Community Spirit? Engagement on Social Networks is 'King'. For Steem, This Means 'Proof of Brain' - Which is Currently Broken.
'Proof of brain' is one of the original unique design factors that peaked interest in Steem's design... But today it is mostly broken due to bid bots - let's look at it more closely and explore what might be done to improve the situation.
If posts that meet real needs are meant to be the highest valued and one of our real needs is to be able to identify the posts that most meet real needs - then maybe posts that help is reach that goal are the MOST important posts there are?
There's a reason why Facebook's designers have aligned their system's algorithms to reward engagement (likes, comments and shares etc.) with extra reach in the network - it's basically because they want to expand Facebook's userbase and keep it relevant. To do this, they know they need to keep the users interested and excited to keep using the system and that means finding ways of allowing them to discover content they like on a regular basis. Content that generates a lot of comments, likes/votes and shares/resteems is inherently interesting in some way - so it makes sense that as long as those who game the system are kept in check somehow, on average, if highly engaged content is made visible to others then it will be appreciated by more users than low engaged content will be.
Steem doesn't have the AI managed and curated system that Facebook does and that is actually one of it's strengths. While a generic algorithm that learns preferences and determines what users will see and won't see 'could' be useful to everyone, the truth is that Facebook is a corporation (and most likely an arm of the 'intelligence' services), so it's integrity is always going to be low in this regard. Aside from outright censorship, Facebook is well known to have a tendency to try to promote itself as some kind of authority for what is 'true' and thus the reach of ideas they deem to be 'untrue' tends to be hampered. I don't know about you, but I don't really need or want the postal service to read through all my mail and just fail to deliver some if they decide it doesn't contain enough truth! What Steem does have is 'Proof of brain' - which is, in essence, the system of users rewarding the 'best' content with upvotes.. The proof of the brain is meant to be in that people appreciate the content and thus some brain must be present in it's creation.
Setting aside the reality that not everyone's brain is the same or shares the same ideals and that stake weighted voting means that not all votes are equal, this mechanism does at least have the strength that it allows the community to operate as a whole, promoting and demoting content according to something tangible and defined. When groups of creative people come together in a shared vision - such as the somewhat abstract idea of 'making great content', there tends to be a team atmosphere where individuals aim to fulfill real needs of other people. This is, to me, part of the power of 'proof of brain', in that it is also to some extent 'proof of understanding real needs'.
REAL Needs? Bid bots are an affront to community spirit.
Sadly, this is where proof of brain and Steem are falling down most at the moment, to my mind. Before bid bots were a thing, the trending pages were a decent reflection of content that was varied and interesting, but which could be relied on to some extent to be a clear solution to someone's questions, desires, problems and real needs on some level. I might not personally want to know how to make the perfect CV or know the perfect mechanics of a paper airplane, but at least if I see a well made post on that subject on the trending page when it has gotten there organically, I know that someone, somewhere DOES want to see it.
As long as votes are for sale and proof of brain is broken, all of these other strengths disappear too. Now posts don't need to meet anyone's real needs to have the highest reach, they only need to have been made by someone willing to pay someone else a high enough amount of money. The entire creative kick and magic of community co-creativity has been shat on from a great height in one fell swoop!
The fact is that there are so many posts on Steem that we really NEED a mechanism for exposing the best ones and the community has always been intended to manually power that process.
I truly am saddened that so many in the community fail to understand this basic dynamic and have no problem with facilitating a centralisation of power into the hands of those who operate the bid bots here. I feel this is a reflection of the dynamic we see offline too, where predatory 'business' people exploit creative community intent at every opportunity and hide behind carefully crafted PR messages in order to deceive as many as possible into using their products.
So what is the solution?
Thankfully, a few Steem sites already filter out posts that are boosted by bid bots, including @partiko and @steeveapp. The more that Steem UIs follow this trend, the less of an issue all of this will be and the greater Steem can become overall. I have posted several alternative options to this over the years too, including a 'voter muting' feature that is similar to what partiko has created and also an idea to have Steemit inc. use their tokens to run their own bid bot that undercuts the competition.
It is also an option to have the community rally around the path of integrity, such that we downvote posts that use bid bots en mass. It wouldn't necessarily take more than a minority amount of downvoting cost to put people off of using the bots as their profit margins are already slim.
I imagine we will see this issue tackled in creative ways by the new Steem foundation, but that, to some extent depends on bot operators not having the power position within it. I suggest learning who is involved and not supporting those who may corrupt the potential for positive change here!
Wishing you well,
Ura Soul
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Unfortunately, the human heart is the problem and not the software. Bid bots are nothing but a short-sighted cash grab by greedy individuals.
I agree that heartlessness is at the root here - but there is no way to explain to those without heartfelt understanding of balance, what they are missing. The only way is for them to go through the step by step process of healing and integrating their own heart and balance. I literally just finished a post about ego balance that is highly relevant :)
There certainly are steps that can be taken in software to defend against heartlessness, though, it just takes the will of the people to get behind it I guess.
Thank you, interesting stuff.
Steemit (to me) is an interface for a banking system at the end of the day. I have cynically not paid a penny to it and I am perfectly crap at getting upvotes. But I think comparing it to FB and the limits and scope of algorithms and edited opinion is looking too much to a social media agenda that simply cannot apply to the ruthless world of banking and its many creative back alley cohorts.
One anaemic long blank blog page is on offer without the other immediate functions to exponentially grow contacts and raise awareness ~ its limited in its reach from the off.
