Should I feel dirty for using vote bots?
I recently found and tried my first vote bots. It was a conflicting experience, on one hand there is an excitement knowing you can use your own Steemit worth to bump up your post when you are a minnow and maybe more Steemians will see it. On the other hand is it cheating or are you cheating yourself and fellow Steemians?
The day I found out how to use the vote bots on Steemit I also found Steem bot tracker. Steem bot tracker is a site developed by @yabapmatt. This is a great site to learn more about what bots are available if you are interested. I spent a couple hours on Steem bot tracker over the course of a day watching and trying to figure out what was going on. Once I thought I was ready I jumped in feet first, no testing the waters, I'm a all or nothing kind of guy and I learn the best by making mistakes.
There were some mistakes made....:( All the mistakes could of been avoided if I wasn't so quick to try. I wasn't familiar with the rules on vote bots but I think I broke a cardinal one. I over bid one of the bots by quite a bit and destroyed my fellow vote botters profit. I felt so small, like a puppy that just pissed on the rug because it didn't know any better. (To those who I screwed over on that vote bot transaction please forgive me and accept my sincerest apology.)
If you are laughing and shaking your head saying, "noob", I have more for you. Yes I made more mistakes.... I tried 10 different bots in 1 day. Here they are: @minnowfairy- bidding round was full and I got a refund. @boomerang and @sleeplesswhale I messed up the memo, the whale swam away with my steem and the boomerang refund came back. @therising I exceeded the max bid and got a refund. @shares, @mercurybot, @pushup, @sneakyninja, @smartseem @aksdwi are the others I didn't mess up, besides the over bid. So depending on how you look at it I got a 50%-60% success rate. That is me on the left. :)
Once I had tried the bots out for myself I wanted to know how the Steemit community felt about this subject. I found and read many posts. As you can imagine there are many opinions ranging from totally against and some people love them so much they want to build their own.
Out of the posts that I read there wasn't many good comment sections discussions except one. @squdsi1 has a well thought out post called"Vote bots: Great tool or destroying the Steemit Community". In this post, in my opinion, there are lots of good comments from both sides. It is well worth the read.
So with my own experience with voting bots I can see some negatives and some positives. I personally felt, after playing with the vote bots, a little like a cheater and a tad bit dirty. Was it because most vote bots posted comments on my post I used them on? I think that is a part of it.... @sneakyninja isn't to sneaky if it leaves a comment is it? ....or is it that this is not the idea of this platform, human to human not bot to human. I think that is part of it too. On the other hand you do have the option of boosting your posts when you feel like you have done a good job and want to share with as many people as your Steemit wallet will allow.
That said, I may use vote bots in the future, if I do it will be sparing. Everything in moderation... I would love to know what you think. Maybe you have a different angle or perception on this topic, I would love to hear it.
If you made it to the end thank you,
Brandon
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I am opposed to all forms of vote selling. For several reasons really. The biggest one, and the one that seems almost ironic in light of all the claims that vote bots are "needed to help the minnows" is that vote selling services serve to increase what is already a huge wealth inequality on Steem. It is true that individual users of vote selling services can (not always, and depending on which service used) turn a small profit (keep in mind, profits are ALWAYS smaller than they seem when the vote comes in - you only get ~75% of the post payout as author reward and if the price of Steem drops while the post is in payout you can even lose money as the value of the vote you received decreases). The vote selling service itself also turns a small profit. But the lion's share of the profit from this activity goes to the largest whales on platform; they rent their steem power in the form of a delegation to the vote seller, and the vast majority of the profits generated in this practice go to paying the weekly rent on the delegation rental. Is it really helping minnows if they turn a tiny little profit but in essence participate in something that funnels their money up into the pockets of the absolute wealthiest handful of accounts on platform? What worries me the most about this is these accounts are already demonstrating that they do not have the long term best interest of the platform at heart. Taking the short term gain available from renting out their SP is attractive, I am sure, but this sort of behavior does not instill confidence in me that these whales won't bail at the first sign of trouble, dumping their Steem on the market and crashing the price. All the minnows that "boosted up" their account by some small amount of steem power will in fact see a net negative if the price of Steem crashes.
