DEBATE: Vote Buying and Selling, Just Good Business? Or Bad for the Steemit Community? Here's my opinion, give yours in the comments!
I will briefly state my position, then open the floor to anyone that wants to contribute their two cents. First, let's down some ground rules.
- Please don't contribute if you didn't read the whole article!
- I don't want this to turn into a flame war, everyone's opinion should be respected, if you can't join in without getting heated, calling names, etc. just watch from the sidelines, cool?
- Please, be kind.
- State your case, and if you have evidence, bring it.
- I will be answering all on topic replies and downflagging all spam comments, jokes are welcome, but let's stay on topic.
Resolved: Vote buying and selling is degrading the interaction on Steemit.
I claim this because of the following.
- Many readers upvote posts they don't read.
- Many readers read and encourage authors they don't support.
- I believe the profit incentive of vote buying/selling and delegation leases is overstated, compared to other methods of earning.
- I think the practice of vote buying is akin to performance enhancement drugs, unsustainable over the long haul.
First, votes that don't come from readers are unearned.
Yes, I understand you bought them, I didn't say "stolen" I said unearned. Since no one has been coerced into giving up their vote, no crime has been committed, however:
It is my opinion that steemit should reward quality content, not just merely "popular" content.
What I mean by that is this. The clear definition being used within steemit for "popular" content is that content, which, by virtue of high value votes, or number of votes, earns the highest potential payout.
This seems to be the single criteria used for the internal, automated promotional categories of both hot, and trending. It is also the criteria used by almost all curation bots to determine "quality content" and maximize returns.
There are other criteria I believe should weigh more heavily than it currently does.
- Total vote count
- Commments
- Number of views
It is safe to say that content that has high levels in these three areas could be deemed "popular" as well, particularly if competing content has automated votes purchased for the express purpose of elevation to hot and trending status.
Since adding the profit incentive, vote buying has not received the same cool welcome the "promoted" category received. Remember? It was summarily moved from the hot and trending categories and walled off on its own, to prevent feeds being overrun by spam, promoted by virtue of capital investment only.
Second, authors who regularly engage with readers that don't support them are getting short changed.
If you enjoy my work and find it helpful, upvote me, pure and simple. If you don't, leave me a comment to show me where I could improve. But, don't spend your time chatting me up, while your votes follow a bot to authors you don't even follow or bother to read or comment on.
Third, I believe the incentive for curation rewards is overstated.
The most anyone could possibly hope to earn from an upvote, is 25% of the payout. unless they are the sole upvoter, and contribute enough with their vote to make that amount sizable, it will be divided between all upvoters, according to order and voting power.
This means that the minnows being encouraged to join curation delegation programs, won't get much in return. Their voting power is not high enough to earn them a large slice of the pie. But the dolphins and whales, running the projects and upvoting the same content ARE.
The math of steemit allows them to maximize their earnings by giving a small increase to those who follow them, while maintaining their own dominance in the vote game, ensuring themselves a healthy payout for curation.
Furthermore, I contend that,a solid voting strategy, can create alliances and partnerships that would, in the long run, net much higher profits.
For those minnows and plankton that manage their own voting, the vote itself is a powerful tool. Sure, it's not large enough to attract big dolphins and whales, but for large minnows, a regular voter who engages, is a natural follow, which often leads to upvotes and comments, and resteems.
Finally, I believe vote buying is much like an athlete doping instead of upping their game.
For the smaller accounts, how many votes can you hope to buy and for how long? If your total earning strategy is based on buying votes, how long can you afford to pay. The law of supply and demand will eventually drive the price up, will the profit margins still support your continued investment well enough to create substantial earnings?
- You have to buy enough votes to get into hot or trending if you intend on attracting large curation votes, or bots.
- You need to stay there long enough to earn followers, can you afford that?
- You will still have to develop your content game to keep followers coming back.
Meanwhile, the relationships you build on a personal level are both sustainable, and more reliable. There is a mutual profitability that is recognized by both parties, and as your followers grow, so will your support base. To me this is a better course of action.
So, what do you think? Agree, or Disagree?
Leave your opinion in the comments. Thanks!
I agree buying upvote for promoting is not sustainable. Yet honestly I do it to earn more SP. There are too much content to be able to get noticed and the temptation of making a quick buck is always alluring. The fact that many steemians also partake in purchasing upvotes has me feeling the need to do so too so not to be left behind.
