A Way to Neutralise Bid Bots On Steemit/Steem - While Still Allowing Votes To Be Bought
Back again on the hot topic of bid bots.. Here's an update to my idea to improve the situation..
If bid bot owners make huge stacks from their bid bots, they will have the most money in the community. Inevitably there will be an outcome where your posts are out-priced from the trending pages and only the 'elite' in the form of the bot owners, top witnesses and other wealthy people will be able to get onto trending. This would make the Steem platform just another reflection of the pyramid/hierarchic system we see offline where the big banks control most societal activity to some extent - this is the opposite of decentralisation.
I have made all of my Steem 'the old fashioned way' by blogging - having used a few bid bots along the way due to the 'arms race' of needing to do so to get seen. For a while I regularly had multiple political and science posts on the trending page without any bid bot use - but as more bid bots have emerged, my ability to do that has gone down and down. This inevitably leads me to not want to put as much time into writing posts - or forces me to buy more votes.
I recently posted about an initial idea for improving the situation with Steem bid bots and didn't use any bid bots on it.. Resulting in few seeing it!
Following some conversations, I have added a missing piece into my idea for improving the situation on Steem.. So here it is, in a nutshell:
- Use the @steemit account to fund a bidbot that is controlled by Steemit inc. - Pricing the votes in such a way that they undercut the competition.
- Return the funds sent to the steemit account to the Rewards pool.
This has several advantages:
- Users can buy votes without draining the rewards pool as the money they are paid out from the vote just goes back into the reward pool anyway. Therefore, no dilution of the rewards pool needs to take place.
- Bid bot operators are priced out of the market and so cannot perpetually increase their own Steem Power holdings just for 'helping' others to have their posts discovered (which is a 'service' that only exists due to the poor post discovery functionality here). Bid bot owners may be forced to use their SP to vote manually, improving post quality and fulfilling the 'proof of brain' concept a bit more.
- The 'ninja mined' Steem held in the @Steemit account is seen to be being used to solve the platforms problems. Ninja mining is a technique that is not respected in the crypto world, so anything that can be done to improve the PR of these tokens is a good thing.
Many bid bot owners are actually only delegating their steem from one or two accounts, which means that if they ceased to do so - the holder of that Steem would have to make a decision as to what to do with that Steem. Is it right that one or two accounts get to dictate the behavior of the entire platform from the shadows? I don't see that as being based in integrity or in the spirit of Steem.
What do you think?
Wishing you well,
Ura Soul
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This is already the situation, and bidbots are not its cause.
They only introduced a new entrepreneurial socio-economical class to steemit - bidbot owners.
Most of them are corrupt, and a few are honest.
If the steemit account was the only account that ever had premined steem, it would have made more sense.
The delegations and tiny gifts to new joiners have to come from somewhere.
To some extent, yes - but they surely exploit the situation just like the banks and 'lenders' do offline.
My understanding is that the bulk of the premined steem went to steemit and related accounts (though I don't have any accurate data on that).
They use whichever means available for them.
Same as any "rational" entity does.
You call it exploitation.
Is it any more exploitative than paying to some of these bots and enjoying some nice ROI?
Or renting to them and becoming a shareholder?
This is the game, and it would have probably evolved in a fair system too, which Steem is not.
How did the whales become whales then?
Some of what you call 'rational' is actually psychopathic in many instances - in fact, totally criminal - however, they use their 'whale' status to control the courts and government where necessary. This has been proven over and over again.
Absolutely, yes it is. The former involves deliberately causing imbalance an in order to exploit it and limit the reach of others - while the latter involves simply using whatever methods are available to attempt to resolve the situation (Which will not work because it actually feeds the cause of the problem). To think that the two are the same is like thinking that a fisherman and a fish are the same in their level of exploitation.
I don't have full data on that, some were developers at Steemit as I understand it - who presumably mined. Some joined later as I understand it who were not part of Steemit, but only once a large amount had already been mined.
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You got a 42.86% upvote from @sleeplesswhale courtesy of @stimialiti!
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You got upvoted from @adriatik bot! Thank you to you for using our service. We really hope this will hope to promote your quality content!
Better yet, a bidbot could be built-in into the protocol just like the promote feature which just burns your STEEM in exchange for votes.
The idea is good, if STINC don't want to support it how about a community bid bot account set up along the exact same lines. People who wanted to support it could delegate to give it power with all proceeds being returned to the reward pool.
Yes, that is another approach - however, one downside is that some people have to lose out on their own payout to make it work. It's a good plan B anyway. :)
Btw, I am currently looking for witness votes - I see you have a few free slots. FYI, 3 of your chosen witnesses currently vote for me - I run steem ocean and am active here in numerous ways. All help is welcome! :)
I thought I was voting for you already, I'll definately add you.
Great, thanks! There is a bug on the steemit witness voting screen and quite often (seemingly more than 50% of the time) witness votes aren't being logged!
The best way to reliably vote that I know of is to use steemconnect to do it, such as by clicking the button i put in the footer of my posts - or via the list of steem witnesses which has a little up or down thumb icon next to each name.
Thanks for your support!
It will be a few days before I can cast the vote but I'll make sure it works this time. I have encountered that issue many times in the past where I thought I voted for someone then it didn't work.
OK, no problem. Yes, it really needs to be fixed. :/
Ahh, here we go! That is a good idea!!!!! Fully support
Tag the SBD in there too, the SBD could go back(if there is a such thing as a rewards pool for SBD), or the SBD could go into a temporary rewards pool and is re-used again instead of creating new SBD.
I think you have a great idea here, but it wont solve the centralized problem of steemit.
"This would make the Steem platform just another reflection of the pyramid/hierarchic system we see offline where the big banks control most societal activity to some extent - this is the opposite of decentralisation."
What is the reason for steemit being centralized. Is it the bot's consolidating the steem or the fact that the more you have the more you can make. This is the truth in the real world also and what I think is centralizing steemit is the more you have the more you can have.
It is true that whoever has the most steem is able to centralise power in their own hands - however, by shifting the control of bots from random people into a form that takes the power back to the general steem pool - there is less centralisation in those specific hands. At least then the only way to centralise would be to actually bring value in the form of quality content or through buying steem directly - both of which actually increase the value of steem and so there is a form of value for value exchange occurring which cannot occur another way.
This is what I thought was a good idea
"however, by shifting the control of bots from random people into a form that takes the power back to the general steem pool"
It does solve very well the problem with the bots.
@ura-soul, what is the way to return the SBD or Steem paid to reward pool?
FD.
One easy way to return SBD is to use Promote. When you Promote a post, the SBD used goes directly into the reward pool. It is effectively burning the payment.
AFAIK we can just transfer anything to @null.
Yeah, that's how promotion works. If you transfer to @null with a permlink, it will put you in the promoted list. If you use the promote button, you should notice a transfer to @null after as well. It's all basically the same thing.
You can still transfer without linking, right? But yeah I understand now what you mean.
Yup. You could always do that. I guess that would be a FOR REAL burn because you're definitely not getting anything out of it. LOL
So if you want to burn SBD, one way is to just create a post and promote it with whatever amount you want to burn.
Good question, I am not aware of an account that can be used for that - but it would be a good idea to have one.
let the people decide themselves if they want to use bid bots and which one . forcing anything is never a good idea
Very good your publication with respect to the bot, I did not know much about this information and thanks to you I have learned a bit more about the bot. greeting
Good post! I like the idea @krnel you should take a look at this idea if you haven’t already!
I still do not know how to use these bots, as a means of helping to get up faster on this platform.