Upvote Bots Continue to Fuck Up this Platform | SEO's Say Steemit is a GREAT Backlink Factory.
I was perusing Reddit this afternoon and noticed a post about Steemit. I love to see Steemit getting recommended or getting attention outside of the Steemit community directly so I clicked the post.
People on the r/SEO subreddit are saying Steemit is a great backlink factory.
For anyone who's not familiar with SEO, article writing, and all that jazz, this basically means that Steemit is a great place to come write low quality garbage content, add a link and post it for a backlink.
They have discovered that links on Steemit become dofollow links with enough upvotes so they use upvote bots to upvote shit content. While they are degrading the quality and integrity of this platform, they get their coveted backlink which helps their site rank better.
I've been somewhat critical of upvote bots on this platform even for regular Steemit users but now we are going to have outsiders who have zero interest in Steemit comming over here to benefit themselves and their shopify stores or affiliate sites, cluttering this platform as a whole, as well as the trending and hot pages with more bullshit.
Your thoughts?
It's the consumers fault really, why anyone would ever purchase shit products from some digital nomads drop-shipping website is beyond me my friend.
Oh, and Steemit is a breeding ground for shit content already, so I doubt this will make it any worse.
Hopefully the "owners" if there are any will get rid of this problem, I'm quite annoyed myself that completely garbage content is getting a lot of upvotes, and even copy pasted comments like "bla bla what a informative and great post" on posts with only a picture and no text is getting upvotes. If there is a will we can hope that it becomes the platform it was supposed to be to begin with.
The way it is its just easily abusable, and in a world where most people just care about their own gains, people will abuse what is abuseable.
I have given up on Steemit. Not that I was ever big here, but this is not a place of ideas and positive content creation. It is a place where bots and whales circle jerk each other.
Good idea, gone totally off the rails.
Hey @appone sorry to hear that. I'm somewhat critical of Steemit at times and I do have my frustrations with the platform, and I'll even say I'm not as optimistic about Steemit as I used to be but all that said I'm gonna stick around. I've made some good friends on here and also I already create content other places so no harm in comming over here adn posting it. If you have a blog or Youtube channel or something else your doing may as well come repost your content here. Another thing if you don't have a blog or youtube channel or other project you may want to consider starting one so you have more platforms to monetize your content on thanjust Steemit, may make it feel more worthwhile.
I've also seen so many garbage posts from bounty hunters, as well as the SEO shits wanting back links. It's so cheap to hire people to write these kinds of posts or buy SEO services.
Steemit needs a new mechanism that rewards users for rightfully reporting these kinds of users. Same for the spam comments.
Looks like people will have to put their downvote button to use for once!
On the bright side, the one of the top commenters had this to say:
If someone doesn't provide good content yet a backlink, downvote that shit. I wouldn't get too worried about this. Just focus on yourself and how you can improve the platform in your own way.
Hey buddy, yeah hopefully what good could come of this is some people come on over here to use it as backlinks and actually find that they enjoy the platform. I totally agree with that message from the poster as well. Why come over here and write shit content, why not treat this like a serious social media platform like any of the others and actually post quality content, maybe build a following and earn on here along with their blog or whatever elsethey are doing
I kind of see this as akin to where people build backlinks to their site by posting "quality" comments on someone's high ranking wordpress blog. It's one of the strategies of internet marketing. Find a blog similar to your niche, post a comment disguised as helpful and then have your link attached to it. Nothing new.
I think it is a normal part of growth. At first I thought Steemit was just a place I could earn money on my old blogs. Likewise with Bitcoin, I wanted to just make money with that in the beginning. Now I am heavily invested in crypto because I like the technology and I'd be lying if I said I didn't care about the money I'm making.
What does kind of annoy me is how little people downvote/flag content. This site is supposed to pay authors according to the "wisdom of the crowd." As of now, it looks like it doesn't exist. You are supposed to downvote content if you don't agree with the payout. That is how things are supposed to even out so that people making garbage posts and using upvote bots to go to trending don't actually make any money off of it. If people assessed the content and looked at the payout to determine whether they should upvote/downvote content, then you wouldn't have all these people raping the rewards pool.
Yes, I have been involved with SEO and my Blogs for many years now. This is so unfortunate. And just to think before I wised up a number of years ago I was one of these ' backlink bandits'.
What damage this shit can do. So hopefully we can get a hold of this before it becomes a tidal wave.
Thanks @rulesforrebels for this heads up
Hey Johny, how is it going with you? Steemeit sucks, no two opinions about it Miss your crypto videos, hope you haven't given up on it and we'll see you uploading soon :)
Hey @cool4y yeah I was enjoying making crypto vids but a lot of the audience was wanting to get back to business stuff. I can relate I know when I follow someone on Youtube and they change their channel theme I get a little disinterested. I'll probably continue making crypto vids every now and again but I was going a bit overboard for a while.
Honestly I've taken a bit of a step back from crypto myself. I havn't sold anything, I'm still invested. I have sold off a lot of altcoins and gone back into BTC, ETH and LTC but still holding everything. I find there's so many coins out there now, its not how it used to be where I could easily predict what the markets were going to do. Also with the downtown over the past few months didn't wanna be tempted to sell so had kind of taken a step back. Maybe I'll start making some crypto vids specificall for DTube.
You have a minor misspelling in the following sentence:
It should be coming instead of comming.I could certainly see it being a natural backlink place just like reddit and forums can be as well. Some people will try to spam it in and sort of the good thing is that someone could be off in their own little corner writing up post with backlinks.
I could get even rougher out here.
The basic use of bid bots is because it can make people feel better about their posts showing some $ value. Everybody's out here trying to earn money with some people posting good content some short memes and whatnots and everyone feels their content is good quality.
Some of us know that feeling of when our quality or well-researched long post don't get noticed or upvoted by the curators/big fishes. If this happens of course our only option would be to use bid bots to feel better. It can be kind of cheating ourselves but that's how bid bots give value to people's posts. I am not a heavy user of bid bots at all but I did try them.
Another use of it is for post promotion when it gets to the trending page. People do read the trending page. And as you pointed out, only those that have their own sites to promote and the money to pay for bid bots here to go on the trending page will benefit much more from using them. We mere red fish/minnows just don't think that way but you've just given me an idea. Hahaha.
Hey @artgirl appreciate your comment and feedback on this issue.
In regards to everyone thinking their content is quality, I don't think that is true. I think some people know they are putting out poor quality content but its just a numbers game or they are lazy and aren't looking to put in effort. That said I think there are a lot of well intentioned people here who do put in effort.
I don't like Bidbots and what they are doing to the platform but I do use them because it's become a necessity. Like you mentioned, it sucks to pour yourself, your time, and energy into a post and have it disapear with not only no money but not even comments or views and it feels like your writing to nobody so that is where bidbots do come in handy as you can get some extra eyes on your post and hopefully other people enjoy it and share it or resteem it.
Well some people do think they post quality, quality posts they've plagiarized. Haha. Lazy people will find ways but they will be found out here. That's the good thing about Steemit, lazy people can get flagged for spamming and plagiarizing. :D