Open Letter to Bidbot Operators

in #steem6 years ago (edited)

As much as I understand the appeal of a free market, and as much as I'm one to advocate for letting people make their own choices regardless of outcome. I can't help but to think that there is a key distinction not being talked about. In other words, freedom of speech is not the same as enabling scams and lies.


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Free market Economy

In economics, a free market is an idealized system in which the prices for goods and services are determined by the open market and consumers, in which the laws and forces of supply and demand are free from any intervention by a government, price-setting monopoly, or other authority.

As a stake holder and a fellow Steemian I not only embrace this idea, I preach it. The corruption of governments and regulatory agencies is nothing that anyone who cares about honesty can ignore. However, I think we are guilty of conflating freedom with debauchery, and I'm willing to bet the word has almost lost its meaning.


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I'm only starting this conversation so far back, because I believe that without these foundational blocks we won't be able to have a healthy dialogue and my point might miss its mark.

There is a very old saying that comes to mind when I'm attempting to explain where I'm coming from:


"Your Liberty To Swing Your Fist Ends Just Where My Nose Begins" - Unknown Author


The Trending Belongs to everyone


And honestly, this was probably not the case before the bidbots made their appearance. Of course, I know that there will be some who will jump at my throat for saying this, but a quick gander at the past will show that my point is backed by evidence. (feel free to explore the golden times of trending, you will be surprised)

I'm also aware that not everyone has the funds to buy themselves a top trending spot, and that argument although valid is also moot. Wealth inequality is a topic of much debate with no obvious answers in sight, but I digress.

The point is...

We need to draw the line


There are many things that no matter who the person is, what he/she has done in the past or the size of the wallet we cannot as community enable with the excuse "its a free market". And as much as it might anger a bitbot operator or two, those who do not react ethically are complicit in the act.

I might be accused of creating straw men to make my case, but I happen to think that in this particular situation, it might help to be a little ridiculous to get my point across. So let's play a "What about then?" game for a minute.

If someone sends into trending a post...

  • Snatching toddlers tips & tricks - What about then?
  • Revenge porn - What about then?
  • How to join ISIS - What about then?

Please note, I'm being ridiculous intentionally. I think everyone would see any of these posts and flag it to oblivion, and if that would not be the case, I would be disappointed with humanity, not just bid bot owners. The only reason why I even bring this up, is because we seem to only be able to recognize painfully obvious absolutes and not all the shades that exist in between.

Taking some steps back from my ridiculous examples, let me try some that are very likely to happen or have already happened in our platform.

  • Miracle Product to cure all Cancer - What about then?
  • Pyramid Scheme ICO - What about then?
  • SCAM "OFFER" Announcement by a Witness mind you - What about then?

Ethics > Politics


I can't for the life of me accept anything else and feel comfortable about it. What I'm trying to say basically, is that we can't put money over integrity. That is not a phrase that should outrage absolutely anyone.

However, I will attempt to tackle a few of the challenges and hopefully get a healthy conversation started.

Who determines what should be un-voted?


The answer is not obvious all the time, but I'm mainly talking about the situations when it is. I'm not trying to say that one influential person, that one whale or witness can make this decision alone because of personal vendettas or anything superfluous of the sort.

For example, I happen to not believe in the flat earth theory, but this does not mean that I think they should be punished or censored for what I perceive to be incorrect.

Let's be honest. In the recent days the obvious cases when a bidbot operator could have stepped up and shown the right initiative have be plastered all over our main trending page. I trust my opinion on this matter is shared by most of the participants of this platform and if I'm wrong please call me out.

This could start fights


Maybe, but what's the alternative? What is the cost of not taking care of our virtual home? - I'm willing to have a conversation regarding this possibility, but I struggle to see the violence in unvoting a post that is promoting something unethical. Note that I'm not advocating specifically for flags, even though I personally have chosen to flag the posts that have motivated me to write this.

These "fights" would also send the right message in my opinion. It would basically tell would be scammers, loud and clear. - "YOU ARE NOT WELCOME".

Refunds?


