Steemit's Got Issues!
Bid Bot Abuse
Take 1

For those of you that have not followed since the opening post This Post
will give you insight as to what these discussions are and how they are intended to work.

I encourage you to read these posts thoroughly before responding. Please do not skim, you may miss something of value.

Links to Topics Discussed Thus Far:

1. User Friendliness and Site Functionality
   • Take 1 (More to come)
2. Self and Circular Voting
   • Take 1 (More to come)
     
     

Today's Topic:
Bid Bot Abuse

So, this topic has been hot lately. There are a ton of bid bots now and people are seeing it create some changes on the platform. Some for the better and some for the worse.

My intention with this post is to convey to you an ample description of the issue, in its entirety. There are many factors surrounding this issue that are being overlooked and/or swept under the rug. After reading this post my hope is that all of you will have a very educated understanding of the issue as it is today.

All that said, let's get started.

First of all, what is bid bot abuse?

Abuse of bid bots, put in simple terms, is using bid bots for sheer profiteering. Using them in a way that rapes the reward pool.

Some people have portrayed black and white definitions as to what constitutes bot abuse.

Here are some that i have seen:

1. Using bots to upvote spam content.
2. Using bots to upvote shitty or undeserving content.
3. Using bots to upvote posts that are older than a certain amount of days.
4. Excessive use of bots.
   • Like people making 10 posts per day then using bots on all of them.

It is easy to look at this list, and on the surface, believe that each and every one of them is absolutely accurate. However if you dig deeper into them you will find out that that is just not the case with some of them. Life, as well as this issue is just not black and white.

I'm going to address these issues in a moment but I want to get something else out of the way first.

There are some people on the platform, that would like you to believe that people are just stripping rewards from the pool at an alarming rate. People posting a picture that is not even theirs and running to the bank with massive payouts. The first question i want to ask is are they?

So...

How much are the "abusers" actually profiting?

Well, lets just look...

In the last round of my bot, @sneaky-ninja, there were several people who bid and got a vote. Out of those I'm going to illustrate those that bid only 1 sbd because 1 is a very easy number to calculate and show.

So, every person that had put in $1 last round for @sneaky-ninja received an upvote of $2.35.

Whoah! That seems like so much profit at first doesn't it?

That is until you start doing the actual math on it.

After taking out 25% for curation they are left with $1.76, still seems pretty good but let's keep going. So then this 1.76 will get split. They will get .88 sbd and the equivalent of .88 in steem. However, what is the equivalent of .88 in steem? Well right now since steem is worth just over $6 usd, this will decrease by roughly 6/1. Meaning that the remaining .88 will actually only be .15 steem once it pays out.

Ok so lets add that all up...

We have .88 sbd plus .15 steem. So, this person that has put in $1 gets $1.03 sbd/steem after payout.

Wow, this is some serious racketeering! These fuckin guys are bankin!!! Holy shit everybody, lets all start doing this and making a potential 3 fuckin percent!! Find the worst pics you can and start posting guys! We've got loot to make! LMFAO

Anyway, as you can see, even the people that are actually abusing bots, attempting to make large profts, simply are not. Now, I will say that just after @yabapmatt came out with his Steem Bot Tracker, there was a period of nearly a week where people were using this to gain profits of about double their actual sbd plus what they gained in steem power. That time is long past though and now the profits look much more like the example I just gave for most bots actually. In fact in some cases the bidder may even lose a small amount.

There is the occasional time that someone will bid during a round that far fewer people have bid. During these uncommon times you can see actual profit from them.

The bottom line is that if your idea is to use bots for pure profit it will not work the way you intend it to.

This basically leaves this issue of bot abuse null and void, though I will continue because there is far more left to look at.

All of that being said, they do find ways of making profit in the long run because some bids will profit and some won't. Also, even if they don't profit, they are pulling from the reward pool for spam or scams so it is something we want to stop either way.

One more thing...

Many bot owners, in fact all most all of us, have discussed this issue countless times to try to come up with some sort of resolve.

We do profit from them and it is a business for us. However, we are not the greedy, power hungry monsters that some would like you to believe. We are regular people. We want to see steemit grow and become great just like you do.

I personally have formulated a plan that will all but eliminate these abusers from using bots entirely. The plan is not the focus of this post so I will not be sharing it here. However, it is peaceful effective and will not spark more flagging wars as we have been seeing lately.

Ok, now lets get to the real meat of the issue.

I'm going to cover some of the more common things people see as abuse.

1. Using a bid bot to get a vote late in the 7 days allotted for voting.

I'm starting with this one because it is definitely the most talked about currently and there are many people here, like @grumpycat that would like you to believe that using a bid bot late is a black and white example of bot abuse...

However, it is not!

First of all, the system allows for votes to come in for posts up to 6 days and 12 hrs. This system was designed for a reason and it essentially is the actual law regarding it.

