Trying out vote-bying
When I heard of vote buying the first time I dismissed it as scammy behaviour, self-voting was another thing that was mentioned in the same breath and I had another meaning of that as I have generally voted for myself since I first started here more than two years ago. In the discussions I followed in different posts, but mainly those written by @steevc my first impression was somewhat challenged. Vote selling and vote buying could be seen as reasonably legit - a way an investor could gear his investment and a way newbies could get some upvotes... which with the current inequality and low value steem can be more than hard.
I was not really impressed with the argument, and did not change my behaviour. I still think that the solution to the problems mentioned above should be solved in the technology, and that the distribution of Steem and Steem-dollars should be optimised to promote quality content.... Yes, I know: not an easy thing to do!
So after having realised that some of the people I follow and admire do use vote buying I decided to try it out myself. Just like trying out cannabis or cocaine to get a feel for what it actually is.
I paid 4.260 SBD to @rocky1 and as far as I can see it has doubled this amount. I am now trying with 3 SBD for another post to see how things are calculated...
Conclusion
Well, it is tempting. I am here on Steemit to make some money that will make it possible to have another year of concentrated work on my comic + all the other creative commons coincidences my hand and brain will produce. It also means that I will have more power on the platform voting for the profiles I like and think should have precedence. I am not even sure what the official stand is. Are there any rules or guidelines that says something about it?
But, I am a bit undecided. Any input would be very much appreciated. Calculations get immensely more complicated when moral is introduced (it is actually impossible on a theoretical level as the utilitarians have shown us), and therefore I just normally tend to go with what I think is right AND what makes me poorer and less powerful. But I am aware that this vagabond mentality is not necessarily the right way, but mainly the easy way for the person who do not place to big an emphasis on money.
That's really a diverse topic and I changed my mind a few times regarding this. Today I would say: As long as you produce quality content, that is probably undervalued, you should go for it!
I hope this is true and a good view, as I'd love to do so as well @shortcut. I do work hard for my posts I think, anyway. We shall see :)
That is a simple and pragmatic view.
This is so good and interesting that you are trying this @katharsisdrill, as last year I did the same thing. I saw that some people I like did it and so I tried it and then posted about it asking opinions and BOY talk about heated opinions! After all the discussion I just stopped doing it as I couldn't be bothered to talk about it any longer. I did think it was good at the time ( I did one or two posts can't remember) to see how it was.
I was happy with the result as I thought it fair, because being an artist we always make money in odd ways and any way we can, so it just seemed normal to me, but I decided to not try again because of all the debate.
HOWEVER, I will say all those that were so adament NOT to do it and that they just wanted to support good posts who work hard, they quickly fell away and I'd say not many of them even follow me anymore, so I mean are we meant to just wait about for the 'whales' and big wigs to just deign to drop a coin our way? But, if we want to take control and try ourselves that is somehow seen bad? I can't ever understand the human animal.
But, I tell you what, I respect you and if it looks good I might give it a try myself and make another post about it. I'll have to see how it works out for you as I would love to increase my earnings to give me more time to work on projects FOR the steemit world/online world as it allows we creatives to be, well more creative and then of course we make MORE good content for the platform, right?
When I try it, I'll use the same service you did and see what is what.
Haha, there's some truth in it ;-)
I neither like a culture, where it is all about kissing the rich man's ass to survive. Maybe it's just a matter of not exaggerating and leaving the cake to the little ones as well. I'm pretty sure, everyone is trying to take advantage of some sort of gambling, in one way or another. Even those who sell themselves as morally impeccable. "Who is free from sin, should throw the first stone..."
That wasn't said to imply that everything is moral as long as others do it too.
That's right, it's about not judging others. At the moment I can understand anyone trying to survive on Steemit and it would certainly be a bigger loss if people like @katharsisdrill couldn't be so active anymore because they had to do a real life job. In the end, even the most beautiful morality won't work, if you can't survive.
Vote buying won't help Katharsisdrill survive on Steemit because ultimately, such action undermines the very community he depends on for his survival; this is generally why morals exist in the first place. "Erst kommt das Fressen, und dann kommt die Moral" is quite short-sighted; often, without morals, the food will stop coming, as we all depend on groups.
Anyway, only a few win in the current game, the rest gets peanuts; vote buying only accelerates this; might as well do the right thing.
But all that is a bit to deep and heavy; it's only Steemit, after all 8-).
I don't judge Katharsisdrill for buying votes, not because I have ever been afraid of throwing the first stone as hard as I can (not that I am without sin, but nothing ever changes for the better without judgements), but because I am beyond caring about such things on Steemit. Steemit isn't about content, but about making money with money, so he should do as he sees fit, and he will.
