Bid-bot thoughts, just my view.
I have watched this debate since my first day here.
Like any other new person I do not know what it was like before them on here. I also do not have enough knowledge of the hard forks to make a claim about that also, I have read many peoples posts regarding both sides.
I will not be using them again.
Here is why, some say steemit is a reflection of the outside world, and maybe it is, the divide caused by bots seems to split right down the middle, some people will refuse point blank to vote for anyone known to use them, and that is fine it is their stake to do as they wish, I just wish some though would consider the other side of the coin, consider those of "us" that are not guaranteed $20 - $30 a post without bidbots, and that is even if they put a picture of a carrot up and no text.
The outside world is divided into small groups, the divide and conquer is a well established tool for any government, and bidbots on here are dividing the community, so that for me is enough to no longer use them.
There is also the "fact" that all bidbots are not equal, some will only give very small upvotes whilst others are more generous, add to that some do not even vote full stop, making you have to spend hours if not days trying to find the owners, hoping they will be reasonable (most are) & give you your money back.
The 2 frustration facts above are extremely frustrating, and as there are no guidelines written for bot owners to follow, the free for all profit angle will persist.
Me not using these any more will probably mean 2 things, the $ a day I give to pennsif will probably not be affordable for me to give any more, and my funding for Tom in Syria will have to come from a different source, that was made easier with the good people at @informationwar and in particular @truthforce opening Tom his own account on here @tomduggan. He has not yet started posting on here, I am working on that with him today I hope.
If ever I use a bidbot again, it will only be to fund a cause and I will state I am using one, all other posts will be clearly marked nobidbot, so there is my personal view on the bidbot wars going on.
As always your thoughts are welcome below, also have a perfectly pleasant week.
Deliberators verdict = nobidbot for me.
Image from pixabay
I have been here just about one year and have never used a bid bot. I do all my own manual curating. I understand people are busy; and this is where I am fortunate. I don't have an outside career or job... I am a stay-at-home wife and have the time to make steemit my career.
I have read more than my fair share of posts about pro's and cons of bid bots and I feel it is each person's own choice to either use or bypass the use of bid bots.
I agree entirely with what you say, it should be a choice for each individual, and like I have stated before, there simply is no easier way "now" to get to 500 sp here easily, without having luck and knowing a few long timers.
Your posts always get me thinking - and what you did - using bidbots to get 500SP makes sense to me - if you don't have 500sp here you are pond scum...
I have set up a second acccount to test some things - including bidbots, and wanting to see what it's like to be plankton was inspired by you
https://steemit.com/introduceyourself/@frot/introduce-yourself-to-www-frot-co-nz
My 500SP level was reached by buying 500 steem on openledger. Not counting Steem Dollars and the steem part of my rewards, the investment was paying approximately 6%-7% ROI when last checked. Voting Bots are devaluing all forms of investment on the platform, in my opinion.
Other opinions:
https://steemit.com/steem/@whatsup/why-steem-is-perfectly-fair
There is one small problem with your "test bed", people do know you, new users do not, in most cases, get a payot of over $2.00 on each of their first two post no matter how good of a post they have. A new user can not in reality give themselves an upvote that will be paid unless someone else has already voted on their post and raised it above the dustvote level.
There are things you can not unlearn for your test. Such as tags like #teamnz, most new users are not going to know that tag is even out there. A noble effort but will anything really be learned? For a real testbed look at the introduceyourself tag, pick a person and closely follow the trail they try to blaze along the way, to obtaining some success on steemit. You don't need to interact or intervene just watch them on a daily basis, if you learn something from them in 3 months then let them know, give them a thank you, and maybe a small gift. I think you would learn more by doing that than this no-bid bot experiment.
Just a thought, and my observation. A diligent quality poster can get to 500SP in 5-6 months without bid bots. A super quality poster can get to a Natural 64 Rep level in about 10 months, with 2267SP of their own. People can say those two got lucky, but the fact is they both have quality post, and worked their asses off, and learned the system.