I was looking for a serious discussion and you brought it... I know I didn't feel good after the fact,(using the vote bots) and I don't see myself using them any time soon. If ever again. I do have another perspective after your comment so thank you I do appreciate it.
I seriously appreciate anyone bringing up this with an open mind. There's so much bot use going on by even the bigger accounts that it's so easy to think it's the way it is, or the only way to get anywhere. Maybe the way everything is set up, it is. That's okay. I'm not wealthy now, so I'm used to that, and the little I'd probably gain from it isn't worth my time, and won't make me wealthy any time soon. :)
Thanks for adding to the conversation. I need to have a open mind... I'm new to the platform and am learning every moment I'm here. Plus, a closed mind is a breeding ground for ignorance. thanks again and take care @glenalbrethsen
I can't agree with you anymore if I'd written what you did myself. :)
I could understand the argument for advertising—if a bot actually put the post in front of more eyes. It doesn't really, though, not without a substantial bid. It could push it up the trending page a little in a lesser used tag, but that's about it. Someone would still have to scroll for it, again, unless it was substantial. Then you're hoping others are actually looking on the trending pages in the tags for content, which I do on a occasion, but that's not very often.
Beyond all of what you talked about, which believe me is bad enough, there's more: reputation skewing—for the user and the bot—value skewing—since people will think the post is worth a lot more than it will ever net—and curation hacking—since a lot of the bots are programmed to vote at the optimum time for curation rewards, the human curator will be locked out.
So, yeah. Bots create more problems than they solve as far as I'm concerned, which makes them a poor workaround.
Yes, as I mentioned there are many reasons I don't support vote selling, you covered a few more of them. I just focused on what I see as the biggest / most harmful to the platform.
I figured I'd just go ahead and mention them for the good of the order, but I agree, you hit the biggest issue. So, I'll ask this. How can we break the illusion that new users need to use the bots, so that they don't just hand over their rewards to the bot makers? Other than trying to educate people about bots, I've not heard any other solutions. Trying to convince a bot maker to stand down while they're profiting doesn't seem like a likely scenario. Is there something else that can be done?
I don't like the voting bots, it's advertising and reduces the visibility of other high quality contend because it takes their places in trending and hot.
You are not alone... I also know the feeling of disappointment of being new on this platform and wanting to reach more people. Vote bots can be alluring in this circumstance.
First of all thank you for initiating this open discussion. This is my personal opinion, you may or may not agree with me. That's ok.
The initial purpose of bots is to assist the minnows to receive an extra boost so they have a chance to get notice. Most voting bid bot requires a minimum 0.1 so everyone can share the voting power of the bot, but some people wants more returns so they send more steem/sbd. If everybody think this way, surely the voting power value of the bot will produce a negative results, not what you're hoping for.
If you notice, some bots require a minimum of 2 STEEM/SBD or even higher so they can produce more revenue so they can pay their leased delegated SP to investors.
Bots are needed to help the minnows. My suggestion is to use a bot with a min 0.1 and max 1.0 STEEM/SBD vote bidding so everyone can share the voting power of the bot. Only allows vote bid from reputation lower than 50.
In this way, every minnows will be able to receive the pie they deserve.
I should create this project. :)
I do see the good that voting bots can provide for minnows at the same time @bastianwehe has a good point as well. thanks for your comment.
I use @minnowbooster it upvotes insantly. I have had success with it - i dont see it as cheating but rather as advertising. Paying a bit for your post to be noticed by more Steemians
I'm torn... and I agree. thank you for your comment
nice man , good experince
i like that resteem and followed
Thank you I appreciate it.
A response in verse, A Few Words With the Bots 🤖
Nice poem thanks for sharing.
Glad you like it, good post :) To bot, or not to bot (how much & how often) these are ethical, almost existential, concerns that occupy the collective imagination, here on Steemit.