What is appropriate use of upvote bots? A survey.
Please share what you feel is acceptable use of voting bots
When I got here, there were a lot less users, then, and it was relatively easy to go through Steem and learn the basic culture surrounding it. In that time, I learned that too much bot use was frowned upon, and could even make actual users have less respect for you, and less likely to vote on your post. There were also a lot less vote bots, back then.
Things have changed quite a bit around here. The value of Steem has gone up, and with that, we've seen a lot of growth here. There are TONS of new users here, and there is nothing to guide anyone on what is considered acceptable use of a voting bot, except that if you use them too much, you might get attacked by the community. Often when this happens, those users usually respond "It's not like there is a guide telling me what to do, or what community standards are." I can't argue with them, there.
Technically, speaking, the code is law. Buy as many votes as you want, self vote as much as you want, and others can flag you as much as they want. Personally, it's concerning that it's so easy for someone to decide to pay for votes on low quality content, and get into trending. I saw a post, recently, that was 3 sentences, a one minute video, and had been "boosted" to $300 and was sitting in trending in one of the tags. It seemed pretty clear to me that the user had put as little effort as possible into the post, so they could use the voting bots as an investment tool. That's not what Steem was intended for, and, I believe, it is harmful to the community as a whole.
The voting bots are hijacking the curation process, then again, they are democratizing in a sense. Because a lot of users get large autovotes on their content, regardless of the quality, so voting bots help to even the playing field in that sense. They can especially be helpful for new users, because people are more likely to look at a post if it has a $5 value than if it has a $0 value.
As it currently stands Voting Bots are a part of our culture. 3 months ago @aggroed posted if you don't use bidbots then the shitposters will win. He argues, that if the quality authors don't use voting bots, then we're giving away even more rewards to low quality contributors who just wish to game the system. That's hard to argue with.
Since voting bots are part of our world, why don't we discuss as a community what we think is appropriate use of them? It would be great if we could come up with a loose set of community standards, at least to be able to inform users: "This is what the Community thinks about the use of voting bots."
My Thoughts
For myself, I am probably more conservative with the bots than a lot of people. It depends on how important I feel the post is. If I don't spend a lot of time on a post(a lot of time, to me is more than 3 hours), or it's not important for lots of people to see, then I might not buy a vote at all. I tend to spend between 10 and 20 sbd for votes when I do buy votes. I never buy a vote until the first hour is done, in order to allow my early voters to get more curation value. On this post, because I think it's important, and I want a lot of opinions on the matter, I'm buying $50 sbd worth of votes... but where's the limit?
Personally, I'm not likely to vote on a post if most of it's value came from bots.
It's not a good look if your post has votes on it from a lot of different bid bots, and makes me less interested in a post.
It's not nice to your voters to use vote bots earlier than an hour.
On bot owners
Today @minnowbooster released a post announcing a new spam detector. In this post they ask thier customers to be considerate when using the bot. Within their list of what is considered abuse, is using it for "low quality content just to farm Minnowbooster for profits", and they ask us to "use discretion in upvoting posts."
I've had a few discussions with @themarkymark (of @buildawhale), as well as @therealwolf (of @smartsteem), and @reggaemuffin (of @minnowbooster). It's quite difficult for bot owners to police and regulate what content bots get used for. Those I've mentioned above take their responsibility seriously, and care about this platform, but ultimately "quality content" is a subjective matter.
The matter of what is to be considered Quality content is subjective, and it's a matter that we all should take seriously as a community. Hopefully, this post can be a springboard for us to share what we, as a community, consider to be quality content.
What do you think?
I'd love it if some Whales would share their feelings about it.
Are you less likely to vote on a post if it has lots of paid votes?
What is "Quality Content?"
Does the timing of the vote purchased matter to you?
How much is TOO MUCH?
It would also help if we knew what it took to get our posts in hot and trending. I know there is some time limit on it... but if it doesn't make to a certain value by a certain time, within the first few hours, then it doesn't matter how high the value gets, it won't go trending...
Please share all of your thoughts on the matter, and next week I'll gather up the best comments, and try to organize it. I think it will be helpful if we discuss this as a community. There are a lot of new users here, and nothing out there to really guide people regarding how to use the voting bots if they are going to use them.
[edit]
P.S. Since publishing, two other posts have come out discussing the same question. After payout I'll go over them all and collect the various viewpoints in a concise location:
Well @inquiringtimes, I've read your post and read through all the comments, and I must say, you've got your work cut out for you here!
