Up-vote bots will be the death of Steemit, and here's a great example of why I believe it to be so:
Known super scammer, and BitConnect mega shill Trevon James has gone dark on the internet, and for good reason too, being a main suspect in one of the biggest cryptocurrency scams of all-time and all, is now busy scamming the Steem blockchain.
Some would argue that this practice I am about to unveil to you is perfectly legal, because the Steemit platform is decentralized, and that everyone around here uses up-vote bots right?
Well, that may be so, but tell me if you think this is right and fair, and that it isn't blatant behavior of a known super scammer taking advantage of this loophole, and is essentially just raping the rewards pool each day without lifting a single finger.
All via the use of scam money he stole right out of the hands of hard working folks through the BitConnect referral program to boot, which really makes this so much worse.
Here's a screenshot of how much he is earning each day, thanks to some shady ass vote bot, that doesn't even read or watch any of the posts here on Steemit mind you, so it is just a blatant cheat tool... as are all bots in my opinion:
Simply tap or click here to enlarge this image.
As you can see, Trevon is making on average, about $125.00 Steem dollars a day, which is $455.00 Steem dollars per day at the time of writing... how sustainable is this long-term I wonder?
Now consider the fact that there are a megaton more Trevon's out there in the wide-world, and whose to say that they all won't just do the same thing here on our beloved platform... how long will Steemit last under this up-vote bot filled dystopian future?
Oh man! This is not right at all. I saw some video or other by him saying that right now Steemit is the only place still treating him well. Not much we can do. I don't know!
Treating him well, means the only place he could make money with his scammy ways is what he was really saying, because Bernie won't actually let him post, hence the reason why he is now using a vote bot instead.
Yeah. I saw the video too. How would you not feel well when you rape others to enrich yourself.
I guess bitconnect didn't treat him well or what? SMH.
DIS guys ain't loyal..
Oh, don't get it twisted, BitConnect treated him plenty well... over a million dollars well as a matter of fact!
Sure! We do know that. I guess he is talking about the video caption.
We sure know about bitconnect and its aftermath. Infact people it has affected, I know some of them
Damn this is plain bullshit...I don't even understand how this upvote boys work perfectly but with what I am seeing, it's just so bad. When I got into steemit , I was unaware of what trevon had don and so he was one of those I liked but with all these allegations I think otherwise of him now.
Why would he do this? Why would he want to rape the reward pool of others . The steemit management has to look into this and carry out an action before people like him cripples us all.
Bernie is already onto Trevon, but I don't think Bernie can touch the bot he uses for some reason.
Yeah. We all loved trevon James. Especially when you get to see his YouTube captions "how to make 100sbd in one day", how to get followers and all those creepy post, sure, we would all like him. But the guys intent is surely detestful. From bitconnect to steemit, that dudes record has had a couple of flaws.
Ha ha, a couple of flaws... now that's the understatement of the century. 😉
These are bad news... 😕
I have mixed feelings about bots and for the sake of curiosity, tried two of them. On one hand, they can provide gamification and rewards like SteemitBoard or help Minnows to grow, like the Minnow Support Project. I think there are a lot of underrated Steemians having a hard time getting noticed, which is where I see the value of bots, but is also where the problem starts... How can a bot determine the value of a post? Currently, it can't, which leads to bad posts being upvoted or even worse, which your example with Trevon shows. I lately had a look at some statistics of Upvotes, Comments and Curation Rewards and Bots were dominating it like hell, not a single Human Account insight - which made the whole report kind of pointless. Although providing some value, in general, I also feel more like bots are endangering the ecosystem and need to be dealt with in some way. The only way would be to restrict access to bots or regulate their use in some way, but is this still in the spirit of a decentralized, open and censorship-resistant platform? I feel like this is becoming a quite complex issue the deeper you dig into it...
Thanks for sharing this information and this great post @tolkatore!
Cheers - @sblue
Unfortunately, without some form of regulation, these up-vote bots will inevitably destroy Steemit... and there's really no arguing this point either.
I don't want to argue that point, but I want to add, that everything has a price...
The price of centralization and censorship
To reduce the number of bots and to ensure that only valuable bots exist, Steemit could introduce an approval process. You have to register and go through an approval process, in order to get your API Key, which is what (in this example) the bot uses to post and upvote stuff. Although the API access was approved, it can be revoked by the central authority at any point in time. This could eliminate the existence of unwanted bots in a very efficient manner. But why stop with bots? Steemit might also introduce a feature to block/disable users, to deny scammers like Trevon access to their primary tool? Ultimately, this would lead to the need for a trusted authority again, which can lead to old problems of unfair and intransparent application of censorship/demonetization. We currently experience this with other central authorities like Youtube, Facebook or even companies like American Express (American Express blocks payments for courses of "The Cryptoverse").
