has a ~10% YOY retention rate, meaning that about 90% of new users bail before a year is up. The reason they bail is that they observe that the rewards pool is being mined by those with the Steem, and they can't compete, because they don't have the Steem. They try to use botvotes to make up the difference, but sooner or later realize that just further concentrates the Steem in the accounts of those funding the bots, and not their account.
They bail.
Kill the social media by mining away the rewards that should be inuring to authors and attracting a wider market for Steem, kill the value of Steem.
Good luck. With a business plan like that, luck is all you have.
I can see where you are coming from to a degree. I personally would be making a decent profit if I was going for the profit and I'm not saying that I will not make a decent return eventually but I believe that this will turn out to be much more lucrative if I can reach my target audience in the long run. Most of the new users who leave expect to get something from nothing and feel heartbroken/butthurt that they don't write an article (well written or not) and voila! $1000 payout. They then turn to blame bidbots and those who use them because we realize that if you want to sell your product you must be willing to put something into your advertising or else you will be the only one who even knows that it is for sale. The very first thing I invested in when we (we are a team but this was my comment) joined this platform was delegations because if I want people to hear my voice you have to sometimes pay the cost to be the boss. I instantly noticed a difference when I began rewarding all meaningful comments on our posts. I feel that the witnesses who mined the steem earned it because I am a miner myself and have put forth thousands of dollars into my operations and I'll be honest, it was not for the good of mankind. I believe in Crypto but nothing is free and if I invest $100, you'd best believe that I will be getting $200 back but mining Crypto is almost like literally "printing my own money". I believe that the majority of the people who whine about bidbot usage arrived at this platform and seen the high payouts but never intended to invest ANYTHING into promoting themselves and while they spend all their time crying and hoping that a whale will notice them and give them an upvote, others are busy getting paid. The whales will eventually power down and drop the price of steem inwhich time I will gladly come and grab all that I can afford. Think about how the crash affected the price of steem and sbd since Dec.. We seen sbd go from $9/each down to $2 each but how many people invested? I wouldn't know because I was too busy grabbing everything I could like it was a clearance sale and when whales power down I will rinse and repeat. Anytime that we are dealing with a currency be it fiat or Crypto we are dealing with business and unless the business is a soup kitchen, I don't expect for anything to be free and neither should anyone else.
(This is only my opinion but "have-nots" will always disagree with the "haves" and waste valuable time arguing which could/should be spent getting their own)
I initially flagged it as spam but decided I would comment instead. I removed the flag long before you posted this. Why am I listed here? I generally don't want to flag.
The list has been corrected to remove those that pulled their downvote.
I had not noticed this wrinkle until I first posted the list. You are no longer on it.
Thanks,
Thanks.