True, it would be a shame if he stopped posting on Steemit, but I doubt his buying votes will be of any help with that, and as long as he survives financially, and I can see his drawings somewhere else, I would be fine with his leaving Steemit too.
I didn't propose vote buying as a good thing in general, but for people, that are good for the community, create quality content (that is undervalued) and don't overdo it.
That won't hurt the system imho, what destroys it, are whales, that only upvote their own shit-posts, don't curate and don't help minnows.
I'm really not sure about if judging is the root of all evil in first place. I try to avoid judging others as much as I can. Isn't that the whole point of a liberal, free speech network? Instead of trusting other's, I try to develop and adjust my own moral.
If it wasn't about content and the people, that create it, I certainly would have gone already. Meeting @katharsisdrill and being at Steemfest prooves, that Steemit has powers beyond "making money".
I doubt not doing so, will be of any help for anybody
This would be a great loss for me personally and for the Steem blockchain in general. So at least, he shouldn't be judged for trying out ways of optimizing his rewards. I won't.
I'll stick around :)
Great :-)
Steemit is only a faucet. Not much moral attached.
But I am an art faucet, and my art can be found here, even when crypto is created by national states:
https://www.datataffel.dk/u/katharsisdrill
No wonder your daughter is in a warlike mood.
She has her reasons I presume.
:-D
😂
Yes, this touches upon some of my thoughts about this platform. I have seen people win politically because they played foul and then... nothing, they get away with it. People seem to think that they are smart. And meanwhile we artists are out there with the lumpen proletariat anyways and are considered dodgy and half criminals and freebooters. So my only regret is that the owners of the bots get away with all the money.
@tipu profit for 11,486 SP
Yesterday 11486.0 STEEM POWER delegated or invested gave payout of:
1.177 SBD + 3.485 STEEM (3.21 USD), APR: 16.78% .
Delegation link: steemconnect 11486.0 SP delegation to @tipu.
Please note that your profit can be slightly different (depending on the payout time).Check out https://www.steemprofit.info to compare @tipU with other services.
Just checking what you would get if you delegated all your SP to Tipu. I'm curious that way 8-).
I am always curious, but one thing I like to do here it is voting directly at the good posts and comments. I haven't really delegated anything yet, but just tried to upvote all the funny people. The boring investors can vote for themselves.
And they do!
But yes, there's nothing like manual curation, but it is losing the numbers game.
It's a design flaw really. Fork this shit! What is your view on this proposal?
Quoting myself:
"As long as a large percentage of the big wallets want to optimise their ROI and tune their algorithms to that end, and prefer to be content-agnostic, you can fiddle with the percentages until the cows come home and bend the reward curve into a bow tie, but nothing will change for the better. They will just adjust their, um, doings accordingly and carry on. Steemit is now for making money with money, not for making money with content, and I don't believe that will change anymore."
I don't believe it will work at all, but then, I am a cynic. I'm all for trying it though, as long as it can be rolled back when it doesn't work. All these discussions based on economic theories are fruitless, as there are no economic models that predict well; it's all just an exchange of opinions without progress in knowledge. Only trying things will get us further.
I think @nonameslefttouse's proposal could be more fruitful; I don't know if you have seen it in the past?
Nothing cynical about that. Libertarianism isn't working as an economic theory. The best societies are European social democracies that uses taxes to circulate the wealth and power a bit. Even the US has to do it, but instead of public healthcare they give their population sleeping guards at the many military facilities, obsolete war machines and War.
I have seen @nonameslefttouse's proposal and felt about the same about it: doubting but interested. And we are not going to see a tax that sends money to the poor newbies, so i am interested in whatever comes up :)
Of course one can simply "power up" SBD rewards, which I've done for most of my rewards. But I held back about a third of my accumulated rewards, and I am "slowly" converting them to SBD using services like rocky1.
I don't think I've earned anything this way, maybe broken even. But instead of breaking even in SBD, this way I'm gradually converting my SBD to VP.
There was a time when the increased visibility seemed to help my posts, but in the current state of affairs that doesn't appear to make a difference.
I've toyed with simply giving up on posting on this platform, but I decided to try and hang in there at least until I've converted all my SBD to VP -- and secretly hoping somehow things will change.
I don't expect to earn anything doing it, but for now I'm just enjoying deep diving on subjects that interest me and posting about them. :-)
I will stick with the platform, but I am not satisfied at all by the way things are running right now. I read that @kevinwong and @trafalgar had some ideas to how curation could be up prioritized... not sure what that would mean: https://steemit.com/steem/@trafalgar/help-fix-steem-s-economy
Right now I am making my art and comics anyway because I can afford it, but it is time I again begin to earn some money. It would be nice if Steemit could be that place, but doubtful.
