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RE: Transparency Bot is going online to help fight the rampant rise in bidbots and their long term devastating effect on our platform.
WTF? Yes, I'm using bidbots, but I know that my article isn't a shit and otherwise it just won't be noticed, I'm not going to spend 2-3 hours on the article which no one will read. Ability to use bidbot is the only reason why I'm still on this platform and I'm sure many will agree with me.
Instead of writing comments judging my work you better consider downvoting whales who makes >$1000 a day by posting shit or even simple photos on dmania. Unlike them, most of the bidbots have limitations and filters the posts they are upvoting...
As part of my contest series:
"Steem Decathlon #1 D2E02 "Baby Needs a new pair of Shoes!" - Theme - 'Politics" - Fake News Quiz...iceberg tip."
I bid it up with bidbots to give the results of the upvotes as a rewards pool to my contest participants....And to get the word out....
I'm not taking the money it's being distributed....
Plus it is my decision to spend the money and for what purposes is my decision, whether it is long term sustainable is not an issue. And issues with the SteemIt platform not really curating/classifying and lack of capabilities/functionality are much bigger impediments to the platform.
I have great ideas for bots that would enrich the community if you want to actually put your talents to better work.
Want to collaborate.
Labeling someone with a big posting giving the impression by implication they are doing something by using bots vs. paying directly to put on the promote page is blatantly wrong....
And by using a bot and asking for remuneration to accomplish this is the height of hypocracy.
You have a problem with something than hand curate it.
Well said, mate, this whole idea of a "Transparency Bot" is nonsense, a storm in a tea pot. It is a conspiracy theory. If there are no bid bots, everyone will have to lick the boots of whales before they trend, which is like the dehumanizing Slave Trade era.
The transparency bot is an attempt by a few to demonize the majority by manipulating the psychology of the majority. Why should a bot that seek to be non-profit be looking for delegation? Does that not tell you something? That the owners of the bots are spammers and opportunists disguising as noble men?
Regards.
Amen! This is exactly my feeling.
We are together, friend.
yes definitely
Where do you think the delegations to the bidbots come from?
Paying for upvotes is the worst kind of pandering to whales... bootlicking indeed!
You're the reason we can't have nice things.
Quit paying for votes!
I laughed really hard reading your reply. You say pandering? Before I give a proper response, will you kindly tell me the "nice things" people like me have hindered because of bid bots patronage?
Well, here's a couple off the top of my head:
You are discouraging human beings from actually engaging.
You are devaluing the upvotes of your peers.
You are concentrating SP in the accounts that already have the most of it.
You are destroying the Steem platform by rendering the society burgeoning on Steemit by concentrating the SP in the accounts of whales.
I could go on, but you're just gonna get madder, and pretend none of that is bad, or real, or matters.
Bye!
Good observation. I will get back to you on this. Regards.
There’s a better way to design a decentralized ledger blogging site that will enable everyone to earn fairly. But never expect it on Steem nor EOS. If you’re wise you will follow me and wait for the announcement.
All my predictions about the demise of Steem are coming to fruition:
https://steemit.com/steemit/@anonymint/re-ats-david-re-pfunk-re-themarkymark-steemit-creates-accounts-for-scammers-and-nobody-else-20180412t201119569z
https://steemit.com/steemit/@themarkymark/steemit-creates-accounts-for-scammers-and-nobody-else
https://steemit.com/steem/@ats-david/re-steemitblog-exploring-steem-scalability-20180411t005457232z
The above links explain why the following stats for Steem are probably to a large extent fake traffic:
https://steemit.com/steemit/@penguinpablo/daily-steem-stats-report-thursday-april-12-2018
I'm sure your articles are good. But don't you resent a system that means you have to pay someone in order for them to be seen?
Paying for advertising is an old practice which is perfectly acceptable. Every day we see advertising for crappy products or for excellent ones. Without the visibility we wouldn't know the good ones exist. The bidbots were allowed on Steemit, so putting pressure on people not to use them creates a contradictory situation. If a bot brings an interesting article to my attention which would never have otherwise appeared on my feed, where is the problem? All artists and musicians face this difficulty of trying, first of all, to create really good art, then trying to get it "out there" so people can know about it.
I've been thinking about this a lot today, and I need to investigate the 'getting seen' aspect further. But, at a glance, it seems to me that a lot of people who are putting about 25 SBD on bots are getting around 50 views within the first day or so.
