#steemit

Bidbot Experiment: The Good, The Bad, The Ugly

Readers who have been with me awhile know I ran a few Steemit bidbot experiments last year, but they were small experiments. Small bids, small amounts, and small rewards. A couple of times, I'm sure I lost money on the bots, though I didn't count too closely. The idea was to merely get familiar with them so I could understand what the issue was with the bots and get some perspective on why they've been disruptive to the platform. My curiosity satisfied, I quit playing with them after a week or so.

A recent controversy surrounding allegations of vote buying in another context piqued my interest again in the bidbots. What could be so wrong with the process of increasing one's rewards with a small investment intended for just that purpose? After all, isn't that what Wall Street investors do every day?

I think the situation is a bit more nuanced than that, and I hope this post illustrates just how.

Image from Pixabay.

My Latest Steembot Experiment

So I decided to run a new Steembot experiment. On Sunday, March 17, 2019, at approximately 9:44 p.m., I published a post titled Experimental Post. It has absolutely no value. It's a completely useless shitpost, published for one purpose only: To buy a bidbot vote.

Unlike the majority of my posts, I did not promote it in any way. I published it, tagged it with the #Steemit tag, and that's all I did until I placed my bid three days later. My hypothesis was this: That one post would earn me a greater return on investment (ROI) than an average post would earn me with my normal routine.

So I should pause right here and discuss my usual post publishing and promotion routine. First, I write the best post possible. I put 100% of my energy into writing the best damn post on whatever topic with every single post I write. No particular reason other than personal pride. Secondly, I tag each post with the five most appropriate tags I can think of based on the topic ensuring that one of those tags is #powerhousecreatives. After that, I share the link in more than 20 Discord servers, pausing to read, vote, resteem, and comment on the posts of others as per each server's rules and my personal interests. That process usually takes an hour to an hour-and-a-half and includes automated upvotes in those servers that offer it and for which I qualify. In other words, it's considerable work. When you factor in that I spend no less than an hour, and sometimes up to three (I've been known to spend six), crafting a post then spend an hour, and sometimes up to two, promoting it, I put in some serious time. I did none of that for my experimental post.

Nevertheless, within 14 minutes, I was able to garner 19 votes for a total of $.23 STU, an humble return. In nine hours, that number was 71 votes for a total of $1.03 STU. In 24 hours, I'd received 76 votes for a total of $1.05 STU. And 24 hours later, no extra votes.

So, within 48 hours, I'd received a potential payout of $1.05 STU with no promotion whatsoever, and I had not yet made my bidbot investment.

On March 20, 2019, at approximately 1:15 p.m., I placed a 40 STEEM bid on The Rising bidbot. You can see the value of that bid, in the image below, was $19.48 USD.

Interestingly, right about that time, I received three upvotes from @up1, @lereve, and @antonella. I have no idea if there is a connection, but it's an interesting correlation.

These three upvotes took my total upvotes, before the bidbot vote, to 82 for a total amount of $1.19 STU.

Within the hour, I'd say about 30 to 40 minutes later, I saw the return on my investment (ROI). After The Rising bot placed its vote, I had 83 upvotes for a total of $27.81 STU.

At first glance, it looks as if I've lost money, but these numbers don't tell the whole story. Let's calculate the ROI.

Steembot Lottery Winner

The way Steembots work is quite interesting. If you go to Steembot Tracker, you'll find a list of them.

It's a rolling list, which means the bot at the top of the list is the one that votes next. You have to get your bid in before the next vote. But the most important information is on the left side of that grid.

The vote value is how much a 100% upvote from that bot is valued at the time of the upvote. On the list above, the top bot on the list has a vote value of $42.81, but that's not the vote value that everyone who bids on the bot will get. Rather, the value of each upvote is based on how many people bid on that bot and the percentage of the total bid that each contains. Let me illustrate by example.

Let's say XYZ Bidbot offers an upvote value of $1.00. If one person bids $.25 and no one else bids on that bot, then that one person will get the full $1.00 upvote. That's a good investment. But let's say two people bid on that bot; one of them bids $.10 and the other one bids $.40. In that case, the total bid was $.50, however, the first bidder registered 20% of that bid while the other tallied 80%. Therefore, the first bidder receives a $.20 upvote while the second bidder receives a $.80 upvote, totallying $1.00.

To see how many other bids there are on a bot before you place your bid, you have to click on the orange Action button and then click on "Details." It's tricky figuring out how much is too much of a bid.

At any rate, how much ROI did my 40 STEEM bid net me?

At the time of my bid, STEEM was listed at $.490176 USD at CoinMarketCap. That means I effectively threw $19.60704 USD into my investment. At the time of the actual vote, the price of STEEM hadn't changed much, so I'll use these figures as I continue (This is a good reason, BTW, to cast your bid as close to time of the next vote as you can).

It's important to point out that the default reward ratio on payout is 50% Steem Power and 50% SBD, but the author only gets 75% of payout while all the upvoters (including the bot) splits the rest. Yesterday, this post paid out and I received $20.71 in author rewards.

Here it is in my wallet:

At the time of payout, SBD was at $1.05 USD. That's equivalent to $10.87485 USD. Since STEEM was valued at .475972 at that time, my Steem Power (SP) payout amounted to the equivalent of $10.629406704 USD. Add those two figures together and that comes to $21.504256704 USD.

Again, my initial investment was $19.60704 USD. Subtract that from my earnings, and my shitpost ROI was $1.897216704. Subtract the $1.19 STU in upvotes I got prior to my investment (valued at .58330944 USD) and my ROI from the bidbot turned out to be a measly $1.313907264. But imagine doing that five to ten times a day every day for a year. The potential return is enormous.

