Vote selling (the historical perspective)
I have lately, and more than a few times, been accused of having double standards when I bring the vengeance of the Bidbottophant down on some poor sod (i.e. downvote them). People seems to think that I myself is bying bidbot votes, some of them simply because they think everybody are, others because the have seen upvotes from smartsteem and OCDB on some of my posts and didn't realise that these two profiles have begun using manual curation.
But I haven't bought votes... EVER... that is, I actually did it once!
the vote bying post
When the bidbot-services started I didn't pay much attention to it, and it certainly felt wrong to me to cheat and circumvent the rules of the quality curation game. I like to compete on quality, because I am good at what I do, and I never felt annoyed when some girl in bikini, some pseudo-psychologist, some cute, little girl with a flute or other entertainers beat me to the high rewards. I have been in the entertainment business for many, many years and I acknowledges that the easy pop tune always wins. No problem there. But the vote-selling destroyed one central promise of the Steemit platform: That we compete on posts, funny comments and interaction and that everybody has a chance in that game.
None the less I was in doubts as some of the people I like, admire and trust here on the platform also were in doubt about the reasonableness of this. So I decided to try buying a vote and then write a post about it. I also hoped for a good discussion in the comments so I could hear all the arguments. And I did get exactly that.
For the thorough reader, you can see the post here. It is interesting as it shows how much doubt people felt a year ago about the concept.
Trying out vote-bying (14th of November 2018)
The result of the post was that I decided not to use bidbots! And I haven't done so ever since. The views I hold about them today was pretty clearly expressed by some of the people commenting. Enough to help me make up my mind.
"Just because I think they don't contribute to raising the value of STEEM or the quality of content on the platform, I don't use them. I don't see myself using them in the future. And I have my (unpaid) voting bot configured not to vote for any posts that have votes from them."
"While it still tempts me sometimes, I haven’t paid for votes since last June when I vowed to stop. You do get the satisfaction that your post has a double-digit pay-out but the number is an illusion."
"Vote buying won't help Katharsisdrill survive on Steemit because ultimately, such action undermines the very community he depends on for his survival; this is generally why morals exist in the first place. "Erst kommt das Fressen, und dann kommt die Moral" is quite short-sighted; often, without morals, the food will stop coming, as we all depend on groups."
@ocrdu who was a brilliant photographer, maker of ivy art and commenter of undeserving steemians has since then left, but he did fight the Steemit abuse while I was just making comics. I did make a logo for his Church of Piglet profile though.
P.S. I did have some bidbot votes on this post. They were bought by a user who really uses a lot of bidbots. I am not really sure about the intentions.
Hi @katharsisdrill i want to thank you for advising me to stop with them bidbots it is working out better for me i even had a visit from @ocdc which was the first time and was quite honored and now feels that my content is worth something 🌝
Great thing with the upvote from ocdc. We're all better off without the bidbot system. If just the promoted posts get to work I think that would be the best solution.
Thanks let's hope it gets even better with this newsteem 👍
Until this all settles down some are going to think that votes suppled by @smartsteem, @rocky1, @appreciator and @tipu are paid ones. It may be a matter of time when @booster and @therising join in.
I got one from @tipu on my last post, but it was not paid for. The bots are moving to curation and people can't assume they are paid votes without inspecting wallets now.
https://steemwhales.com/clean-trending/
This fine utility is also showing native 'no bot posts' as having paid votes resulting in unwarranted flags. As I said.. it's going to take some time for the new STEEM rules to settle.
I find them via my old friend and fellow viking Booster's wallet. Hopefully I can soon stop worrying about this all together and get back to my art business.
I can't find any official statements about Rocky1, appreciator or tipu going manual. Is this behind the curtain talk or what? or have I overlooked something?
Somehow they owe us to come with an official statement of what their future politics will be. I would prefer if it was with some crying and remorse and a strange hat, but a one line of: We will now manually curate content, would do.
Haejin just wrote this yesterday. Things are really going faster than I would ever believe.
The H posts have stopped, and he's dormant for the moment.. but it's promising.
I don't know if there's official statements, but I'm seeing votes from these bot owners more and more.
Hope they spread them wisely.
maybe i should start actifiting again. 100% upvotes from hajin -nice! lol
Let's see if he does anything at all.
Maybe they suddenly found themselves with 100% voting power and thought - this is bad business. Let's bribe that selfroghteous one-man army, Slobberchops! I mean I had a bidbottet upvote as stated in the post.
Right now it is of course too early to say anything, but the omens and the sign in the sky are surprising.
This post was shared in the Curation Collective Discord community for curators, and upvoted and resteemed by the @c-squared community account after manual review.
@c-squared runs a community witness. Please consider using one of your witness votes on us here
Out of pure curiosity, why did you:
To point smartsteem to the post so they can decide if they want to vote for it. They only vote for steemcentric content and this was. I am not sure they still look at it but they made a post where they said they would look at posts that had paid 1 steem to null.
Now things seem to go in the right direction I am going to write less about steem subjects, so I thought I give it a go.