Downvoted? The Bidbot Cycle is Broken
View this post on Hive: Downvoted? The Bidbot Cycle is Broken
5 years ago in #newsteem by abitcoinskeptic (73)
$15.36
- Past Payouts $15.36, 0.00 TRX
- - Author $0.00, 0.00 TRX
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I'm not worried about who's downvoting who for why. I do my best to make good blogs to tell my life story as it is written by our creator. I don't use bots because I'm not trying to get rich here. I did like your article and your infopicture though. But.....
My main reason i came here was to tell you your post made it into my Google news feed! Congrats dear friend!!!
Thanks, glad you like the post and play by newsteem rukes. I also just for the most part like blogging. It is neat that it is trending there. I updated the photo based on some advice. Hopefully that didn't hurt it.
I have been rather generous with my flags, the most common reason is for tag spam. It annoys me when people use tags inappropriately hoping to get tokens that don't really belong to them by curators who don't read the content. What I've noticed is that these people, who are trying to optimize their return with as little effort as possible, really get angry with flags. They often threaten me, which leads to a mini flag war that I know I will win because I don't really care about some minor flags from reward pool rapists.
Why do people feel like they have a right to not be flagged anymore than I have a right to flag for whatever reason I want? Some people think it will scare people away from Steem. More people are scared away from Steem because they see crappy Technical Analysis trending or people playing guitars and holding cups of coffee.
Oh no, I lost a few cents I didn't deserve because I made some lousy post which people didn't like. I am never going to post here again and everyone is going to hate Steem because of it...
Glad to hear you are flagging. Without this, people would be abusing the platform left right and center. Since the ban hammer is almost non-existent, we need coordinated effort and support to clean things up.
I despite the argument of 'who are you to judge'. Well, I'm no authority, but if you don't want my flag, don't breach etiquette, don't abuse, don't troll. Steem would be a nasty cesspool if people could be as awful as human nature allows for. The rules are very lax in my opinion compared to centralized platforms where abuse isn't even possible. Here you just have some responsibility because there is no central authority to put their foot down.
It's nice that you aren't scared off by a little revenge flagging. I think that is worse than opinion flagging or random flagging.
Tag abuse is definitely an issue, but I think it is more related to Scot-tokens and tribes than to new Steem. However, fighting is easier than ever. It's good preparation for when SMTs and communities come out as they will need the tools avaliable especially if they hope to attract platforms and people who aren't already established Steem users familiar with everything.
I can agree that people who post crap content and use bid bots just for the ROI and to get free Steem should probably be downvoted.
On the other hand, what about people who genuinely have something of value to share and want to reach trending in order to reach a wider audience?
I think it’s quite short-sighted to just downvoted anyone who uses a bid bot, but that’s just my opinion.
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Decline rewards, or at least burn/donate-to-dao.
If the value is in what you are sharing, and that's why you want to promote it, then you don't need to get paid back from the reward pool for doing so.
Fair enough, although I feel some people would still downvote as a knee-jerk reaction without reading what will happen to the rewards
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Nothing can happen to something that doesn't exist.
Content promoting using bidbots is a bad idea right now.
The problem is promotig and ROI together seem unfair.
There needs to be another way to genuinely and effectively promote a post while not taking rewards from the reward pool.
Most of the resteem services just resteem to thousands of inactive and fake followers.
I think paying front ends directly to advertise or promote posts is best.
Yes, that would be ideal.
I wish there was a better system for promotion!
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CONTENT COPS
:D lol
Where is idubbz?
Steemit is left with internet janitors
I swear this is fact.
There are people who used to earn 30-50 dollars for pictures of cats and umbrellas.
Now they down vote entire articles for using bidbots. Smh
Right?? The people who seem to be downvoting heavily are people who already have a very large following and they can get stupid high rewards for posting basically anything.
The people trying to use bidbots to gain traction usually post better content anyways.
Of course there’s always the exception, and this is where the real downvotes should come in
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HAHAHA I love it this is what it feels like sometimes
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Agree with this for sure @dropthatcode... its a fine line and seems to be petty alot of the time, some people just dont like people bid botting at all anymore - its fine if they want to promote a new dapp etc in my mind.
Maybe we need a new way to promote content as what we have is broken. I think that promotion should be paid for on here - everywhere else promotion is paid so why is it different here ??
You have some very basic math on the bidbots.
A 10% ROI on a 100SBD bid would be 110SBD. 220SBD would be 110% profit.
Edit: Disregard this, I thought you were referring to the profits on pre-hf21. My bad.
