[IMAGE: https://cdn.steemitimages.com/DQmesbjxBGhP9cu4m5zNV8JUiCAW58fxi1MxxeLWh6MPLPh/image.png]
Hey guys, I take no quarrel with offering votes for a price. I remember when you had to be in the club to exchange votes. Openness and transparency are better than backroom deals all day long. However, I think things have to change after HF21. This platform is undergoing a lot of effort to clean up abuse, award good authors, and stop the endless siphoning of value. You, the bid bot owners, already have a large impact on the platform, but I think it's going to get larger, and more eyes will be upon you after 21 takes effect Tuesday.
I want to help bidbots that are ethical, practical, and care about Steem to grow. That growth I hope will come from bidbots that don't support this effort...
Downvotes
You guys are getting free downvotes. Of course you have the option to sell these. That might be a profitable service, and I have no quarrel with that in principle.
Assuming you aren't selling downvotes as you don't want to get into the questionable outcomes of that then you're going to have a large pool of downvote power. I'm encouraging you to get some guidelines immediately about types of content you'll flag, when you'll flag, and under what circumstances. If you have questions about it I suggest you talk to other bidbot owners, or the folks from steemcleaners (guiltyparties and anyx) about various practices.
I'd also encourage you to tighten up your standards regarding what content you allow to be bid botted. Right now with only a few notable exceptions people using bidbot services are free to shitpost all day long and upvote it to kingdom come. We need to change this behavior. You're going to want to change it anyway because after 21 this entire community will have free down votes and pure shitposts getting your votes are going to get nuked along with your profits and delegators' tolerance.
Right now several of you choose to allow any content of any quality, but if you continue doing that post hf21 I think you'll die a death of a million paper cuts. I'll help lead the effort.
Seriously, witnesses are implementing EIP to support the price of steem and improve content creation on the platform. I'm not going to see it undermined by bidbot owners who don't give a fuck. Steem price isn't going anywhere with large amounts of stake supporting zero-value posts just so bid bot delegators can receive a profit.
Shit's gotta change. Change has to start with me, and I'm going to put myself in front of your profits all day long until behavior is in line with #newsteem expectations.
If you've already done these thank you. If you haven't then I'd strongly encourage you to create the following.
- Guidelines on supported content
- Flagging guidelines to support quality content
- Arbitration
Time for a change and clean slate
The era of supporting literally anything and everything stops on Tuesday.
If it doesn't stop I plan to run an aggressive campaign against your business, against your delegators, and will try to get Steem delegated to your project moved to a more responsible one.
This isn't an idle request...
I'm not anti-bidbot. I'm coowner of steembottracker so that everyone can transparently and openly get the services you provide. Your service can be very valuable. So can mine. Imagine having a bidbot when no one knows when your vote windows happen... I think it'll be harder to engage in your business. Don't you?
I'm less inclined to set standards for you on what is a zero value shitpost. I want you to come up with guidelines that show what your business is doing to protect and grow the value of Steem for the stake holders.
Change is hard. I hope you'll manage.
Yours truly,
Aggroed
I think it's a wonderful time to buy steem. :)
It has more application than many other cryptos and a vast majority of those have bounced back multiple times, some even to new highs than previously. I see the all time low on coinmarketcap is like $0.06-0.08 for steem, so honestly even if it were to drop that low, I think it's a good buy now.
The idea behind all investing is don't invest more than you can afford to lose... so in my own mind, even if my investment drops by half or less, it's still better than nothing at all.
There are many things we all spend money on daily that never return anything. Why do some bitch and moan about crypto as if it's any different? :P
There are risks, sure, but it is also an investment, an asset, as opposed to a liability.
Alcohol users drink alochol that runs through their system, makes them feel good for a moment, then the moment passes. They have a memory, sure, but not all are good. They still continue to use it. They never receive anything back from that investment though, not financially anyhow. Yet they happily throw money into a pit. At least here, even if you invested $1,000 and lost 90%, you'd have $100 when all was said and done. If you spent $1,000 on alcohol, it would be gone. You lose 100% the second you drink the last of it.
Nice dinners and going out to eat are great, but the money is also gone instantly with no return. The food is gone when it's consumed and that's that. If you spend $200 a month on dinners, you get nothing back. You enjoy yourself, same idea as before, but that's it. Your steak never gives you cash back later on, not even a fraction of it's cost. lol. Short of having rewards back by having some credit card or membership deal of some sort, you're not getting nothing back for your investment beyond some momentary feelings of enjoyment.
Am I saying people shouldn't enjoy themselves? Not at all. :)
I'm saying that it's always a good time to invest in something you believe in.