There is not enough time in the world to review all posts and curate on steemit. Furthermore the 7 days limit on curating is limiting me to want to upvote content I just discovered. The way curating is working simply feels like a way to make money and not really a validation of how good or important a post is.
I know it is bad to automate upvotes just so I can earn, but at the same time I am earning more this way and using the additional earnings to grow my own status on steemit. I feel this is helping me more than hurting. Of course this sounds self centered, but ideally everyone on this platform really have the same intention. To gain enough steem on this platform. How they use the earnings is a different matter. Thanks.
In the beginning, posts paid out in 24 hours, then votes would accumulate every month and payout. But that was quickly changed to one day and one 30 day payout, which was then removed later. It is not bad. You're also working hard to develop an audience. If renting some votes keeps you here and working, then by all means do it. I'm speaking of what is optimal for the platform. If more users were personally curating, you'd have more available votes to attract.
I really do not know where to start with a reply here,
Perhaps a reflection on why people are here, would provide more input. It reads that the Steemit area (remember a noob here, I am not saying this is how it is, just what I see) although is performing well as a platform, is monopolised. Do you see the same thing in the fiat world? Yes it is possible to get a decent start and gain some ground, I have done that,. I also see some struggle and I see some start and go straight up. I see content posted that offers nothing to the community, a single picture with Zero text pulling out 60 SBD while other have spent hour typing editing probably proof reading over and over as they go, and re editing the content, Correcting grammar and all the other things. and get less then 1.
The Steemit or currency, this platform is an income in some way to all that use it. The motives to been here at the end of the day is a better financial tomorrow. (Yes, there are exceptions).
We can list the things we find unfair or morally wrong, and try to change them here, I do not believe we could change them here without first putting some effort to correcting those things we see wrong in the fiat world. Listing all the things we see as unfair or morally wrong imposed restrictions or other.
So once we have completed our lists from both Steemit and the other world, I bet we see alot of similiar situations. some will be polar in that they are opposing. the majority will be midstream between those two opposing.
This is where the problem comes in, People begin to try to fix one thing, with the intention of moving then to the next and so on selected by importance set out by someone's agenda or situations they can manipulate to personally gain from. Like what I am doing here, typing in the hopes I get a upvote and an extra steam point in 7 day's.. But I do believe also this is a valuable reply. And I reply in the hopes of opening the debate wider and past the Issues problems irregularities misuse or abuse of steemit and try find a debate out solutions.
It's about the tools we use to fix things. If coercion is your game, you need to maintain your ability to crush your "opponents" to make change. If convincing arguments is your method, all you need is one partner, then another, then another.
I agree! Buying votes is not something I even consider, as I came to use steemit not with the goal of earning fast money, but to improve myself.
The benefits is multiple and in my order they are:
Buying votes only serve one of these points, and it does no good for the community .
Grow your account organic, and you'll grow with it yourself.
You'r welcome to visit my blog @thedolphin, but if you don't enjoy charts and crypto prices you'll be bored :)
It's not ALWAYS a bad idea, but it's really become prevalent.
Still new ,, only just started to follow you , I like so far the impression I get of how your mind thinks/relates/tick-tocks,
Still too new to have a balanced opinion, But there is overwhelming evidence to the imbalance of what is considered Good/beneficial.
Great! thanks. Definitely check out my buddy @markrmorrisjr, then, he just wrote one you'll appreciate. https://steemit.com/introduceyourself/@markrmorrisjr/the-first-three-things-every-steemer-should-do-share-with-your-favorite-plankton
This post was resteemed by @steemvote and received a 45.85% Upvote
Yeah? Then why did it only jump 4 cents? About to agree that your service is a ripoff.
I agree, but I do think the system already works better than we often think. I've analyzed the voting bots several times and so far I've seen that it takes a lot of patience to bid at the right time on the right bot to get a positive ROI. If you add up the SP and SBD post payout, you often end up with less than your bid. I'm not taking into account the advantages of the SP, because it would be easier to change your SBD to STEEM and Power Up in the current state of Steemit. I don't necessarily think it's bad, but it does leave me confused as to why there is a 'promoted' tab.
What I don't agree with is using vote count, comments and views to measure the quality of a post (or giving them more weight). They are vanity stats that can easily be manipulated, which could actually make matters far worse (think of click farms).