However, I don't understand why some people downvote all bidbots. They are useful for trying to promote your content. Especially for newer accounts with hardly any followers like myself.
Glad you have figured out my explanation. It's definitely confusing, especially for beginners.
Now the upvote required is literally 22X the ROI value (220 SBD for 10 SBD profit). Before HF21 it was around ~15X the ROI value (147SBD for 10 SBD profit).
The difference is significant, but the biggest difference now is the free downvotes to counter this issue.
People trying to promote content either need to be willing to give away all post rewards to beneficiaries like null or steem.dao (until a consensus is formed), or risk downvotes.
If you are trying to promote your account as a blogger it can be tough. However, when downvotes were around no one read the highly valued posts anyway. It takes a lot of dedication and hard work or stunningly amazing content to do well on Steem.
Asides from focusing on your content, I recommend you join some contests run by larger accounts, follow people who's content you like and engage etc to get your name out there. It's tough, but possible.
Seems a bit self-defeating and counter-intuitive to downvote on quality content that utilizes the bidbots though. And giving away all the post rewards would kind of defeat the purpose of posting here and trying to promote your content in the first place.
I mean I could understand if there were alternatives other than the promoted posts on Steemit which do absolutely nothing, at least in my experiences. eSteem is doing a better job injecting sponsored posts in to feeds which is a good idea, but that's limited to a very small user base.
And I'm not so much worried about it for myself. I don't post anything special anyway. I just think the downvote everything groups are a bit out of line and potentially doing more harm than good.
Are there any bots that have no ROI? Say, I put in 100SBD and in return I just get a vote to get my money back or get a vote equal to the value of what I paid? If the issue is the ROI, would this be a possible solution to allowing promotion and stopping downvotes?
Quality is difficult to judge and generally based on opinion and consensus. However, as soon as you bid on your post people decided if it is overrewarded which is why people are actually against using bid bots for promotion.
EDIT: To answer your question, just bidding for 0% ROI is not a solution. This still requires a vote of 20X your bid which is still 5X the definition of abuse several of the cleaners follow. Also, why should we have to calculate this? You are basically going to need to set a beneficiary to receive most if not all of your rewards to avoid a downvote if you bid a lot on your posts.
Taking an unfair share of rewards from the reward pool is not a fair solution for a lack of promotion. People who want to promote their posts need to understand this.
Unfortunately, a good solution doesn't exist. So in the meantime, I recommend people do not bid on their post to promote it because of the negative attention that is received.
According to the general definition, if a post's rewards are 2X ~ 10X what it would earn organically, this is bid bot abuse. For example if we remove the bids and your post sinks down from 5 SBD to 0.25 SBD this is 20X and abuse by almost everyone's definition.
Downvoting may be doing more harm than good, but that is difficult to judge actually. A lot of people steer clear of Steem because of vote purchasing.
Imagine if politicians were allowed to purchase votes? This is some people's attitude towards vote purchasing.
I think the vote sellers/bid bot owners have a duty to warn their clients of the potential to receive down votes. The current situation makes the downvoter warn them and the buyers are confused (or pretend to be and are just upset).
Since the bot owners rarely warn people of the controversy, people still bid. The bot owners still sell and are very aware of the controversy. Some of them don't even mention in a comment that a promotion was bought, this is deceptive advertising.
Painting downvoters as the bad guys is easy, but they are trying to fix the blockchain, it's actually the vote sellers that are wrecking it in the name of profit. In the meantime, it's great you want to promote your post and all, but not at the expense of the community.
This is a statement I find rather troubling about the situation. You made a reference to politicians buying votes, but if your definition of abuse is correlated to what a post earns "organically" then how is that much different? The people with big accounts will be able to get away with this more so in the end, people with less of a following will be the ones to suffer more. You can see the error in that logic right?
I'm not trying to paint anyone as the bad guy here. I just think both sides are pretty equally flawed. I understand your perspective to an extent. But, I can also see a benefit to the bots too.
Also, I said 0% ROI or just pay 100SBD for a 100SBD vote (which would be a negative ROI). In that scenario you'd be losing 50% to curation at the expense of promoting your post. If there was someone offering that as a service then would it be acceptable to use it?
Actually now that there aren't so many people buying votes, abuse fighters amd cleaners are going after vote traders or circle jerkers as some call it.
However unlike vote buyers vote traders are definitely not doing it for promotion, but they do have a lot of stake and are removing a lot of steem from the reward pool.
There are some people arguing for vests to be returned faster (for a price) to appease big investors.