Now, if I pay facebook $20 AUD, which is about 8 SBD, I can get a post in front of 340-1500 specifically targeted people (e.g.: interested in cryptocurrency) per day, for 3 days. Sure, the engagement rate can be pretty bad, but if even only 10% of people click the link I'll have 100 views for only 8 SBD.
Now, none of those people directly pay me anything, so it's not the same as here, and obviously I need to look further into what the comparative views are over a longer time period. But I think we should think hard about this 'being seen' angle that we are being sold here.
Also, and I need to flesh this out a bit too, appeal to advertising assumes that advertising is in itself morally acceptable. To your credit, at least you defend the view openly not everyone gets that far). But equating bidbot usage with advertising fails if advertising is not an ethical practice.
Finally, yes, bot are allowed. But I don't accept this 'code is law' argument from an ethical viewpoint. There are lots of things that you can do within the code parameters on steemit, but you wouldn't say that they were all morally good, or that they were helpful for the long-term sustainability of the steem economy.
Banning the bots is one thing. But how do we get people to look at things and support them financially? I know a number of FABULOUS artists who are totally under-recognized because they are not getting the right exposure. And god-awful art that gets rewarded by strong marketing. I was lucky to make a living with my paintbrush - but very few artists are able to to that. What can be done to remedy this? If artists don't get rewarded for what they do, they have to spend hours and hours doing other things just to survive. And as a result the general quality of the art suffers because it requires full time work to arrive at a high quality result.
If you can come up with something better than the bots, more power to you. They are far from perfect. What we need is not to remove what already exists, but provide more viable solutions and people will gravitate to them.
Yeah, I feel the same way about my writing.
This is a problem both on and off Steemit. Part of the problem is artists believing good art is, or should be, enough.
Good marketing isn't using money to get in front of the most people. Good marketing is figuring out who the right people are, why they want to buy your art, and how to present it so the right people will see it and see something they want.
What we have here with bots isn't marketing, cause there is no way to discern who is seeing the message. And many of the automated votes come from non-human accounts with steem automatically delegated to them as new "members". Delegated from whom? All those artists. You, and me.
This is long but if you'd like to see how deep the rabbit hole goes...
Believe me @wholeself-in, it is a problem I know quite well having been a self supporting artist for the last 30 years. Finding your audience is what it is all about. At some point you need to extend your audience, having sold work to all your current clients. Now steemit should be good for that, right? Actually the bots have brought my work to the attention of some like-minded individuals who would never have found me otherwise. I feel like everybody is ready to criticize, but no solutions are forthcoming. I am not computer savvy and my creativity is not in that area. So maybe we can appeal to people who have those abilities to create tools to diffuse the right information to the right people.
in your opinion because they financially don't back their own endeavors they are better?
I ran Arkahdia Arts Studio for 16 years and am an Artist myself..
You need money to build a following......
The reality is Art is subjective and those spending for position with something people aren't interested in will go broke...
So they will be like most other artists....
This situation is much more complicated than simple advertising, and there it’s also fair to raise the question of the ethics of some forms of traditional advertising.
Bid bots make no discrimination based on quality, we are just being shown articles for people who pay and the ad power of these giants will only get stronger and stronger until the whole platform collapses.
No judgement on you personally.
Yes that is the defect of the bots - they'll upvote anything. So somebody needs to invent something that can somehow upvote real posts and differentiate between them and junk. Now there's a real challenge for the computer geeks...
Actually you are 100% correct and I have no idea why nobody has figured out to set certain requirements that the algorithm will recognize and most importantly enforce like 1: MUST contain 2-3 paragraphs minimum 2: Make sure these are words (which can be done from the bot to make sure that someone doesnt kijghdsfkjdsfghkrfg kjsadbads kjsdfh. making it look like a sentence) 3: 1+ Pictures required (we like pictures ^ ^) and if it does not check out.. Insta-Refund! Happen 3 times in any 7day period=blacklisted simple, easy and it works! Does it mean that the posts will be quality!? that is in the eye of the beholder BUT it definitely won't be spam. But you see, that would actually work WITHOUT being beneficial to them so they say "We have to keep you from getting where we are and we will break the very rules that we set in advanced then present them as a just reason of why we do what we do under the guise that we are actually doing something great for this platform instead of locking it down like we really are. Something like "This will be GREAT for steemit!... we will keep all the sp and sbd and you get to spend hours of your day posting and if you do really good with the current market prices you might just get an entire dollar out of it or if you do favors for a whale he might make it rain on ya ;-)
Yes, there must be a way to do it.
