On Voting Bots
On Voting Bots
In response to a post describing why, in the author’s view, paid content promotion services are bad for the Steem platform, I was asked to share my thoughts on the matter. That post made some sweeping allegations against the owners and operators of such services, including that we have “remained silent” and refuse to answer questions posed by the community about these services and how they benefit the platform.
These allegations are blatantly untrue as myself and many of the other owners and operators of content promotion services are always available and open to discussion about these topics which are of key importance. I am not only open to, but also genuinely excited for, the opportunity to discuss the topic of paid content promotion services and what role they play in the future of the Steem platform.
The key is that those discussions take place in an open-minded, civilized, and respectful manner. I refuse to participate in any discussions characterized by personal attacks and disrespect for those with differing opinions as is unfortunately so often the case with online communications.
With that out of the way, I would like to start by discussing the two primary ways in which paid content promotion services benefit the Steem platform:
- Providing real utility, and therefore value, to the STEEM token; and
- Providing passive investors with attractive returns on their investment in Steem Power
Utility for the STEEM Token
Currently, the market value of the STEEM token is almost completely driven by speculation - as is the case with all cryptocurrencies right now. That is not sustainable however, so for Steem to succeed over the long term it needs to have real value, derived from real utility.
The STEEM token has a few different things that give it utility and therefore value, however the primary utility of the token is that it allows one to promote content on Steem-based websites. @ned says it better than I could starting at around the 5:25 mark in this video:
The transcription of the relevant segment is as follows (emphasis mine):
The 5th thing, and probably the most important aspect of the value cycles in all of this, is the idea that STEEM and SMTs really are the world’s advertising network. These are tokens that get laid across applications and they have these functional properties underneath everything that cause interfaces to basically sort order posts in terms of their value, and once you have posts sorted in their order of value, then any blogger curator content creator video creator or straight up advertiser can look at that sort order of value and say well you know if i just buy some more SMTs or STEEM i can promote my post higher up in that sort order and thereby get more attention which may help me sell more of my products, so that’s a good thing for me, there’s a return on investment.
So there’s a very natural, very sustainable, flow of value that’s caused by these tokens where value is coming in to buy or rent STEEM to promote content that causes sales in other places. That’s a value flow that’s very analogous to what we see with traditional advertising businesses like Facebook, Reddit, and Twitter. So all that is happening behind the scenes where there’s no company and that’s what’s so new about all of this and what makes it so possibly pervasive across the internet.
Paid content promotion services, currently in the form of voting bots, provide this utility for the STEEM token. Publishers can buy STEEM (and hopefully soon SMTs) and promote their content in order to sell more products, get more brand recognition, increase their followers, etc.
This is just like like advertising on traditional media sites, like @ned has said, but instead of this value going to the company that owns the site, on Steem it goes to Steem Power holders and helps increase the price of the STEEM token.
Some people have questioned whether or not this type of promotion actually provides these stated benefits for content publishers. Obviously that depends on the content that is being promoted, but @spiritualmax ran an experiment that clearly showed that using these services “increases your profit, your follower growth rate, and the SP value of your account.” Generally advertising works, which is why it is so prevalent, and there is no reason to believe it would not work on Steem-based sites as well.
Returns for Steem Power Investors
All of this content promotion is provided by holders of Steem Power. The returns are currently very attractive and therefore provide a very good incentive to invest in, and hold Steem Power, which I think we can all agree is a good thing for the platform.
I know of well over $100,000 that has been recently invested in Steem Power specifically for this opportunity and I expect that is just the tip of the iceberg for what is possible as the Steem platform grows and the word spreads.
I know one of the main issues people have with this is that it’s a small number of “whales” that are earning the vast majority of these returns. That is a distribution problem with Steem which pretty much everyone is aware of. It really has nothing to do with voting bots at all.
