Cut the deck, stop the stack
So, it looks like bidbots aren't going anywhere for awhile but, perhaps they could behave with a little more community orientated spread? There is a lot of talk about the nonsense that is Trending and all it takes to get there is bidbot purchases. However, there is (in my head) relatively easy to control as well as help with wider distribution. Yes, it won't fix the problem with the lack of manual curators but, it does mean that organic content has a better chance of making it into trending without bidbots.
Stop the stacking.
Since all of the major bidbots are known and listed, it should be relatively easy for the bot creators to run a script to see if a post has already had any other bids already fulfilled on it and then cancel the order in favour of the next bidder and return the funds. Very soon, the bidders will adjust their buying to only ordering one on a post meaning that there will be ore available in the bidbot range to spread to other bidders. Not much really changes for the delegators/owners and they can continue earning.
But, the massive amounts coming from the pool won't all be piling onto one individual post and will instead be spread to many. This could work in favour of both the community for distribution and the bidders themselves as if their posts aren't getting 1500 dollars, they are less likely to get flagged and more likely to get additional votes. Good content that has had a vote bought on it will likely attract additional voters willing to bump it up.
This will almost immediately have an effect on what is seen in trending while still giving visibility to the bidbot posts and allowing them to compete side by side. It might also mean that there are less losing bids at the lower levels also. The additional benefit is also that if content that is voted into trending by a bot is actually nonsense, it makes it much easier to deal with from a community perspective.
For example, this post by Jerry that still appears in trending after 5 days has 800 coming from the pool on it yet, has been downvoted about 800 dollars worth too... still in trending. That is pretty ludicrous considering the organic community has decided it should not be there but the bidbot purchases can't be balanced. That also means that the 800 in flags that went to one post didn't go onto several post or, go to the community as positive votes.
Stopping the stacking of bidbot votes would stop common situations like this. This way, the community can decide what is valuable enough to keep the bid without the bidbot operators coming under fire for not removing their votes.
There is already so little free SP in the pool that having it going on flagging nonsense posts is ridiculous. Distribution needs to happen but when so few posts are taking so much from the pool inorganically (regardless of their quality), it is very difficult for others to grow, even those using the bidbots.
As said, I don't think this would be too hard to organise for the largest operators of bidbots and it won't really cost them anything since what they lose on one bidder will quickly be taken up by another. It would be a 'simple' interim fix and would go a long way to balancing trending so that the projects and posts that have the community and whale support do not need to also buy votes just to be seen in Trending. It would also mean that there is likely to be more variety in the section as more will get both bidbot votes and organic votes when they are deserving.
So:
- Wider distribution
- A wider range of users in Trending
- Chance at additional votes for bidders
- Easier to deal with abuse by the community
- Less responsibility of Trending on bidbot operators
- more people getting rewarded (even if bought)
This is again not in my wheelhouse but, the general idea is simple enough that those with a basic level can see the benefits of not having massive votes stacked one atop the other.
Of course. This might all be irrelevant considering a lot of people don't want to change anything.
Taraz
[ a Steem original ]
Interesting post, flagging isn't a complete waste as it removes rewards and places it back in the pool to shared out to other content based on the ratio of votes.
During the flagwars, many noticed their post payout was higher than they expected as a lot of funds were returned to the pool to be redistributed.
Did the people doing the flagging get any rewards or recognition? Not really... Well Haejin noticed I was flagging him and pushed my reputation from 40+ to -5. Did all the community who benefited from the flagging come to help... Take a guess
Will I still flag, yes, it's the right thing to do when meaningless posts are getting disproportionate rewards.
I like your idea about the bidbots, but the simplest thing to do is remove the ability to delegate. Will that happen? Nope, because a lot of bidbot owners are witnesses
there are benefits to delegation such as support for projects but even with out it, they will still be able to organise it via trails in much the same way so killing delegation won't actually help much.
this is really interesting and I would love to see something like this introduced. but I do not think many of the bot owners would go for this. the posts that tend to 'stack' send high value bids, which means the bot owners would take a hit.
Food for thought. I could run a report that would capture all of these stacking accounts, but not having the power to flag anywhere near the size of the votes given I dont do so. I also know there are other tools to help spot accounts that 'abuse' bots.
THey do send high value bids but perhaps there could be the same gain in spreading the high value bids to 5-10 bidding posts instead of one. Someone could still use more than one in a day but, they would have to have multiple posts.
