A review of vote buying
I found a link to @reggaemuffin's post on a Daily Flag Report. You know which one. After months of seeing this fad unfold, I now feel I can review the general concept of vote buying.
I don't believe vote buying services have any long term benefit for the community, and they don't solve any alleged shortcomings with the Steem network. A few basic facts -
This is a free market. Like any free market, only a few creators will ever be popular. New users have to put in the effort and rely on considerable luck to "make it big". Historically, the free market has been particularly flawed with services with no objective measure of success, i.e. the arts, or any creative content. Blogging is certainly one such artform, and only a handful of bloggers will command a giant's share of the market. Justin Bieber and Michael Bay command a significant share of the music and movie markets respectively. Are they the finest artists of their generation? Doesn't matter. It's how free market works. As such, there's no flaw with Steem here that needs a solution.
Steem already has far superior discoverability thanks to financial incentivisation of curation efforts. Whether it be individuals, organisations or community projects. Compared to Reddit or Twitter, Steem has a significantly higher proportion of high quality posts that are discovered and rewarded significantly. As Steem grows and diversifies, this effect will only increase. On a broader note, Steem also is working with a much greater degree of meritocracy than the music or hollywood industry. This is for the simple reason that Steem connects the creators directly with the audiences, without the middlemen (producers) who often stumble in misunderstanding the demands of the audience.
Anecdotally, a vast majority of votes bought end being self-votes on mediocre (if not spam) posts, and they are paid out with no further attention. Large votes ($10+) are required to gain any significant visibility. (I'm aware of an initiative by Minnowbooster to offer quality authors larger votes, but that's yet another band-aid to a broken solution) Yes, there is of course many people who have become regular bloggers and used vote buying services, but do not confuse correlation with causation. I have personally asked many good authors to stop vote buying, so that I could submit their posts to Curie, or vote for them myself instead. They did. Through this they got a kickstart and built and audience through the network effect. It would be disingenuous to suggest that said author was discovered due to vote buying.
Vote buying services make Steem look scammy, and those buying have a high attrition rate. If a content creator has to pay to reward themselves, it is obviously an unsustainable endeavour with no long term scope. Also, in a previous post that generated a lot of comments, I noticed almost all of my favourite bloggers who commented would never buy votes. I mean, which artist who respects their own work would?
That said, vote buying services can be a lucrative service to offer. Authors will come and go, but someone or the other will want to buy votes. And that is just fine - any claims to there being a sustained demand for such a service is true and valid. What is not, however, is that it offers a valuable long term service to the network.
With Communities incoming, content discoverability will be greatly improved.
Finally, if the problem is "new users have a hard time getting noticed", it is one that has had a clear and established solution that has worked wonderfully for over a year now.
Curation. There is a significant financial incentive to find and vote undiscovered posts. I have made a lot of money by discovering exceptional posts that are sitting at $0, resteeming them or otherwise getting the word out about them, and then being paid for it through curation rewards (or finder's fee, in case of Curie, which is an indirect return of curation rewards). I vote for them purely on merit. No need to be greedy and ask people to pay for it on top of it.
If you really care about the Steem community, stop with this vote buying, and use your software engineering talent to build curation initiatives. It can be just you, it can be a group of people. Approach whales to delegate (or follow) their unused SP. Make deals with them so you can send them (or they send you, in case of following) a percentage of your curation rewards. Build sophisticated machine learning bots and content discovery systems. Prioritise making a free market that rewards long term quality and not short term greed.
If you want to make a quick buck, that's just fine, vote buying will continue to have some demand.
PS: I'll support anyone that downvotes posts and votes by vote buying services, as that effectively redistributes the reward pool to the people that create and discover content on merit. The people that add lasting value to Steem, making it a quality social publishing platform.
Well said. And agreed.
I'l add two more points, both of these from a more distant perspective.
(7.) Every rewards-for-content site over the past 20 years (almost ALL of which have failed) have had the central flaw that the founders/creators grossly underestimated the level of greed and selfishness inherent within human nature... as soon as there is money/rewards on the table.
(8.) For all those who whine about rewards and get into rhetorical battles over the issue that they are "depending" on Steemit for money... a REMINDER that you are not an employee of Steemit, Steemit never hired you to do anything with any promise of payment whatsoever, and the rewards you do (or do not) earn here represent nothing more than a potential opportunity to be rewarded. If you even make 50 cents here, you're better off than you would be, posting on Facebook.