It’s just the way that Steem works that these accounts control the vast majority of the reward pool. It’s naive to think that they will give it all away and not seek to earn a return on their investment. If there were no voting bots they could still just as easily take the same portion of pool they are taking now, if not more! At least by selling their vote they are allowing everyone the opportunity to benefit through what is effectively free advertising.
The Problems
I want to be clear that I am not trying to say that everything is all sunshine and roses and that people are complaining for no reason. There are absolutely a number of issues with the Steem platform and with content promotion specifically.
My point is simply that paid content promotion services such as voting bots are not the cause of these problems, and getting rid of them (were that even possible) will not really change anything. Additionally I do believe that they add value to the platform and token as I described above so getting rid of them, in my opinion, would be like throwing the baby out with the bathwater.
I would love to discuss each of the problems in detail, but then this post would turn into a book and I would never get it finished! Perhaps I will try to address some of them in future posts if I can find the time and in those posts I can show how getting rid of paid content promotion services doesn’t solve the problem and also offer some potential alternative solutions.
For now though, I urge anyone who thinks getting rid of voting bots will solve whatever problem they see to really take some time and think through (a) how they plan to actually get rid of voting bots; and (b) whether anything would really be solved if they were successful.
Witnesses who run content promotion services
Last, but not least, I want to address the people who do not feel that witnesses or other respected community members should be running paid content promotion services and actively campaign against those that do. Let’s consider what would actually happen if those campaigns were successful…
There is clearly a large demand for these services both by content publishers and Steem Power holders, so if a campaign was successful to either force witnesses to stop running these services, or have them lose their position / respect in the community, then others who are not witnesses, or otherwise respected community members, would pick up the slack and run these services themselves.
Witnesses, especially those at the top, are typically very active in the Steem community, are trustworthy, and are truly doing what they can to make the Steem platform the best it can be. Some people might disagree with me, and there always may be a couple of exceptions, but I talk with many of the top witnesses on a regular basis and I wholeheartedly believe this to be true.
So the question you should ask yourself is: who do you want to be running the content promotion services on Steem? Who can we trust to run them in a proper and responsible manner? The top witnesses with the traits I described above, or random people whose intentions are unknown and who may not ever engage with the community or care about its long term success?
I know my answer, and I work every day to do what I can to ensure that the paid content promotion services on the platform are run responsibly and in a way that will hopefully benefit the platform as a whole.
In Conclusion
There are three main points that I hope my readers take away from this post:
- Paid content promotion services create real utility and value for the STEEM token
- The problems that exist are not caused by paid content promotion services, nor would they be solved if paid content promotion services did not exist
- It’s highly preferable to have these services run by top witnesses and other well known and respected members of the Steem community who will run them responsibly and have the best interests of the platform at heart.
Lastly, you - the reader - may disagree with the things that have been written here, and that’s okay - in fact it’s great to have different opinions and people who see things from different perspectives. The important thing, like I said at the beginning of the post, is to present your differences of opinion in a respectful and constructive manner.
I expect this post may stir up a good number of lengthy discussions in the comments, which, again, is great. I will do my best to try to read, upvote, and respond to each one that adds value to the discussion. It might take me a while to get to them all though, so please be patient with me!
For those of you who made it this far, thank you for your time and I look forward to continuing to discuss these topics as the Steem platform grows and evolves!
Banner artwork by @nateaguila
Matt, first of all I want to say publicly that your first point about you wanting to engage with others in a honest discussion about the bots or any other topic is completely true... I have seen you interact on many occasions with me and others that you may disagree with, but you have always been approachable and helpful in trying to get across your point of view. So I think the point that people make about "bot owners" not engaging clearly can't be talking about you, since you are readily available and happy to engage. It is why I support you as a witness because I clearly think that you have the community at heart and care about the little guys too.
On your second point about the advertising, I completely understand the concept. And I would be thrilled to accept that point if people were using the bot services to advertise a product. But from what I've witnessed, I haven't seen anything approaching "advertising". I think most people that use the bots do so with the desire to 1) make a profit 2) have a scheme where if it gets high enough they will get some less informed people to upvote (or follow) or 3) want to increase their reputation so they can earn instant "respect".