I have never really considered resolving the issue of what you call as 'stacking'. BTW thanks for sharing the term :-)
I think that if the people are greedy enough to buy one vote then they'll buy three. This is what we can call 'normal'. What troubled me in the past few weeks is that the system that allows it once is also allowing it to happen more than once.............. this smells suspiciously of being in cahoots or even worse - not giving a shit.
The posts rising in terms of popularity do not rise on their own. They don't even just rise by help from bid bots. The aspect of this scenario is that they rise at the cost of other content that is deserving of attention.
What amazes me and confuses me is that over and over they show that they don't care about you or anybody and here only for themselves and people will line up for it every time .
I don't see bidbot helping us in any form, even with your suggestions, their would still be competition among the bot operators.
If their is a way to put an end to all the bots, it would go a long way in attracting and retaining many users both old and new to the platform.
The use of bidbot is taking away the community value of steemit.
I used bot before, but I stopped about two weeks now when I realized I was contributing to the problem I was campaigning against.
To have a better community, we have to kick out all the bidbots.
Yeah, not going to happen though is it? So, it is either find a way to reduce harm and increase benefits or, not.
I understand your point, but educating people about the impact of bot on the growth of the community can also go a long way.
This would be very difficult to achieve as many people are just not cared about the community again, what matter to them is the personal profit.
I don’t think the platform has suffered enough yet from the nonsense that is trending. For if it was even the bidbot owners that only care about the money and where not trying sometimes to do something would say “this nonsense is hurting my bottom line.” If they want fill front page trending with YouTube links, scammers, thief's, and gambling so be it. Only thing we are missing is trending filled with porn but I think that’s not allowed on front page.
Maybe a racist one day will walk into steemit and promote there hate group on the front page of steemit. Maybe than we finally have enough. That kind of of PR nightmare should keep the whales up at night. I'm sure the news outlets will just jump at such a ripe opportunity to get those click baits in. Steem the raciest cryptocurrency more at 11.
With that scam product monoatomic gold doing just that, the scenario that you presented is a distinct possibility and one I hope that will be the tipping point for us to do something.
Right now people are just happy collecting all the money and making Steem a money printing machine. Yet till when?
Till there investments are losing money to the point it’s no longer worth doing or a better opportunity comes along.
Which brings us to curation rewards. Would I be willing to let curation earn a bigger reward off my posts? No, I already don’t self upvote so they can get their fair share as I feel that is only fair. I don’t think even letting them a 75% cut would keep them happy. That also would make most stop posting as they really not getting anything from posting than.
Do we create massive holdings to counter there bought upvotes that are promoting such stuff? I think they are only like 20% of the voting power. Sadly flag wars don’t end so well for the minnows. They will just move SP around and play all kinds of games. It in the past seem to only have limited effects and that asking a lot for people to give up just to keep greedy people from getting more.
For now I’ll just keep using #nobidbot and not supporting the kind of content that is a scam to best of my ability. Once a scam loses too much money they go looking elsewhere for easy hanging fruit. Perhaps it will slow down if they ever fix the leaky faucet of account creation. As right now they just make a new "free" account when they get caught and try again.
What will be worse is political campaigning trending. :D
It's an interesting idea. You'd have to be able to convince the bot operators that the demand for the votes is wide enough to support parceling out the votes to more people and still make the same money.
Either that or get 50k minnows to flag bots and their posts.
If only they would.
It's hard to believe people haven't caught on to the fact that if this bait wasn't keeping the pockets lined of a small group of whales, it would have hardforked faster than you could say...
Peace.
even without delegation, it is possible and 50% curation still doesn't stop it. it is all a bit of a mess but oerhaps, SMTs one day will balance something.
One day.................................................................................when you're old and gray....lol....That's a tune from the 50s....Harry Met Sally comes to mind....
Carpe diem. Time nor money waits on no/any one.
Peace.
That seems like an idea worth pursuing. I have been thinking to stop this sort of post happening time after time that there should be some sort of penalty. Flagging isn't enough and a proper lesson should be dealt out. We would rather trade our flagging for a flogging but obviously we cant unless we go to Steem Fest. Steemit should bring a punishment to fit the crime to deter further posts like this.
Steemit can't do anything, it is up to the community. As soon as Steemit steps in directly into such things, they become a centralized authority.
There some big hitters there , at least $600 in upvote bots
he first 8 + are at least.
At least I see some flags from people . That at least says something and where they stand
I don’t know enough to comment whether this possible, but I’m afraid your last sentence says it all. I think there’s too much money to be earned, so few people want to change anything.