From what I see here, there are two distinct camps; one is hoping for a near-perfect world where people would use some common sense and use the bots when they've created something worthwhile. And yes, I realise that's all semantics because who then decides what 'quality content' means. This group also believes in the sheer quality that exists on this platform and the possibility for it to continue to grow, but with 'quality users' to go along with that 'quality content'. The second camp tends to lean towards the idea if you can't beat 'em, join 'em; not to abuse the system like 'they' do, but to earn something on your own quality content. This camp prefers to view the bots as a way to make well-deserved money, because after all, this is a job and in this world, we make money at our job and simply deserve it. If you don't like that someone is earning more, the beauty is that you too can work harder and earn more as well. I think the one general consensus everyone's agreeing with is that the people who post garbage and make piles of money on it simply because they are taking advantage of the voting bots shouldn't be allowed.
When I began on steemit just 2 months ago, I 'dabbled' in upvoting bots to try and figure them out. If I had a post that I deemed 'good quality', but because of my 'newness' hadn't received much from it, I tried to use the bots to basically "pay myself for a job well done". Other times, I tried them on some photos or posts that didn't take a lot of work, and felt like I had given myself a birthday present when it wasn't my birthday...not very deserving and I must admit, I didn't feel right about it. Or I had a post that was dedicated to my friend who was dying of cancer and all proceeds were going to her foundation....a very good reason to use a bot I think. I have since quit using them altogether now and will gauge my growth organically. I do believe in the power of quality posts, but more so, at my stage here, I believe in the power of commenting and developing community in the hopes of earning true followers who want to upvote my work. Time will tell, but I'll be very curious to see what you come up with here! Cheers:)
well it's certainly a tough predicament. There was a time when the bots actually proved to have a positive return on investment... but I think those times are over... which I hope is the case. if we have a paid, promotional service, it should even cost the user money for added visibility, rather than profit them as well as giving raised visibility. Ultimately, the free market will likely agree with that sentiment.
You are correct; sometimes I will just watch on steembottracker and see people at the very last minute place a huge bid and then basically ruin it for everyone because the return goes into the negative. I think people don't understand how it actually works. Or people placing bids when it's already in the negative! I do like your idea of a paid-for-system, and perhaps add a extra risk of some sort in the hopes of only the serious players engaging in it all. It's a tough one for sure; thanks for tackling it...and thank you for the response (I realised after the fact that I'd written a novella :)
Just finished reading your comment on my blog and came here to read the comments posted here. I must say a great comment! Would you please copy it and post as your own post? I think it will help you. It's a complete post anyway. Just add some imagery and headings and you are good to go!
Will do @ilyastarar! Thanks for the tip; I'll tag you in it as well, plus your post because it is so informative! (of course, @inquiringtimes survey as well!) Cheers and thank you again!
Thanks for posting about this @lynncoyle1, I got to open my eyes to the opinions here. We all have different strategies for growth and I chose organic growth like you do. It's more difficult but it pushes me to market myself in other ways like engaging myself in the community or joining post promotion activities in discord. I like that better because I get real connections and meet awesome people. And that's how we met!
And I agree with @ilyastarar especially in his point that these bots are useful if there's an urgent/important announcement.
I for one will tell you that post values on other people's posts or how they got them matters absolutely zero in my decision to read/vote/resteem anything. Why would it? Like at all?
I read what I read, and I do what I do about it. Other people's actions on a post have no bearing whatsoever in what I personally choose to do.
At most I might look at a big dollar value post's voters just to see who likes them, out of pure curiosity, but not to make any decisions.
That you are a very rational person is nice for you but in truth we are humans and most of us are intrigued even if involuntarily by high value posts. As in "Why has this post earned $150, can I learn something from it so my posts get such nice rewards too?" And if you look around, there are few consistent patterns to answer such a question. One is of course the "group of whales" - one of them has posted and others have voted. Or some VIP who posts something and it attracts SBD like honey attracts flies. But for middling dolphins, what you learn is that it's the bots who helped a post draw you attention (regardless of the post's quality)
I agree with the "gentleman club rules" the author proposes: use bots because they are here and if you don't, the most determined "reward pool rapists" (to quote @berniesanders) will get away with an even greater booty. But exercise restraint.
Yes, It shouldn't matter how they got those votes if the posts are actually interesting and valuable, but when all the shit posts are flying around, bot votes are only helping them to get onto the front page (trending/hot) leaving all the interesting posts never to be seen.
We need to see more great content getting better rewards, because remember, new users will always take the examples that they see when they join.
If they join and all they see is memes and two sentence posts earning hundreds of dollars, they will obviously attempt posting shit as well. Thus, the amount of interesting content will be decreasing with each day/week/month.
I understand the argument, it's been made for the whole year I've been here.
people will degrade to the garbage they see!
whales should be pushing better stuff to trending
its not fair!
people will leave!
and yet, they go to 7-11 instead of whole foods anyway.