Paying 100 sbd for a 100sbd vot still removes 100sbd from the reward pool for curation even if you aren't getting half. The bot owner will get like 20% returned in curation atleastband 100sbd from thr purchase, meaning they are earning around 120% for their vote which is excellent.
The entire community still looses honesty and the reward pool, the buyer loses 50% but gets promoted, the seller still profits.
Honestly, it's better than what is happening now or pre hf21, but I doubt most people will agree it is fair, just a little better.
Good, I think the circle jerk voting is a much larger issue. I could easily name a couple dozen people that do it. Glad that's being taken care of finally.
I see what you're saying. There really just needs to be some other sort of mechanism in place to allow promotions. It's a failure of Steemit at the end of the day. Like I said, there's already some viable options with the example of eSteem. Imo, Steemit is a junk interface and it's a shame it's known as the main interface to Steem. I think it really hampers growth of the platform.
the worst is when they go downvote you when you get an organic @booster upvote from @fyrstikken and then they go around and leave their own organic bid bot upvotes alone and no one is downvoting the downvoters, its just basic human corruption and the scariest type where the people believe they are perfect and that their somehow always right, as if the FREE MARKET doesnt know better. They also correlate low price of steem hahaah with bid bots! theyre all just losers man , people who were on top when steem was high now theyre so desperate because they lost ALL their money lol
LOL But they dont have to ask?
Fuck that bullshit hahaah You think flaggers should be some protected group? Their flag is justified but we cant flag them back without it being revenge? Maybe we just dont like their shit content man lol :D
I liked and resteemed and commented your tweet which is where i saw this
It's my advice to avoid starting a war.
Downvoting to get revenge for being flagged may feel satisfying, but it is also a good way to get flagged some more.
Personally I don't think flaggers should get special protections, but if the people getting flagged just revenge and don't change their posting and voting behaviors, they will just be flagged again.
So why did they flag you without talking to you first? Smh.
This place is shit.
Are you trying to forward a "but he started it" argument?
If you truly don't know what you did to deserve the downvote and can't think of anything you did that could possibly be viewed with negativity, it's probably a good idea to be patient and ask before hitting back.
There is a possibility it was a mistake.
Your attitude is shit.
It wasnt a mistake. Flagger was just being salty or flexing his self-righteous muscles. According to him I was downvoted for using two bidbots. The flagger didn't even factor in how much was spent on the bidbots. He even claimed I didn't have enough engagement. Really?
https://steemit.com/classaction/@ulqu3/class-action-suit-against-stox
So now, I have to take my time to write an article, then force people to comment instantly in order to please the self-appointed steemit police?
Does the word "decentralized" mean nothing to you?
I'll take 3 people talking about the content of the article over 100 yes men looking for an upvote.
The irony is this same person has like 30 posts with like 1 comment or none. But okay
Some people consider buying votes as abuse no matter how little Steem is exchanged. It is annoying, but at least you know what their problem was.
For 3 years, vote buying was tolerated. Steem didn't grow enough and slowly sank to rank 80. A few people profitted immensely, but no one wants to join a platform that sells votes. It is too much like traditional social media.
For 3 years vote buyers had their way and were winning. Suddenly they are losing and they hate Steem. At least the against side endured 3 years. Let's give it at least a year to see what happens now that vote buying isn't tolerated.
It means the lack of a central authority. Mob rule is still possible.
Steem has always had a consensus of top 20 witnesses or a majority of Steem decide things. Steem allows downvotes and upvotes.
You don't have to accept the etiquette, you don't have to like the consequences.
You can start a scot token with internalized bidding and no one will mind as long as it doesnt involve steem or more SP than necessary for RC. We all know how well this token will do.
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Thanks for the attempt of explaining and justifying. Just to eliminate bid bots by introducing free downvotes and slashing the author rewards by another 25% less reaching only 50% some real users have been affected. It's barely worth it to create content and instead better to move to curation only.
Besides, my posts are attacked by a couple of users with much higher SP than mine and have really harmed my work just because they oppose my views on a particular subject, and also losing my desire to spend time here, and each time I have a new post worth sharing here I have to spend a considerable amount of time convincing myself to write it.
I believe 50% author reward is unjust, and free downvotes are not the way, if someone wants to downvote posts let them spend some resources, just like in upvotes.
It is annoying that people abuse downvotes.
I think downvoting based entirely on opinions is wrong and should definitely not be free.
It will always be necessary for abusers and trolls.
