RE: I Don't Want to be a Sellout and a Few Other Things I Find Somewhat Humorous About This Place
Simply remove the posts from trending status the moment the use of a bidbot or other promotional tool is detected.
This might be a fine idea, but as I think I've said before, it's tough to solve this in a decentralised manner. Steemit.com could certainly do this in a centralised way, but that would cause problems:
- Certain people (including myself, sadly) would see this as an abuse of their status as the main gateway.
- Other sites such as Busy.org which operate on the same blockchain would not reflect the changes.
- Bots would hop to new accounts as soon as they were discovered and added to the list, making it an endless cat-and-mouse game to catch and "blacklist" the vote sellers.
If we amended the witnesses' duties to include maintaining a list of known paid vote accounts, that would take care of 1 and 2, but issue 3 would remain open.
Personally I think it would be far more productive to integrate bidbot-like functionality into the consensus layer; to use the blockchain to compete directly with the bidbots. We could make it so that posts that had a certain amount of SBD burned to promote them appeared as if they'd been upvoted for 10 times that much. This wouldn't really "fix trending" in the way you're hoping, though it would go pretty far to stop bidbot abuse as well as the centralisation of stake:
- People who still used bidbots would lose the "promotion" argument and would be forced to admit they were only doing it for the money. This would open all bidbot users to (potentially automated) flagging, since legitimate promotion would be using the onchain mechanism instead.
- This would cause the bidbot business to dry up, which would fix the stake centralisation problem as well as hopefully causing whales to start curating again.
There is one option I have not seen discussed. I am honestly pretty drawn to it these days. That idea is... forget about fixing Trending. End it.
Switch to a pure subscription model for the main interface. Don't even try to rank posts by popularity or payout anymore. Just get rid of the Trending page, and have people follow people they find interesting.
This isn't about abolishing or taking anything away from anyone. In theory, everyone ends up earning more.
A trending page full of solid content encourages consumers to stick around and see what else they can do.
I'll go to Youtube and watch one of videos receiving high ratings, then click on something that catches my eye. These promoted posts could catch a ride within our potential trending posts instead of being the trending post. They get their visibility that way. And there's far more money to be made in honest advertising. More people would see the ad if it was inside a solid post. Not many people look at trending now, they look at the posts published by the people they follow, so that's where the promotions should be. Look at the audience. Those people spend money to promote in front of people who can only say things like, "Nice post!" They're not interested in buying a product or, anything, really. They're just there on the trending page now saying mindless drivel. An advertisers nightmare.
If someone wants to spend $500 to show off a couple of lame ass pictures, they can still do it, they can still be on the trending page, and many other places, if someone wants them to be there. The thing is, most won't, and those providing the promotional services won't have to worry about people attempting to scam, so that nonsense gets cleaned up and even those selling the votes won't look as bad because they'll be offering quality ads, or go out of business.
The guy can publish his shitty pictures, add an interesting banner, people might click, and he can earn for those clicks instead of getting nothing for a shit post, and then people can just flag his $2 spam instead of his $400 spam.
Right now this model is driving nearly everyone out of business. People aren't buying STEEM for this system. They buy some, they lose, they leave; and get replaced by the next idiot.
There won't be many people left to buy STEEM and promote their posts like they do now, and lose money. How many suckers are there in this world? We need real promotions, and those people need content producers. That turns into a proven money making machine.
That dude that tried to sell his white powder that he called gold failed because he pretended to be a trending blogger instead of smiling face on a banner ad where he belongs. He would have done far better as a banner, and we'd all earn because people like him have to buy STEEM in order to do their thing, plus he'd have to pay more for a higher slot. Then they all start competing while the content producers get to have fun and do their thing the natural way, plus earn. Yeah, I'm rambling. I'm tired, it's late, I'm going to bed.
As a software developer myself, I had the same ideas about potential problems that @lemony-cricket highlighted. I don't think he/she was discounting your banners idea so much as the idea that trying to detect whether accounts are organic or not is much easier said than done. (One case that comes to my mind that he/she didn't cover is the case where a person that legitimately blogs and participates also sells bids through the same account; e.g., the account is not solely used for bid-bot purposes. Do you just blacklist all activity from that account?)
Accounts don't need to be blacklisted. They can still function like they normally do and the posts still exist, they're simply sorted into a different pile. Account names would work like tags. I used the steemit tag, so if I click that tag, I get a trending page of only posts that used the steemit tag. That doesn't mean all of the other posts vanished or were blacklisted.
What I'm suggesting offers an opportunity for those promoting posts to present their work in front of more people. That means more money to those who sell promotional services, and if they wanted some of that money, registering their bot to work in a MARKET tab rather than the Trending tab would be the way to go.
There's far more money to be made in honest advertising than there is with this misleading style they offer now. You said it yourself, you don't look at trending. I pointed out in the post, it's normal for paid programming style posts to receive low ratings. That's just how it is, so there's more money to be made if they organize and put things where they belong, rather than attempting to cram it down a person's throat.
If folks realize the potential of doing things right, the bots don't have to be detected, it could be voluntary.
Give trending and the front page the middle finger and make your own. Join and be active in a community.
Take the best they have from that week that are still open and make a curation post. Share it with them and let the community support each other for the outstanding work those members did for the week.
Most things we can’t change. Some things you can to make it better for those around you.