Well said. @transparencybot @bycoleman & @tarazkp are spamming hundreds of posts from their 'Transparency Bot' in order to get more delegation and more followers. It doesn't matter if the posts are original and of great quality. In addition, they are also upvoting their own comments so they show up on the top of your comment thread. That's just playing dirty.
Totally agree, they just need upvotes.
a great point made on one of my comments was, why do we need a transparency bot when everything is transparent?! Anyone can go do research or look at the information as it is free for all of us to see to begin with. the upvoting self and asking for deli i did not see, and that is ridic. so they are making money off of us (another ploy) just as the argument that bots are a hack on the steemit platform. SMH
@transparencybot is not about judging, but about transparency. I’m sure that if the community thinks your work is of good quality, the message sent by @transparencybot will have no impact at all.
You're right, but I don't want to see a spammy comment on each my post, asking people to upvote it and delegate some SP.
I can agree that there is no need to ask for an upvote. If people like it, they will upvote without being asked. And @bycoleman, maybe you could add the delegation links to the introductory post you are referring to?
That's the question, why does the bot needs delegation if its purpose is only to show readers that author has used upvote bots?
I mean the bot creator just want to make some money like everyone on steemit. And I think his hypocrisy is much worse than bidbots usage...
If I understood correctly it needs a valuable upvote to counter the downvotes it will get, so it will not be made invisible by those downvotes
@bycoleman, can you confirm this?
Many people are downvoting the comments so they do not show.
If the bot or someone else does not upvote them, then they will be hidden and serve no purpose.
Soon there will be a consorted effort to out SP the bot so the comments are never shown. Several posters have already begun to power up (which is great), but that power will directed at the bot to try to shut it down.
https://steemit.com/steemit/@transparencybot/the-daily-coverup-transparency-under-attack
The message was changed yesterday. No upvote or delegation is requested.
exactly, and also telling everyone if you used more than one bot to make money. the message is actually confrontational and not very nice. to boot they upvote themselves and ask for a deli. LOL yikes
The message no longer asks for upvotes or delegations. This was removed yesterday shortly after getting the bot in full gear. Your feedback and others were very helpful on this regard.
Thanks,
The post from transparencybot is like spam, it looks like crap on the comment section of the blog post. And the blockchain is transparent, all anyone needs to do is look at the wallet of anyone on this platform and they can see every transaction. This bot is crap and not needed.
exactly! i totally agree
This is unasked for spam. I agree with you 100%
I had just followed you and was excited to learn more about you. But when I saw that you guys used a bid bot, that told me everything that I need to know about you. In ten seconds, you are not just going to be unfollowed. You are going to be MUTED!
Do you think @dunite actually cares that you followed him/her? No fucking way, you should mute your fucking self.
exactly, you are my hero!
Go ahead. Mute me and hide in your filter bubble. Or, encounter me. Social intercourse is about giving, not taking. Human relationships, even isolated encounters, are sacred. Whenever you disagree with something I post, say so, in whatever terms you choose to express yourself. I will consider your thoughts.
My most significant achievement in life is the large number of mistakes that I have made and false ideas that I have embraced. You can quantify the maturity of a person by counting the number of times he or she has apologized and/or admitted that he or she is wrong.
there are so many groups and people using bots! you look fairly new, maybe do more research before passing judgment. if you like the content, which is what steemit is about ... what would a bot matter?
I am new, and I am willing to admit being wrong if it appears that I am. But I am a trained economist, and my trained instincts tell me that gaming the system will destroy it. There's an old saying in monetary economics that is closely related: "Bad money drives out good".
