RE: Part 2 of Our Plan to Onboard the Masses
We do use the platform, but we also have to build the solutions necessary to fix the problems, and that simply takes time. I don't see your comment disagreeing with our views very much at and feel like we are simply talking past one another. We agree that there are problems with the system. What system doesn't have problems? We're trying to lay out very clearly how we are developing and conceptualizing the solutions we have developed and continue to develop at every layer of the stack.
If we were just front end developers, or just blockchain developers, or just middleware developers, as many in the space are, we would be able to move much faster in any one of those domains. But because no one else is doing what we're doing, we have to develop in all of these domains and the consequence is that if one has too narrow of a focus, the progress appears to be slow when in reality it is quite fast, which is why no other blockchain rivals Steem in its core value propositions, and steemit.com remains by far the most used Steem interface in the world.
I like all the things that y'all have done recently, but they don't fix the bid bot problem and I don't believe communities will either. I think they are great steps in the right direction, but why would people want to build communities in a place where vote selling dominates? I'm not talking past you. I'm replying specifically to what was said with my honest thoughts.
I'm not complaining about your pace. I'm saying that y'all could start a culture against bid bots and you haven't. You have endorsed it. What is Steem's core value proposition? My position is that Steem's core value proposition is undermined by bid bots and you aren't doing what is needed to fix it.
IMO it's likely that vote selling dominates because we lack better tools to cooperate socially (as humans). My goal with communities is to create that tool... and to help resolve many of the issues brought up in this thread.
Well, that sounds cool. I'd love to know more. It's easy to have a culture that doesn't go for bid bots. I've done it with my tribe. What concerns me is that even if several popular communities instill a culture that doesn't go for vote selling, it will still be a powerful force on Steem. I can see HF21 and 22 mitigating it to a degree, but it seems to me that bid bots will still be a dominant force as long as Steemit Inc. doesn't take a strong aporoach against them. I appreciate you interacting with me here. It is by far the most response I've gotten from the Steemit Team. I still have the concerns I've mentioned, but at least it seems to have been noticed.
Thank you all for this enlightening thread! @richardcrill, I share your views; at the same time, if the Steemit Team hasn't yet addressed the bid bots phenomenon (and doesn't seem to be eager to include it on its short or mid-term roadmap), isn't it a hint about the bid bots global function in the platform?
I mean: if (plausibly) 85% of the Steemit users would prefer this mechanism to be banned, and the Team turns a deaf ear to that community desire, it leads into thinking that the small minority benefiting from those bots activity is considered by the Team to be ultimately more a structural profit driver than a malfunction.
The reason why Steemit Inc. doesn't call out bidbots and seek to nip them in the bud is because unlike Richard here, they understand economics. They understand that bidbots were a pleasant surprise, and Ned even pointed this out in a video recording. It is an interesting new form of business model that requires the buying of a large sum of STEEM and staking it.
I sincerely doubt that the majority actually do want bidbots removed. I hear the word "majority" a lot from what I bet is actually the loud minority.
And even if the majority do want bidbots gone I bet they would regret that decision the moment the bidbots left. Why? Because in all likelihood, that $0.07 upvote you just got from gentlebot would be worth $0.01 or less. This is because the bidbot businesses are a big part of the demand in today's STEEM demand/supply ratio.
In the end of the day, nobody cares how much STEEM they get, they care how much Steem Backed Dollars they get. SBD depends on demand for the STEEM supply and this means that long time stakers, like businesses, help increase the amount of SBD you can get from upvotes.
Want your STEEM bags to go to the moon? Then encourage more people to open up shop as upvote services. They don't have to be "bidbots" but upvote services of all kinds, be it contests, not-for-profit organizations like @ocdb and also the for-profit ones. Why? Because they buy a lot of STEEM and then they lock it up as SP for a very long time. That is very good for the price of Steem Backed Dollars.
Upvote services are not expensive, usually they can even get you more STEEM than you had originally, so its kind of like paying for promotion where you get all the money back... Cool right? Totally...
