In this occasion we will deal with the subject of the interference or jamming of the content discovery system

Radar jamming and deception (electronic countermeasures) is the intentional emission of radio frequency signals to interfere with the operation of a radar by saturating its receiver with noise or false information.
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The content discovery system can be seen metaphorically as a Radar system that detects content of high quality/relevance/interest, the interference of the content discovery system "jams" the "content radar system" preventing it to detect/discover that content.

Curation-less BidBots as Content Discovery System Radar Jamming

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Bidbots that do not engage in the curation of the promoted content in one manner o another interfere with the Content Discovery System (CDS) by bringing to Trending/Hot content that was not in any way discovered or curated by any stakeholder or curation initiative. In this way these bidbots are actively enabling the interference, "Radar Jamming", spamming of the system that is supposed to provide the content consumers with content that is likely to be of their interest or taste. Instead it provides content consumers perusing trending/hot with content that was curated by the operator of the posting account. In short, the diametrically opposed dynamic of how the CDS is supposed to work. The highjacking of the CDS.

By boosting said content to Trending/Hot not only is this curationlessly boosted content taken where the highest quality/relevance/interest content is supposed to be and that high quality/relevance/interest content moved down, no. The result of this boosting is that no value range of trending/hot can be trusted anymore, not just the top, since it is not only the content at the top dollar value range that is boosted by these curationless bidbots, all value ranges are spammed, interfered and jammed by these bidbots resulting in the whole value spectrum of the CDS being compromised and corrupted, hence the CDS becoming completely useless to content consumers.

There may not be a lot of quality original content in Steem to begin with because of other factors, but this pervasive jamming of the CDS by bidbots makes the situation worse, turning the finding of the "gems" nothing short of a treasure hunt conducted in a garbage dump.

Means of Curation for Bidbots

At the moment, to the best of our knowledge there is no bidbot that actively curates the promoted content on a post per post basis. Some, the most antiabuse friendly ones like @buildawhale @steemium @ocdb and @smartsteem employ whitelists and/or blacklists and take abuse reports that result if verified in the blacklisting of accounts. We feel that although whitelists and blacklists are a step in the right direction and necessary tools, they are insufficient to prevent CDS jamming, spam and abuse because:

• Blacklisted accounts simply get a new account and start over.

• Whitelisted accounts often go lazy and start farming the bidbot with subpar content, overbidding, recycling, plagiarism and other abusive techniques.

Hence what is needed is the simultaneous implementation of :

• A whitelisting process assisted by competent antiabuse operators (aka cleaners)
• A blacklist.
• A post per post curation system with competent and professional curators so as to greenlight the boosting and the level of boosting of each post.
• An abuse detection/monitoring system conducted by competent antiabuse operators in order to detect and blacklist accounts that after being whitelisted turn to abusive behaviours such as for example plagiarism as a means of bypassing the curators quality control filters while minimizing efforts in the content production.

Money Talks, Curation Listens

Frankly speaking we dont think the above points will be implemented by most or likely any bidbots because it goes against their bottom line. Why you ask?

• First and foremost this goes against their bottom line because bidbot operators depend on all their windows being as full as possible in order to maximize the profitability for them and their delegators as well as for the vote buyers in the case of those bidbots that provide their vote buyers a guaranteed ROI. This means in practice that the interest of the bidbot operators lies in using every single vote available to them with the SP they have, any voting power that goes unused is money lost. Hence, applying strict whitelisting, curating for quality and monitoring for abuse goes against their bottom line because it limits their potential customers. In short, if you are picky about who can buy the votes of your bidbot you risk not having enough qualified buyers, and then having a portion of your voting power go unused.

• Hiring and paying competent curators and antiabuse operators to review users' content history, review posts and monitor abuse costs money, and bidbots operators prefer to keep that money to themselves and/or their delegators and play a simulacrum of abuse fighting that includes some of the measures stated earlier in this post, but not all simultaneously, fully aware that applying some and not all of those measures will result in abusers circumventing them. How you ask? Regarding whitelists they circumvent them by exploiting the fact of the people doing the account assessment not being experienced antiabuse operators, counting on them performing only a superficial research of the accounts which can be easily circumvented (as the case of @ayasha-art, the second account of a known serial plagiarist being whitelisted by @ocdb demonstrates). They will also try and get whitelisted via corrupted curators (as the case of @sardrt and @adrianobalan clearly exemplifies). As per the blacklists they will circumvent them via the creation of new accounts. None of these whitelist/blacklist measures are effective if not paired with curation on a post-per-post basis and accompanied with the assistance of competent antiabuse operators in the whitelisting and ongoing abuse monitoring. Without these last two elements the others are nothing more than an antiabuse simulacrum, a charade, a pose.

In short we believe these measures won't happen because it is not rational to pay money in order to lose even more money, it is unreasonable businesswise and so our assessment is that it is highly unlikely to take place.

The Hack, Thinking Laterally

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Lateral thinking is a manner of solving problems using an indirect and creative approach via reasoning that is not immediately obvious. It involves ideas that may not be obtainable using only traditional step-by-step logic.
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So far our analysis presents an intractable problem, a problem with no apparent solution. The common approach to this grave problem in our platform is to vilify and stigmatize bidbots, to see them as the enemy, as the problem to be eliminated. Few individuals have explored approaches in which BidBots themselves could be a part of the solution. In one of our recent posts we have presented superficially a solution to this problem, which we will expand now in this final part of this post.

How to solve the lacking curation and abuse monitoring in bidbots without burdening the operators of bidbots with extra costs?

Externalizing these activities in a curation guild to be in charge of performing said curation, whitelisting and abuse monitoring.

How to be able to afford to be selective in which content is promoted without shrinking the potential customer base?

The way out of a labyrinth is UP, the way to solve this problem is to eliminate the concept of "customer". Namely: for the curation guild to provide free promotion to the authors they curate, becoming itself the biggest "customer" of the bidbots.

How to cover the costs of hiring competent curators and antiabuse operators?

With the profits derived from promoting the content in bidbots with a guaranteed ROI.

How to implement this system?

• A curation guild is created or an existing one adapted to this model.
• An arrangement is made with certain interested bidbots in which the promotion costs are paid by the guild at payout time instead of upfront.
• With the upcoming HF21 curation rewards boost curation minded stakeholders join the trail of the guild.
• Users that want to qualify for the curation guild curation and promotion create their posts with an ad-hoc account created jointly by the guild and @likwid set as beneficiary, so that at payout the rewards are liquified and sent to the curation guild.
• Curators of the guild select high quality/interest/relevance content to be curated.
• The posts are reviewed by the antiabuse operators and greenlighted or vetoed if abuse such as plagiarism is found.
• The post is first voted by the guild as the main content discovery entity.
• The post is then voted by the trail of the guild.
• The post is then promoted by the guild to a degree congruent with the score received.
• At payout the guild receives the liquified rewards from @likwid, pays the promotion costs to the involved bidbots, calculates the author rewards corresponding to the organic SP of the guild's trail used on the post and sends this to the author, keeping the promotion profits to pay curators and antiabuse operators.

Win-Win-Win, Everybody Wins

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In this manner everybody wins, the trending and hot pages regain their usefulness as a content discovery system, the bidbot operators can fill their windows and make the same money, curators and antiabuse operators get rewarded and the satisfaction of making trending great, and quality authors get rewarded and promoted.

This is Jaguar Force,
Reporting directly from the Jungle.
Onwards!