Good post. I know next to nothing about using bots, but this was an excellent primer.
Are you worried that bots like this will eventually devalue Steem by upvoting content based on metrics instead of quality?
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I'm not worried about that no. The main purpose of creating it is to put power into the hands of "normal" people who haven't so far had access to a versatile bot they can call their own. They can call it their own because it's kind of programmable, in the sense of being very customisable.
What I want to counteract are the promenant closed source bots and auto-voting services. A big thing is privacy and data protection (I'm all about that). Most (all?) of the services popular now require you to store your keys on someone else's server. This bot is basically your own server, you control it. It's certainly possible to run it all from your laptop, even with the web app, I just have to write the tutorial for it and work out any kinks.
The value of Steem doesn't even come onto my radar tbh 😬
One more thing, I do think that bots are problematic, and I think that an open source, easily available bot will hopefully spur discussion and either they will become nicer in the community or we'll have to do something about them. Making sure everyone has access to a high quality bot is a good way to promote that conversation.
Also I just like building stuff 😜
But the bots are meant to upvote for tokens, it's like being on a treadmill.
I'm not judging, I think it's awesome you can do this. But I think a system like this needs to find ways around these problems too. It's fine if everyone has a bot, but it does become a zero sum game eventually.
Thanks for giving the source code. I don't know much about coding, but it'll be fun to check it out.
I agree. But one has to be practical, it's fine to talk about the big ideas of the platform, but when there are other users empowered by something only selectively available, I feel like that is something to be opposed. And because it is in my power to do something about it, I did. Tokens can also be earned by witnessing and mining. I see this auto-curation as a kind of cultural mining.
I see it as contributing to the ongoing working out of finding ways around the problems which bot raise. I'd like to see where we go with this, but in the meantime, here's a bot 😊 One which has what I feel are good principles at heart, genuinely.
Well, I stand by my assertion that it brings the site down overall. But I can appreciate your logic. (No pun intended)
I disagree. It's like raising the level to competativeness for everyone, too a baseline that allows people to benefit more than they do now where power is concentrated in a few hands.
But in earnest I'd be interested to discuss ways around the problem of bots too. I believe in this approach for the moment but I'm not beyond convincing .
Thanks for the conversation, hope to continue it. 🙃