"But what about investors?"
"Investing" typically means you buy and hold an asset on the assumption it will increase in value. That means, you buy Steem at $0.92 with the hope that it will become worth $10.00. Getting "paid to post" is not investing, it is a possible fringe benefit.
Which brings us full circle back to your post. To increase the value of your INVESTMENT-- whether you hold 1000SP or 1,000,000SP you're counting on the infrastructure that holds your investment to be attractive to other investors... which will drive the price up.
Now, for reality and economics 101: A thriving social community people love to interact on, and want to be part of, is probably going to look more attractive to the next 7th, 118th or Nth next investor than a cesspool of automation, bots, spam and system abuse. Which do YOU want to be part of, if you weren't already a member.
What's the challenge here? Ultimately (just my opinion) this boils down to short term thinking vs. long term thinking. If your entire focus boils down to being worried about making money for tomorrow's pizza... then you're not going to act from a perspective of securing the site's long term stability. And that's what all those purchased votes are about... wanting a shortcut to "make money now" rather than putting in the work and slowly building a social following.
Most will not BE successful. Period. Please go back and read (8.), above. This is a social site, not your freakin' job!
Anyway, great post-- couldn't have said it much better!
@denmarkguy you are right.....but...
A small fact is that Steem Inc and two of the biggest Steemit YouTube videos Do Promote the platform as a cash cow.
Are the First introductions into Steemit. It is no wonder people comes with $$$ in their eyes. That's what sold most of them.
We werent told how much we can expect to make....but I was looking at a couple of $150 posts and thinking..."I can do that or better" when I first got started after seeing the YouTube hype videos.
So...it is just an adjustment for people that it isnt a cash cow and don't expect much in terms of financial payout.
So I try not to be too hard on newbies who come here with the wrong info/marketing.
making money is literally the only thing that distinguishes steemit.com from any other social media site
Absolutely valid points.
I somewhat "reluctantly" signed up here in January because I was looking for a new place to park my web content and wanted to get back to social blogging... and the rewards idea sounded appealing.
If you analyze that sentence carefully... my motivation was "content creation," and rewards were merely a potential consequence.
The reason I said "reluctantly" was that I started looking around to see what others were saying about Steemit... and came across various versions of Jeff Berwick's "$40,000 post" promotions... which immediately made me think... "This place is SO doomed!"
It's simple marketing 101: If you pitch a place like this on the "free money" you attract a swarm of people looking for free money, if you pitch it as a "content platform" you get content creators.
They basically "blew it" because they were afraid people wouldn't show up unless they were promised "free money." It's a basic beginner's mistake: Thinking you have to give away the store for free. It "works" (in terms of drawing people) but it's the wrong crowd.
What can we do now? Reward those who authentically try-- ignore/flag those who game the system.
You may be right; however making money on posts and for voting is a unique selling point, so why would you try and hide that fact?
If you marketed Steemit as just another content creation platform, first of all you'd be doing it a huge disservice by not mentioning what makes it different from the plethora of content creation platforms out there.
Secondly I feel the response would have been'meh'.
I do get what you're saying though, expectations should perhaps be balanced, but at the same time nobody ever got excited over $0.10 :-)
Cg
I wouldn't advocate hiding the rewards... it's more of a case of "what's your lead argument" when you market?
If your argument is "Make money on Steemit!" and you publicize Jeff Berwick's famous $40,000 you'll get a whole different set of people than if you say "Steemit is a censorship resistant social content platform, and we reward quality content!"
When I joined I was excited about the idea of a social content site with rewards... but to be honest, when I started reading external content about Steemit, it sounded a bit scammy. And I experienced the same feedback when I aired the idea to fellow bloggers and content creators. BUT... I am a "content creator" (who happens to like being rewarded for content) not an "investor" or "income opportunity seeker."
Agreed. And I would really expect no more. The challenge of the moment seems to be a lack of balance as the "clicking buttons for pennies" brigade is starting to drown out real human interaction and engagement... which is a concern (in the longer term), because communities are built by PEOPLE, not by code, bots and automation.
One of the factors @penguinpablo tracks in his daily stats is "comments per post" and that number has been declining for months. And if we keep in mind that upvote services auto-post thousands of time, that means the "human interaction" aspect is really tanking... and I see that as problematic, maybe not "now," but definitely in the longer term.
