Bid-bot activity report -- 04/01/18 - 04/07/18. Who's paying the most to promote their articles?
The list below represents the 50 largest net transfers to bid-bots for the promotion of articles posted on Steemit during the last calendar week (Sunday through Saturday).
Due to formatting restrictions, only a few columns can be displayed.
Note: Due to the complexity of certain promotional tools and their associated refunding mechanisms, some smaller refunds may be duplicated or missed.
What is this report?
Many authors choose to promote their posts via Bid-Bots. In return for direct payment, the bots will upvote your article. This service is fully "legal" on Steemit and used by minnows and whales alike.
There are many reasons why an author may want to purchase votes.
- Give the impression that the article is of substantial value and perhaps you should think so too.
- Cause the article to make it to the "Hot" or "Trending" category where it gets more exposure and more votes.
- Cause the payout to increase so that anyone that votes on the post will share in a higher curation pool.
- Attempt to make a direct profit on the vote by receiving a vote that nets more than the cost of the bid.
- Increase the authors reputation by receiving large SP votes. High SP votes move the reputation quickly.
- Support another author or entity indirectly through a Bid-bot.
The list is sorted with the highest NET amounts paid to the Bid-bots on top in descending order.
- From = The user who sent the payment to the bot.
- BID (SBD) = The total of all bids sent to the bots in SBD or Steem for this single post.
- NET (SBD) = The net total of all bids sent less refunds received back in SBD or Steem for this single post.
- Article Payout = The total STU (SBD/SP) payout value of for the entire article (not just from bots). This is the total paid to the author and curators. (This is the $ value which shows on the bottom of every post.)
- Link is the direct link to the article that has been promoted via the bid bot.
Largest Net Bids sent to Bidbots and and other post promoters
Sometimes great articles get to the top because they are great articles.
Sometimes other articles get to the top because there was sufficient money to pay for that placement. It is up to the community to judge if the rewards pool is being properly managed and distributed in a fair and honest manner.
The wonderful thing about Steemit and the Steem blockchain is everything is transparent
allowing you and all those who care about this platform to be educated on how to properly use the platform as well as how to protect it.
This week I have made a personal decision that I will no longer use any bidbots.
I am still considering the use of resteem services. The long term impact on our platform is just not worth the short term gain. I have used these tools in the past and in-fact very recently. I had of course justified this with the the same means as all others, my articles are quality, or they need to be seen so we can get the word out, etc.... As far as I know, I have donated all of the proceeds and then some back into various contests and worthy causes. To date, I have not pulled any money out of Steemit, but continue to powerup with external funding. My heart and money remains with this platform.
As a result of digging even deeper on the longer term problems associated with bidbots, I have launched a new tool called @transparencybot, which seeks to bring more transparency and education on the use of bidbots to everyone.
You can read more about this mission here.
Please resteem this post if you think this information might be useful to the Steemit community.
@bycoleman
https://ColemanAir.us
Craig
So your not going to use bidbots and will produce a bot to spam the blogs of the users of bidbots? I know there are abusers of the bid bots and they should be singled out, not regular users that have quality posts.
Thanks for the reply. I would hope most people find transparency on the platform to be very welcome, so far the consensus is very much YES.
Well maybe you should have a exempt portion of your bot for the people that do not wish to see the auto bot spam post on their blogs.
I sure as hell do not appreciate having your spam upvoted by you above the comments of those who read what I write. Maybe you don't appreciate what that is like because you don't actually produce anything. It's one thing for you do put spam in the comments. It's quite another to upvote your own comments so that they are at #1 position. Not cool. I was interested in supporting what you were doing before as I said in response to your initial comment, but not since you upvoted your own post. You're no different than anybody else abusing the system to get attention.
Thank you for the feedback, it is appreciated.
The bot upvotes itself so it can get started, it is only two days old. If it did not upvote, then every author would simply downvote it and it would have a negative reputation and not be visible.
ALL SP/SBD from this project will be used to fund this bot to help protect this platform from abuse.
No one is making any money on this tool. I do hope I continue to have your support, transparency is simply great for all of us.
Blessings!
You do not have my support. As far as I am concerned, your bot is leeching resources off of my post just as much as any other bot that is draining the system. I see no difference. That's how bots work. They find legitimate content created by the brainpower of humans and they find a way to capitalize on the creativity of the content creator without doing any work.
Craig, what about the idea of combining the functionality of @transparencybot with that of @trufflepig created by @smcaterpillar ?
An evolved bot that combines the functionality of both could post comments combining the transparency information coming from the former with an assessment of "theorretical value" comming from the latter.
Worth giving a thought, don't you think ?
self-upvoted for visibility
You present some great info. that must be taken into consideration when sending bids to bid-bots, and vice versa.
There are always two sides to every story and we must take a look at both ends of the spectrum in order to see the picture more clearly.
We must also look at whether the pros or cons outweigh one or the other, and I agree that in long-term, the cons of using bid-bot services definitely outweigh the pros. I gladly respect your decision of discontinuing bid-bot services --- props to you my guy!!