Contrast these earnings, however, with the next post I wrote, going through my normal routine, two hours before payout and I sit with $2.38 STU for payout. STEEM currently sits at .453335 USD and Steem Dollars at $1.02 at Coinmarketcap. Taking 75% of the STU and dividing it in half, multiplying both SP and STEEM projected payouts means my ROI for that post, with about two hours of time invested, comes to $1.314965875. Trust me, my time is worth a hell of a lot more than that.

What's Quality Got to Do With It?

It makes me wonder, if I can earn as much ROI from a single bidbot vote, which takes all of five minutes, as I can from a one hour investment in promotion, then why shouldn't I? So why didn't I experiment with my most recent post instead of creating a shitpost? The answer is, I needed a control, a stark contrast to my usual posting and promotion routine, in order to isolate the results.

From this experiment, I can ascertain that, had I invested in the bidbot vote for a normal, average post, my ROI would have been very similar. Posting the Steem Monsters post the very next day and waiting until payout to post again means other factors affecting payouts were limited, allowing me to get a realistic look at the bidbot effect. So why does that matter?

It matters because this very average post of mine has earned a total of $2.38 STU with only 47 upvotes in seven days.

I can assume that the people who voted for that post thought it worth their percentages. Otherwise, they would not have cast their votes. The exception to this would be those kind folks who auto-upvote every post of mine simply because I impressed them at some point in the past. Those people also voted for the shitpost, by the way. But if you examine all the upvotes on both posts, you'll find there are some voting accounts on each post that you won't find on the other. These are the manual human upvotes. These are the upvotes on which quality--actual post quality--ought to be measured. If we were to put these two posts side by side, we could judge the average power of manual upvotes for each of them. On that, we could ascertain the relative value that each post contributes to the blockchain.

As you can see, the experimental post has a higher total upvote value, due in large part to a single upvote by @Neoxian, an Orca with a stellar reputation on the blockchain, who gave it a very generous .56 upvote. For whatever reason. However, as I hypothesized, the Steem Monsters post garnered a higher average among the *manual human upvotes*.

How did I determine what is a manual human upvote? The process was simple, but it took a little time. There are some accounts that I know follow me and upvote every post, no matter what. Then there are accounts that upvote me based on a membership. Included in that category are curation trails and Discord channels such as Power House Creatives (aka @steemitbloggers), @qurator, and @steembasicincome. A few of the Discord channels have an upvote bot that will upvote specific types of posts or offer free upvotes based on other criteria; examples include @steemmonsters, which will upvote Steem Monsters-related posts, @esteemapp, which only upvotes posts made from the eSteem app, and PAL (Peace, Abundance, Liberty), whose criteria includes a 30-hour cooldown period. Finally, I compared the two posts and some other recent posts and removed those accounts that were common, assuming them to be auto-upvotes. I know I have quite a few of these because I usually can get more than $1.00 STU in upvotes before I can finish my normal routine of sharing in the various Discord channels I frequent.

All of this is to say that quality is a huge determining factor in what kind of rewards are to be expected. However, quality alone won't do it. One has to put forth the time and effort to promote one's posts no matter what kind of quality sits on the table. Without promotion, results will be meager at best.

NOTE: Using my normal posting and publishing routine, I have managed to attract many @curie votes in the past year, pushing those posts that receive such votes considerably higher in ROI. This further illustrates the importance of quality since Curie doesn't upvote posts promoted by bidbots.

What Bidbots Do to the Steemit Rewards Pool

There's just one more thing to evaluate with regard to Steemit bidbot voting. What does it do to the rewards pool?

Like bidbot payouts, the blockchain creates a fixed number of potential rewards each day. Those rewards are divvied up to all the parties with a vested interest in the blockchain. Without getting into the actual numbers involved, I'll illustrate the principle with an analogy.

Let's assume the blockchain creates 40,000 STEEM on any given day. 75% of that, or 30,000, goes to authors and curators. Let's assume that two-thirds (20,000 STEEM) of that goes to authors and the remaining one-third (10,000 STEEM) goes to curators, the category into which bidbots fall.

If we divvy up 10,000 STEEM among all the curators from redfish to whale, including bidbots, each curator will receive a proportion of those rewards based on the strength of their individual SP. An example of a bidbot with relative SP strength is @buildawhale, which currently has over 67,000 SP and another 1 million+ delegated to it. With a rank of Orca III, it's closing in on whale status pretty quickly.

@therising, the bidbot I used for this experiment, is in the same status - Orca III. It has over 59,000 STEEM in its wallet and an additional 3 million+ delegated to it. It also claims to share 100% of its bot earnings with delegators, which likely explains why it has so much in delegations. In my view, that's a plus.

All of that aside, however, taking another look at the rewards from my experimental post, curators earned $6.74 STU from that post. The lion's share of that went to the bot, which contributed $26.27 STU of the total upvotes for that post. Had I not bid on the bot, that would mean the other curators would have had to split $1.18 STU.

Let's do some more math: The bot's portion of the total upvote value for that post equates to 95.7%. If the bot received that percentage of the total curation rewards, then it took $6.45018 and left about .29 STU for everyone else, a paltry sum to divide between 25 accounts. On the other hand, those 25 accounts would have divided $1.18 STU without the bidbot vote, the lion's share of that going to @neoxian, a manual human voter.

So what do bidbots do to the rewards pool? They sink their teeth into it and rip it to shreds. And this is why you hear so many people, like @quillfire, constantly haranguing witnesses and whales for supporting the bots. It could also be a contributing factor to why there was such a precipitous decline in user activity last year (The decline in STEEM value during last year's bear market was also likely a contributing factor).