Don't get me wrong, I'm not saying all bots need to go simply because they aren't really "advertising" yet, what I am saying is that people can see with their own eyes the truth. And when that advertising argument is used it diminishes the credibility of the argument.
In my opinion, we might one day have advertising so its good to have the architecture in place. And I completely agree some of the bots provide value for steemit, most of the bots provide value to the SP holders (which is good for short term demand for steem as you say), and some of the bots even provide value to the users.
Where I think the good bot owners such as yourself could improve the message is through continuing to increase your transparency... And I know you are the leader in this area as you are the creator of steembottracker which attempts to provide transparency (and does some really amazing things btw). So this comment isn't really so much directed at you, as it is to other legit bot owners. I think the bot owners have made a big effort to do so in the past few months too btw... Gone are the 6 days posts for instance. But there is still a wide range of abuse by the bot owners that give you all a bad name... Things like taking payments and not delivering the votes, changing the rules from one day to the next with no notice, some bidding on their own auctions to give a losing vote value. These are things that if they could be cleaned up will help you all a bit more with the image.
But I will agree with you that the bots are not the cause of the problems that people have with the platform. My opinion is that the bots provide that utility you discussed for the owners of the SP, ie you can monetize their votes so they can be passive owners of steem. Let's face it, that is really what the bots do (including minnow booster and smartsteem too)
So whether the paid upvotes are "advertising" or simply a way for people to make a profit, they by themselves are definitely not the problem. And frankly I use bid bots myself to make a profit, so I don't see anything wrong with that either. I think the problem people have is much deeper, and the bots bear the brunt of the anger as they are easy targets because of 1) some bad apples that take advantage of users 2) lack of transparency (but getting much better) and 3) there is a lack of consistency in enforcement of what is considered "good".
In my opinion, the true thing that people get frustrated about deep down is the point you made here. It is dead on.
And by the way, I think this problem will get fixed too... One way or the other. People don't like to think that the prices going down are a good thing, but in reality it is how the free market adjusts for imbalances. I have faith that things will get better in the future. And I have a lot of respect for many people I have met through this platform. And that definitely includes you! Thank you for what you do for all of us and for taking the time to talk about these issues that we face in an open and honest way!
I don't agree with the bidder's profit motive of bid bots, there's clearly no value added in that transaction to the platform, and while I understand that it's something that helps a minnow earn, it does no good for the platform. I anticipate arguments about this attracting new folks to the platform, but I don't think that is the right approach and is largely short term thinking for a social media platform.
As for advertising, I would feel a hell of a lot better if the native promotion worked better and made bid bots obsolete. That leads to a healthier platform in my opinion, because now the rewards pool can focus on content independently of advertising. I already know there are some good ideas for that so I'm curious to see how the discussion evolves.
I hear your point @eonwarped, and as far as user of the bots not adding value of to the platform I would also mostly agree with you. But it is what it is. They way it currently sits, the owners of the system have delegated so much of their voting power to encourage the use of bidbots, minnowbooster, and smartsteem that it essentially necessitates that people earn a profit or their wouldn't be any more vote selling. There are no natural buyers yet of the "advertising", and until that develops we will have the owners do what they can do to get their return on their SP. They aren't going to let is stay unused, I can promise you that.
Yeah I know how that goes. It's just that it's a shame that everyone thinks that that are entitled to such gross returns on their SP to begin with. It's the old fight between doing more for the platform vs maximizing what you can for yourself. In my ideal world even when advertising develops the $$ won't go to SP holders anyway. We'll see...
This is the best possible outcome for the platform.
Currently, SBD is sent to @null for "promotion." In exchange for this sacrifice, you are rewarded with a higher ranking on a separate tab which nobody in their right mind would visit.
In my opinion this was the most terrible idea ever to exist, and I'd like to have a conversation with whoever came up with it. Not to shout or demean or attack in any way... to listen. I want to understand the reasoning behind that decision, because in my view, it alone is to blame for the current situation.
