Free Downvotes Are Comming
Steem rewards are given through an inflation pool based on the amount of stake you hodl. The inflation pool is finite and shared amongst everyone on Steem. When someone uses bid bots to promote their post, they are essentially taking money from every other user on the platform. So please, use bid bots wisely and appropriately.
This is why when you advertise using a bid bot; you don't pay much because you get your money back, well where did that money come from? That money comes out of every Steemians pocket. There's no free lunches in life and Steem is no exception. I'm not against using bid bots to promote important topics that provide value. However, I'm against excessive/abusive use of bid bots.
We need to find a way to implement a burn when using bid bots. I'm not sure how we do this, except asking every bid bot owner to burn some Steem out of the bot profits to help the blockchain, but that isn't something everyone should rely. We could also ask people who promote their post heavily with bid bots to burn some Steem themselves, showing the community they are not taking advantage of the inflation pool. If anyone has a suggestion that will work, feel free to let everyone know.
With free downvotes, I'll be looking at posts that makes over $200 to make sure the inflation pool isn't being abused. If your post has over $200 in votes, but 95% of those votes came from bots, and your post adds little to no value for Steem, here is your fair warning, I will be downvoting you. Nothing personal, I'm simply protecting my investment in Steem.
The inflation pool should be used to help on-board new users, reward great content, and community work for Steem. Again, remember, the rewards on Steem come from a finite inflation pool that everyone shares. Every time you use a bid bot to promote your post, you are taking money from everyone else, so I ask, please use the bid bot services responsibly. Thank you.
I encourage all Steemians to use their downvotes. Without checks and balances, Steem will crumble, it's up to all Steemians to step up and help clean up the trending page and beyond from bid bot abuse.
The power is in our hands Steemians, Cheers!
In a general sense I agree with you... That being said, bidbots don't really steal from the pool as some say. I mean, not technically. Now, this is not to say the rshares are not misallocated, on that front I think there's little debate.
The point is, the rshares being "sold" the "right to the pool" if you will, is being paid out to the providers of the rshares. Those who delegate to the bots. I say this to keep the conversation honest.
In other words, the whales (including freedom) who delegate to the bots are just as responsible for the misallocation we've seen in the past. So, the change in behavior cannot just be from the misguided, the bid-bot maximalists as I call them.
You are 100% correct on the video, which I just finished watching, that there's plenty of people that do not grasp how the inflation pool work, and even though there's countless posts on the math, and Steemians who've tried to explain it to them (im in this group), they are too in love with the short term rush that the idea of "i just multiplied my money" gives them.
As you say, Ideally downvoting would be normalized, but it's easier said than done. Downvotes here may be just a protocol to remove rshare allocation, but the psychological effects of disapprovement on social media in general extrapolate into the real world. There's a reason why plenty of Social Media platforms removed the downvotes altogether, granted they don't provide earnings of course.
Like you, I intend to do my part (and do occasionally) and downvote those who are literal takers, and are here to drain out everything they can. But lets not forget, the smaller guys may have all the will in the world to cleanup house, but the whales need to play the biggest role of all in the cleanup.
As always, thank you for sharing your thoughts.
There is only so much Steem allocated each day. if someone pays 400$ for bid bots to reward their post, that is 400$ worth of STeem taken from everyone else in terms of allocation. Now that is fine, but when you add in the fact they get the money back that they paid for the 400$ redirection, there is no stopping people from doing this over and over again, thus milking the reward pool, and doing so sometimes at a profit.
Yes, I was not arguing agains that. But the $400 paid mainly goes to the owners of the rshares, all those who delegated to the bots. Now, they might sell, they might not... but the point I was trying to make is that the misallocation of value that happens is not one sided.