I like your approach to Steemit, I do hope Steemit could become universal in a way that could open up opportunities for creative people like you to reach a mass audience. Fingers crossed.
Yes, fingers crossed!
I often feel like my best posts have not enough visibility, some suggesat me to buy votes, i try once and i spent really a poor thing, like 0,07 sbd or similar i have a little result but i must admit i feel like guilty after that, i think that votes must be earned with a good aquality content but at the same time i am so disappointed when i see quality post so unconsiderated and some not good post having a big visibility and eranings because they buy uovote..So i think it's useful to buy votes if no one notice your good posts but i also think we need a different system because thias one do not guarantee an equality, and do not incentivate people to create good contents.
I agree, but I am not sure what to do. The best thing would be of people voted for good posts, but the richest here like to play ponzi-scheme with the place. I power up all I can and try to vote for people who make good content. That is all I can do.
That's true ^^
It's not only vote-buying that feeds these "not good posts," it is also the constant guaranteed votes of rich people that do vote-circles regardless of quality content.
Just because I think they don't contribute to raising the value of STEEM or the quality of content on the platform, I don't use them. I don't see myself using them in the future. And I have my (unpaid) voting bot configured not to vote for any posts that have votes from them.
But... I can understand why people use them, and I think there's nothing really wrong with it. I think bid-bots are probably a form of arbitrage because the author/curation reward split is too rigid. I have thought for a long time that authors should be able to set the curation reward percentage independently on each post. If that were possible, bid-bots would serve no purpose. Like it or not, I think that as long as the curation reward split is out of balance and rigid, the bidbots are going to make sense for some authors.
I am all for the solution that promotes quality content, so trying this is mainly desperation. I have powered up all the way and I am making quality content on a professional level. But gaming the system professionally is more lucrative as it is. As I said I am not convinced that it is a good way but it is darn easy, I just tried it :)
All else being equal, I guess you'd still expect high quality authors who use bidbots to outperform low quality authors who do the same, so it probably doesn't discourage posting quality, but I do think they might drive away prospective users and thereby lower the price of STEEM.
Anyway, the way Steem has evolved, it almost seems like many authors don't really have a choice. I'm not a prolific writer anyway, so I'll keep plodding along without them, but if I were writing a lot and getting the rewards I'm seeing, I'd probably see things differently.
I am still not sure. I will probably do it when I feel greatly undervalued (which I am not by the way. I have many great contacts here that have done a lot for me). I guess the problem is only part technology (have you btw seen this proposal from @trafalgar?). A community with investors in the top will never promote quality even though quality is paramount for the investment (ie. the future of Steem), so building a middle class of hard working people on Steemit should be the main objective. Right now the rich get richer by doing things that are bad for the platform and for every second their power is increased. Steemit is just doing what we see everywhere else in the real world. I have powered up, but my yield will be lower than the ones who are richer than me. Our best hope is that they leave the platform with their winnings...
I have seen @trafalgar's proposal, but I don't have strong feelings on it. @svamiva also mentioned in a comment that golos will be having a Nov. 22 hardfork where they switch to allowing authors to set their own curation reward split on each post. I'm eager to see how that works out. Unfortunately, I don't speak Russian, so I can't try it out first hand.
The sad part is that even the rich don't get richer. The value in ranchorelaxo's wallet has dropped from 8 million to less than 1 million. Whatever haejin might be pulling out of curation rewards, I'm pretty sure he hasn't made up for that loss. Same with freedom and other people delegating to bidbots. It's something like the tragedy of the commons, I guess. Eventually, I can only hope that the low (and falling) prices will drive out the failing strategies and shift enough STEEM into the hands of people who will use their influence more wisely to attract that middle class that we need to raise its value.
Yes, grabbing for control ruins them. The let's-eat-all-the-food-on-the-island approach is stupid at best, so yes, kind of the tragedy of the commons. I have been having the same thoughts as you, that a crisis might run the investors of the grazing fields... but who knows what is going to happen.
While it still tempts me sometimes, I haven’t paid for votes since last June when I vowed to stop. You do get the satisfaction that your post has a double-digit pay-out but the number is an illusion.
What you may want to consider is delegating to steem-ua. This gives you a daily vote if you loan them 250SP, one per day and is based mostly off your length of service from what I see. It is supposed to be off the quality of your content, but I have my doubts about that.
Is this paying for votes? You could look at it that way but it appears more ‘acceptable’ than doing it the sledgehammer method. You can also remove you delegation and get your STEEM back anytime.
Have a look at my posts and check the steem-ua vote weight if you are interested and then you can decide.
