What if Bidbots did some 'for-profit' community work?
Okay, so ~1500 dollars was taken from the Beacon of Steem today but, it is going to be very difficult to maintain long term and unless his earnings are zero, it is worth it for him to shitpost here.
Together the TA and Rancho have ~1,400,000 SP they are upvoting 10 posts a day with which is currently about $320 so, 3200 a day. You know @ned, you could just autoflag this and end it? I know, I know, censorship, freedom... It has to be community.
Well, I am not a a big fan of Bidbots if people haven't realized but, they have a massive amount of SP between them. If I remember correctly, it is about 30-40 million they are voting with each day, every day. You know what that means? for 5% of their combined voting power, they could make sure that the TA doesn't earn anything other than what other members of the community give him. All they need to do is match some flags with the same weight as the SP they are using to self-vote.
It would be a community initiative and it would actually cost less than 5% as it returns rewards to the pool that they are taking large amounts from anyway. They will have more to sell or perhaps, there would be less losing bids or something like that.
With all of the bluster some of them have talked about with their bot coding skills, it shouldn't be too hard for one of them to write a bot that calculates posts in the last 12 hours and draws the correct voting weight from the other bots to flag. That would currently return about 20,000 SBD into the pool each week which would get distributed to people who will return ~30% of that to the bidbots anyway. So, the bidbots would make more money and the Beacon of Steem Dreams will be cut off from the pool other than the community votes he gets. I would assume that once the option to frontrun is taken away, most of them will drop off also.
A few months ago I had hopes that whales would get interested in an idea to create a community tool to deal with these problems, hopefully before they get as out of hand as this one but, not much interest was given to Helsing. Perhaps it was just too risky.
Well, the bidbots really don't have anything to fear and by their own life philosophy Code is Law, there is nothing stopping them from throwing a few more flags. With enough of them banding together, it will cost them and their delegators almost nothing and as said, it returns a lot of SBD into the pool with statistically, 30% of it getting returned to them the next week anyway. 30% is about 25,000 SBD a month and they took 345,000 in April. That means they will get about 7% returned, more than they spent. This makes it in the best interest of the community and for the bidbots and their delegators to do this. Win/win.
The only real conflict of course is that the TA votes for many of the operators who are witnesses and is also Rancho's proxy. So, those who flag are likely to lose 1.4M in witness votes. It seems it is an attempt to protect himself from just this occurrence and so far, it is working. However, those who take part in shutting this monstrosity down are likely to attract more votes anyway.
So, doing this means the Bidbots make more money, the TA gets cut down to value and the constant discussion and wars can soon be put to bed so then we can all move onto the other dramas facing the platform.
The code allows this, bidbots make more, the delegators make more and authors have access to a pool that has 2% more in it per day so, it is really up to whether the bidbot operators are serious when they say they care about the community.
Just an idea..
Taraz
[ a Steemit original ]
You could always buy more steem. lol Hopefully in 2 years I will be able to compete with the bots.
Yeah, you touched on the issue.
Protecting witness votes.
In one way (and probably the only positive), its good that a non-bot boosted post can get into trending, but it's not really a community effort that makes that so.
Just to throw more coal on the fire of curiosity, I 'heard' that BB owners were told not to touch HJ. It could be an excuse of course.
This potential reason and the witness votes has certainly worked.
Yea, but, yeah...
I think today, some crossed that line but I don't think they are getting his vote anyway.
@booster certainly threw its weight behind the movement today. I hope more BB owners will be like @fyrstikken and just end this once and for all. It's a win-win for their business and the community.
Yeah... I know, just searching for any cracks of light I can find!
I know 1000 SP and 20 SBD wont rock your account that much in % terms, but I think you could put something together for a community push on Sunday. No pressure of course :)
Ah yeah, I will try :)
I don't need the prize.
Uhmm, I think.. I will try to see if I could come up also with something worth to push up and get stuck on the trending page for a few days through @abh12345 contest idea for the sunday.