People throw money away left and right daily, on any number of frivolous things. It only makes sense that something with potential to create more wealth, is a more sensible thing to spend your money on. That is, if you wish to have the potential for much more money. If you don't though, don't take chances, play it safe. Get a job and work a career and do things that way. Many do, no shame in it. :) There are other investment options that can give decent earnings. (Inflation protected bonds and such.)
TL;DR:
Yes, it's a great time to buy. :) Even if it reaches it's previous low, that's still down only half from the current price. I see steem making huge recoveries in price in the near future.
The focus on money on Steem social media is unfortunate. Social doesn't mean financial. Society is comprised of people, and people have value far beyond their ability to write and produce content, as well as their ability to consume.
The narrative of the ninjaminers that have focused Steem on profiteering is harmful to society; to the social media platform, and we see as a result various effects that have degraded user retention, Steem distribution, price, and market cap, and more.
I do not accuse you of being one of them, but note in this comment you seem to further that narrative. People participating in society have far more value than their economic impact, and that's a fact. One of the things I anticipate from communities is that some of those communities are going to focus not on money, but on more valuable aspects of society.
If we're just mining tokens here, we'll be well rid of it when Steem dies. We're not, and unless that fact becomes far more recognized and supported, we'll lose all that potential value when Steem dies, because if it doesn't become more than a Steem mining device, it will die.
Steem can change the world, because it is a platform that potentiates completely voluntary governance from beginning to end, including financing public projects. The financial mechanism is not the primary import of such a model, and despite the ignorance of folks incapable of seeing beyond their wallets, society yet may benefit in paradigm transforming ways from Steem.
Let's hope HF21 doesn't kill it before that can be realized.
Money is not bad. Caring more about money than people results in, and is a result of, misunderstanding the real benefits and value of society. That is bad.
I did not assume, and simply noted the apparent intent of your comment.
Mike Tyson once said that Don King would sell his momma for a dolla. Such people exist, and are logically extending a focus on finance over more valuable aspects of society. It is obvious that doing so ultimately harms people, and destroys society. Steem is failing, because it is a society, and those with the most stake value their stake more than they do the society.
Profiteering destroys the business profiteers extract value from. That is what is happening to Steem. Almost no experienced investors employ profiteering as SOP, because destroying businesses is less profitable, less productive of ROI, in the long run. Warren Buffet is an investor that increases the value of the underlying investment vehicle, builds the businesses he invests in, and as a result has become one of the most successful investors in the world.
>"This is just how the things work on the Steem blockchain."
And this is why the Steem blockchain is failing, and needs to be forked to prevent it's death right now. Unfortunately, HF21 is exactly the opposite of what is needed, and makes profiteering more attractive. It encourages greater extraction via stake weighting of the value created by users rather than allowing that value to increase the value of the investment vehicle, Steem.
Capital gains FTW. Profiteering = destruction.
Let's set the record straight. Actually; you said you had a conflict of interest during a podcast interview.
I upvoted your post as I am no fan of upvote bots. I no longer auto-upvote, follow curation trails, or use upvote bots (I tried using BroRando, but did not do it right) though I have used them in the past. I do not agree with your aggressive threat.
> The era of supporting literally anything and everything stops on Tuesday.
If it doesn't stop I plan to run an aggressive campaign against your business, against your delegators, and will try to get Steem delegated to your project moved to a more responsible one.
Guess I will just add you to the list of bully oligarchs here on STEEM. By you own ultimatum you have earned that title. You have not only threatened the bid-bot owners to bend to your will but the delegaters as well (most who delegate are just minnows trying to make-it here on STEEM. Just like your PAL delegaters.) The statement above shows that you are under the impression that you are now running things. I warned others in the past, I am pretty good at reading people.
I realize that this is a DPOS platform. As a stake-holder myself I have an interest in this platform. @ats-david has also, in many ways (in the background) remained loyal to this platform.
After rereading your post I regret upvoting it. I should have read it better. I will leave my upvote as I am not an Indian-giver. I will take away my Bitmoji though as now after reading the whole thing better, I don't love it.
Kudos for your involvement in the side-chain steem-engine. I play with it myself. If all the notifications I get from GITHUB are any indication, it has pushed many to get the SMT thingy going. Everyone is also thankful for SteemMonsters/Spinterlands helping the Steem platform, but most of its success was due to crowd sourced work just like many projects here on STEEM.
If I have said anything that are believed to be unsubstantiated, by all means, set me straight. I said on numerous occasions in the Foundation server (both drunk and sober) that you would be a big part of the Foundation. Even this hog can find a truffle (truth) now and again.