In the future I hope to see it more more regulated, but for now there are serious issues like vote trading and vote selling going on.
Maybe later allow it to be cancelled by using downvote power to negate downvotes.
It is just is unfortunate for people who are legitimate but may be writing stuff others don't like or want censored.
I think that if people post crap and then bid bot it to inflate the rewards then they deserve to be downvoted. However, if a project wants to make an annoucement that they want everyone to see then I dont have a problem with this. Its a bit of a fine line though.
I can see that soon bid bots will all but dissapear - some will go manual but I think that delegations will slowly decrease as profitibility decreases. People will start to delegate to projects like @actifit and @steemhunt more!
I agree. Promotion is tough right now, but a lot of people disagree with what warrants promotion. Generally if you set beneficiaries to null or steem.dao no ome will bother downvoting unless they are really amgry.
Great work on explaining downvoting but I think there's a lot more than just curving bid bot use with downvoting.
I've been in discussions this week on a post made by xpilar due to me disagreeing with rewards given to some posts without leaving a comment. I think we all have a part to play as to why we downvote something and not just do it without leaving a comment.
Some users are still learning what this all means and I think it's in every steemian's interest to educate. Also, I don't agree with doing downvote trails as it is creating a negative environment at the moment due to the lazy nature of it and downvoting stuff you haven't read (and yes, the same can be said for following upvote curation trails).
Still at teething stage here but I expect things to settle in a couple of months.
As for the infographic, maybe you can try to put less text in the boxes with more succinct sentences. Also noticed you repeated one sentence in there about newsteem (the last sentence in the box on the lower left of newsteem and the first sentence in the text above it for point 3). Great effort on that though, thanks for taking the time to explain.
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I think if one person leaves a comment that is enough or if the author has done it on several posts and gets at least one comment.
Generally they learn what they did wrong very quickly and they are rarely confused after reading definitions of abuse.
Im just focusing on vote and bid abuse for now.
I will work on the infographic, it does have too much text. Thanks for the feedback.
I think it depends on the comment as well. Sometimes just saying "downvoted due to disagreement with rewards" isn't enough and giving some constructive criticism goes a long way, whilst still being encouraging of course. It's something I have learned this weekend.
There are many facets to this side of Steem for sure. Think the beginner's blog will be a challenging one to write and keep simple but will give it a shot!
You're welcome for the feedback
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It may sound silly, but if we have enough discussion and get enough posts about this topic, eventually we will have excellent posts to refer people who are still confused to. I hope with some work that's one function of my infographic. Hopefully it helps explain why bid-bot using is suddenly no longer acceptable after HF21 which si the point (it was alway controversial, there was just nothing to effectively stop it before).
You still havent stopped it all you do is ytax minnows. The larger bid bot users are not noticing anything and youre just hurting steemians. the end. Check back by years end when steem is almost1 penny tell me if all of this worked
steem isnt about content its about crypto dapps and users and whenyou dont have users doenst matter how many peopel you flag, you wont get any good content without more users, its a numbers game
you cant micromanage yourself into prosperity, its like tryin to play starcraft on n64, you cant try to play wackamole eitehr with black market bid bots split up behind many difefrent accounts all voting at random, oh yes this product is coming outa nd you cant stop paiud upvotes! youll be faced with REAL manual curation with someone using the posting keys of multipel accounts too
you just cant fight the free market, you guys are just doing what communisst tried to do lol, not that your communist but your doing this central planning thing or it has those vibes
also, you have to realize the SOCIAL reprocussiosn frpom downvoting bid botusers is not gonan be worth whatever benefit yoru expecting
steem IS social its social media, u cant just ignore that aspect and alienate everyone
Vote selling and buying only benefits the people involved in that. It's literally taxing on the reward pool for everyone else indirectly by taking up such a huge portion of it to promote often questionable content usually purely for profit.
Did you know you can make your own scot token and give it a try? With a few thousand you can get a webpage and a bid bot. I'm sure the bot owners could easily afford this considering they have millions of Steem.
However, only a few communities still do it. The rest stopped offering this service entirely after watching what it quickly did to their communities, the same happened on Steem just on a larger scale.
I think you should check out the token communities that still offer it. Maybe you will find these places more welcoming and in line with your ways of thinking.
We aren't fighting the free market.
You are free to buy and sell votes, no one is stopping you.
I am free to upvote and downvote whoever I want. It's called stakeholder activism and it's much more powerful than any unnatural restraint on the free market.
If it alienates people who refuse to adapt and accept the new steem consensus, so be it. We will be better off without these people.