Then what would you use to rank posts? What other metric is there?
The great thing currently is that posts aren't measured by a metric, but by people. Well, at least that's the idea and of course, bots ruin that whole proposition. I think Steem being built around the idea of upvotes, where upvoting power is connected to Steem Power, is a really great concept. The problem with ranking posts, is that it's always subjective. Unless, you make clear rules which everyone has to follow, which makes it centralized. Unless, you decentralize the rules, which makes it impossible to use one specific metric to rank posts. So with the state Steemit is in now, so far, getting upvote by someone with a lot of SP, willing to provide you with a higher % of their SP than usual is about the highest approval you can get when it comes to ranking posts. Not sure it's the best option, but trust me, if it were views, the would be an apocalypse of 'influencers' driving traffic from other channels to Steemit. Just to get their posts to rank higher. And I'm quite happy that's not the case.
By people? but how do you measure the number of people if you don't measure upvotes, resteems, comments or views? Magic? Ranking by these stats is not subjective. It's inherently objective. How those stats are earned is another matter. But vote count, views and comments are objective measures. If you have more, you're objectively more popular in the steemit algorithm. There are already a huge rush of them, and your opinion is well taken, but I think misguided. Counting $$$, which is largely a factor of who you know, not whether your content is worth a damn, as the only thing that drives interior promotion makes it nearly impossible for newer accounts to break through.
I agree with you the that counting $ is not the best way to measure, but vote count, views and comments aren't any better. Let me elaborate:
Person A: Vote count is an objective measure
Person B: So... you telling me that someone's post who get 5-10 upvotes through a discord or Facebook group is objectively better better content than a post that gets 3 votes organically?
A: What about views then?
B: If views become an objective stat, I'm paying Facebook for a traffic ad from click farm countries to get me couple of hunderd views.. bam.. I'm a stud!
A: Comments?
B: Sure, just like they are objective measures on Facebook pages. Vanity stats, vanity stats... lesser than page likes, more than quality connections.
A: Resteems?
B: Can you even publicly see how many resteems a post has, didn't know that
A: So, you are sticking to payout then?
B: No, that sucks, I mean if someone has a payout of $100, of which $99 is through voting bots, is it better than the hard earned $2 posts? And we haven't even talked about the 1 sentence posts and non-sense posts that rape the reward pool.
My point is. Like with all Social Media, you have camp ROI and camp Social. Camp ROI will find ways to objectify statistics. Camp Social will say its about building deep meaningful relationships. The truth lies somewhere in between. But yes, the people, the users, in the end will make or break Steemit as a platform.
So, you're back to magic, or random post promotion. You have to trust at least one of these stats and I say the best way is a combination of all of them. That way, if you want to game the system, and every system can be gamed, you have to work all angles at once. You can't just buy votes and claim the reward.
Not to mention, do you recall how SP was laying in the streets when we got here? You could scoop it up, with one or two posts and reach what takes the new accounts months now. Also, many of the big accounts have bought their way in, why should that be the standard? Is content the mining process here, or not?If yes, then relevant, evergreen, value adding content should be the gold standard, not whatever is popular this morning.
You don't have to buy in. I've seen people buy in and leave (currently on full power down mode) within the 2 short months that i've been actively using. Why, because they miscalculated, thinking that what works for others would work for them. If you get SP delegated, you better do a damn good job or you'll lose trust. If you buy in big and continuously upvote yourself and get no one behind you, your time here will be short lived. It's amazing to see how much effort Haejin puts in to stay alive (or win, depending on once perspective), considering Bernie among others straight up bullied Trevor away recently. Really don't understand anything what Haejin is posting, but posting 10 times a day does take a serious time investment, the main reason why the feud hasn't ended. I'm not taking side or justifying anyones behavior, but definitely saying that not everything that blinks is gold. So yes, people that are blind to popularity are on the trending page daily hoping to get there. Some are spamming whales with tip notes to get there attention. Meanwhile I'm here, talking with someone with way more experience on Steemit than I have, acting like I know better...:D..
Maybe I'm just naive, or maybe I'm right and we have to believe that long term, good content and real interaction win, just like smart financial decisions and investments do.
#lobi
Btw, buying votes at the moment... not a smart financial decision/investment.
It depends on which bot you use. Some are paying off quite nicely. I've done a few little buys just to see what it's all about. But, like I say, I think long term, managing my votes and building relationships and strategic partnerships is where it's at.