From @arcange: Steem Statistics – 2018.12.25

The Residual Effects of Bitbots on Steemit Post Quality

So far, I've shown that bidbot upvoting can lead to higher author rewards and lower curator rewards for individual posts, the effect of post quality and promotion on manual human upvotes, the difference in ROI between the two, and the negative effect that bidbots have on the rewards pool. But do they have any effect on post quality? I would answer in the affirmative.

Let's take a sample post:

This two-day-old promo post on EpicDice has garnered $263.09 STU from 682 upvotes. That's about the number of votes I've been known to receive from a @Curie upvote that earned me in the range of $40 to $60 STU. Granted, the post isn't nearly the shitpost that my experimental post was, but it isn't any better quality (and probably slightly less) than my Steem Monsters post either.

@EpicDice only has 69 followers and is barely one month old. I would wager that a good number of its manual human upvotes come from its Trending status as a result of its multiple bidbot investments. And the Trending page is full of such examples.

EpicDice is an account worth over $1,000 now. Not bad for only four published posts. Clearly, this account started with someone's personal investment, but it also sits with over 20,000 SP delegations. I won't claim it doesn't add value to the blockchain. There are people who love to gamble, though I'm not one of them, so providing a source of entertainment where gamblers can enjoy themselves over a game of chance does offer some value to some people. Nevertheless, new users should not visit the trending page only to find half of one account's published posts trending because that account bought its way there.

The Steem blockchain is based on a single principle: To reward participants based on the value they bring to the blockchain. We must realize this value is relative. It isn't objective. That's why rewards are determined in part on an upvote system. All participants have the opportunity to vote their subjective judgment on the value of others' contributions. The practice of bidbot upvoting, however, subverts that.

I'll state for the record that I've got no issue with the bidbots themselves, or for their existence. In a free market economy, and the Steem blockchain is a free market economy, one should expect some choices to devalue the community standard. Wall Street has its junk bonds, but it also has rules to regulate bad behavior.

I applaud those efforts to promote the blockchain and Steemit in order to attract new users. I also applaud the efforts of communities such as Power House Creatives and Qurator to promote quality above crass capitalism. But if the efforts of fine folks like @raj808 to get Steem listed on Coinbase and other exchanges is going to have any real long-term effect, it's going to require cleaning out the pool (and I don't mean the rewards pool). We can start with the trending page. What kind of effort would it take to create an algorithm that diminishes the influence of posts that rely heavily on bidbot upvotes? Not much.

Disclaimer: Any error in math is surely my fault. I do my best, but I'm a wordmith, not a mathematician. Also, my apologies to any curators negatively impacted by this experiment. I hope you can find it in your heart to forgive me.

Get your weird lit on:

The Biblical Legends Anthology Series

| Garden of Eden | Sulfurings | Deluge |
| ------------ | ------------ | ------------ | | | | | | At Amazon | At Amazon | At Amazon

Limerents in the Bog

[At Amazon](https://www.amazon.com/Limerents-Bog-Allen-Lee-Taylor/dp/1508682070)

speculative fiction

While you're here, check out the backside 5:

Review Me, Please

Created by @EdibleCthulhu

promo mentors

helpienaut

Join me on Narrative

Comments · 49

@dramatoken(62)· 2713d

Such drama, you've earned a DRAMA!

^{To view or trade DRAMA go to steem-engine.com.}
@freebornangel(72)· 2713d
!dramatoken
@freebornangel(72)· 2713d
Stinc, et al, hijacked the chain to change it from proof of brain to proof of wallet. If you weren't here to understand proof of brain, especially during the whale experiement, then proof of wallet is all you've known.

Proof of wallet rewards those with stake, those that brown nose them, and the ego of the tyrant that forced them on us.

Proof of brain rewards good content by crowdsourcing stake weighted ratings. It rewards curators that find good content before those with stake vote on it. It works to keep stake in fewer accounts. It is what steem was launched as.

Bid bots break proof of brain. @dan left to start eos after getting pushed out over his lack of support for proof of wallet.

All Hail, Stinc!

We pushed the tyrant that chose proof of wallet over pob off his throne. It is time to give proof of brain a chance, imo. The newbs have no idea what it does, they just swallow the Kool-Aid that gets rewarded on the trending page.

To repair the damage the tyrant did with the hijackening. Restore the n2, put the 4 post soft cap on rewards so that post #5 gets less than it would otherwise, cut vote power in half to require 20 votes a day @100% to fully use vote power, and let the little accounts have some, too.

We win against the bots when they shut down due to lack of customers. Using them breaks proof of brain. It supports proof of wallet. The blockchain records who is on which side, and with how much influence.

#m2c
@whatsup(76)· 2715d
The solution is to have so many people want visibility that the bidbots are a cost not an ROI.

This is the model that every content creation site I've ever heard of uses.

Including youtube, twitter and even facebook provide ways to promote content.

If people are unhappy with the results they should flag.

Also, your review misses a couple important points.

People often BUY steem to promote. I've done it many times.

No matter what the ROI is, 1/2 of the value is powered up for 13 weeks.

Have a great day!
@redpossum(48)· 2715d
Excellent work. Well explained and well written.

Personally, my position is far less moderate than yours. I hate all bots with a burning passion; they are abomination, a cheat, a con, an insult to human dignity and creativity.
@buttcoins(75)· 2717d
Thank you for putting in the time and energy to do and write about your bidbot experiment. I’m a bit ambivalent to these things in general and just kind of plug away at my own thing. But your report certainly makes me think about the nefarious effect bidbots have on quality posts. It certainly seems that just not allowing posts that used bidbots to be on trending would be an effective start in evening the playing field and simultaneously showing the world a better face of what steemit is. Everyone I know thinks the trending page is pathetic and rarely goes there. Imagine if it was where you could actually find trending quality posts, wow, that would actually be useful and would show any newbies a level to aspire too.
Thanks again, I enjoyed that laymen’s breakdown.
@ecoinstant(78)· 2718d
Hi again. Maybe one day I will write a post but suffice it to say I am not going to have the time to dedicate to the full reply I was dreaming of when I first left the comment (its still pretty long but its the wee hours now, so my quality might not be up to snuff). I will try to keep my points direct, and will be more than happy to engage on anyone of them in follow-up. I will check this comment in the morning for tone, as no part of this is meant to be offensive or an attack on you. I like you - you roleplay with me and also write pretty cool stuff.

