RE: Let's all Stop Using Randowhale And other Voting Bots.
Good discussion and an important topic. I do know of a certain whale who is thinking about dedicating some of his SP to downvoting posts voted up by bots as a means of suppressing the use of them.
This is a really tough issue for me to decide where I stand, because I'm very "pro minnows". I understand the frustration some of them are experiencing. It's hard to tell them "don't use voting bots" when they are trying so hard to get ahead the normal way and seeing little benefit for their effort.
At the same time, the bot owners are not using any oversight to deny upvoting on posts that many in the community would regard as poor quality or thin content. That encourages draining the reward pool for any content and bypassing the community's judgement entirely.
Resteeming this to 12,000+ followers.
Edited: As I've had a couple of days to think about this more, I've decided to take a firm stand against the voting bots, and from this point forward I won't be resteeming posts where a voting bot has been applied - the exception being when someone has used a voting bot to gift a vote to the author of the post. I also can't do anything about voting bots that are used after I have resteemed the post, except to not resteem that author's posts anymore.
It's great to see your kind, genuine views on the platform. As a minnow loving the platform and info sharing is amazing, my firstborn week I got downvoted on one comment I made on my second day that I'm still puzzled about but I've just enjoyed resteeming and upvoting good content and I hope to keep adding value myself. Love steemit!
Yes It is a tough one I agree, but I really think if we minnows did not rely on rando to boost our post then we would find other ways, like engaging with the community and helping each other,
So far that has worked better for me than any vote I ever payed for.
Someone suggested that the Bots are a good way to boost other people posts like an extra form of support, but that's exactly what you can do by promoting their post, the other day I boosted someone's post by promoting it, I payed 10SBD, there post got promoted and they got about $6 upvote from @promoted and instead of the money going in some guy's pocket, it goes back into the reward pool. Win win win, I think together as a community we can come up with alternatives such as this to help minnows.
Thank you @joanaltres for your feedback on this matter and for the support by Resteeming,
I am actually going to donate the SBD proceeds of this post to a minnow by way of promoting their post, and I would like you to pick the person you think is most deserving, if you want to?
I don't want to be the one to choose, but whoever you pick I'll also resteem as an additional boost. :)
Great idea thank you very much.
I like your idea of promoting, instead of bots. That makes a lot more sense and seems more honest and beneficial to the steemit community as a whole.
Fortunately, not all bots being created are voting bots. I resteemed a post a little while ago about a friend-finder bot for Steemit that matches your interests with others on the platform so you can connect with them on the Discord channel they have set up.
this was the kind of bot that could really be super helpful, I was a big booster bots fan, I'm only almost 3 weeks old here, so I thought bots could be a great "strategy" to make my posts more viable, but with time I realize this is nothing but cheating on yourself, your hard work, and the whole idea of the community. A nexus bot, between members, matching same topics and tests sounds amazing, we need to connect more between us, I joined Discord two days ago, and instantly changed the way I thought about Steemit, people really want to help you in the best way, and is amazing what can we do if we make it to get all together helping each other. This is awesome to read, and see how this is taking the right shape.
Wow that sounds great! I look for that post. Thanks!
Since I became active on Steemit in May, I've heard a lot about bots and how, as a minnow, they can really make all the difference. However, the idea just never seemed quite right to me and after reading this, I'm glad I haven't made use of them. I'll stick with what I call 'conscious curation' by upvoting and resteeming content that I've actually read. I would also much prefer to be upvoted by someone who has read and genuinely enjoyed my content rather than by a bot.
Thanks
That's a great idea, giving people an incentive not to use the pay for vote bots, I have also been thinking and I think the only way for it to stop would be if there was a donate or a boost button on posts, people could boost a post by donating or the author of the post could directly boost there own post, this I think would slow down the Bots if not eliminated them. Boost button on posts, how can we make that happen :)
In fact I have just made a post about it.
Hello @joanaltres, I have donated the SBD from this post to @sandzat, she is a very good writer who does really good quality post's, I think she can go far here on steemit so that's why I'm choosing @sandzat for the donation and the resteem :) let me know what you think? . Here is the post chosen for a resteem https://steemit.com/life/@sandzat/childhood-life-as-an-adult-and-a-great-wish-called-steemit
Take care :)
Based on this reply, I am going to try your upvoting offer that I have in my wallet. I am a new steemer - a content creator here to get my message out - I am 100% against bots that do not check the content. It's a tragedy in the search results outside of this site and blows credibility.
One video with no text should not rank! This is the one that bothers me the most since it also causes link jumping.
Anyway, thank you for the offer and I will see how it works in a day or so after my post ages.