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RE: On Voting Bots
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)