There are some minor points that I am tempted to argue. Profitability, for example. I have made money and lost money on bidbots, so it is not a money printing machine. Also, some of your argument structure shows that you have your mind made up before you started. You might be right but compare these two passages:

my ROI from the bidbot turned out to be a measly $1.313907264. But imagine doing that five to ten times a day every day for a year. The potential return is enormous.

my ROI for that post, with about two hours of time invested, comes to $1.314965875. Trust me, my time is worth a hell of a lot more than that.

My time is worth more than both of those scenarios too Blockurator. Neither one is enormous, no matter how many times any of us do them. And bidding on the margin (each additional bid) results in increasing unprofitability. Its basically a futures contract, betting on the price of steem whenever the post pays out, and the only way to be sure you'll make money is if the price of steem rises (and sbd is printing). Its really a form of speculation, and carries risk.

Is it good, is it bad? Yo.

My main point is this: We are sitting on a piece of infrastructure and people want to talk about whether a picture is better than a poem or how much better a poem with a picture is than a guitar riff with no thumbnail.

There has been a mistake. None of our content is worth anything. Quality is not the purpose of steem. Yes it probably was sold that way but its not that, and it never was even in the beginning. There is no commensurate compensation, just stake weighted votes. Want to do a pension plan? Put together a group of friends, buy some SP and vote yourselves until you're all dead. Want to take advantage of 3 second blocks and zero transactions fees for your trading card game app? Use the custom json features! Want to reward people for taking worthless steps they do anyway? Use our reward pool function by locking up Steem Power!

Want to complain about how one thing that's voted to 1 dollar is really better than some other thing voted to 2 dollars or 35 or 500 dollars? You can do that too - and you can even get votes for it. And yes, these votes give steem rewards. And yes, these steem rewards can be sold for money.

But don't get confused! You are not being paid for your content! And you are especially not being paid because it is 'valuable'. You are being released 'stake' in the platform that you are using, stake that just so happens someone else will pay for. Maybe one day no one will buy it. Maybe one day they'll pay $100 dollars. I don't know.

What steem is - a blockchain. That blockchain has a lot of uses, in my humble opinion most of the best ones haven't even been thought of yet. There are other blockchains, and some of them are trying to do cool things too. I suspect the smart ones are learning lessons from our steem experience.

Some cool things you can do with this blockchain -
- Instead of paying transaction fees in $$$, your 'stake' generates resource credits. That basically means a wonky type of 'free hosting'. (I say free because if I buy 50 SP, use the RC to host my material, I can still sell my 50 SP at the end).
- Great SEO for google and other search engines for your hosted content.
- Multi-level permissioned keys for extra security.
- One of the only blockchain with password recovery features.
- Delegation (hands free staking)
- Free transactions. I've probably only saved ~$32 dollars from this feature so far doing remittances, but I suspect over the next 10 years it will really start to add up. (as compared to $8 usd per transaction with Walmart2World, my next best option)
- be social with your friends (or enemies)! Try being social on litecoin, you'll end on telegram, reddit, or maybe even steem ;p
Anyways, I suppose too long, didn't read: Steem does some stuff good. It is not a place to reward quality content. It is a place where some people try to reward quality content, and that's okay. But that is not the purpose nor the principle reason nor even a very high priority of this place.
@tryskele(65)· 2718d
Very interesting. I'm leaving all the little ins and outs to you guys. I think to try to see the individual effect explains why they are popular. Content doesn't matter, pay the fee, hopefully get a decent ROI and move on. I think that's more the 'get rich quick' or the 'no personal effort' type of person.

On the larger scale, I completely get where the others are coming from. A simple version, I think this is why we belong to groups like PHC, because we believe in good honest work and having a system supports that.

I do admit, appreciate breakdowns like this, Quill's small comment and so the others it puts things into another perspective and helps someone like me.
@papilloncharity(83)· 2718d
@blockurator A brilliant analysis here and unfortunately I am one of those that believe in hard and honest work. Don't get me wrong, as we need every cent that we can get for the charity and I have been tempted a few times in the past, simply by looking at the amounts on the "Trending" page. Seeing some posts in there that I know I can beat with my eyes closed, but and there's always a but.

This coming June, we will be here for two years now without ever withdrawing one cent and always hoping that we can build the amount to really help the charity. In the meantime, while doing this, I enjoy the other posts and the company of some good friends. But bid bots are a no no, as it would make me feel unethical.

There is always an easy way out, but I don't believe in short cuts, as sooner or later they backfire. Call it old school or by any other name, but I have seen many efforts fail due to short cuts. and instant riches. Blessings!
@rebeccabe(63)· 2718d
There is plenty of analysis going on here for sure.
@mattifer(58)· 2718d
You've got a whole lot of patience. I experimented with a bidbot once. After about 30 minutes I was over it. I did see higher votes than typical for my posts at the time, but I didn't analyze it in quite this way. Or anything close to this way for that matter. :-)

Anyway, good times!
@tipu(68)· 2718d
🎁 Hi @blockurator! You have received 0.1 SBD tip from @dswigle!
@dswigle wrote lately about: Market Friday Visits The Baltimore Aquarium Feel free to follow @dswigle if you like it :)
Sending tips with @tipU - how to guide :)
@dswigle(78)· 2718d
I still don't use bidbots and manually curate. Time is not on my side, but, I do like to know who I am voting for and what they are writing.

I learned a lot more than bargained for reading all the comments, but, I definitely walk away a little bit (read A LOT) smarter about it all.

Get out of the weeds, Quill!

!tip
@helpiecake(55)· 2718d
Hello!

This post has been manually curated, resteemed and gifted with some virtually delicious cake from the @helpiecake curation team!

Much love to you from all of us at @helpie! Keep up the great work!
![helpiecake-chocolate-500.png](https://cdn.steemitimages.com/DQmdFGjzF2wtxPvY28CL7h4bPLzGa8aP3fG93kChMP1s5Nz/helpiecake-chocolate-500.png)
manually chosen for curation by foxyspirit
@foxyspirit(65)· 2718d
Well there isnt much more I can say that isnt already said in your post and in the comments here. You have the brightest of the brightest commenting. I can say that I appreciate your post and the time it took for you to write it. For people like me, that don't understand bid bots so much, it brings a lot to light. I am still quite comfortable to not be using them as I see the damages it causes.

The Steem blockchain is based on a single principle: To reward participants based on the value they bring to the blockchain. We must realize this value is relative. It isn't objective. That's why rewards are determined in part on an upvote system.

So we put our work in the hands of others to decide whether what we write up, no matter the time and effort it takes. It is up to the people to decide what is worth their upvote and the amount of their upvote like if it is money that they own to give away (yet it is not.)

The practice of bidbot upvoting, however, subverts that.

It does and it is one of the reasons why I choose not to go with bid bots no matter how sweet the money may be. When I write, I write in the hopes that someone reads it. Otherwise, why write at all. Just put a picture and throw in some bot votes.

It really does take away what the platform is about. It's not just a reward system, but of also connections. The people are not robots. The people are real, their time is real and their skills are real. If we leave it in the hands of bid bots, then what is all this for? Let's just make more robots, make them right for us (if its not done already) and sit on our fat asses to watch our wallets get just as fat while we waste away whatever passion, emotion, and heart we have, as we become less human in this robotic world. We are already losing jobs to these mechanics. Why make it the same in a blogging, vlogging platform? Then what does it mean to be human in the end?
@cheese4ead(61)· 2718d
Really good post @blockurator

Comprehensive and easy to follow. I have never used a bidbot because I have a suspicious nature and it seems to go against everything that Steemit should be about. Adding quality to the blockchain and convincing the mainstream that it is the future of social media platforms.

The longer things have gone on the more I an entertaining the idea of using them. I am nervous every time I put in a post with some effort behind it that it's just going to bomb. My run of curie posts have dried up too. I've looked at steembot tracker a few times and decided against it but your post has made me move a step closer to going for it.

It does worry me that the trending page does not reflect well or positively promote Steemit to new users. I have some really close friends who are perfect for Steemit. She is an illustrator and he is a photographer and their work would really add some value. I was getting there in my quest to recruit them; in fact they have signed up but have never used the account, but Vanessa took one look at the trending page and said that it is full of garbage and that she wouldn't be posting her stuff there! Can't argue with that observation even though I know different. This is damaging to our growth.

I am torn. On one hand my selfish view is to 'get mine' and on the other it is to hate the 'free market' because all that does is force the drone workers down by the elite putting their foot on our heads

I appreciate your post though and thanks for your efforts.

Gaz
@joeylim(64)· 2720d
I agree with this:

The Steem blockchain is based on a single principle: To reward participants based on the value they bring to the blockchain.

Though honestly, human greed and inability to look at the long term ramifications (how it actually hurts in the long run) is and will be present in other systems too, albeit in different forms.

I'm thinking that if and only if this bidbot issue cannot be resolved, whether Steem can provide other attractive reasons for Steemians to continue using the platform regardless.

Because the bidbots won't go away so easily, and we should perhaps focus on making Steem more attractive in other ways (maybe as a way to effect micro-payments)?
@cardboard(65)· 2720d
Regarding the curation rewards. There are voting bots, like @boomerang or @tipu, that power down and send the curation rewards to investors. Cheers, a lot of work went into all the research in this post :)
@fullcoverbetting(74)· 2720d
Thanks for the expirement. I decided to stay away from the bidbots at the moment. I did some tests a year ago and decided that it was nothing for me. The votes you got just after placing the bid are normal. People do have bots running to see which post will be upvoted. So if they do place an upvote before the bidbot upvotes the post, they will get a nice curation reward. Imaging doing this 10 to 100 times a day and you will understand that they will probably make enough steem to continue to do this. Cheers, Peter
@c-squared(61)· 2720d

This post was shared in the Curation Collective Discord community for curators, and upvoted and resteemed by the @c-squared community account after manual review.
@c-squared runs a community witness. Please consider using one of your witness votes on us here
@bluerobo(70)· 2720d
Great post. This detailed look at the whole process is probably very enlightening to a lot of Steemians. I use my feed as a starting point for everything. That way I have a good chance to see good posts. If a post is promoted or bid up doesn't matter that much to me. My opinion towards bots fluctuates in a narrow band around undecided...

Posted using Partiko Android
@adamada(74)· 2720d
I saw your post after a resteem from @arcange and it's exactly the kind of post that tells the situation as it is. Too bad a lot of newcomers or old members of the chain still don't get the long term effects bidbots bring. It really doesn't give greater value compared to manual curation. It's more on the short term gains that just keeps getting the trending page a bad image.
@watersnake101(68)· 2720d
I used bid bots like crazy in my earlier days here but I stopped using them. I realized it wouldn't be real in terms of knowing if you created something exceptional. If I didn't get any upvotes I took it as a challenge to improve and turn up the volume a notch higher. The feeling is ecstatic and rewarding seeing people truly enjoying your content.
@nickyhavey(74)· 2720d
Great analysis on the ROI side of things here and appreciate all the effort you have put in.

@Quillfire couldn't have said it any better in my opinion adding that the indirect consequences of bidbots are the bulk of the story here.

I dare say your graph with dwindling user base numbers would mostly come from new users seeing how things work after diving a little deeper on the platform and checking out a week or two later.

I gave my own account of this in my 1 year review a couple of weeks back as you don't have to look very far to see how things are going on down here. Drop in market has also had an impact I'm sure but the dwindling number of active users has only increased the concentration of bid bot accounts, making it more visible than before.

It really would be ace if the trending page was a true trending page based on manual curation initiatives like the ones you mentioned and a separate section for promoted content that uses bidbots. I doubt that will happen though.

Posted using Partiko Android
@fionasfavourites(77)· 2720d
@blockurator

I found this post fascinating and I learned a great deal - thank you. I dabble, when I was mere plankton with a bot or 2 and have absolutely no idea of the return. I probably lost - I had so little to throw at them by way of Steem and was not going to actually pay. That was probably more than 18 monts ago: I will have been on the platform 2 years in July. Since then, I've not and I've had the same questions as so many have, and which you have tried - so eloquently - to answer. I think, in the main you have succeeded.

You have also articulated my (and many others') frustration at spending time on well-crafted posts which, as you, and on comments like this, for little return. Recognising that one needs to maintain a 'presence" to build up a reputation when time is "of the essence" with apologies to old Sherlock, I've resorted to superficial cooking, cats and posts of a similar nature. If I could make more from less frequent, longer posts, I would certainly invest the time.

I have read and understood the gist of @quillfire's comment and think that his concerns are not just valid, but should be heeded. What he suggests for those not paying attention, is terrifying - for them and for others on this (and other) blockchains. We seem to share the same value system and as I recall, it was on one of your posts that we "met". Anyhow, back to the bot thing: I have also dabbled with auto curate trails and stopped. The only dapp where I continue that is @share2steem where there is some transparency with the return). What also strikes me, talking of where value gets frittered away, is that folk don't realise that voting from dapps like Partiko also dilute the value of votes. They tempt one with points, but the value of the points when redeemed are not commensurate. That said, one could argue that if one has not paid, technically, one is paying for the convenience (of "steeming" from one's phone).

I sense that with Quill and people like @raj808 there is a groundswell for cleaning things up and as I have indicated to Quillington elsewhere, I'm in and all for it.

Thanks again for the very useful explanation and analysis.

Fiona
@thekittygirl(74)· 2721d
Kudos for your experiment and reporting the results in such a detailed way! I had suspected some of this, but never did such a test. This is a fantastic post! 👍
@bengy(79)· 2721d
Great analysis and write up... however, (unless I missed it), you also run the risk with bitbotting of get LESS than your investment, and collecting a hefty negative ROI... so essentially it is gambling, as sometimes people just plonk down a huge bid without checking to see if it is worthwhile or not!
@raj808(77)· 2721d
Excellent post and analysis m8. It's a shame curie don't look at, or reward, steem related posts because this surely deserves higher payout.... and in a steem world without bidbots this level of analytical post would have garnered much bigger reward simply because there would be much more manual curation. Lol, the irony being that you wouldn't have had to write this post in that hypothetical steem world 😂

So many have said it right in the comments here and particularly quillfire who obviously has massive experience and understanding of financial law. I haven't a clue about that type of stuff.

Here's a crazy thing though. I've been massively vocal about how bidbots have destroyed the reputation of steem. It's something I'm 100% sure about. Another thing I'm sure about us that people who run bidbots are watching! They hide in plain sight as 'so called' respected leaders of some communities. As has been pointed out in your article, they are some of the top witnesses, and they make a lot of money through what they do while depleting the value of steem both in reputation but also in regards to the reward pool. Some of them run legit curation bots, I assume to try and give back in some small way. But I would posit that it is more likely just pure PR. I have worked in marketing and PR in the past so I know exactly what reputational management is and what it looks like in action. Strangely, I have only ever been hit with one of these 'legit curation bots' once. But they are voting on some of my fellow twitter promotors every post. Hmnnn kinda seems like I was sent a message, 'here's what you could have if you just shut up'. Ha ha, maybe that's a little far fetched but ya get where I'm coming from.

Thing is, I've started using OCDB which is a none profit bidbot run by the ocd curation initiative. It promises a garunted small % ROI for the bidder after curation, I think it might be 9%. So why am I using it and going back on what I've been saying all this time? It's partly because this bot will only vote whitelisted authors, who've had an ocd vote/curation in the past. Each post is checked before the account votes it, so this garuntees no shit post will make it through. But the main reason is that I'm simply tired.

Tired of fighting and telling people what they are doing is destroying the promise of what has been advertised (steem as a platform that rewards quality engagement and content). Steem.com have changed there wording recently but the old strapline on the steem landing page said words to that effect for a long time. I'm tired of not having that extra few dollars reward on my post that OCDB will give me. Tired of not seeing my posts, which are all well crafted, on trending. I also see OCDB as the least damaging so I thought fck it.

Does it sit well with me? No, not really but that's just the way the cookie crumbles for me at the moment. If I somehow gain the notice of a friendly whale long term, so that my posts are hitting $10+ each time, I'll stop putting ocdb on my posts as I'm not greedy and I honestly don't think ocdb are the answer. I do know that the owner acidyo is trying to offer a better option than other bidbots which often return negative ROI. It is a genuine attempt by a decent community minded whale to make headway on solving the issue. But it also kind of legitimises the whole process of vote buying, which for me could be a can of worms. Imo, the only solution to end vote buying is to change the mechanism of delegation so that bots can't function... But that would cause a mass sell off of steem by the people who only want to delegate for passive income. So, I'll be the first to admit it is a very complex problem.