True - I can't unlearn two years on Steemit, but I have already learned some stuff from this experiment - starting out is different now, but not totally - some people are really good at this but most people are utter crap - @deliberator is doing it really well!
I agree, there is a lot of utter crap out there, I am not so much a content provider for people, just mostly the contest I enter and try to have fun in, but I do see a whole lot of bad, but I also see some good stuff. Not all the bad is from new users either, or low reputation users. If I were to rate my posting on a scale of 1-10 I would see it as a 4. Mostly game/contest content, some picture content, and the rest, well irritated postings, so slightly on the shit post side when it comes to providing content for other people's enjoyment. I might go as high as a 5.5, but it would be a close call. But like I said, I'm not a content producer, yet. But I am still learning to be a blogger, only been at it 10 months.
Hell - I've only been at it 20 years :)
https://web.archive.org/web/*/www.frot.co.nz
Oh that is superb, I shall watch with interest, as even $100 plus posts on here now bring such little return in sp that it takes simply months to achieve now. I shall watch this with interest, as now you will know what it is like "now" as opposed to "before" and I wish more old heads would try that experiment.
Have a superb week.
When I was starting out one of my first posts scored a $400 payout. Awesome!
But 50 of them earned less than $1
Then I bought Bitcoins for $1000 and sold them for $17 000 less than a year later
Will opportunities like that happen again? - I have no idea, but right now I'd say not at the moment..
Wow nice score on 2 fronts, I bet that one $400 post got you the slider with the payouts back then yes? well it would not now lol. And the btc trade, well nice one on that, you got to be in it to win it.
Though in saying that I never do the lottery here as I would not be allowed to claim it.
And then I thought about my stupidity and realised the mrs can claim any winnings, boom, the Euro jackpot is at 385.000.000 millions of the damn things.
Instead of Proof of Work the steem blockchain uses Proof of Brain to 'mine' steem. Non-Proof of Brain voting, like a bot vote, produces counterfeit steem, in my opinion.
Just as counterfeit currency will cause inflation unless removed from the economy, so too does non-proof of brain voting devalue steem in my opinion.
Well there it is, great thoughts & to be fair I am not bothered if my posts only get 50 cents of upvotes, as that is obviously all they are worth, so time will tell I suppose, as I do not have the time to run around steemit rubbing shoulders with large sp holders all day, not with a farm to run, and daughter to raise. Have a great week.
Commenting and curating earns the majority of my rewards. When bummed by the odd metric of worth, one trick of mine is to remember how long it took to get my first cheque from facebook. 😎
LOL first cheque from fb? Hope you are not holding your breath waiting.
People like 'us', can try and help.
We all need to vote for each other a lot more me thinks, as it all adds up in the end, your thoughts?.
Absolutely...that's what I try and do as much as I possibly can. My problem is my vote spread is pretty crappy, until my account grows. So I try and spread the love around lol.
I just applied to lease another 700 sp to spread the love, if you do not know how, which I dare say you do, see my last post.
lol I actually have no idea at all about any of that stuff. I tend to not get involved in any of that. I spend most of my time concentrating on other things. Will check it out.
I leased 1200 last night, so now have 2000 sp to share around. :-)
I'm delighted to see more and more people coming around to this way of thinking. I don't have a huge vote but I try to support those who don't go the bid bot route.
I still feel that for newbies to get to 500 sp in 6 months or so posting quality posts will require bidbot usage, I have exceeded that 500 sp now, so feel I no longer have the need, I hope you watch with interest sift666 below experiment. Have a super week.
Indeed I will. I tend to watch with interest everything sift666 does!
I have been on steemit about 6 months now and i have not used bidbots yet and i don't intend to either. I like to do the voting myself as i see fit and yes it takes time but is worth it to me.
That is the same amount of time as me then, I just wanted to get past the 500sp quick, and accomplished that now.
I've also watched this debate since my first day here but I do not know what conclusion to reach, maybe I don't get to understand it well, I think that those I have used can not be classified as bid-bots, I have seen people defending them for many reasons and I guess as you say this is a reflection of the outside world so I try to act alike.
