RE: Voting-bots are not (inherently) bad
people get less attention though. If I see a post has a bunch of bidbots on it, I am less likely to upvote it... Actually all high valued posts I tend to avoid reading and voting on altogether if I can help it because a majority of them I find are crap. Thats me, a minnow, that avoids those posts, you know who else avoids those posts? Whales, dolphins, pretty much everyone. The reason is because unless you see a lot of people reposting it, its likely not that good and yo know what, getting reposted by a whale like Bernie, Transisto, etc or dolphins like steemstem will do way way more for exposure than any bidbot could give you. As well, higher valued posts opens you up to scrutiny and that means flags, so unless your post is good, like really good then a bid bot has a potential to decrease your rep. The one argument that I can make for bidbots is the rep potential if you do have a really good post.
Exactly, because most of them are crap. But what, if they weren't anymore? Would you change accordingly?
You are probably right about this. But yet again: You have to rely on the mercy of these dolphins/whales - if they ignore it, you will not achieve anything, no matter how good your post is. The bots enable you, to be more independent, don't you think?
But take a look at this post - it bought the position it finds itself in, but quite a few people are engaging regardless and the author gets way more followers because of it. This is some kind of exposure, money can buy - it's all about advertising your own content and to catch people's attention. You are don't have to rely on luck and that a big account gives you a decent upvote - thus, you are more independent.
True. Personally, I think it's a childish behaviour to flag a post, as long as it's not spam/plagiarism. We don't have to like everything other people do. I think, it's alright to let people just be.
I really try to understand the harm in pushing useful, well written posts. Sure, the bot owners are getting richer, human curators don't earn that much anymore - but in comparison you may be able to reach way more people and provide some useful knowledge. Is this really such a bad thing?
So this is where I will redirect you to the steem white paper section of Subjective Contributions subsection of Voting on Distribution of Currency and then the subsection of that labeled Voting Abuse.
In here you will find the following:
Bid bots would be counted in the defecting large stakeholders and as such is getting groups that are actively putting pressure on them. Eventually that straw is going break and the flag war going on against Haejin will be tiny and minuscule against the War Against the Machines.
Yes that is a terminator reference
Anyways references aside, I can name (off the top of my head) multiple groups and or large stakeholders which are actively pressuring bot owners, flagging bot curated content, and more. I mean the alternative is that manual curation groups cease from existing.
I liked that reference :D
Anyway. Currently I don't see a way of getting rid of the bots, because they have way too much power by now. It seems to be an idealistic approach to flag all bot-curated content to prevent this - because there is just too much of it.
I'm still interested about an answer, how small accounts get enough attention without bots or the mercy of whales. This is something, which seems to be the most important use case for bots.
That is actually something really interesting that I want to point out. here is a post by Justtryme90, one of the steemstem creators, made 2 years ago that answers your question. That being said, I am not certain if bots were as rampant back then as they are now.
People with good content stops buying bids and flags the bad content then the people making the bad content will stop buying votes as it won't be profitable anymore. When nobody buys votes, bots will nolonger be paying the people whom delegate to them. When this happens then people stop delegating and bots lose their power.
I mean sure they will still have power but since all the large bidbots have most of their power through delegations (which aren't cheap) so instead people will choose other paths. Curation trails might be big again or maybe they will have passed for the next tech.
He wrote:
I think, that's naive. Two years ago, it was easier as well. As I wrote in my article: we're living in an attention-economy and to attract attention you need exposure. Especially now, with so many new poeple around, you will need help to be visible - no matter how good your content is.
This is idealism. Most likey, it is not going to happen - the advantages a bot can give, are way too big: more visibility, more follower, more engagement.
I see your point, sure it would be cool, if those weren't needed, but the current situation encourages this behaviour. Even with a few hundred people and some big accounts - you will not be able to change it. The sheer numbers are against you.
Btw: Thanks for a constructive discussion :)