On top of that, not only is the bidbot's STEEM locked up, but the people using those bidbots are locking up STEEM too! That's right, they are locking up STEEM because they have to go buy STEEM and pay the bidbot, and they have to wait 7 days to only get HALF of the STEEM back! Let me show you with some math how this works...
Let's say your account is set to get rewarded in 50% SBD/ 50% SP, well that means that when you send 20 STEEM to @rewardpooleater you get an upvote of 27+ STEEM which will take 7 days before you get it. However, when you get that 27 STEEM (-25%) it comes out as 20.25 divided between Steem Backed Dollars and Steem Power. Half of your STEEM gets returned to you as automatically staked/locked up STEEM!
This is very good news for other STEEM hodlers, because your liquid STEEM just got cut in half, which means that if you want to promote another post at the same 20 STEEM you're going to have to go out and buy someone else's STEEM. This creates a much needed sink for the cryptocurrency, one that has the potential to become an ever continuous cycle.
But wait!!! Wouldn't the 20 STEEM you spent go to the upvote service and immediately get sold on the market as profit? Not necessarily, because the more upvote services come into existence the more competitive the services will need to become. This means that as new upvote service businesses arrive (after buying a wicked ton of STEEM to power up) the original gangsters will need to offer something the new guys can't like MORE POWERFUL upvotes or more lucrative ROIs to their customers/users.
No, Steemit Inc. does not want that to go away, because they're not stupid. In an industry where everyone is making a coin/token and everyone else is asking what their utility is, STEEM actually has a legit utility in the real world: promotion. Another token also has that same utility and its called the Minds.com token, but that utility is quite centralized. Steemians should be quite proud to say that the promotional utility of STEEM in the form of upvote services is decentralized, because anyone can offer the service by buying up STEEM.
10000 people giving one entity their money is what you'd consider decentralized? 10000 people buying votes so they can place their work in front of an audience being paid to look away is what you consider to be promotion?
Did the bidbot people pay you speak this nonsense you speak? The entire bidbot operation only puts selling pressure on the token. It pushes the quality work aside and places the junk up front. Thousands of people left because of this. Good people with their heads screwed on that know how to draw in an organic viewership. There's billions of dollars up for grabs if you offer a content consumer incentives to purchase tokens and actually consume content. Robots can't see, hear or read like a human. If you were on stage, would you buy every seat in the theater and feel successful performing in front of empty chairs? That's what bidbots and delegations do. Content producers can go anywhere else and get paid. Buying votes is a joke to anyone who takes their craft seriously. That's for amateurs and suckers. "Promotion." Banfield has over 30000 followers and if he tries to earn organically today, he's lucky to see a buck. That's all the proof you need to know buying votes is a serious waste of time.
Honestly, you sound like you don't know what you're talking about and did a poor job of parroting the bidbot sales pitch. I suggest they fire you and hire someone more suited for the position of paid shill. You didn't even put your words out in front on the main thread. Rookie mistake.
You're describing perfectly one potential outcome of communities. Communities will essentially enable organizations to amass SP and use it to provide curation for their members. I believe this will rival bidbots.
Yes. I hope so.
Free Markets
You get it. That's economics. Ned gets it. You get it. People can do good and bad. Bid bots are like the symptoms of human psychology. Make free markets great again. Make governments smaller. Some people want welfare. They want equality of opportunities and results. But that's socialism, communism, UBI, etc. Life is dangerous. But that's the meaning of life when you invest, you might lose. Some of us gets how economics work.
Bid Bots
Technically, by the way, I wonder how a website would even begin to try to stop bid bots for example. Of course, you could do what Facebook did back around 2010 when there were thousands of Star Wars character accounts. I befriended hundreds of them. Many of them were named Luke Skywalker. So, Facebook probably banned many of those accounts. Twitter does stuff. YouTube banned at least three of my channels, that is thousands of videos. I've been banned on Facebook many times. But Steem is better than that. Right? I think so. I hope so. Maybe Communities will rival Bid Bots, Whales, Bernie, etc, lol, but seriously speaking too, or else my name is not Oatmeal haha.