It is a confusing situation, it does help people grow fast though, though whether the cost is worth depends on which bot they use, so yes, confusing it is much. Have a great week.
It is a debate that will not end nor go away. A person's vote is their vote to do with as they see fit, including selling it. They need to understand though when they sell it, they are not only selling their vote but the buyer is buying Reputation from them. We have one person on steemit that is REP 80 + by now I think, I have not looked in a long time. So a few more people that do not have enough money to be an honest investor, and buy in their rep level, can now buy votes, but reputation, and think their shit don't stink and can tell everyone how much they invested, money and time wise.
Would that be "mr 10 posts a day" by any chance. :-)
You got it. Now no one can touch his reputation at all. Because to have an effect on a person's reputation, you need to have a higher reputation, so nice we have a 10 day a poster guru at the top of the food chain. Next Guru a youtube guru and witness, "I didn't know" "oops I forgot" mr banefield, (spelling intentional). So nice to know those two will be the top of the food chain.
Makes you sick does it not, and to think so many people run around laying the law down on the small players here, yet most people on here let the autistic one and the head and shoulders 10x poster run riot makes me shake my damn head.
That and the argument that did bots help the redfish and minnows, I barely make enough to try and help people and level up my SBD to steem, Bid bots cost money, the whales want every penny a minnow and a redfish make. If people are spending their SBD's on bid bots, they are not accumulating the real steemit currency Steem. So they will never get higher payouts, The more steem power you have the higher your curation and other rewards are, the higher your rewards the more you take from the reward pool. Vote Bot owners understand this, that is why they do not care what a person's Reputation number is as long as they keep the people from gathering real wealth (steem) they are happy.
Have a look at @abh12345 superb post about bidbots and whales from yesterday, I think you may enjoy it very much.
Hello friend, go theme with opinions so divided you bring us. In my opinion, it should be free for each user because if they were so bad they would be illegal here and there. The issue is that you should be very lucky to achieve SP because the great whales vote little and rarely a day what would last months today to reach 500 SP. On the other hand they see badly invest in Bidbots but they do not look bad when you invest in your profile buying SP. I think they do not realize that this is a financial world and so many see it and that is why they invest in Bidbot to be able to earn SP and be visible in this Steemit world where it is very hard to stop being invisible. If we pay attention this campaign against the bidbot is generating whales that only publish a carrot get $ 200 and only share $ 50 a day of $ 200 that can give daily. I do not ask that you give away the votes much less. They have their ideals and they respect each other, but they should respect the opinion of others. a greeting
Thank you kindly for your thoughts and yes it is a topic that will rage on until some changes are made to the code or to the vote structure itself via said code, either way I still think the whales will never be voting us "mere" mortals. Have a superb week
My biggest issue with bidbots is that they remove the actual curating for quality. As people rush to use them it is "vote buying" and it will corrupt the entire process as expected. There will no longer be support and curation based upon quality, instead it will be pretty much anything even really bad quality stuff voted up by bots that were paid for.
As the reward pool increasingly goes towards purchased votes the payout for posts based upon actual content and quality decreases.
The natural progression is to go for the easiest amount of effort with the greatest return. This is why the bid bot creators made them too. It allowed them to automate the voting of their power and make even better returns without having to do any actual work other than making sure the bot remains functional and tweak its voting % as needed.
Overall bid bots are a short term solution for ALL parties involved. Some may not care. Take the money and run. Long term it is very bad for steem.
You can't stop it via code, and you shouldn't. So the community speaks up and takes action, which is what they are doing.
Well I guess I chose the right side to be on by no longer using them.
Thanks for a super and detailed comment as usual.
Have a superb week.
I went and wrote my own post on the subject right after that comment.
I went and wrote my
Own post on the subject right
After that comment.
- dwinblood
I'm a bot. I detect haiku.
I just upvoted said post 100% after reading it. :-)