Cheers and STEEM on :))
Thank you for the useful reply. The issues are indeed very complex, yet I think any student can see massive abuse in this list. It is not sustainable.
Thanks for the support!
No problem, it is my pleasure, of course. Yes, the issues are quite apparent as seen in the chart you mention. This most definitely is not a sustainable practice here, especially moving forward and looking ahead to the future of this platform.
Anytime, I appreciate what you are doing here for all of us!! keep it up :)
I have to admit I use bots every now and then if after 24hours there's next to no traffic and the content took a lot of thought to produce. I have said to myself however the bids will be no more than $5 SBD. I think a lot of your posts are worthy of using a bot especially when the only way many people see new content is in the trending pages of certain categories. It's a touchy subject and appears to me that posts such as this one are shining the light on the path ahead.
Thank you brother for the support.
Most of us feel our work is quality. And of course all of us want to be read after putting our heart and soul into the post, but then on FB, what does anyone get paid, and why is there still so many subscribers and why and how did some get so huge? -- They put their heart or talent into it and eventually they were noticed.
Why should it be any different here?
That's very true, it's hard to argue against a reasonable response as that. I would say that I've never spent 2-3hours gathering bible passages to post on Facebook, only on Steemit. I think there's a balance between abuse of the tools and fair usage. I for example have around 80 followers at the minute, yourself over 1000 so automatically there's a greater audience, a deserved audience I'll add as well. At this stage I personally don't feel I'm abusing the tools with my usage or my aim for using it, it's evident from the above post that some have less shame than others.
Granted! I probably would not have the followers had I not run contests that I promoted or wrote articles that I promoted. I truly agree, it is not easy to get started here. If one uses the tools especially the non-bots and resteem services to get a little boost, then there is likely no real impact to the rewards pool. IMHO, sending many hundreds to bid bots is often driven by greed without regard to the platform.
It is all a personal decision at this point. Money of course will dictate both short term and long term, for better or worse.
I agree entirely. As long as there's content such as yours providing analysis such as this then there will be hope, more importantly there will be accountability. Thanks again.
I like the analogy to Facebook usage and postings. The normal user on FB (not purchasing paid ads) just mingles, adds friends, comments, likes posts, etc. One can spend a few minutes or many hours a day on that platform.
On Steemit, that avenue is available also -- the organic expansion of friends/followers and discussion on topics of interest. But with the ancillary "game" going on of using multiple accounts and bid bots to actually make money, there seem to be two counterproductive currents in the same river.
I can't change the direction of the wind, but I can adjust my sails to always reach my destination.
I like this analogy -- quite clever and very accurate in accord to such a topic
Hi, would it be possible to talk to you via steem.chat or discord?
My names are @transisto or Transisto#4061 over there.
I sent you a memo.
Thanks.
This pretty much sums it up.
https://steemit.com/funny/@mrhanky/howwwwdyyy-ho#@transparencybot/re-howwwwdyyy-ho--bidbot
I wonder if there would be a way to add Views to this.
The main thing I see is like 300 upvotes but you click on the article it has like 18 views.
That being said I do like seeing these, and the ROI they get by paying bidbots. I will resteem this, since you are no longer using them.
I tried minnow booster out for the first time, I did actually get an engagement from using it, it just feels like cheating though, and I like doing things old fashioned and organically - and that's almost impossible here these days!
The huge number of views is due to the resteem services that upvote a post with 55+ accounts of very little value. This is really not a big problem to the platform. The bidbots eating up millions in rewards is.
Thanks for the support and doing things the right way, even if it is old fashioned.
Thanks for this bid-bot activity report, @bycoleman! There is at least one name on that list that I thought was an educational leader on this platform, but who now I realize seems to have popularity only because of paying for it.
I'm new and have been using a couple of the promotion services (and tried a couple of bid-bots to sad results). I went this route because I thought it was how Steemit worked! Now I'm seeing more posts about the negative aspects of the bid bots, and I'm hopeful that some sane, friendly and equitable solution will be found to this problem.
I'm following @transparencybot for further reports!
Thanks Mr.(Ms.) memos -- It is interesting to find out how some of our "leaders" are leaders isn't it. Good thing is that there are plenty of really great people with pure (or mostly pure) motives.
Transparency and education is the key.
Thanks for the support.
As a Collective, the Banana Bunch, we answer to both Mr. and Ms. :-)
Hopefully the transparency aspect of this platform is what's going to help us all grow and change in whole new directions, on and off of Steemit.
Here's a snack for all the time, work and dedication you put into Steemit, bycoleman:
Yes, I do hope you are right.
The banana fit right in with the rest of my fruit basket this morning.
Thanks,
The best things in life are Free, but getting your post seen cost SBD
#thealliance
Perhaps, but I'm very happy with the results of this post and have not spent a cent on it.
😉 Respect to that, who know's what can happen when your work get's shared.
This can happen.
https://steemit.com/introduceyourself/@transparencybot/transparency-bot-is-going-on-line-to-help-fight-the-rampant-rise-in-bitbots-and-their-long-term-devastating-effect-on-our