For me, at the moment, I am maximizing my rewards using this method while steem is so cheap as I want to get something substantial out of this when the market turns around again. Nearly 2 years and well over 500000 words written on steem and I've powered up at least 90% of what I've earned here.... I need to start taking some earnings into fiat soon to pay off debts etc. I guess this is why my shift in attitude a little.

Anyway, gr8 post as it makes people think and your maths is one hell of a lot better than mine m8 🤣
@mariannewest(75)· 2721d
When I first joined and read the White papers, it said: NO BOTS. Well, that went out the window fast... I think that they are very bad for Steem and While I take advantage of a few that are designed to help the little guys and there will be not negative return, I am not in favor of the big money bots at all.
@nathanmars(75)· 2721d
Until this day I never used bitbots or auto curation

One of the reasons we not moving forward is Bitbots killing the organic interaction
@seadbeady(66)· 2721d
Am new at all this and wasn't aware of the fact that there were bots voting too - tx for this clear post :)
@plantstoplanks(72)· 2721d
Wow, excellent experiment here! It's crazy to see how deep you can get into the analysis of the reward pool and the impact to the steem sphere as a whole. I have a hard enough time reading all of the great posts and supporting them as is, so I'm definitely never going to be one to try to figure out bots, haha. Let alone use any to try to get more rewards. I appreciate the work you and other folks like Quill do to share this impact and hopefully (fingers crossed) impact some positive changes so we can all continue to put out and reward actual quality work! You've got my manually curated vote on this one! ;)
@joanstewart(75)· 2721d
Good insight into bidbots, never used them since I do not feel it is ethical, nor right, one has to justify profit in utilizing them. To me it relates to a bone being thrown out to a pack of dogs all waiting in the wings to devour it, or each other.

If you so desire to make money online trade between crypto's, another ambition I feel is like walking over burning coals.

I will stick with projects that look to be promising going into the future on blockchain. Gambling has never been something I find comfort in coming from a financial background, too many loop holes as mentioned in comment made by @quill

Very sad to say, after some time here it is evident quality posts are sought out by very few communities, a strong supporter of #qurator and #powerhousecreatives where like minded work together.
@sevendust04(54)· 2721d
You worked HARD on that post and it really explains what goes on with bid bots. There are ways to be found by the greedy to exploit anything. Moderation and common sense don't play well with greed unfortunately.
@jaichai(58)· 2721d
Great info.

I haven't indulged in bidbot plays (yet).

Namaste, JaiChai
@wales(68)· 2722d
Lately I've been using bots to make my posts look as if they are worth something, and to keep me interested. But I'll have to stop soon as I don't know what I'm doing with them and am losing and not gaining. I'm just so tired of spending hours doing a great post and only getting 15 cents if I'm lucky.
@manoldonchev(74)· 2722d
Well, there's a Promoted page and using bidbots to promote a post should at least send it there instead of hot or trending. That shouldn't be hard to code.
@brittandjosie(76)· 2722d
Dear wordmith great piece changes take time and blogs like this can only help to speed up the proces 💪
@toddrjohnson(54)· 2722d
An excellent post. For me, the biggest issue with Steem/Steemit is that its rules are not designed to meet its stated goals of rewarding quality content and curation. I realize that Steem is also a crypto and that things like bidbots can encourage investment, which may help Steem as a crypto, but at the same time, as you show, that hurts Steem as a quality content platform. I think the Steem blockchain should decide which of these goals it wants to pursue and then change the rules to support that goal. I personally no longer have interest in spending massive amounts of time putting effort into a post here, because it simply isn't worth the time both because of the reward structure and because my audience, for visualization posts, simply isn't here. It also hurts that steemit does not support more content types, such as equations and embedding interactive web content. I introduced many people to Steemit and I am the only one still here. The others found its rules too confusing, the interface too poor, and were taken aback at people buying votes for themselves without any regard for quality.

Proud member of #powerhousecreatives
@steem-plus(74)· 2722d
Hi, @blockurator!

You just got a 0.7% upvote from SteemPlus! To get higher upvotes, earn more SteemPlus Points (SPP). On your Steemit wallet, check your SPP balance and click on "How to earn SPP?" to find out all the ways to earn. If you're not using SteemPlus yet, please check our last posts in here to see the many ways in which SteemPlus can improve your Steem experience on Steemit and Busy.
@quillfire(62)· 2722d
@blockurator,

Hey Block.

Excellent article. Very well written.

I'm planning to do a post on this issue so I'll keep my comment short. As bad as your analysis makes it sound ... it's far, far worse.

STEEM/Steemit is a "system" and actions within it can be measured by their direct effects (which is what you did) and their indirect effects (which you did not).

Consider a simple example: The effects of bidbots upon new users. They arrive, look at Trending and say, "What, $400 for THAT. I can do way better ... I'll make a $1,000 per post." And then they discover that they'll be lucky to make $1.00 without buying votes.

And so, huge numbers of people show up, get discouraged and then leave (or at least become inactive).

But now they've had an extremely negative experience ... and now every time they mention STEEM/Steemit on other blockchains, how do they describe it?

A "scam."

How much would you have to pay in advertising to neutralize that effect?

And here's the thing: The system depends upon bringing in a flood of new users, especially in the early years. Why? Because STEEM is inflationary ... every payout from the Reward Pool increases the Money Supply. That's OK ... so long as there is someone to sop it all up, analogous to a country's increasing GDP (demand for money) in the real world.