(That's right! I don't blame bot owners for doing what they're doing. They're doing what the platform allows them to do. The bidbot problem is systemic. It's a problem with our consensus code, full stop.)
Let's replace the current in-built promotion mechanism with one that actually assigns higher trending ranking to promoted posts, in proportion (let's say 10x) to the amount of STEEM (not SBD) that was burned. That's the first step and it would help the platform in several ways:
Hi @yabapmatt
Thanks for taking the time to write this piece.
I concede to being vocally against bid-bots, how they are managed by some, and am guilty too of casting general assumptions that the owners would rather not discuss their implications for STEEM and Steemit.
This post has proved some of the above not to be the case.
I'll save the long-winded response for another post on Bots at some point, but would like to ask the following:
What would Steemit look like if we all delegated our stake to bid-bots?
and in response to:
Do you not think that (minus bot owner take), delegating to a bot is essentially self-voting?
Cheers.
I 100% agree with your very last point Asher...
I agree with you that delegating to the bot and then receiving 90% is the same as self voting... There is practically no difference as it is just monetizing your vote value. The 10% is what the lazy man gives away so he doesn't have to open his account and then self vote. (plus may a fraction of that to not look so bad)
That's why I think this issue is a lot more complex, because the owners of the system are doing one thing, and then the community are frowning on the exact same thing done at the lower levels. Its also why people get mad when someone flags another (think haejin), because you can always find a shittier post that got a big upvote and then got to keep it. We see it every day.
I think the solution will happen when the whales are begging at some point for the "community" to develop. Usually that will occur when they want the price to stop going down. At this point there is not that kinda pain. Its fat city for many of the owners.
But it will change and they will come knocking at your door and they will say "Asher, what can we do for you so that we build a strong community?"... "Can we delegate you 100k steem power and have you build out a network where the people are happy and feel like engaging daily?" "Where is fulltimegeek, can he help us lead people to be good community participants?"
You watch, it is coming... Maybe not this week or the next... But when the price gets low enough that will be what happens. The demand for community builders like you will grow very large (and also that applies to Matt with his services too)
Oh yeah, I feel like this needs to be a component of every discussion. Delegating to a bid bot is absolutely just self voting with the stake from the point of view of the delegator, but even more efficient. (Well except for shameless self upvoters that make sure they vote their own comments throughout the day to not"waste stake".)
I suppose a little goes to the bidder and the bidders gets some promotional value (questionable and even then, unpredictable), so it's better than the delegator actually self voting, but not by much.
One might ask, so what should they be doing with their stake anyway? Delegations to places that increase the value of the platform, obviously. Long term thinking and their own steem will explode in value. Making their bid bot generated SP look like dirt in comparison.
Hey, okay, otherwise we can build a better platform and let these bid bots rule over a drying pond. Shrug.
As I responded to Asher above,
So is it any wonder why people get confused? When the guys that own the system do one thing (whales), its kinda hard to complain about lesser people doing the same thing (every other fish).
Its kinda funny... when I use minnowbooster I see many of my friends in the vote totals because they sold their vote away to minnowbooster. But they will frown on someone who upvotes their own post. I don't blame them though, they are encourage to do such things on a regular basis (sell their votes that is)
Yeah I totally struggled with this disparity. Some people take the position that it's okay until your vote gets to a certain point, but I feel to be fully consistent you have to reject the behavior altogether. And the people that take such positions are really at a disadvantage vs the ones that don't. Oh well....
I've been waiting on this post for a while. I knew you had it coming. And I couldn't agree more with what you've said. For example, I run a promotion service (upvote bot) myself and can say that because of this service I have put an extra $10,000 of my own hard-earned money into Steem that I wouldn't have done otherwise. I also know that many of my delegators have powered up their Steem (locking it in and increasing the value) just so that they could delegate more to my service.