Second, there are plenty of legitimate reasons to vote on the sixth day. Here are but a few

1. What if you simply did not have any sbd to buy a bid for your or someone else's post until then.
   • Many of our users are from countries where money is hard to come by or simply do not have much. Steemit provides these people ways to make enough to survive, to feed their families. It brings them hope.
2. You want to surprise a good friend or maybe just a stranger with an undervalued post by voting or bot voting their post on one of the final days.
3. A simple gift.
4. You want, or need a small payout quickly so you look for the most profitable moment and exploit it.
   • Again, some people do not have much and a dollar or two guaranteed to come out tomorrow could be a meal for that day or help a person get medicine or something.
5. What if you made a post, waited for it to be voted on, but it never did.
   • This can feel very daunting, I know, I've been there.
   • How could it possibly be wrong to want to see your post make just a little even if it is from only you?
   • Using a bot for this can make you feel good whether you profit or not. There is much to be said about seeing your post have money on it vs. having none regardless if it is actually profiting or not.

This is not, by far, a complete list. My aim here it to show that the issue of voting late is not black and white. There is so much grey area that we cannot just put a blanket rule out there to shorten it. If it were 4 days in the system, you could bitch about people voting on the third day.

The truth is that voting that late in many cases is not smart because you simply may not get the return you expect as so much will go out to curators. However, it is not our job to punish stupidity or ignorance, only to root out abuse.

We have an economic society here on steemit. It is absurd to think that someone would not want to use this platform for profit. The line is drawn when they are using abusive means to achieve that. If you have a good post and want to invest into yourself for a small profit no one should be able to say otherwise.

A lot of people say, and I agree, that the best way to use a bot is to promote your post. Buying a vote when you first post as a means of getting your post to show in hot or trending. With how hard we all know it is to get noticed here this is a very great way to use a bot. However it is not the only way by any means.

I want to touch on something else here for one moment. When I started @sneaky-ninja it was meant to be fun. Fun for me and fun for the bidders. He was given a cool persona with stories and everything. In the very beginning I simply had a decent amount of power and would look for good posts that had not made much by their sixth day.

I would pick stuff that interested me and that I could enjoy reading. Then I would leave them a big vote with a comment from me saying "sneaky ninja attack!". I thought it was a real fun way to reward great content right at the end when that person was likely assuming the post they had poured their heart into would just not payout.

I made so many people happy by doing that, that I decided to look into making it a bot. So for me personally, I truly believe in allowing people to vote on the 6th day and even bid on bots on the 6th day. This is something I stand very firm on regardless of threats or insulting comments.

2. Using a bid bot to upvote spam content.

Alright, this one is a no brainer. The truth is that since there are no rules here on steemit, and that people power is their power, they technically have the right to create and vote on spammy content.

The greater truth is that basically none of us like it. Spam sucks and clutters up everything. I am very happy for teams like @steemcleaners that focus on uprooting this type of content as well as farms and other abusers.

That being said, in my opinion, spammers should not be allowed to use bots at all and should be reported to steemcleaners. This is why I actively build and grow @sneaky-ninja's blacklist as well as share blacklists from other sources. It is not perfect yet but is getting there. In the very near future it will much larger and more effective in fact.

This is also why there are people now working on building a shared and unified blacklist that can be used across steemit by all bots and other services that would benefit from it. It would allow many people to be able to add to it and would grow quickly without huge time involvement from any one person and basically eliminate bot abuse all together.

Eliminating these account from using bots is at the forefront of my plan.

3. Excessive use of bots.

What I mean here is the people that are posting like 10 times a day, usually also with spam content, then hitting all of them with bots. These guys are likely actually making profit as they are doing so many that it probably averages out.

Everyone has the right to post 10 times a day if they like. This in itself is not wrong or even grey. I'm not sure how they do it but I have seen accounts that create actually entertaining posts and still do it 10 times a day. However, if it is spam and clearly abusive then it should not be allowed to get votes from bots and should also be reported to @steemcleaners.

4. Using bots to upvote shitty or undeserving content.

I have to be candid here. This one is actually grey. Some people are simply not very good at this. Considering the many reasons listed above for voting late it is not really up to us to judge them for not being very good. However, as a community we can help them understand how to be better at posting quality content. There is also so much here that is subjective. We do not all like the same things. What is crap to one person might be funny as hell to another.

For this issue, my suggestion is a schooling system. Something that would alert them that their posts are not up to par and give them time to learn how to write better. Maybe even link them to posts with pointers on how to get better. Give them a couple times to start getting better and if they don't, temporarily blacklist them until they begin to get better. This allows the honest ones, that just need to learn, a second chance and the others will simply not be un-blacklisted, effectively eliminating the possibility for further abuse from them.

These are only some of the major things that people use to show bid bot abuse. Some of which are widely considered unacceptable and some that are not.

The truth is that none of it is black and white. It really comes down to the motives of the individual users.

If there is something I have missed or you believe holds importance here, please feel free to add it in the comments below.

Thank you all once again for joining this discussion and adding your input to it. As a community we will grow and with one voice we will speak and create necessary change.
@michaeldavid
Master of @sneaky-ninja
and
proud member of: