So over the past week or so I've noticed that the same author's continuously have trending articles on a daily basis. Naturally, I started to read their posts to see what they were doing that I wasn't and I started noticing a trend.
The same people were upvoting and more importantly the same whales were upvoting.
Why the same author's trend
Upon further digging I noticed that some of these accounts were 'curation bots'. They have identified high quality author's and or identified 'popular' authors and added them to their bot list. Anytime an author on the bot list posts the same thing happens. The bot upvotes, and subsequent bots upvote and this causes the the article to become trending.
Once an articles starts trending a snowball effect happens. People visit the site, see the article, either read it and upvote or upvote it just to grab the small curation reward.
The whales and their bots aren't dumb, that's why they are whales. They know that if they get the ball rolling, it will trend and explode and they will get the majority of the curation reward.
It's no coincidence we see a lot of #introduceyourself posts trend. The reason is because the @wang bot is programmed to like and comment on them all and @wang is a big whale.
Same goes for some of our #travel bloggers. I'm not saying their content isn't great, a lot of times it is. But the same travel bloggers are trending on a daily basis because the same whale bots are upvoting them.
Is this a problem?
I don't know yet and I'm not sure. First, I think the bots play a vital roll because they promote liquidity but I think this was more of an issue in the beginning when there were fewer users. Similar to how the Reddit founder had many accounts to make it look like the site was popular.
But now that Steem has over 30,000 accounts I don't think this is an issue. And if the bots are continuously updating and adding new author's to their list great content will continue to be buried.
Is this unfair?
Maybe but life's not fair, deal with it. Let me be clear, I'm not complaining in this article, I'm just stating my observations.
SteemIt Going Forward
I do think this issue of bot upvoting needs to be addressed in the long run as I mentioned before, great content will be buried. And without great content a social network doesn't exist.
Let me know your thoughts below!
I invite @berniesanders @ned @dan @steemed @itsascam @steemroller or any other whales. I'm interested to know your thoughts on whales and the roles they play and will play on SteemIt.
I just want a fair shake at this. When i spend a great deal of time putting together a quality post and it just gets swept under the rug it can be disheartening. It's a bit like playing the lottery here with your time. I'll contine on because im addicted to steemit now and have powered up with over 100 of my steem from bittrex. It doesnt seem to be enough though.
Also, is it just me or is anyone having incredible difficulty creating a post from their phone? I cant even type in the body 99% of the time. I need to be on my laptop. Anyway, i hope that my travel stories and informative, engaging and thought provoking post don't all get completely looked over by everyone choosing to flock only to the trending page. Best of luck everyone!
Can't become disheartened. Again, either great content is recognised or the platform fails.
A few whales have found my content. So far I don't have bots following me (that would be cool. lol)
I'm doing my best to post decent and accurate content that people can use or enjoy. :) Seems to be working. :D
Keep it Clean!
Here is my proposal on what to do about the bots...
https://steemit.com/steemit/@williambanks/bot-warz-a-hybrid-approach
I'm very interested in your thoughts and feedback, thanks!
Good article. Shame it didn't get any traction.
Thanks but it can still get traction. Posts here never expire. Any topic, article or posting can pay forever. People just need to be interested in it, keep upvoting and commenting on it.
Feel free to go there and crosslink in any bot related threads and information. We can win the war, but we need intel to do it.
I'm gonna go right ahead andd say it's a problem.
Yeah, like I mention above, I understand the need for them in the beginning not so much as we progress. Hopefully some of the whales join the conversation and give their input.
It's a bug of the system...
Yeah, I can say that it is an issue that needs to be addressed. It is not a fair practise and lots of good content is not getting any attention or low attention when it really deserves to get some of it. There must be a fair way to resolve this for the sake of all the Steemers that are investing their time to bring the valuable content to the community! It must be resolved...
Agreed, this is an issue; unfortunately I can't envisage a solution.
How can we stop bots? Is that possible? With bots in place I see an infinite loop until Steem crashes.
Self upvoting is an issue.
Eh, not so much. There are really only a few people so far that have the power to really make a difference by self up voting. For the rest of us, it's just a couple pennies.
Whales!
Indeed. The engine the feeds the beast or gives it 'steem' if you will.
I finally posted my introduceyourself and yes, Wang came along and voted. Wang must be an impotent whale. It did nothing for my post. My post has died the same death my other posts have died.
haha
Yeah, but we are in the same similar problem where the whales control 99% of the wealth and therefore voting power and the bots exacerbate the problem because the 'inner circle' isn't gaining membership, it's just gaining Steem aka $$$$.
if @itsascam is a bot then that name has a lot of irony, lol