You are spot on!
"What can we do now? Reward those who authentically try-- ignore/flag those who game the system."
And at the moment we arent doing a great job at either. In part because so much SP is tied up in 'votes for hire' systems.
I do hope the big players will reassess their positions with a better strategy in mind.
Plz upvote me
Wow that is great. Superb work. I read some jerrybanfield post. His work ia also good. I think ypu joined steemit from 2-3 years ago. Well done
Plz upvote me
Wow. Nice comment. You have great knoledge which is seen from your comment.
Plz upvote me
I use voting services from time to time, primarily minnowbooster. From my perspective, it serves three purposes:
So, for instance, I post mycology posts twice a week. I work really hard on those, and many people, early on acidyo, and especially the steemstem community, today further supported by curie, have been super supportive. (For which I am immensely grateful).
My plan now is to take one of those once in awhile, go 50/50 on it, and then use the SBD payout to buy large upvotes for OC fiction content I want to get more consistent about writing, and regarding which I currently have zero street cred. I work hard on these posts as well, but nonetheless, my writing is simply not that great. Still, this use of a vote buy, on a purely selfish level, results in a near risk-free, delayed SBD transfer that keeps me posting when all I really want to do is play 7 hours of League of Legends.
For me, being able to visibly boost my content on demand is, and always has been, a major psychological assistance in continuing to post, especially before my posts got as consistently large support as they have been getting.
Steemit has kept me from playing a video game for 158 days. That is the most effective "sobriety" mechanism I have ever encountered. But even now, when things have been going very smoothly, having the ability to simply tack on some post value, even artificially, helps to keep me motivated and simply gives me a dopamine boost.
Now, I haven't cashed out any steem, and have no plans to, because this experiment has nothing to do with profit for me. It is gamifying my mycological exploration and creative writing. To the extent the visual booster shot of a bought vote keeps me - and other people - here, so long as we make a good faith effort to create quality content and engage in the community, I guess I support those services.
Having said that, I'm sure these services are used, much of the time, somewhat unscrupulously - in a broad sense of the word. Indeed, I imagine some would criticize me for using them as well. If a macro-analysis shows that it is a net drain on the reward pool, or on the overall well-being and health of the steemit community, then I would also support the elimination of those vote buy services, assuming there is no way to regulate there use in a net-positive way, especially when communities come into play.
I understand, and there will always be a demand for wanting votes. However, I don't think vote buying services should extort money from the vulnerable. (Yes, dramatic effect) Instead, they should do what the system was designed to - curation.
Personally I love what @treeplanter is doing. They banned self-voting and lost 80% of the donations they were getting. (https://steemit.com/nature/@treeplanter/i-lost-more-than-80-of-donations-because-i-banned-self-voting-i-will-give-you-200-upvote-of-your-donation-till-my-vp-get-80)
The bot is there to help fund the planting of trees in a Forrest in Cameron.(http://kedjom-keku.com/en/) I think it's a great social initiative and a perfect example of what upvote bots really should be. No self-voting means you are doing it for somebody. A @treeplanter vote is better than a straight donation to the content creator as the vote is worth more than the SBD invested. Additionally, half of the money spent goes to plant trees. $1 is 1 tree planted on our planet to create a greener and better future.
O-kay, this is kind of what I was mentioning in my response to @techslut only in reverse. @dber, I like to read, and I will take a look at your story. This is the sort of thing I have tried to point out to new people, (yes I am still new myself) is if you want visibility you need to put yourself out there and promote yourself. If you go to a dance and spend all your time in the janitor's closest, you are never going to get asked by the pretty girl/guy to dance, because they don't have a clue you are even around.
Oh absolutely - the success i've had here is the result of socializing, promoting and sheer persistance combined with luck.
But despite all that, I still use the boost as an on command "point increase" - and it helps me when I feel like walking away - which, because of the diminishing returns inherent in any addictive behavior, still happens - even though there's no rational reason for me to feel that way!
So much of this process is just posting and watching to see what it stirs up - and when it doesn't stir much, it can really help to force that number up and just look at it.
@dber's post has been the best answer I've read here, it's great that it has come from a vote buyer, as it is important to see things from that perspective. It's all very well and good saying that these services are bad for Steemit etc. But the fact remains you can get rewarded for your posts and you see others getting rewarded, why not try and join the club?