Not my place to say, I happen to side with @yabapmatt on this issue. If I was running a bidbot business I would refund and blacklist a scammer, even if he was a top 20 witness. (I know this is a jab, but I'm being honest). However, I don't think anyone can make that decision for the bidbot operator.

Political Costs


I happen to understand this aspect of the problem more than anyone would imagine. As someone who has participated in "the real world" of the political environment, I tend to empathize with the cost of decisions.

Angering a whale that purchased votes from your bot, might result in losing witness votes, retaliation flags or other infantile reactions. I get it, I understand it, but what we might be failing to consider is the respect and political weight someone who stands by his principals wins when he/she decides to climb the steeper hill.

I've said it before, what @pharesim did took courage. He could have lost his top 20 position as a witness, but instead of him losing his position as a top ranked witness, I'm willing to say he gained more support. I did not hesitate for a second to unvote silent witnesses (complicit really) and give him my witness vote instead. I doubt I'm alone on this matter.

Money != Respect


Who ever attempts to connect those two is doing some mental gymnastics at best. I'm not aware of a store I can go purchase some respect. I'm sorry if I'm being ridiculous, but I feel like this needs to be said at times.

Everyone is free to weight what they value more, but I happen to side with the latter. I would have a hundred times more respect for someone who stands on principles, that someone that calculates everything against the pocket.

In conclusion


Please, to all you bidbot owners, do not be quiet about this. You are all Entrepeneurs, businessmen (and women) who are offering a product that the people like and demand. I have no personal vendetta against you and embrace the idea of a free market. If people want to buy, who am I to tell adults they can't have it?

I'm simply asking you are not silent, you are not complicit, and when you see someone attacking, (because that is exactly what they are doing) the health of this platform, do your part to defend it.


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Again, the bid-bot operators come in for criticism and perhaps, yes, they don't do enough to combat spam posts being elevated but as always, I can't understand why the auto-voting bots are never brought in to question.
THE trending posts are mostly exceptions with no one person sat on trending continually, yet all over this platform, dolphins are creaming in a fortune daily simply by being auto-voted by fellow dolphins daily. Their posts are barely read, and now we have lost the'views' metric, we cannot see how much true engagement there actually is.
I think this bid-bot witch hunt is nothing more than a smokescreen to hide deeper issues perpetrated by a much smaller group with more financial clout. Bid-bots are mainly used by minnows. Auto-voting, a much worse issue that removes a damn sight more reward is mainly used by dolphins and whales.
Why are so many people of influence here not prepared to complain about huge auto-votes ? Don't answer, we know already, the silence is deafening.

Are you talking about whales and dolphins using SteemVoter on one another?
Im not sure what your complaint would be here.

See there is quite a big difference between bot bought upvotes and whales/dolphins upvoting same people, their friends, etc...

Those that use bots, effectively decide: "My content is amazing, it deserves exposure, it deserves to be trending"
Who is trending, who gets rewarded should be determined by a consensus, and by human decision. I shouldnt be allowed to say "my content deserves and will trend today".
Trending : Currently popular( liked, enjoyed by a large number of people)
Basically, what im saying is that the current trending tab has a wrong name. Thats the bot side.

The other side you mentioned im quite ok with. You can vote for anyone that you want with as many VP as you want, its your stake. And sure some upvote friends. But why shouldnt they?
Their friends maybe bring them value. Who knows? Should they not be allowed to do that because they have more stake then you and me? I upvote my friends as well. I like them, i like what they do.

Right now, its not who gets read more, its does a high stake holder read my stuff... I agree, stake based system is very flawed in regards of determining what is and what is not high quality but its necessary to accept that currently that is how the whole system works.

What your comment seems to me like is: "Why dont whales/dolphins want to be friends with me".
I cant answer that question, but i know that the approach of making yourself seen by those same whales and dolphins, contributing positively to their discussions, offering value to them is much a better way to go about this then saying you shouldnt be upvoting who you want, what those do that you upvote is not that good

And no, bid bots have much more delegation then the small groups you mentioned. Its not even barely comparable. Bid bots hold almost 50% of all SP.