I'd like to have a respectful conversation about each of the types of bots currently in use or emerging, in which we take a good look at whether they are good, or bad, for the platform.
however, you do not know what has been going on for months now including bots being used by many. after only one month on there is a lot of info you are not yet familiar with and you are making a judgment based not all on facts.
thus was the first comment left to you was you are too new to make these statements and basically bottom line is to do the research first before trying to defend something you do not understand. that said, there are people on here that have been on awhile that feel if someone puts in money to the bots and feels the only one getting rich are those owning bots that may be a better argument.
try looking at all the owners of bots first ... someone making money off of a "transparency bot" is still doing exactly as you stated above. do you know what a deli is? do you know that steemit is already transparent? these are things that need to be looked at before taking sides. anyhoo, good luck on your endeavors on steemit. making people upset when being new is not something one can easily overcome. the community is still small.
I'm here to give, not to take. The probationary period goes both ways. I agree with much of what you say involving me being a newbie. But ad hominem attack responses just tell me that the person can't articulate why I am wrong.
I don't mind being shown that I am wrong. I appreciate it and will thank the person for it. But the childish responses and behaviors will result in the kind of responses from me that they deserve.
I think that @transparencybot is the best thing I've seen yet here. You guys who are paying for exposure are selfish, morally ignorant people who don't get the concept of community.
We don't need your shitty content or your even more shitty predatory personality here. I personally wish that you all DID leave. Three cheers to @transparencybot.
I'm glad you think that it is the best thing here. selfish/ignorant? What does using a bot have to do with community? Is this platform fair for all users in the community?
We don't need your fucking twisted perspective on the issue and it's best if you shut your fucking mouth.
This is a public platform and you are free to write anything you want on any post, but you shouldn't be condescending to those you do not know.
That being said, I see what you have wrote and it would be best IMO that you take your shitty worthless posts and leave the platform. Do us all a favor and go fuck yourself and leave the platform.
Thanks for providing even more evidence that you are a selfish person who flags people merely because you don't like what they have to say. If everyone was like you, we'd all destroy the platform in a nuclear flag war. I'm not going to flag you because I'm not that kind of person. My policy is to UPVOTE people who disagree with me. So you are getting an upvote from me.
You assumed that I flagged your post b/c I did not like what you have to say. While in fact, when you read the message that appears before you flag, one of them are 'Hate Speech or Internet Trolling'.
Your initial post described your personality from the get go. And for someone that just came in last month, you sure have no problem shooting your mouth off with no respect at all. It actually does not matter b/c crypto and a decentralized system is a free for all and the wild wild west.
Nuclear flag war huh? If you look at my history from July 2017, I have flagged one other person, that is it. You and this new bot were number 2 and 3. There are a lot of people that flag every single week. I have flagged 3 times in 10 months.
In addition, since I have been on this platform since July 17, I have never been in one argument with anyone with the exception of today. So congratulations, you are the first.
One can get a misconception from my reply post that I am an aggressive poster based on the profanity used. But if you look at every single one of my posts or comments from July 17, you will see that I do not use profanity or swear in any of the posts. Your reply brought it out and I think that people need to stand up to what they believe is right.
Commenting on posts is fine, when a bot FORCES an unwelcome comment that has zero value on a post is SPAM. One only needs to look at a wallet to see if they were using a bot.
I personally do not need upvotes that are of zero value...
Please remove the flag. My post is neither hate speech or trolling. If you disagree, please give me the courtesy of stating the ground for your flag, with enough specificity so that I and others can form an opinion regarding whether your flag is reasonable.
BTW, IMO flags should not be used for hate speech, for the same reasons that there is no "hate speech exemption" to the First Amendment in the United States.
Since you were merely standing up for what you think is right, we have that in common. That's all I was doing. Neither one of us should be flagged for speaking our minds.
I happen to think that the comments by @transparencybot are of great value. It feels like it would if you were caught masterbating, doesn't it, to have everyone see that you paid for your votes and that you paid to rob the rewards pool? Those comments expose you for what you are, for what you KNOW that you are. That is why they are so embarrassing for you, and so hilariously funny for the rest of us.
You have no option or any control over any flags that you get, and based on what I have read, your going to get your share if you continue on this platform.
Again, READ what determines a flag as written by the developers of this platform. 'Hate speech and Internet trolling' is one of the items. Re-read your initial post, tell me that it has no hate in it.....lol.
First Amendment? Let me enlighten you a bit, that applies if your in the USA, the blockchain is worldwide. There are people posting from countries all over the world and the first amendment does not apply...
And I know it is very hard for you to comprehend, but this blockchain is transparent. All anyone needs to do is look at a wallet for anyone on this platform and see every single transaction, comment, post, reply, purchase. Can you wrap your head around that concept??? Apparently not...