But if you decide to participate, I do not have many illusions about win it. :p
So, my good friend @tarazkp. I suggest you unravel your best literary coup and hit with your wildest and merciless prose all the goodness and wonders of Steeimeeeit #welcometosteemit campaign to attract, recruit and shave their heads in a blink to all that massive horde of potential new steemians that with your convincing propaganda you will catch like flies. :)
And if you don't need the prize. ¡No problem! Just violently snatch it out from @abh12345's hands and send it my way. I'll think of something useful to do with it. };)
I am considering giving it a go, just for the shill factor :D
Shill it is!! Such as it must be matey!! };)
(noun [ C ] - verb [ I ] UK/US.- An accomplice of a hawker, gambler, or swindler who acts as an enthusiastic customer to entice or encourage others.)
I'm starting to think there is no way to fix the distribution issues on STEEM. You're correct in saying @ned is probably the only solution to mr. TA but there would need to be some sort of on-chain governance in place to force his hand. EOS will have their Constitution when mainnet launches but I see that as just another experiment. Most crypto communities are proving once again that political organization is an extremely difficult problem to solve.
The problem with crypto people is their approach to life, they are maximizers. Works well for the stackers but against a community as they fail to find the line of personal/community benefit, time and time again.
The only real value of crypto as I see it is community. The current abusers as you point out in your post are very much giving credence to the idea that the whole thing is a ponzi scheme.
But how do we do it? the whales really have the power. To whom do we delegate more power? He's the dilemma there. He has seen very interesting publications and they do not even have a vote, like many others of a quality that has 100 votes. They have the power and one way or another they put it into practice. The distribution is not equitable. Those who are just following follow or leave on the recommendation of the others. Sometimes you need more guidance. :(
It is difficult at the moment because of several factors and I hope that things will change when communities arrive. Until then, do what you can.
Not a bad idea but it is stepping on toes again. There are so many toes that need stepping on and something tells me they don't care about charity or community. If you are correct in what you are saying with the votes then you may as well put Zuma in charge. At least he was a simpleton and wasn't sneaky like this lot. There are so many blind eyes here you ask your self is it going to stop. They are getting bigger and bigger and it would be too late.
Do you honestly believe the bidbot operators. As long as they are taking their cut and being profitable they will agree and say anything. Maybe a 7% cut to keep them in business will be an agreeable deal. I don't know as this is very complicated and too many toes.
I don't have a lot of faith in many people at all these days and I believe even less on what they say. Behaviour tells a lot though.
Agreed. Don't know what happened today but most of your stories are current. I have learnt not to expect too much from people as they will most likely let you down. I think that is why I say it as it is and it doesn't always go down to well. Never been a brown noser. I hope that they surprise us by doing the right thing.
That's the way I look at people. Never mind the mouth, let's see what the hands get up to.
A lot of time, i see these bidbots as promotional tools,. As long as they are optimized and regulated not to bring ruins to the platform
People want to make money, this leading to a winwin situation is meant to put an end to the bot troubles, if there are no selfish coders
Unless you promote to the first pages of trending, there is little value. All of the small votes don't get any more eyes on. I know, as I have a $10 small vote and don't get anything extra for it.
Then their acclaimed love for the community is a facade then
I don't think this is an outrageous idea... I would love to see if any bitbot operators would voice their opinion on this.
No, not completely outrageous and with their size, hardly a dent on their voting power.
Precisely because of this...
I apologize beforehand @yabapmatt for summoning you, but being someone who cares about the future of Steem and a person I respect. I would love to hear your thoughts on this.
If you show up @yabapmatt, Welcome but, I am heading to bed now and will get to it again later.
Money talks. Also, Nobody will care about Steemit once SMTs come out. Just ask @ned...
Yeah, this makes them ore money ;)
I am still unsure how it will go, I am not confident yet in the early launches. I hope I am wrong.
I couldn't follow your math, but it seemed like the bots would lose money because power dedicated towards flags is power not available for votes and curation? But I'm all for bots doing something to actually help the community for once...
You have a minor typo in the following sentence:
It should be they instead of thet.You failed, just like a Nazi...
I did use it to fix it though so I gave an upvote. Incorrect can still be useful :)
Man... i hate that little bot.. hahahahahh you are too nice.
I was literally thinking about this same topic last week. Thanks for taking the time to write and post this. I like like like this idea. I’m on board .. whoever I am really.
I for one do NOT use bidbots of any sort. I like to do it naturally. I'll reach who I reach and see what happens. Looking forward to other replies on this.. should be VERY interesting.