I get your frustration, I really do... that being said I have no answers, no "solution" sort of speak for the autovote (the giant ones) as you describe.

This comes with the free market aspect of our experiment.

Meno thank you for the lengthy post. This subject has interested me for some time. I think it may be a little unfair to call this a fair market here in steemit.

Let me expand. Just assume if tomorrow the US goverment and all state and local non volutary entities disbanded. How would our freemarket look? Im going to guess it would be the worst period in human history but not for the reason people might. Currently in the real world resources are so concentrated that in this situation everyone would end up far worse than they are now..except of course the owners(who got all the resources through government coercion). Which leads me back to steemit, something like 90% of steem is owned by very few. This is equivalent to an oligarchical system and can not be overcome without significant systemic changes.
Im sure steemit has been good to many people and its certainly a move in the right direction but it still retains many of the qualities we all say we despise.

Won't disagree with that observation, it seems to be the case... however, will it always be the case? is there an opportunity for people to climb?

Fun fact, anyone with more than 500 Steem Power on their wallet is part of the 1% on this platform.

These are valid concerns, very valid... but I'm not convinced they will always be an issue, at least not yet.

Sometimes there are no easy solutions and all we can do is highlight what we see as 'issues'.
I Just think there are many double standards here, dependant upon where we are on the Steemit foodchain!
This is a financially driven environment, not one led by content. When 'success' is measured by financial value and not by true engagement, many of the arguments about what constitutes 'quality' or not become invalidaated.
Let's just all accept that it's all about the money, accept things how they are and move on. At least we will be honest and see the this online community is nothing more than a reflection of 'real' life.
Great writing from you again fella :-)

Oh listen Nathen, you are not incorrect here...

This is a financially driven environment, not one led by content. When 'success' is measured by financial value and not by true engagement, many of the arguments about what constitutes 'quality' or not become invalidaated.

Content does not make Steem go up in price, investment does. The idea is (or at least was) that the content would give Steem its relevance to attract investment.

Since we have not edificed content, great content, we have effectively not brought in the right type of investment. But this is a long war, not a single battle.

We are just in the pits, and take a bullet or two on the shoulder for disagreeing on how to reach solutions, that is all.

I would have to completely disagree with you here. :D
This is a completely content driven economy. Without content there wouldnt be any economy on Steem.
Steem is a reward based economy, meaning you need to have something to reward, that being content.

Economy constitutes of production (content), consumption (of that content) and the supply of money.
Be that content bad, average or amazing, doesnt matter.

We might be talking about the order that we think these dynamics play out. In which case, Its probably accurate.

Users with Great Content brings Investments which in turns produces great rewards for the users.

So its like a little cycle...

How the wheel gets started, that might be our point of disagreement.

But unfortunately Steem reputation is slightly stained due to many things.

  1. Dan leaving to, "make some better and more fair", indirectly attacking Steem by pointing out its failures in a very calm and professional demeanor. (if he was childish about it we would be better off. haha.
  2. the perception that Steem is a crap content economy based on the trending page.
  3. the perception that only the wealthy can earn anything on Steem.
  4. vote buying, bot account generation.
  5. inefficient account creation process... etc etc. etc.

All of that affects the investments, and the price.

You forgot the ninja mining... some people can't get over how this whole thing started.

I remember bumping into a post by @inertia back in the day that made a lot of sense to me... and honestly as simple as that, I got over the ninja mine thing.

Well i think the wheel got started because there was a belief that the founders and creators of the idea of Steem would deliver what they promised to.
When it comes to attracting investment, the token that shows it has the ability to fulfill its core goals (and offers value) will do better.
Had Steem completely succeeded at its goal i think we would be looking at a completely different picture in the market cap list.

"...Let's just all accept that it's all about the money..."

No.

You were absolutely correct to that point. There was a point you didn't touch on, and that is what ties bidbots to autovotes: people. The purpose of social media isn't to wind up bots and have them spout verbiage and vote for us.