@jerrybanfield may have been despised by many for various reasons, but at least there has never been any shame in his game nor did he ever flex his financial muscles and make public threats.
Bidbots are all unethical. Society is people, just like Soylent Green. Every bot vote is a degradation of humanity. A substantial reason Steem social media is not succeeding at retaining users is that users are not more competent at financial manipulation than automated mechanisms.
Worse, financial manipulation has been demonstrably established as the heart and soul of Steem. Social engineering is yet one skill people, such as ninjaminers, are better at than bots, and HF21 is evidence of that.
You have done a great deal for Steem society, and I laud you for it. Running a bidbot is not advancing Steem society, but degrading it, and I do not support you in that effort. In truth such profiteering is going to continue to decrease the price of Steem, user retention, and market cap until it is no longer practiced or Steem dies.
Steem has dropped over 50 places on CMC since I first told you that. I look forward to the day when you decide to end your support for bots and apply your considerable skill to supporting society - people - exclusively. Steem incorporates technology that enables voluntarist governance. Wasting that on mere economic gain is tragic.
People need to be empowered to effect their values as policies, and selling that power for tokens is unethical. That's what bots do. Please stop.
I never thought the vision of Steem was to find the best post and make sure it earns the most.
I consider it a social media site where the "Owners" pick the winners. I am not arguing that they have done a good job with this.
I think many posts that end up on trending are important information or discussions.
I understand the point of view, I just think you have to make the assumption that everyone has the same goal as you do to consider it unethical.
I happen to think Steem is perfectly fair from a stakeholders point of view. I get to allocate exactly the correct percentage of the inflation pool as what I own.
I am not saying I think the stakeholders are making excellent choices.
If I hold more stake than I can vote with it is my possession and I should be allow to sell the bi-product of that (votes to whomever I please) AGAIN... Not saying it is going well. If they sell too many too often we end up where we are right now, no one wants to use it.
I guess the only thing I am saying is that it isn't as black and white as he claims.
DPOS I get it and it sounds good on paper, I just don't think I care for it.
It makes sense that the largest stakeholders decide the direction of a project, I just expected them to have more intelligence about what they are and are not good at. :)
@whatsup,
What you say is true (and articulately expressed).
Here's what's also true: A "product" has been created that no one wants, with the exception of the vote-buyers/sellers. Once everyone else leaves, which we are perilously close to, all those votes will be worthless ... as will be the SP that generates them.
It doesn't matter what's theoretically right or wrong if, pragmatically, it causes the entire system to crash.
You spoke of "owners" ... for that which is owned to be worth anything, there must be customers. This customer feels shafted and he is not alone. This cannot, and will not, go on for much longer.
Indeed, unless the Voice launch turns out to be an utter disaster (and @dan has more than enough money to ensure that it doesn't), September 23 may be the day that the STEEM/Steemit charade finally comes to an end.
It's too bad because I and a lot of other good people love this place. But enough is enough. Fool me once, shame on you; fool me twice, shame on me.
I'm tired of feeling like an idiot.
Quill
@whatsup, you said,
> It makes sense for the largest stakeholders to determine the direction of a project.
Maybe that's the problem. When you start a project, it looks like it's the wrong way to get the biggest stakeholders first to decide what the functions should look like. Wouldn't it be wiser, if you want to create a good product/service, to really want to bring this product to its full potential first?
Everything seems to be the other way around here. First the investors and then the development up to the product maturity? That would be like putting a seedling in the soil and pumping it so full of fertilizer that it can yield a lot very quickly, although the fruit tastes much better when the process has enough time to get to the true goodness.
Take for example a service like WordPress or deepl.com. The former was an open source project and the developers were interested in the product and how to do it so well that you could be satisfied with it yourself.
Along the way, many minds have tried to make it good, just like with Linux. At deepl. I don't know how open source the whole thing was. But it was, similar to facebook and youtube, in an initially slow growth. While the users tried it, the developers learned to make changes and the programmers learned to write the code.
The investors came later: A company that wants to make first-class products chooses its investors well. These selected investors don't exist here. Anyone can join in and then say that they are an investor. On the basis of this logic, wouldn't one have to say that no matter how big a share someone holds, he should have the same voting entitlement?
Why should those with many shares be wiser than those with few? Or vice versa? It has nothing to do with intelligence, how much or how little I have. It's more about how well you want to make a product and whether you can imagine that the later beneficiaries will like it so much that it will inevitably develop into a mass market.
I find one can better rely on the intelligence of the many interested and curious ones instead of that of the largest stakeholders.
>"When you give kids a stick there will be injuries."
Ban sticks. No one needs sticks in [current year].