Markets gonna market. Adapt, improvise and overcome, or don't play?
All the good content creators find each other.
This is planet earth. My television has 270 channels. I don't watch the shitty ones, just because they are more prevalent than the good ones.
And which ones are the good ones? Cartoon network? Or A&E? I find A&E boring.....
Hello @sircock
I for one don't attach the quality of a post to the amount it makes. I check the Impact of the post.
But I am often saddened when Shitposts makes money. I believe that it is a huge diversion from the tenet of this platform which calls us to hold valuable things in high esteem
It is! but it's also possible and allowed. So, ignore and be better than that! Seriously, there are shitty resturants making a ton of money. Does that stop the 5 star resturant just because McDonalds exists?
Curious question... do you flag the shiposts you see?
I'd like to see more voting based on personal perception of the contents merit, regardless of what others think or do.
Freedom of mind is everything.
A man's gotta do what a man's gotta do!
As far as throwing up their hands and saying "it's not like I knew what community standards are"... I call bullshit on that, I'm afraid. The community standards are the same as anywhere else on the net, only the stakes are higher. Spam for profit, gaming the system without regard for the community, and other bad behavior isn't acceptable anywhere on the net. Why would it be here?
That being said, there's definitely a large grey area here. And yeah, it's hard to navigate. Like you say, it's hard to put hours of work into a post, only to watch someone who wrote a paragraph boost themselves to trending with bots (although it doesn't feel much better when this happens with actual votes).
My experience has been that if you're getting under 50 sbd of voting power from the bots, using them actually hurts you. Like you say, it's not a great look in general. But after you get high enough up you get over a hump and hundreds or thousands of people will upvote you.
I mean, just look at this post by @jerrybanfield. The highest upvotes are from bots, and he's raking in the dough like there's no tomorrow. This is true for other posts on trending, too.
Doing things in this way feels a bit scammy, like gaming the system. I don't want to become dependent on bots. Then again, it is quite an opportunity. It's very much a dilemma.
I recorded pretty much same thoughts in my post on bid bot abuse (linked in top comment). This part especially.
I took a 5 month hiatus from bot voting, but now I'm doing it again... I think @aggroid is right, why leave the spammies with all the advanced weaponry?
However, I'm working on ways to help others, my plan is to spend $1 bot-voting others for every $3 I spend on myself. Maybe I can bring that up to $2/$2.
I'm in a tough spot, I lack access to 98% of my steempower, my upvote is 8 cents and to be honest, a lot of the support I used to get is either diluted by a flood of new users or they've just lost interest.
> Are you less likely to vote on a post if it has lots of paid votes?
Unsure, I may give it a smaller vote weight if it has insanely high payouts. But it's not the end of the world.
> What is "Quality Content?"
Original, creative, detailed works that are sure to at least capture the attention of -- and entertain hopefully -- a good number of users. Something that is impressive, that not everyone can create or has thought of...
This takes time, effort and communication skills. Look at the comment section, if it's filled with organic (non-spam) activity, that's a great sign!
> Does the timing of the vote purchased matter to you?
It depends on the intent of the voter. I think anything past three days is a bit shady...
> How much is TOO MUCH?
A bit subjective, but I make a comparison to what some of the organically successful posts are making.
I prefer to be an owner, not a renter. I think bot use is just another form of self-voting so it can create more noise and less signal. Many people come to me asking for advice on how to succeed at Steemit, but it seems few do the work of replicating what I've done. The three posts I mentioned here outline a lot of what works for me. I try to add value to other people's conversations first and build relationships that way. Eventually I've gained enough followers and friends to have great conversations in the comments and people now like my stuff enough to share it. That means I see no need to use an upvote bot. If my content is valuable to community, I'm confident it will be appreciated eventually. If something good gets missed, well that's why I keep producing.
Proof of brain is all about the community deciding what is valuable. I don't self-vote because I want others to make that decision about my content since I have a bias. If I think my content isn't valuable, I wouldn't bother posting it. Sure, I could self-vote all my root posts and maybe some comments, and no one would get mad at me, but I don't do things solely based on other people's perspectives. I try to operate based on my own principles and values. If they work, I can then be a demonstration for others of a better way.
Does that mean I'm leaving more rewards pool for scammers by not taking it for myself? Maybe. It's a sound argument. Instead, I'd like to shift the discussion towards personal responsibility for curators and stake holders to vote more for value-giving authors instead of expecting them to vote for themselves. There's plenty of good content out there, we just have to do the work to find it. As the communities and the steemit interface improve, that will hopefully become much easier in the future.
Thank you for sharing your perspective. This exercise has given me quite a bit of time to consider the subject, myself.
It can be hard to pull back and take perspective of a situation.