And I have no issue with that. The issue I have is the system is broken to the fact someone can buy free advertising in a sense that dilutes the pool for everyone else. We either need to step up as a community to solve this by DVs, or bot owners/users can take it upon themselves to burn some Steem. Like I said in the post, I don't know the answer, but I am just pointing at the mistake. And just like people are free to use their stake as they wish, when I see people misusing their stake to the detriment of the system, investors need to step up.
Btw you make a good point, I'm just speed typing. xD
That's the challenge my friend. I've maintained for the two years that I've been on here that our biggest hurdle is not technology, but culture. As long as we have short term thinkers thinking in scarcity the shift is extremely difficult.
As much as I haven't particularly enjoyed the bear market, I'm also somewhat grateful for it. It's served as purifier of intentions. Those who are still here, even those who complain often, are the ones who actually care. The biggest leeches are gone.
Yes, I'm sure when the market turns around, when STEEM his $1 we will get the typical:
"Hey guys... long time without posting... I've been bla bla bla upvote and resteem" post.
But as you said, its up to us to be more conscious of who we support, and literally remove ourselves from supporting fair weather steemians who powerdown constantly.
I think if more whales had your disposition towards this challenge we would be doing 10 times better, but it seems like some of them want to have their cake and eat it too. I don't need to mention names, I'm sure.
There was a burn mechanism - it was the "Promoted" tab.
It is going to very interesting to sit back and see what happens with the free downvotes.
I feel that too much is happening in this HF at once which will make it difficult to measure its success.
The worker proposal is good.
Going to 50/50 curation and adding free downvote mana at the same time is going to be chaos.
I think at these prices today, 200 might be too high as that is ~600 Steem out of the pool (450 to author). However, to send it into a loss (most offer around 10%) would only take a $20 clipping. 200 is a good place to start perhaps though.
As for the burn, what might be interesting is if there is an option on the bidbots where a user can select it and the bid will provide the vote, minus any potential profit (and perhaps a fee) and it will be automatically sent to @null. That way there is the profit burn and potentially an actual cost to advertise through the bot. If the post is worthy, it will make profits anyway.
edit:
if it is useful and adds value, the cost of advertising will be small in comparison to what it may earn.
True, I may readjust my number. With the current price, and if Steem dips any lower, I will need to readjust.
Yep, and if it goes up significantly - move up. It is hard to think in terms of Steem allocation but when Steem is at 10 dollars, a 1000 dollar post is only allocating 100 steem, unlike now where a 30 dollar post does the same.
This is a great initiative.
I am proud to say that I have never used a bid once and have always sat on the fence as to whether or not they are detrimental to the experience of the users.
Financially, the bid bots will always win and this win will always come at the expense of the users.
The System is the System and that is why I have sat on the fence as to whether or not bid bots bring any added value, however I strongly agree with what you say and that they should be used wisely and appropriately.
I have lost count with the number of new users that I have introduced to the Steem Community only to have them call me up to explain why some content has had huge payouts distorting the experience for new users to the Community who are not familiar with the bid bots.
Good luck with the initiative.
Stephen
Honestly $200 is to high with current prices.
Something that I have stated many times as a solution to the bid bot issue it to allow for paid placement of posts. These posts earn their placement via payment to a @burn account. If it's truly about "visibility" as the bid bot abusers claim then this would solve the issue.
A set fee is charged per impression no matter if a click happens or not, then an additional fee for clicks. The post has a suggested amount to be sent to the burn account based on how many hours or days you want to show up in the promotion section ahead of other posts. You can sell 3 at the top of the page, 1 in the middle, and 3 at the bottom for 7 at a time.
There can also be the promoted page with all of these posts.
Posts shall be clearly marked as promoted and should show exactly how much Steem was burned to promote the post.
This would require some programming (which there is plenty of talent for) and more importantly the acceptance that it's much better for the community to have steem burned then going to a select few whales who clearly are selling non stop driving the price of steem down.
If there is something like this in place I would actually watch the promoted section vs avoiding the trending page like it's the plague. At least I'd know the intention of each post and people would be paying for advertising so their posts would reflect this.