I will look into that. What I really want is to just upvote all the good content out there by myself and I have by being thrifty I have collected a reasonable amount of SP, but with a inflation of 8-9% a year you feel a bit like Sisyphos. Maybe Steem-ua is a better way, but I prefer to vote myself instead of delegating.
I also use the @steem-ua service. They try to reward content based on the quality of your content, your networking abilities and user engagement. So it's not that you get higher votes, when you delegate more Steem. It's probably a good thing.
There's been negative talk about @steem-ua from some but there's only so much one can do when it comes to AI and voting.
It's still the best thing out there if you look at it from a financial point of view and ROI.
Most people who have been here for > 6 momths seem to have delegated. That speaks for itself really.
It doesnt seem a great thing for new people though. They tend to have a very low rating.
That's true. People who are new and think, all they need to do is delegating some SP and then getting a huge ROI are probably pissed.
At least @steem-ua offers help to grow through their discord as well.
If your goal is to make money, the bots won't help you any since there's no profit in it. That's why people are silly for hating people who "abuse bots" since they're not ending up with any money themselves.
Maybe being abused by bots is a better term for what they do... ( I just did), but with the price of steem dropping the big investors will hopefully suffer too.
I have been using vote-buying for some time now; but in my case it is more like an attempt at gamification of steem services. My SBDs & SP is so low that it does not really have any impact on the SBD pool or the payout of my posts, but I get to engage more with the steem blockchain, to get in touch with others in chat channels & discover new steem-users. I get to see how the votes are distributed, I learn about the platforms and their extra services, I see how some people use innovative ideas in the steem-chain. Just recently I was introduced to SteemFollower, which is in beta yet but maybe it turns out to be the basis of a good concept.
After 1 year, I have mixed feelings about steem; it seems too much of a "circle-jerking" and of the 90-10 (or whatever ratio) rule: 90% of the money here circulates between 10% of the people. Or is it 95-05? I was not expecting easy riches, but seeing shit posts making ton of $$$ is disheartening; one major concept that drew me in steem a year ago was "quality posts are rewarded". "QUALITY posts" not "RICH MEN's posts." On the other hand, since I am not a very social type of person, I keep a low profile, I don't like the overuse of the word "community" etc, I had that coming (the low payouts I mean).
Anyway, it's not about the money, currently for me it's more about the people I met here and their true quality posts, like this one.
Well, I agree on all accounts and my questions mirrors your thoughts. Something is pretty wrong about the distribution of Steem. I will still be here as I am fond of people, and the tech is great (ie. working), but I would like to see changes! And reunion! And firework!
I've expressed myself many times on this topic, but it's not a black and white issue. What I don't like to see is people buying lots of votes on a post, especially if it's not that good. I can see some do it so they can appear on trending and thus gain followers, but you need hundreds of dollars to achieve that. Some of those people have a large following, so why do they need to keep on doing it?
I really don't know how much profit there is in doing this, but the big winners are those selling the votes as they get your money plus curation rewards. Some of them share it amongst those who delegate to them. I do delegate to one 'bot', but it's a small one that supports the running community.
As part of the @steemflagrewards team I do flag posts that over-use bots as they are depriving others of rewards. Not that my vote can make a huge difference. I even flag some trending posts that I think have too much rewards. I appreciate it's a business running these things, but we are meant to use our voting power as we see fit and the first reason on the popup is 'disagreement on rewards'.
We have a choice in how Steem goes on. Use your vote as you see fit.
I don't buy votes for specific posts, but I do use Steem Basic Income and I get votes from Helpie and Steem-UA for delegating to them. The money is nice, but I want real interaction too.
I know you really want the best for Steemit and the same is true for me. On a simple level I just want to power up to be able to upvote people and be a model citizen, I always felt best going about things like a honourable man. But as you well know Steemit is not Picadelly, but Klondike. Right now I have 180 SPD that I have saved to exchange when the steem gets low, and then I want to power it up anyway. But this made it possible to do the same fast and with
Like you I hate to see the bot-owners get away with all the wealth, but how do one really help Steemit the most. By grabbing power or by setting an example? I have a bad feeling it is the first. Anyway we will see. i will probably not be doing much vote-bying. Like cocaine the pleasure it very, very limited. At least for me.
The funniest thing about using bots and vote services is they make you feel guilty and weird despite "everyone" uses them, even though deep down you know not everyone uses them. Horrible tools, I use them too at times. A lot of times I believe the bots end up being the only ones to truly profit as your Steem levels rise a bit but then you are stuck with that Steem for x amount of time more. It could definitely be considered as an investment back in the system as much as it could be considered gambling. Got I love and hate the bots and services on Steemit.
Ha, yes. I do feel pretty bad as soon as anybody doubts my honour :)