At the end of the day everyone deserves a crack of the whip, and what you would hope is that people get a bit of exposure and then the quality of their content keeps them up there and growing.
I'm glad Steemit has been your methadone, keeping you from those heroin-video games :-)
Cg
Plz upvote me also
You are really going about "getting seen" on Steemit the WRONG way... I would suggest reading people's content and actually engaging them in dialogue... and then let them decide for themselves that you might be interesting enough to have a look at.
Well said. I've never personally paid for a vote bot, but I've also been here over a year and a half which gives me a significant advantage over new users. I like how clearly you explained how markets function. Much of that was covered in the white paper originally as well. It's like a lottery but many want a meritocracy. The closer we can get to a meritocracy, the better, but we may end up finding ourselves battling against aspects of human psychology, such as it is today.
And in a year and a half new users would have been here for a year and a half :)
From a financial point of view, I find vote buying unprofitable. First of all, bought upvote amount doesn't stay same until payout time. My understanding redistribution/recalculation happens while rewards are pending and the value of the bought vote or any vote goes down significantly by the payout time. Second, the author gets to keep ~75% of that amount, as 25% or so goes back to the seller as curation reward. Lastly, remaining amount gets split in half: 50% illiquid, 50% liquid. In the end, it becomes a loss in my opinion. I think people should be educated about this too, that might discourage them from buying as well.
Plz upvote me also......
Great analysis of vote buying. Most creators will do fine if they can put out consistent and good content for 3+ months, and participate in the community. This is one of the simplest places on the internet to build an income for people who are willing to do the work.
Hopefully these bots will keep losing influence for a little while, they've been too powerful historically on steem.
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Completely agree. I've recently come to the conclusion that using upvoters and boosters is just counterproductive. No-one with any power behind them is going to upvote your post if their curation reward is going to be diminished by the hundreds of boosted/purchased upvotes a post before they notice it. I admit, i used minnowbooster and randowhale in the past, but have been phasing these out as im finding i get more rewards for my content when not using them.
My feeling is that if we remove them, a lot of pointless spam will also disappear.
I'm going to investigate something that I have seen mentioned in the Curie chat and try and develop myself a curation algorithm so that I can find good content. I already have some manual techniques but finding more stuff would be beneficial for all.
Any technology that will benefit curators is highly appreciated!
I am glad you said that. How do you feel about using the voting service to give someone a boost that deserves it?
For example, I have a few paragliding friends that came in seeing my post getting 20, 30 and 40 bux. They have not had the luck that I have. They posted a few here and there and for the most part didn't see much.
I remember when you messaged when I was brand new and talked about how you felt about Vote-buying. I dabbled around with the booster a couple times, but I always felt unclean when I did it. You said it well when you said:
This needs to be a long haul thing. Not a blow and go website that had potential.
That would be curation :) That was the whole idea of this post, to push vote buying services to get into curation.
Currently, there's still a lot of gaps in curation.
Great article which I found thanks to @kevinwong.
Thanks to both of you :-)
That's a brilliant approach, and I will copy that :-)
@curie is doing an amazing job ever since btw. I really love how they select content. If I want to read an outstanding piece of content I simply need to follow their upvotes.
Let's make quality a priority again on this amazing platform!!!
Resteemed this
Thank-you, thank-you, thank-you! It is so nice to see that what I have been going on about for so long is finally catching on. I believe this has now turned into a movement and more and more people are 'getting it'. As more influential people begin to write about this issue, the faster this movement will sweep through the community and soon a new mindset will dominate the landscape. I truly am excited to see more and more of the higher-ranking Steemians writing articles like this one.
There were days when I felt like joining the crowd and give in to the pressure of vote-buying because I could see how those who bought votes shot past me in earnings. However, I feel proud that I didn't cave in and have never paid for a vote. Instead, I have been offering all my SBD earnings for the week as incentives to others to read my weekly contest posts and to write some meaningful replies in order to encourage engagement.
I'm just a small fry with very little influence, so would appreciate any participation I can get from this audience.
Thanks again for supporting me in my mission to look at the long-term health of this platform by having REAL social interactions.
i never knew it was not ok to pay for votes. yhur post just made me think. if i am here with the hope that i will get a reward for my original works why then do i have to pay?
Exactly :)
Plz upvote me