Content promotion is a key component of all media sites and I think it should be embraced here as well because it adds value to our platform and token like you've mentioned. I know that the biggest concern most people have is about the rewards pool and the way in which the Trending page is ordered. But to my understanding, the rewards pool doesn't really grow. It's long-term utility is dependent on the value of Steem's value rising. So get rid of upvote bots (SP holders and investors) and that value will drop... therefore damaging the value of the coin and causing more harm to the rewards pool. Please correct me if I'm wrong on that.
As for the trending page, I feel it's pretty simple to tell who has paid for promotion and who hasn't. And I also think that once HiveMind (communities) is added this will take care of most of the complaints. Our sub-steemits (if you will) will have much better categorized content for you to view. So it wont' be as likely that you'll see things that don't interest you.
Anyways, just my thoughts. But I really appreciate you taking the time to write this article. I've been waiting to hear your thoughts for a while. 👍
Thanks @brandonfrye! I've been working on this post for a while and went through quite a few drafts and different directions. It's really hard to clearly explain your thoughts on things!
You're definitely right about the reward pool - the amount of STEEM in it does fluctuate a bit but it's fairly constant. The value all comes from the market price of STEEM, which is currently driven mostly by speculation, but ultimately will be driven by the token's utility.
And the trending page, I think that should just be gotten rid of entirely (which I've posted about before). I actually had an entire page written about that in a previous draft of this post but I felt the post was already long enough and I didn't want to get off on too many tangents.
You're probably right. I've spoken with a lot of Steemians who say they rarely visit the Trending page except to see what the recent flag wars are about lol. I would be perfectly fine with it going away or at least showing new users to Steemit something else when they first log on.
This is an interesting comment, because without the trending page, I would argue that bid bots are irrelevant (from a promotional point of view). (Or are you thinking about leaving HOT in there?) So if you do make a post about it, I would be happy to read it.
I will be addressing the main part of this well-written post shortly(ish). I have plenty to say :P
Here's the post i made a little while back about getting rid of the trending page: https://steemit.com/steemit/@yabapmatt/what-if-we-got-rid-of-the-trending-page It's really just the global trending page i'm saying to get rid of, and just keep the content-specific ones.
Overall I think there needs to be a balance between advertisements and interesting content. The global trending page clearly does not strike a good balance. Also Steem currently poses a weird situation where advertisements and interesting content overlap that you don't see in most traditional media.
Ah okay I see. I don't actually have a problem with the concept of a global trending. But more filters and search functions are much needed.
In terms of traditional media, it's funny because botting and shady engagement services try to optimize the metric that would grant access to exposure, but it seems to be difficult enough that it isn't causing major problems (or there are systems in place to look for it perhaps). So the actual platform provided promotion service is used, and clearly marked as such.
On steemit we only have the the former kind (okay fine promoted was the attempt at the latter and... Yeah we all know that's a joke), and it clearly just looks shady, even if that isn't the intent. Like you say, it all blends together. And only a platform change will help with that.
Bid bots are a promotion hack that have the intended promotion effect, but there are so many downsides (to be written... Bleh). I think someone needs to drive the way to a healthier ecosystem.
(And I don't think communities will solve all the problems)
So here's my take from someone relatively new to STEEM and sees the massive opportunity that the promotion 'bots' have...
Like you mentioned in your bio, they are content promotion services / software in my opinion too. The 'bot' brand almost hides what they CAN be used for...Promoting (hopefully) great content!
I do my best to create the best content on the blockchain I can . That being said, getting on the radars of others isn't that easy here. So waiting for a 'whale' to upvote or engage with you can take some time.
Time I'm willing to invest in for sure...
I'm here for the long run and have a multi-year plan for developing my brand on this platform.
'Bots' are helping me on my journey!
As a content creator on this platform I look at every time I invest in a bot, I'm not doing it for any return other than...Getting my stuff out there to more people. And it's working, slowly but surely.
Is it a perfect solution? Nope. And I'm sure things will improve overtime. But as a content creator who WANTS to promote his stuff on the blockchain...I enjoy the services you and other provide.