The price of lost innovation
Another way is to get rid of all bots. On the downside, valuable bots would be gone as well, but on the plus side, all the other bots that endanger the ecosystem are gone too. In order to get rid of bots, Steemit could just shut down their APIs, which might be a tricky thing considering Steemit runs on the Steem blockchain, but let's just Imagine, they could (as we did above). All the bots would be gone, and the platform would be solely used by humans. Great, except for the fact, that this also reduces or almost eliminates the possibility for innovation to prosper. No access to APIs / to the Steemit Blockchain would also mean that there are no such applications like https://busy.org/ or https://utopian.io/, just to name two. Also, all the Steem Tools found on http://steemtools.com/ would be gone.
Although I'm not really in to argue your point, I'm worried that the price we'd have to pay is very high. Furthermore, the technical implementation of my proposals described above is a huge task, since it would require fundamental changes to the Steemit platform or even the Steem Blockchain. I very much agree with your point, unfortunately, I don't see a solution to this problem which is also worth its price... hopefully, someone smarter than me can eventually figure this one out. :)
I believe in complete freedom on the platform as well, hence the reason why I implied with the title of my post, that the death of Steemit will be caused by bots.
Because, eventually, the entire platform will be run by bots, and the bots will steal all the rewards before anyone else could get any, and then all the real humans will leave.
If a central authority can stop a blogger from posting because of bot activity then when some Government agent approaches them and puts pressure on them they can be made to censor a blogger out of political and other reasons. We must reject the path that leads to a violation of our rights to privacy and freedoms of speech and expression just as we have seen on youtube and facebook.
“I lately had a look at some statistics of Upvotes, Comments and Curation Rewards and Bots were dominating it like hell, not a single Human Account insight”
Maybe I’m old school, but a social platform, to me, implies people interaction. Not bots to bots, not bots to people just people to people.
It seems to me that evolving is getting harder with each day that passes. In time there may just be big players screwing each other. This gaming of the rewards could be at some point the undoing of this platform.
Like how Bitcoin developers are creating ASIC resistant code, the Steem developers need to implement Robot resistant code... am I right?
Technically, you're right.
But I'm afraid that there's a problem if it comes to the real world 😔
BTC to ASIC resistance
I'm not aware of BTC Devs going for ASIC resistant POW algorithms... I'd appreciate if you can point me to additional information! Assuming they would, with an existing SHA256 community of miners and manufacturers that big, I think it's highly unlikely, that the algorithm can be changed without a hard fork. Which is why I think that the original Bitcoin might stick to SHA256 forever or rather jump from PoW to PoS than changing the PoW algorithm.
BTW: Monero is a nice example that implements an ASIC resistant PoW algorithm.
Robot resistant code
I like this one! But it sort of contradicts itself, since code is made for machines aka robots. 😅 One form or shape of a robot resistant platform is the one which doesn't offer a robot-friendly interface. Which means, remove all the APIs and just leave the Web-GUI (the one we're using now), add captcha codes that need to be entered before posting or voting for anything and we're good to go. The most robot unfriendly environment there is. I just don't like the price (described in a comment above) we'd have to pay...
Ha ha, robot resistance code was just me talking out of my ass, but as for the Bitcoin code, I'm pretty sure the whole reason why Bitcoin Cash came into existence was because Bitmain was butt-hurt that SegWit was going to make Bitcoin more resistant to ASIC miners, in an attempt to give more power back to the little guy.
I could be wrong though.
Post Script: I fucking love Monero!
I don’t know nuffin about no code
But I hope such a thing can be done.
I think in "small doses" and if applied to a reasonable use case (for example the SteemitBoard bot), bots can provide value. But with what we're seeing now, I completely agree with you. This is madness and doesn't serve the growth of the platform and also doesn't help or provide value to its (human) users.
SteemitBoard offers a fun interactive gameification for all to enjoy though, and isn't just blindly up-voting shit content out there on Steemit, so it's beneficial to Steemit... my problem is with up-vote bots specifically.
I absolutely agree. It's just tricky to get rid of one but not the other, without sacrificing too much of the platforms positive and innovative aspects.
It's definitely going to be tricky, but I 100% guarantee you, that if the bots continue at the rate they are going, Steemit will be a wasteland as it pertains to real people behind keyboards.
I really hope that Steemit doesn't become a digital wasteland cluttered with bots that are talking to each other, without any humans left to enjoy the platform. It has such great potential, but you might've pointed out one of its biggest challenges.
It always was and will be its biggest challenge, because being completely decentralized has its flaws too... but we shall see how it unfolds in the future.
I dug a little deeper on this topic and found some other examples of Minnow Support Bots / Programs which seem to provide value (not just simple upvote-anything bots). Furthermore, the group seems to take their responsibility serious if it comes to upvoting of bad posts. It was an interesting read. Maybe that's just how things roll now... I'm going to have a closer look and experiment with those kinds of bots. Let me know if you're interested and I'll leave some links in this comment (don't want to clutter it with links without your permission).
Hey, feel free to do what you will bud, but don't expect me to jump on board, or support any "vote-bots", I disagree with them 100%.
Now all other bots... I am cool with them.