Take the issue back to the principles @meno speaks of. The essential purpose of social media is to engage with people, not their avatars. Trails, selfvotes, bidbots--all automated voting--defeats that purpose and degrades society.

We don't need to give up because there's a problem, and that's what the quote advocates.

I'd like to point out that I believe this problem has solutions that I see being approached with the same effort that is dealing with stake-weighting. Oracles are going to have to be able to certify with some degree of accuracy that an account is a person and not a sock. This not only makes 1a1v possible, but the elimination of votebots.

While curation trails, autovotes, and etc., will still be possible, oracles will also be able to suss out this behaviour, and communities that choose to will be able to disable SMTs from being dropped to accounts that autovote.

It's always darkest before the dawn, and I hope that soon the dawn of SMTs, oracles, and communities potentiate leaping the predatory sharks and lazy asses that feed autovotes off the rewards pool.

While there will be communities that various dedicated profiteers and folks that haven't quite connected the basic social function principle with the harm that automated voting does to society, I expect that the benefits to communities actual social engagement exert will quickly make it obvious that allowing automated voting of any kind degrades communities and weakens society.

Millions of people around the world face the scourge of war, and believe it or not Steemit can do something about that. There are groups and posters that assiduously reveal details they gather through their careful research about Ukraine, Syria and the ME, and many governmental and institutional propaganda campaigns supporting war around the world.

Steemit is trying to do something about these evils, and the qualitative leap in societal power that SOC (SMTs, Oracles, and Communities) enable will reveal new ways Steemit and social media empowered by SOC can impact evils in the world.

That won't happen if we're phoning it in, just automating and letting our bots do the voting.

There's a change coming. It will get better in ways we can't imagine, and power to do good things and stop bad ones from happening is about to increase by orders of magnitude on Steemit with SOC.

I have to say that I am a user of bid bots as I am new, but your statement regarding who is "mostly" using bot bots is completely inaccurate.

Bid-bots are mainly used by minnows

That is simply not true from empirical experience. As OP stated, the trending pages are just "bid bot whores" (my words not his) to be frank.

The beauty of the blockchain is we can see and trace every transaction, I encourage you to take a look and verify. I do not want to "name and shame here" but I see the same posters day after day with +$600, all having a reputation value over 50. These are clearly not minnows by definition.

I am not trying to stir​ the pot but misinformation must be corrected.

If you could do the maths, you would see that the bidbots are mainly used by minnows, it's just that the most visibility is to the whales who use them occasionally to score a big trending post. You would never notice the likes of me, and thousands like me who use them with small amounts daily but over time add up. MY rep is 56, but thats from the increase in rep from spending money on bidbots, NOT because I am a great content provider, which Im not lol !
Look at posts from any of the 60+reps, in their list of upvotes you wont see bidbot votes, you will see auto voted upvotes.

It's time for a whole lotta this...

Can you stop being so awesome and save some for the rest of us !! Another banger man. You are quickly becoming one of my favorite voices on the platform. Keep it up ma dude.

thank you for reading brother... and more importantly, thank you for caring.

I think you're quite right as far as you go. As I state in my reply to @nathen007 your invoking principle is spot on, but I reckon you need to start at first principles. @nathen007 is right about autovotes, and bidbots are just another form of autovotes, as are selfvotes and circle jerks.

None of them are curation, in the essential meaning of human eyeballs judging content quality.

SOC (defined in my reply to @nathen007) make it possible for communities to limit voting, at least for the most part, to actual curation. It's difficult to overestimate how that will empower people, and how powerful people really are. I dream big, but I note that others before me dreamed big, and built the pyramids, the internet, and Steemit.

I can smell the change on the air, like the ozone that precedes a thunderstorm. Dig deeper into first principles, and dream bigger, and maybe the moon will fit in our sights. Who doesn't want Steem to moon? When it does, the real power of Steemit will be unleashed, and that is the power of people to put their money where their mouths are.

Thanks for a great post!

I just your reply to him, as usual brother your thoughts are very welcome and filled of great perspective.

I happen to think we are also on the brink of something great, we just need to get through the ugly times for a little bit longer.

I have always been honest and open about this with you. I do see the difference between use and abuse but I have never used them. I get a postpromoter and others upvote sometimes but comes from OTHERS so I take that as a donation or encouragement boost, like last post but comes from people I usually do not know or I am not in close contact and decided to do so. I have never bid on "myself" the same way I do not self vote. And it is not a preaching or judging remark, neither I consider myself better or worse for it. It was my choice to be naive despite the obvious rigging until it became some kind of experiment. So it is kind of a challenge.

But I understand people does out of frustration. I do not know what I will do in the future I can only respond for what I have done so far. Someone told me once if I did not use them I would be always on zero land. Grateful to all the people that has proved otherwise.

Is this an attack to bidbots? No, just a call for proper use. Someone encoutaging me one or boosting a charity or whatever, it could be even considered a proper use.

But if you bidbot yourself you are selfvoting... Is this wrong? I would only do that if I think I have something really very meaningful or important to highlight. I would really consider it an advertisement. But yet again we enter subjective lines.
Why not clearly put "advertised" as "advertised" why do keep in trying to mask it as genuine engagement?

And thanks for whoever has stopped boosting me without me ever asking. I do not think it is the same.

I do not believe in witches hunts one way or the other.
There are issues and holes though that generates community uneveness and yes, should be addressed. I wish it were in our nature a better disposition to proper use and not abuse, but almost every single thing in life

I understand where you are coming from, I really do. However, we can't make decisions for adults, hence why I try to keep my position as neutral as I can.

This does not mean I don't think we could do better, or that we could come up with a proper way of listing promoted posts (the promoted tab is useless) - I'm just saying its not the current reality.

So, I agree with your points. Buying votes is self voting, but I just won't say that is "wrong" because its everyone choice to do so.

As I said in my comment I have not said it has to be "wrong", and on fact they could be used for good things even, just that it has to be saved for something significant. For others, for the community or even why not, to advertise something meaningful to you as a cd release. It is like a at everyone tag.
If you abuse it... Same things happen... It becomes spam
And how do we filter it?

I do not consider myself morally better or worse.

But there are people that use them to.mine promoting hurried 1 picture low quality post. there is a misbehaviour that stained the whole community the same way users uploading copyrighted content stains... There are things that should be at least discussed. It is sadly obvious.

I know it is not in all bots either, honestly dunno much about them. So I am not debating oros and againsts tights or wrongs. Just my choice (so far) and why

I also have genuine talented artist friends that use (not abuse) them because they would not reach otherwise. How could I not understand it? I have been lucky so far, as I say I respond for what I have done not for what I will do.

https://www.minnowbooster.net/tos

If one can do it surely others can follow.

Oh, is this new? this is great... everyone should adopt this.

It's been around as long as I've been involved in MB, so at least several months.

There's an abuse forum on their Discord specifically for getting bad votes removed.

This is true... anyone can be in trending tab. In fact, a scammy project and shit coin got into trending spot and last for 7 days. By the way thank you for being the voice of these platform.

Did you FLAG your own post though @meno?

omg, i failed at doing that...

on my way

This is a very interesting post! I am reading this because you bought my vote via a voting bot and I personally feel the same way about them. Although I am unable to commit time at the moment to submit daily posts, I wanted to continue to contribute to the community with my vote so I chose to do so using (in my eyes) an ethical vote selling service. However, just because they have their own whitelist and checks, I still like to know what I am voting on so I log on every now and then when I can and check my votes and this is how I came to your blog!
So I guess what I am saying is there are more ways to combat the potential issues. The vote sellers can also play their part by checking on their votes after the event and reporting anything that is unethical.
I thought this would be a 'I hate bots' post, but I am pleasantly surprised to see someone thinking out of the box for a change :) Great post my friend! :)

I happen to share your appreciation for smartsteem. It distributes steem among all the accounts, its not just trickle up.

It brings a big smile to my face that you enjoyed it, and that this was a happy surprise for you.

Cheers

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