It may be a start to downvoting trails gaining traction. While I agree with the approach, we will also probably see some flag wars again and abuse for some time. Exciting to see the implications once deployed!
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We all have to set our standards or at least think about them, so I like that you're setting an example here. I'll use my downvotes but will be careful how to use them, especially smaller users can go crazy over them and start retaliating (and I don't mean by flagging in return, but by posting literal shit or dick pics below my content argh :D). So when I thought about this a few days ago I realized I'll probably join community efforts to lower payouts of certain users that could use a 'nudge' into not abusing bidbots or self-voting clear spam/plagiarized shitposts.
Curious to see if we can change the culture around flagging once they're 'free' but they should probably have made delegated flags part of this HardFork, most users won't spend time searching for posts to flag, but would be willing to hand over that responsibility to flag groups with clear guidelines on what posts they flag.
If I am not mistaken, a way to fight those spam comments will be fixed. I agree on delegating DVs, I believe that is the future.
Are you considering the fact that those who use bid bots are probably a few of that select group of people who actually buy Steem on the market? I knew a guy here who was buying $200.00 of Steem every day to buy votes from bid bots. I don't use bid bots I don't have the money for that, but I do think you should first see all the ramifications before wishing for something.
This is a fair point.
A large stakeholder self-voting 8/9/10 times a day could be considered equally, or even more draining, both socially and economically.
correct....good point.
People only need 200$ worth of Steem once, there is no need to keep rebuying Steem, they just recycle it. - Promoting on bidbots is practically free, so that drives very little demand for Steem. And I have no issues with proper bid bot use.
Not if you are voting every day, I think you would need at least 14 days of buying to reach a moment when you can get 200 a day from rewards without having to spend money. I really haven't done the numbers but don't you get in liquid Steem a the most 50% of your rewards?
The point is people who buy votes get there money back. Even in the extreme example of someone promoting post 200$ every day, they still don't lose ROI and will eventually hit a point of being able to recycle without needing to buy more Steem. So yea, it may be a short term price increase but that is it, and when the person is done promoting steem, they can dump all the funds they used to buy votes back on the market. Free advertising dosent work well in the end.
Sounds like progress @theycallmedan ...
... to know some of the "big boys" will be doing this. If there was some "vehicle" like the current curation trails for auto(up)voting tied to your downvotes, others would have an opportunity to "join forces" with you ...
Or ... Perhaps someone will build a bot that has all the right criteria set for its downvotes and it could be supported by us?
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Steem flag rewards.
More power to the trolls, great. Instead of fixing a current problem, they're going to make it worse. I think downvotes are being abused for years and with this option, I don't even want to think about what will happen. I bet Flag Wars will escalate to a point of absurdity.
Trolls max out their DV power anyway. Giving Trolls 20%ish more power while giving everyone else 100% more power (no one uses DVs atm much because it's costly) is a fair trade-off. The minority are those who downvote maliciously; the majority will downvote to protect the inflation pool from abuse.
I don't think people refrain from downvoting because it "costs" something.
Most accounts downvotes hold no water against a bid bots.
And there is the real possibility of retaliatory downvotes - that really hurt.
"Free" downvotes don't address that.
We need to at least be able to pool/delegate downvotes in order to achieve anything measurable.
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Honestly I think this is true. I'd gladly delegate the downvote stake that @pifc has as it's a community account and retaliatory flags can hurt the community as a whole since we use the rewards to pay for leases and prizes. We barely cover the costs of the everything as it is and that is with donations from community members for most of our prizes. The loss of a couple weeks of rewards (or more) due to someone taking exception to a flag could mean the end of what we are doing.
That said our VP will not be used for flags except for plagiarism just as it has been since the account was started. Will be nice to do that without cost, but it won't change our flagging practices.
I agree
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steemit will die....thats what will happened
What is dead may never die.
Is that a GOT quote! Nice. Be well