But we now have the worst possible circumstance: A declining active user base with an increasing monetary supply. Irrespective of the economic model one employs, this has driven down the price of STEEM and will continue to do so.

Of course, a low price in-and-of-itself then sets off another series of negative feedback loops. The "A-Team Producers" finally get pissed off and leave for other blockchains where their high-quality content will be better compensated. They cash-out, depressing the price of STEEM yet further and the blockchain's overall quality of content drops yet again.

Common sense says that at some point you'll hit a "critical mass" beneath which the system simply cannot function, even minimally.

It's the positive or negative feedback loops that make you or break you.

So how does one value all this and add it to the "True Cost of Bidbots?" If you figure out a methodology, let me know. Despite the impossibility of actually calculating a meaningful number, can there be any doubt that such a cost exists ... and that it is substantial?

I spent 20 years in High Finance, most of that managing hedge funds. Without the slightest amount of exaggeration, STEEM/Steemit redefines the word "self-dealing" ... which is MASSIVELY illegal.

Indeed, as I've written elsewhere, if someone decided to file a lawsuit against the Top 20 Witnesses ... they'd be screwed. While under the law they are not "Company Directors," they are almost certainly "Trustees," and courts the world over have repeatedly ruled that Trustees have a "fiduciary duty" to the beneficiaries of a Trust.

Well, "There's no Trust," the Witnesses would retort.

Amateurs.

Law courts long ago invented the "Implied Trust," a legal fiction, to deal with financial actors who are, using common sense, "acting as Trustees" to people who are, using common sense, "acting as beneficiaries." Massive amounts of "Trust Law" and "Offshore Law" deal with this very issue as people have long tried to "technically distance themselves" from assets ... and hence tax liabilities ... using Trusts. There are countless "See-Through" provisions designed for this very purpose.

The Reward Pool is a "shared resource" and the financial interests of every Steemian is dependent upon how it operates ... and adversely effected by bidbots.

And yet many Top 20 Witnesses not only use and delegate to bidbots ... they own them. And, they are the only ones who have the power to regulate against their existence, which they don't because they are the ones profiting from their operation. This is the dictionary definition of "self-dealing."

I've had a number of people say, "Quill, why don't you become a Witness and clean up this place." Legal liability. The legal expenses that would be involved with defending against such a suit would be enormous ... and I'd be willing to bet that the brainiacs running the show have never heard of D&O Insurance or E&O Insurance (although I'd also bet that no insurance company on the planet would sell it to them, no matter the premium, given the blatantly obvious legal perils involved).

Even absent a lawsuit, the SEC could initiate an investigation any time they wished. The utterly asinine assertion that the SEC wouldn't have jurisdiction, so often mouthed by the so-called leaders of the blockchain, is prima facia evidence demonstrating just how out-of-their-depth they actually are.

Steemit Inc. is based in the US. Tens of thousands of STEEM/Steemit users are US Persons resident in the US. Countless STEEM nodes are physically located in the US. Countless daily transmissions occur via US-based telecommunication infrastructure just as boatloads of money entering and exiting the blockchain do so via US financial institutions. Any one of these alone would be a nexus that would establish "US Jurisdiction."

Quill
@tipu(68)· 2722d
🎁 Hi @blockurator! You have received 0.2 STEEM tip from @traciyork!
Sending tips with @tipU - how to guide :)
@wolfhart(63)· 2722d
I looked at the bidbots a while ago and came to the conclusion that no matter how much I would make, I wanted no part of it. I am happy with my $1.06 Stu because I earned it.
@kaerpediem(73)· 2722d
I finally understand this BitBot thingy Thank you I now see why some flip over the use of it... And for all that work you put into this post... I hope you get more than where it is at :)
@traciyork(75)· 2722d
Sorry for the delay, but thank you for showing your support to our #PowerHouseCreatives community in the 20K delegation dpoll contest last month. You were entered in my "Show @steemitbloggers your support in the 20K delegation contest, enter to win 1 Steem!" contest, and you've won a @Tipu tip on your most recent post (so, this one... 😂). Apologies again, and most importantly...

!Tip 0.2
@minnowsupport(72)· 2722d
Congratulations! This post has been upvoted from the communal account, @minnowsupport, by blockurator from the Minnow Support Project. It's a witness project run by aggroed, ausbitbank, teamsteem, someguy123, neoxian, followbtcnews, and netuoso. The goal is to help Steemit grow by supporting Minnows. Please find us at the Peace, Abundance, and Liberty Network (PALnet) Discord Channel. It's a completely public and open space to all members of the Steemit community who voluntarily choose to be there.

If you would like to delegate to the Minnow Support Project you can do so by clicking on the following links: 50SP, 100SP, 250SP, 500SP, 1000SP, 5000SP.
Be sure to leave at least 50SP undelegated on your account.
@ecoinstant(78)· 2722d
I have a large response. This is a placeholder.
@metametheus(66)· 2722d
Excellent work!!

I too have been experimenting with these just to see what the fuss is about on a couple of posts, although not quite as ‘controlled’ experiment as you did.

What I’ve noticed more that posting less but ensuring the quality of the post (and yes, spending hours writing it) made more of a difference, attracting votes and resteems from curation teams.

For me the ROI was so minimal and there wasn’t the satisfaction that I was receiving kudos for the work, even if I was receiving meager rewards.

Will certainly be resteem if this, and hopefully many others have a read!!

Posted using Partiko iOS
@esteemapp(76)· 2722d
Thanks for mentioning eSteem app. Kindly join our Discord or Telegram channel for more benefits and offers on eSteem, don't miss our amazing updates.
Follow @esteemapp as well!