Well said, @jongolson. Creating your best content is all you can really do and I know that you do that very well. Glad we got connected early on!
One of the complaints we've seen is that bots are "mindless" and are upvoting crap posts. Of course this is subjective... but there really are spammers, plagiarizers, and down-right con artists using our promotion services. Luckily there are people like @themarkymark who have spent countless (and thankless) hours combatting this and creating the ultimate Steemit blacklist.
And with the latest @postpromoter code created by @yabapmatt I believe @buildawhale's blacklist (run by @themarkymark) is added in by default. I know that I've personally added his blacklist to my service and many others have done the same. And this goes back to what Matt said about those running these services being trustworthy. We've all got to do our part to be responsible and ultimately the community will judge for themselves.
You guys all have a tough job and thankless one too. And I get the arguments from all sides, there is a ton of garbage out there...But like you said man, in your comments above...Content promotion is key for all media sites. You have to take the good with the bad. That's social media LOL The more money coming into STEEM though, I think is great.
I had the same experience myself when I first started, and I've heard from many other people like us whom these services have really helped. I appreciate your support and I wish you the best of luck on your Steem journey!
Oh for sure. They are a huge help. By no means I guarantee though. And I think if people have the right mindset when using them, and follow it up with the engagement, etc...It's a great game plan for success long term here.
This post brought up a lot of interesting aspects of promotion/advertising in relation to the value of the Steem token that I hadn't thought of before. For that I thank you @yabapmatt. I, too, have been awaiting this post from you and the angle you took on it is informative and intriguing. I have used bots occasionally- dabbled with them early on, but didn't get a positive ROI or any noticeable benefits for my account on Steemit. This, coupled with the general "frowned upon nature" of using voting bots on the platform led me to try to grow my account organically. But I really appreciate where you're coming from here. I agree with you that most of the top witnesses do have a high degree of awareness on the platform and want it to succeed. Again, I hadn't thought of advertising services as boosting the token in quite that way. That's of course a huge boon to many of us powering up SP.
Of course, like so many, my main offense in the voting bot category is just the way it makes Steemit appear to an outside group of people due to the overall poor material on the trending page (so much better stuff out here making less than $2!). I understand it would be incredibly difficult, if not impossible to truly control the quality unless someone was fully dedicated to the task as a full-time job! I am glad to hear you say "do away with trending". Like many others I don't read it, but find/follow/peruse content "through the grapevine" so to say.
Personally, I've found it more sustainable/lucrative for my account to delegate SP to a private bot service that then gives me a daily upvote. It's nothing to get me anywhere close to "trending", but it provides me a steady positive ROI. As I said above, my experience was different than spiritualmax's in that I didn't find using the bots really helped my account grow. I'll be interested to see how SMTs, Oracles, Communities, etc all shift this current conversation significantly. It seems that with the SMTs and Oracles on top of the blockchain, Steemit.com and its issues will fade as the Communities come into focus. Again, thanks for writing this piece and sharing your thoughts as a witness, bot owner and all around person who cares about the future of Steem.
Thank you, @mountainjewel!
This is exactly right. As far as I understand it steemit.com was supposed to just be a proof of concept site to show what can be done and other third-party sites would come along and carry the bulk of the usage. It seems that the Steemit team is still focusing on trying to empower third-party sites to overtake steemit.com and then they can choose the best UI/UX for their audience which I think is great.
That's the whole point of SMTs and Communities and I, like most people here, are really really looking forward to that!
That is an interesting point Matt... It would make a lot of sense if you are right. Maybe they really don't care about steemit being anything other than a proof of concept site. If that is really the plan then it would explain many things!
While I'm against using bidbots myself, this is an interesting post that reminds us in a very clear way that attracting capital is one of steemit's primary aims (and it's always been clear about this from the outset. )
I basically have the same opinion (or I think it's more of an objective fact) that bid-bots are basically the mechanism whereby advertising takes place, although I'd never really thought about the idea that the revenue generated is more widely distributed than to just the owners of the big corporate sites, which is something I'll have to take away and think through.