Fair enough. And no worries, I'm far away from wanting you to jump on board. Still getting my own impression of this whole bot thing - and playing around with them helps me learn :).
Remember though, I don't hate all bots, just up-vote bots, because they don't actually read the content they are up-voting, which in my opinion does nothing to better the community.
i still think that the bot owners will try to get rid of the scammers.
anyways we wont see trevor around much anymore. he is going to court really soon and if he says he has no assets i guess steemit can show he have 1m+ XD
Ha ha, I love the fact that he is so cocky, and thinks the courts won't call his totally public Steem wallet into question.
yep, and even if he powers down it takes 13 weeks he have shot himself majorly rofl
Don't forget... the transaction history is there forever as well, so even if he does power-down, the record of him doing so will be there forever!
yep :P a smart man would have gone quiet after what he did. but then agian.... he aint smart.
No... no he isn't.
and the fact that he showed his face while advertising it like he did is probably the dumbest thing you could do.
Oh yeah, he's totally fucked... he's basically crying in his latest video.
Are following the course of the trial? Any dates posted? Just curious, as it could set some precedent.
I don't know if there are any dates set.
it's on the cryptocurrency reddit last i checked.
I need to check this out, I'm actually excited about it!
As per a February 1st order, a tentative trial date for the Florida class-action has been scheduled for September 17th, 2018.
check trevors youtube the dumbass uploaded a video about it.
That means he has not lawyered up. An attorney would have told him first thing to stop talking.
Yeah right, these fools don't know how to stop talking.
the guy is borderline retarded he wont be able to defend himself lol
Who is "trevors"?
lol when writing too fast gets you :D
Plenty of time for me to grab some popcorn. 😉
Simple word "GREED". This is pure Rape. Raping the reward pool, raping the system and raping the community.
Jeez. $125 per day? Wow and yet we are shouting Hae** gin Hae** gin, buh people are somewhere smashing the system via tricks.
But then I ask again, what would you gain if a system that benefits you and others collapse????
I've never been a Fan of Bots, not before, not now, not ever.
Amen to that my friend!
@tolkatore ? If this platform is going to be successful in any way shape or form bots are going to need to reign supreme. The attention economy will be underpinned with bots to ensure the best content thrives. Those bots will have to be optimized to align with the values of the network. Otherwise the bots will become worthless quickly.
Bots will be how users ensure their favorite creators continue making their content..!
No, I 100% disagree.
If real people don't up-vote your stuff, or you can't survive via your own Steem Power, then maybe it's time to move on to something else in my opinion.
Isn’t a social media platform supposed to be about social interaction?
I have no need to interact with a robot.
Well, maybe some…
Dang... she's hawt!
Thats bad
Many times these bots doesn't give a positive ROI too,I have seen the people who lost around 30% of SBD just in the awe of getting into trending page,but that also didn't help them to get considerable votes.
I also came across some fools who bit more than the bot asked for at the bot tracker.
Don't forget about that bot that just ran away with everyone's money too!
@tolkatore
I think upvote from bots are not good in the long term in spite of the benefits for those that use them in short term. They retard the growth & full potential of what steem.
Maybe an option to filter out posts with paid votes would be good for people. I dont come here to see ads, i am here to understand content. With bid bots in place, sometimes the best content is difficult to find.
I think as far as content goes, you have to do your own due diligence of finding the content creators you enjoy, and just following them, so that's not the issue... the issue is will there be any rewards left to give them once the bots are done raping them all?
I think in time there won’t be enough rewards, and some creators will just move on. This platform is incentivized by reward. For better or for worst, that paradigm is set. If rewards die, people move off. Then it will be just whales and bots.
Ha ha, just whales and bots... what's that going to look like?
???
Ha! Is that what the whale who wins the flag war will look like?
To me it looks more like a whale in the grip of a killer mechanical device or bot.
Naa, that's his exo-suit!
Hhaha then last there may b flag war at end.. And the winner whale will alone rule steemit...
Ha ha, I guess so!
How do we combat this? Because if he delegates to a bot that many people use, and if the community nukes the bot, that harms innocent users? He’s like a wolf in sheep’s clothing at this point.
I am convinced either the law suits or the IRS will eventually catch up with him.
There's nothing we can do, except talking to the bot owner, and let him know that he has a morally defunct character in his camp, which judging from some of Trevon's videos, the owner is well aware of who he is, and is only giving him half payouts as a punishment for now.
Haha oh wow and he has the gaul to complain I’m sure? Such an injustice! I was going to say, getting him blacklisted by the major bots would be a good start. I suppose we just have to make things as difficult as possible for him.
He was blacklisted by a few bot owners, but he happened to find this one I guess, but eventually he will get stupid again and go lose all his money somewhere, so I ain't worried.
Trevon's latest video about his impending trial was quite an amusing watch, guy pretty much admits to being guilty without even realizing it.
Here's hoping he won't be an issue for much longer.
Did he delete it already, because I've been hearing about it, but I haven't seen it yet?
Oh, I see it now!