True, long term it just doesn't work.
But even the ones that are paying off nicely don't do that great short term. I recently upped a post for SBD 3 total, Payout reached $5.50, days later has dropped to under $4.50, around 25% goes to curation, the remainder is split 50/50, which leaves me with SBD 1.3 and SP 0.4 according to steem supply. I rather use the SBD to purchase STEEM and Power Up next time around.
Well, I'm banking on that too, just not sure how you think we'd reward it without metrics. You have to measure something, or serve the feed random posts.
I do agree you need to measure. Do think views are a valuable metric, but as soon as you incentive one of the metrics, people will try to abuse it. So unfortunately, it's objectivity just has limits.
Well, no, objectivity is inherent. there are x many views. there are x many upvotes, there are x many comments, there is x amount of sbd pot. payout. That is inherently objective. Subjective would be, I like this, this committee thinks this is valuable, that person thinks this is worthless, etc. We make subjective judgments, based on our own biases, as to what we will reward. But the stats are objective. And anyone can get the stats. I just think using money as the ONLY stat is a shitty way of doing it. Again, of course they can game the system, but most won't. Most aren't really now. So, that's what I mean.
As a newbie, I tried it a couple of times just to see if it would help get my posts into the newsfeed because they seemed to be just diminishing... I didn't find them to be very helpful, and I didn't make a profit from it either because the upvote $ didn't outweigh the cost. ...I tried the free bot that goes to friends, to help them out. But I didn't like that either. I prefer to go to their pages each time & read their articles. & the continuous upvoting was using up my bandwidth. As a newbie, I have to try everything once to find out how it works. Heaven knows I've made every mistake in cryptosphere... But after giving it a try, I agree with your opinion. I think natural is better.
Great you might take a look at #dolphinschool to help you shortcut some of the process.
Thank you.
first. I saw what you did and I know who you are and I like it.
More importantly: This is a hot topic. I agree it needs some open discussion. I have developed a different view of Steemit recently You can find it here. I've compared Steemit to a middle eastern open market. People who contribute content are all vendors trying to get the attention of all the customers.
In that scenario the paid upvote bots are like getting the teenage son to pretend to be a customer to attract attention. It's a good strategy, but there have to be customers in the market already for it to be effective.
I'm only here for a month and I am still on the fence about this one. It seems like the votebots really do rip off the little guys, but I don't think I fully understand what earns what or when. I haven't tried using them. I will eventually when I understand the market better.
For now I'm enjoying meeting interesting people like you who share an interest in some of the things I enjoy.
I like the idea that they need to change the algorithms to include views/clicks and comment generation and is there a way to track shares to other social media? That should count for something too.
I've got no idea what you're talking about, but if I did, shhh. I think resteem bots are probably the best idea, if you can find one that's genuine. Also, minnowbooster is legit. There are a couple of others, minnowsupport is one. But, I think there are some unlisted upvote bots. You can see it in posts that get big payouts with no apparent reason, go inside the wallet,you'll see where the money went.
It may look good on paper but I don't think that would do so because based on my observation that even though that you grow your following organically, chances are that there are others would to inactive status especially with certain whales and dolphins that may get tired of upvoting a particular person.
I would imagine in their shoes that if I were a whale or a dolphin, I will upvote a person's work that captures my interest in a heartbeat otherwise that I will ignore it regardless how good is the content that the person is producing which it hurts alot.
Even though that I have group support another factor that will affect your payout was your standing (based on your niche or a particular content in your posts) which was rather polarizing that there are chances that it will get downvoted due to differences of opinions or majority of a particular group was not very keen about a person's content.
Not to mention that we should not force any whale, orca, dolphin or big fishes to upvote a minnow's post. There are times that a person have to comply to a whale just to get more upvotes. Thus voting bots come into the picture.
In my case that I often used @minnowbooster and sometimes @smartsteem whatever resources that I have which it helped me alot plus that I have to market my post to different discord groups and steem chat. I'm pretty aware that there are more rubbish post and I sensed that a viable solution will take a long while.
Your payout is effected by only one factor, the number of votes and how much vote power each voter has. Nothing else. Period. Now, standing can help you get better votes, no doubt,but no one is holding you down.
And where did you ever see me say "force" anything? I'm libertarian, I do not believe in coercion. But, if you can convince them, by all means, do so.