It is not like we received the shit post from this bot and got busted...lol. Even the postpromoter bot sends a post indicating the vote percentage it gave.
Sounds like a very balanced and fair perspective to me, @glennolua . “You can say whatever you want, just don’t disagree with me”. Got it.
I'm glad you see it as fair and balanced... if you don't like what is written, say it straight up or don't write anything at all....
I Agree the comment looks like other loud bot spam, but I think for example an outsider who lands on trending wouldn’t go look into someone’s wallet...
YOu will never hear me say that it is perfect, but it is a step in the right direction: bringing awareness about the problem of upvote bots (I know there are many more, but I’m already happy with one step in one direction)
IMO, most of the bot users are minnows that send in 5-10 SBD to get something back for their post. They do not care if their post is on any trending page at all.
I see this as a small crypto savings account that may have more value in the future. I can continue to grow it slowly for potential future monetary gains.
I'm not sure how the abusers of the bid bods can be addressed as it is hard to tell someone to stop abusing the system.
There are others here that have multiple accounts with high SP that are really abusing the system. They make 1000's of dollars in withdrawals a month and are living off Steem/SBD's. This is the stuff that should be stopped, but the high profile people (witnesses) just turn their heads the other way.
Don’t get me started on all the things that need to be fixed around here, lol. I can go on for a day or two...
The real fixing should be done by SteemIt Inc., but they don’t care and they don’t do anything.
The fact that a lot of early adopters are stuck in their circle-jerking and don’t care about the community, only about the money is a huge problem.
But we are small and can only do so much...
Those minnows that invest $5-$10 in bots are not going to be addressed by the bot. I must admit, I am not innocent in this. I do send money to the bots, although i realize I shouldn’t. But I have invested quite some money into Steem, and I never got a payout as high as $50, even when buying upvotes.
You know people are throwing $100s at a time to the bots??
I'm using $25-30 to buy upvotes for every post and getting payout around the same amount + some SP and I think this system is useful for platform, especially for minnows, since whales and dolphins has much more ways for promotion.
Also, let's not forget that main vote sellers like @minnowbooster and @smartsteem has limits and they use rating systems, so that they won't upvote shitposts. Maybe someone will use bidbots to make money on a low-quality post, but leaving spammy comments under everyone's posts in a row is not a solution. In my opinion this bot is not more useful then bot posting BTC price.
And I still havn't got an answer, why does this bot need SP? What it will be used for? It's not supporting minnows or quality posts, it's just leaving comments. If I'm not wrong no SP needed to post a comment.
Yeah, there are some dolphins/whales that throw in 75-100 at a time to the larger bots. Their posts and payouts are like $700+, that is abuse.
While I'm not quite as belligererant, I do have to agree that many people using bid bots is a symptom of the low quality stuff getting to trending page. I appreciate the idea of the bot, but I think this is something that should be looked at manually vs automated.
If quality content is upvoted with a bid bot, that's okay. Many times I spend 2-4 hours on a single blog post. To have that go on to make .12 is stupid. I sell those same blog posts for $100 to clients.
I think there will be a point where bid bots become obsolete (possibly with the communities update), but until then it's the best way for a creator like me, who spends hours creating and publishing high quality content, to get any sort of traction. Without a valid solution to them, I and many other high quality writers/content creators wouldn't be here.
corporations paying for politicians sounds like a great idea too, of course it doesn’t affect their motivation to represent the people, right?
if u are making good post a dont Se a problem om advertising it. but the problem is the shit posts.
if someone can take one photo of a garbage can put some random texs on it pay 100$ on bid pots get it on trending and make 150$ on it the system is not working. and its down hill from there. the bots Ned to be controlled in some way or like these bot is doing.
And again, the problem is the vote sellers who don't care whom they are selling their votes. And I would understand if the @transparencybot filter that kind of posts, which consists of one image or random text and mark them, but not the same huge and spammy comment under every post is annoying and pointless!
Rightly said bro, I am a newbie and have written down around 10 articles, but it is quite disappointing to see my good posts not even making $1. I have much to write about, writing is not a problem for me, problem right now is the fear of having my article lost and not seen by others, as its been happening since I joined. Can you explain to me, how can I use the bidbots to have few of my articles get in the streamline?