I think it's just that all of us who prefer not to use bid bots just value the human validation more than self-valuation/ validation, but then again perhaps we're just naive in that we haven't adjusted this brave new age of micro-capitalism.
When I say 'think through' above I mean what I need to think through is why I'm perfectly happy to spend £1/ day on targeted Facebook ads, and earn £100s a month through advertising from WordPress, when I find the idea of self advertising on here through bid-bots as somehow demonstrating a lack of integrity.
Perhaps it's because it's my professional services I sell through those other platforms and more of of my personal interest stuff I share through here, which I think still has value, and I think that's true of many of us 'community curation types' who are haranguing your comments stream... we're not here to sell services.
As you and everyone else says, perhaps it's soon to be that the advertising services and the community aspect separate out so all of this will be moot, I can't see the bots going anywhere. Until then, it grates seeing good content undervalues and mediocre content bid-botted up, which is maybe something of a long term problem because surely for steemit to have utility as an advertising platform, people have to actually be using it? And clearly many people are being put off by not being able to get any kind of return (and maybe because of a sense of injustice caused by relative deprivation), so something does need to be done about making a distribution more equal, but I'm rambling and point taken about that not being a bot issue.
Bit tired to go into any more depth and am still thinking these issues through, just wanted to put something out there though.
It's still a very new space of course, full of contradiction and innovation so none of us can be certain what's going to happen moving forwards.
Useful article.
It's great to see an intelligent counterargument from a voting bot provider as typically they are silent on this issue, and vastly outnumbered by the amount of people crying out to ban voting bots.
This is a multi-variable discussion but typically I see most people latching onto one piece of the argument and then completely ignoring all other aspects along with their potential benefits.
Like you say the issue is around inequality of reward distribution on Steemit, which is definitely broken. I was very turned off at first when joining the platform (before investing $1k of my own money) because you start with 15SP, which isn't even enough to earn curation rewards. Then as you earn SP, the delegated amount drops away.
So you spend a lot of time literally earning nothing in terms of net SP, and the rate at which you earn SP at first is incredibly slow which is very demotivating. I think more needs to be done to help people get off the ground when they join Steemit and this should be accomodated with increased controls to prevent people having multiple accounts.
If you get an intelligent and balanced critique of this post from someone, will you share it to continue the discussion? It would be great to get some feedback from the devs on this but I haven't seen anything to date.
Great article @yabapmatt. You've certainly contributed a lot to the community and I would say you are engaged.
Bots are advertising and I avoid advertising. I want to see what I want to see not what the highest bidder puts in front of me. I've not been on steem much lately as a consequence. A lot of advertised content has been of no value to me.
Having said that I think you have valid points. It's a complex issue. And indeed the fact that the money is so skewed to the whales is deflating. But this happens everywhere in life. Not just steem.
It also means that if I want my post to be seen then I have to engage in the bot buying. But this is the same outside of steem.
Ultimately the bots are a response not a cause. And what is a paradigm shift in blockchain is that the governance of how people operate is led by the protocol. So new protocols (blockchains etc) will be created until a balance has been found.
👍🏾🙏🏿
Well that's why you can create your own feed and choose who you want to follow. I love my steem feed!
I’m not educated enough about this topic to make a proper comment. I do see both sides of the coin. I agree that many blame what’s broken on here with the obvious enemy. There are so many other problems that many just don’t want to dig further to find root causes. Or simply not care to acknowledge.
No more of my spammy comment. You have plenty of lengthy ones to keep you busy. I wanted to reply to this comment because I saw your feed remark.
I hope I don’t spam that feed of yours! 😀
Hi @yabapmatt and thank you for the vote. It is deeply appreciated.
Yes, but my feed was mostly all resteems. Wherever I looked I seemed to be getting articles that were paid upvoted. The effort to find content got bigger than the time I had.