[IMAGE: https://files.steempeak.com/file/steempeak/valued-customer/lGXdeizj-banhands.jpg]
Srsly though, you are completely right, and few know this better than I as a result of experience. The ability to buy and sell flags is about to begin. We see that professional flaggers already are financially supported on Steem, and 25% of VP is about to be available to that market without appreciable cost to potential sellers of that VP.
I have been saying that the downvote pool is going to be the worst aspect of HF21, and this despite the terrible financial impact more than halving author rewards is going to have on onboarding and user retention.
Buckle up. The consequences of the flag market will never be the same. I, for one, here salute our new robot overlords:
[IMAGE: https://files.steempeak.com/file/steempeak/valued-customer/baoF1yQS-fuckyou.jpg]
Note: banning hands will make banning sticks unnecessary, as well as salutes impossible. Food for thought.
I DO NOT recommend what I do, as I don't care about money, and I will experience financial loss as a result of my actions.
Don't do it. Sheep that obey the shepherd get pastured on good grass. Feral sheep get the wolf. I am here for the wolves. From time to time, feral sheep are eaten by wolves, and that keeps wolves from eating obedient sheep.
Until then, I am free of the corral.
It is not often grasped that flags return rewards to the pool, where whales then have another go at them. Since whales extract ~90% of rewards, and HF21 will reduce author rewards by more than half, flagging (with free flags) will become a far more financially rewarding act for substantial stakeholders.
I'd quote Samuel Adams for everyone here, but instead will let the community self segregate. Life is an act of war.
Peace.
Decrying extortion is not claiming entitlement to rewards. Rather extortion depends on pandering to stake, as only stake weighting is potentially a threat on Steem. Your threats are based on your own entitlement to power due to the weight of your stake. Projection is demonstration of denial, and you are projecting all over me.
However, I will note that the community needs to be rewarded for creation of content in order for that content to be created, and thereby add value to Steem. Insofar as extracting value from that chain using stake weighting diminishes the rewards creators attain, bidbots prevent that value from inuring to Steem. Were that a small matter, it would be inconsequential, but stake weighting extracts ~90% of rewards already, and HF21 is going to decrease the rewards allowed to trickle down to creators by more than half. Rather than inconsequential, it is existential.
Not only am I correct that bots voting equally with humanity degrades humanity, but they are also reducing capital gains, and vectors of profiteering that are destroying Steem. There are reasons society engenders certain ethical and moral standards, including hard work, self sacrifice for the greater good, and etc... Building society requires foregoing potential personal rewards.
You demonstrate those values well, but not by running a bidbot. Even the most ethically run bidbot must extract value from the content of creators to be profitable, and thus degrades the society and the value of Steem. Threatening people if they don't vote or deploy their stake as you desire is what you have done, and projecting that onto me doesn't change that fact. I simply note that some things are harmful, some are beneficial, and generally act to promote the beneficial.
Extortion is harmful, and the reflection of pandering. Look in that mirror before you accuse me. No matter how you sift my history on Steem, you will not find examples of pandering, extortion, profiteering, or entitlement. If you do, I will be grateful to have it pointed out to me, so I can rectify the situation.
>"I have a right to interact with unethical bidbots however I want."
I disagree that you have a right to do anything you want with your stake, because some things you can do with stake are illegal, and others unethical and harmful. Your rights end where other's rights begin. Freedom is accompanied by responsibility. Liberty is not libertine.
>"I’m going to protect Steem, my home, from people hurting it."
Then quit destroying the value of Steem by running a bidbot.
Capital gains FTW.
Why do you sound as if the bot business is a personal threat to you? Because it is? Then, why is it?
There are as many opinions as there are forms of expression. Also here on Steemit. The diversity of the comments shows that very nicely. Why shouldn't the community decide how it wants to deal with content and bidbots on the basis of a democratic consensus election, based on a simple procedure that could be set up at any time? Which I describe here.
My own behaviour may serve as a yardstick, and I assume that most people are like that. One day I am completely unimpressed by whether someone is stuffing their pockets, another day or at another hour I am not. I have mood swings and I have different reactions. My lifestyle may change, so may my circumstances, and on the basis of these events I decide sometimes so and sometimes differently. I call it the reality of life.
There should be an opportunity to incorporate this into decisions: On the one hand about the amount/ratio of the distribution of my payouts as well as about my intentions to vote someone down.
Why not support the moment of decision by incorporating a "rethink" option?
In this way, I am urged to check every single post, every single comment and every single reaction, positive or negative. This could be solved technically quite easily. It would probably have a greater diversity in the whole system if I didn't always have to choose between two or not enough options. A technically built-in time delay between impulse and execution. That doesn't exist here at all yet.