If collective groups innovate with worthy content, as you say, then perhaps pushing this cohesion would help great posts get spotted ~ moving away from individual accounts? Besides, it's all a branding exercise anyway if formerly based on brain power to attract votes, as reality can be dull and not everyone on Steemit writes on popular subjects with the panache of a over-zealous PR exec. AND some people without brains get a sh*t load of upvotes. :)
Maybe put the heart to the brain and enable cooperatives to take it by storm - being a single blank blog page doesn't really give you much scope to begin with. Something needs tweaking and stitching together so that Steemit fam can see each other. Safety in numbers.
You are welcome. Steem is a socio-economic system, so it is both a financial platform and a social platform simultaneously. It's kind of a new thing, in it's own category.
Curation groups have always existed, they just don't have the kind of backing that would boost posts higher than individuals can currently do via bid bots. Heart improves the capacity of brain, absolutely - but that can occur just as much within individuals as within groups <3
I really like how @steeveapp is addressing the bid bots problem and trending page. I fully recommend its use as well as the use of @partiko
Posted using Partiko iOS
https://steempeak.com (@steempeak) is another beautiful user interface, with no trending or hot page.
Steempeak's equivalent of the trending page is just the 'topics' list - but i am speaking with them currently about the possibility of filtering it in the way i suggested months ago, using 'voter muting' lists.
If when we or someone disagrees with a post payout, IF we could signify our disagreement by downvoting the Voter and not the poster, then maybe bid bots would get a clue, if this person bids on me I am going to lose money because in the past they have had the Paid vote nullified. How long before bid bots start to say no to people. Why should the content creator be penalized for someone liking their post? If the bought and purchased votes are nullified, then the content creator is learning either post better stuff, or stop buying votes on bad stuff. Or if they do not learn, then they might learn that they can no longer buy votes, because they have been blacklisted by the bid bots.
yes, that is one good aspect that I have included in my model - penalise the perpetrator not the victim. That also works for other voting patterns such as rings, eg decrease the voter's VP more than standard and the mathematics of the game starts to look less attractive.
Bid Bots are filling the need for more active curators on the platform (not talking about the people who are being greedy dicks, but maybe more so from my experience when using them). Maybe I'm just a terrible writer and maybe I don't understand what a good writer is, but seeing people write amazing posts and get little payouts sucks.
OCD is on break and I've heard Currie is possibly losing a large delegation. A lot of whales are powering down as they've lost faith in the platform and were more than likely not curating anyways.
Add this in to not having a great way to filter content besides this site which I didn't know about until a few weeks ago, the best way to get noticed is to make it to hot or trending.
If you want to focus your frustration at something get to the root of the problem and focus it on lack of good content curators on the platform and the fact that there is no great way to get more eyes on good posts within the platform.
This is one advantage that youtube creators have over Steem creators. You don't have to have a youtube account to earn money for the creator. I don't know if it does much good spending time sharing your content outside of Steem as they have to create an account to reward you and even then they'll probably only be rewarding dust at this point in the market.
agreed :)
Improved content discovery is the aim, but so too is improved proof of brain distribution. Bid bots are an exploit that makes this situation worse, not better.
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Hi @ura-soul!
Your post was upvoted by @steem-ua, new Steem dApp, using UserAuthority for algorithmic post curation!
Your UA account score is currently 6.897 which ranks you at #99 across all Steem accounts.
Your rank has dropped 4 places in the last three days (old rank 95).
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Bidbots are the symptom, not the cause of the problems.
Bidbots, and other upvoting schemes, are a consequence of the economic code encoded onto the blockchain that allows such transactions to be profitable without any consideration to any human aesthetics.
To target the effect rather than the underlying cause will never completely solve the problem.
As you say, the solutions currently being designed are to build on top of the blockchain's economy and construct user experiences that align with the original goals of "proof of brain".
However, these will all be built on the same foundation and will have to compete for rewards with those content-agnostic algorithms that will not go away on their own.
I repeat, the underlying economic code needs an upgrade to become more balanced.
The economic code is not sacrosanct, it needs fixing.
The code is designed on principles of anarcho capitalism, which means free trade - there is no easy way to facilitate these principles while also preventing bots at the blockchain level.. Besides which, it's not really possible to block bots at that level reliably.
The aim is not to block bots, that's looking at the effect, the aim is to make the underlying transactions less profitable.
This isn't "free trade", it is an encoded economic system; one is only free to do what is allowed.
The idea is to allow as much as possible - hence the 'anarcho' in anarcho capitalism.
What is your particular suggestion to make the transactions less profitable?
My suggestion is that we need a small team dedicated to looking at the economics of Steem, with the ability to stress-test ideas on a testnet and be entrusted to write some reports of all successes and failures.
The aim is to reduce the symmetric design of upvotes so that bilateral relationships are less predictable and hence less profitable. One example already exists on Steem: the curation algorithm and the reverse auction period. That island of activity is unpredictable yet perfectly algorithmic.
I agree that making alternate rule-sets available in test networks is needed - although history has shown that Steem's complexity can result in these test scenarios having difficulty generating realistic data, but it's still better than nothing.
I agree that effecting the way that voting benefits people such that dysfunctional voting is reduced would be a great thing - however, despite a huge amount of communication and thinking on this issue over the years, I haven't really seen any examples of how this can be done reliably and in a balanced way. In the absence of any workable solutions, I look instead at what is workable and hence I look at preventing the function of bidbots.
Curation, as interesting an idea as it is - doesn't actually stop the bidbot corruption of proof of brain because, for one, the curation rewards just go to the upvoter - which might be a bidbot - which still helps the bidbot operator to offer lower priced votes to customers. Higher curation rewards don't necessarily hurt bidbot operators.