I second the @steemcommunity endorsement for @paulag and @abh12345.
I really wish we could just get rid of the bidbots. I think most of us who care about the community agree that it would be a better place without them, even some people who support them. I'm sure a few very powerful people would whine and stop any efforts to get rid of them, which shows the fundamental flaw in the system. Likewise, it would be great to get rid of self voting, but again, powerful people would probably block it. As long as (most) of the power players on this site are doing things that fundamentally run contrary to the interests of all users and the system as a whole, nothing is going to change or get better. Not without some serious united efforts from the "good guys" (and gals)--e.g. @friendsofgondor.
agreed with @paullag and @abh12345 as well. I've come to see that bidbots from a UX standpoint don't help establish organic content. that is what this site is about right? connecting users with great content they enjoy reading. Instead bit bots fake users into thinking the content has value and waters down the internet time used to spend finding quality content. I am trying to recitify some of this SHIT with @sugarsteem hopefully soon ill be able to help people find better ways to find relative content than that of upvoted bidbots.
Yeah, and I know my initial reaction when first exploring Steemit (and when I show it to friends) is that there's a lot of crap that does very well financially and floats to the top of the pack because of people gaming the system. The advice that I always give people is to just ignore it and make your own great content and find other hidden gems that make content you like too. I don't go on the trending or hot pages at all. We could totally make the idealist vision of this site real if we removed all of the financial incentive to "cheat."
i think this is where @transisto and people are coming into play building a way to resolve this issue. Stay tuned there are smart minds that are aware of this conflict and user loss and are working on a solution. When @sugarsteem UI becomes available I will have the UI default to My Feed as a logged in user and default to the home page as a non-user. so the trending page will not be the first thing new users see. :)
Thanks Mallory!
Pretty much. It is their money though, why should they let 'us' decide how it is spent/earned/distributed?
Well, it's the age-old question in politics and morality: is it right to police the actions of those at the top and limit the things they do in self interest in the interest of the many? I'm sure the libertarians and free market economists among us would say absolutely not. I just wrote a whole post on morality in which I argue that the whole thing doesn't really exist, so I'll resist any temptations to make moral judgments! But to speak more pragmatically, the thing is that we're all existing in one closed economic system that is enormously influenced by being so weighted at the top, and if we're allowing wealth to pool and consolidate at everyone else's expense, then it makes for an awfully unstable system that can't possibly survive in the long term, and that hurts all of us. @paulag's statistical analysis showed that over 25% of the SBD earned on Steemit is going to bidbots. That's a huge dent in the liquidity and distribution of STEEM and it means that a few individuals are capable of completely crashing the site's internal economics if they make a few selfish moves (and, as I think we've established here, we're not talking about super selfless people).
I hear you :)
Around 90% of that 25% goes to the delegates to the bid-bots - those with the x million SP already for the most part. The rest goes to the owners, some of whom joined as minnows last year, and will be whales by the end of this.
Whether this distribution is killing Steem/steemit or not, they do not seem to care - Eggs are in other baskets, and have been for a while.
I have my hopes pinned on the SMTs, as I think blogging/vlogging (unless you aim your material at the money - dtube/utopian, will become very tricky to make STEEM from. The hope is that those of us holding SP, will not have to, and companies buying liquidity for their tokens will boost the price.
Chin up eh, loved your recent post :)
SMT's worry me as that type of growth with uneasy UI's to access the foundation flounder.
Yeah I see where you are coming from. I guess part of the reason things are taking so long?
Thank you! I'm glad you liked it.
I haven't read up much on the SMTs until now--very interesting. I wonder how it'll all play out. I don't have the same level of technical knowledge as the rest of you.
One thing that does concern me re: economics of the system is that I don't know how much consideration goes into how fragile this kind of closed economic system can be. If we're not doing this already, I think we could probably benefit from some crypto-friendly economists weighing in when we make policy changes so we know the potential benefits/drawbacks of things like banning bidbots or altering voting power equations.
Im actually in favor of self voting if done only in your posts, you earned that SP so you may as well get an initial boost thanks to it.
I agree with getting rid of bidbots though, but humans will be humans...