toppl

Until just recently, I was a fan of upvote bots and used them extensively. Impart to push my articles to the top of a category and impart I did some tactical upvoting to maximize my payouts.

To me, upvote bots were the great equalizer since even minnows could use them to get some attention while pushing their payouts.

But in the past days, my opinion towards these upvote bots has changed fundamentally.

I came to the conclusion that they don't have much of a real use or value, because you don't really get higher payouts by using them. Depending on the circumstances, you may get more visibility, but overall bots facilitate the gap between minnows and whales, which is as I think very hazardous for the further development of the platform.

The extensive usage of bots has created an entitled financial Steem elite that gets much from the platform, but doesn't really give anything back in comparison.

Therefore, I have quit using bots and I recommend you to do the same.

What should replace upvote bots?

The main idea behind upvote bots is that you can buy yourself a top position in the „hot“ or „trending“ section of a specific tag.

While this works impart – you always have to assume that others try the same – I think this specific visibility problem could be solved much more elegantly (apart from the fact that you can also comment and network with like-minded users who will be happy to upvote you.)

Specifically, I have in mind that users should not just be able to follow (or mute) other users, but also tags. This would lead to a much higher likelihood of not just getting seen by like-minded users, but also improves the own user experience, since „colorchallenge“ is not everyone's thing, but surely clogs up your feed as well.

Just think of how different your feed would look like if all these challenges were replaced with content about topics that you are interested in!

This change in the Steemit.com script surely would be a piece of work, but then again it isn't rocket science. I have no idea why this hasn't been done yet, because personally, I would find it intuitive to add such a functionality. (The same issue by the way is with languages. It's not that hard to add a selector that filters out the languages you would not like to be bothered with in your feed.)

My bottom line for the issue of pushing your article with the help of upvote bots is this: It can be replaced by something that even works better, someone just has to do it.

I do have a hunch of why nothing has been done so far, but to that more later in this post.

At least in my case upvote bots leave impressive numbers, but only until the payout comes.

Probably, I am doing something wrong. But so far I somehow always ended up with by far less as actual reward payout for my upvote bot treated posts than the number below the article claimed it to be.

In fact, it was usually zero minus 20% in gains in terms of SBD (and yes, the curation rewards for others are already subtracted).

This means, I did not get back more SBD with the payout than I paid for upvotes, but I effectively lost money there. (I didn't do exact math about it, but noticed it over a period of a month with lots of upvote buying.)

With every payout, you also get some Steem. But here too, the bottom-line is rather disappointing. If simply you buy the Steem directly on the market for your SBD instead of getting them via an upvote bot, you end up with at least as much Steem as you would have gotten through the payout.

Of course, this depends on the price ratios of Steem and SBD, but my gut tells me, I made a really bad deal with buying upvotes instead of Steem most of the time.

And yes I know, you have to look for the percentage of upvote power by the bot and also the timing of the upvoting plays a role.

Depending on your skill and knowledge of the inner workings of the system, you might do better and actually make a profit. But I am convinced that on average(!), users make a bad deal with buying upvotes.

They do it anyway because the number looks so big and covers the fact of being a false impression. (At least in my case that played a role.)

So, if you end up with a minus as buyer – what's in for the witnesses and whales who run those upvote bots?

Overall, I would say there is roughly one dozen of big upvote bots and most of them belong to one or several whales, but there are also upvote bots that are crowd funded like @boomerang and @minnowbooster.

I wrote a post analyzing the latter kind and I came to the conclusion that if you can afford to delegate Steem Power to them, you can earn a good income.

Depending on the circumstances, per 1 SP you can get out about 0.0018 SP per day. Take that by 5,000 SP delegated and multiply that with the current market price of Steem and you can retire, well, almost.

So, if even relatively small players can make such a profit, what is in for the really big ones?

I decided to take a closer look at two of the big upvote bots. @buildawhale with about 1.8 Million Steem Power owned by @themarkymark and @upme owned by @suggeelson and having 2.4 Million Steem Power at its disposal. Both users are witnesses. (I should add that I am not much a fan of themarkymark but had a very positive encounter with suggelson.)

I picked out Monday, February 12th 2018 and looked (on Steemworld) how much SBD for upvote requests the two bots received and gave an upvote in return for. I subtracted all other payments and upvote requests that haven't been filled. My goal was to get to their bottom-line aka the profits of the day... and you should better sit down for the results.

On that Monday the @buildawhale bot made his ower 1,952 SBD (~10,000 US-Dollar) and @upme raked in 2,582 SBD (~12,500 US-Dollar) - and I don't think this day was anything special. In fact, you can look up the amounts made every day by searching for the payments that went to @alpha, where the money goes which is made by buildawale and the upme profits go to @freedom.

The extrapolation shows that both bots make more than one Million US-Dollar a year. (Question: Do they pay taxes for that?)

If you think now: „Hey, maybe they don't make that much money every day. Perhaps it was an exception..“ Well no, that Monday was pretty average. Look it up in their wallets.

This is absolutely absurd and also absolutely mindblowing and even dwarfs the activities of @haejin!

They „earn“ so astronomically much, but I don't see them change and improve the platform in a way that would justify this kind of money.

Just to give you a comparison: Tim Cook, CEO of Apple („iPhone“, „iPad“) made 12.8 Million US-Dollar last year. The rather rhetorical question is: Has the average whale behind one of the big upvote bots also third of value that Tim Cook has for Apple?

The business of the upvote bots is nothing else but what they (especially markymark!) accuse haejin of doing: Relentlessly exploiting the system in a reckless way.

It also leaves the strange impression that part of the action against @haejin was nothing but a witch-hunt where other witches probably saw mighty competition rising (remember, the SP you have determins the voting power for witnesses; also: when the SBD go to haejin they don't go to the bots). And so they decided to get rid of this competition to keep the Steemit oligarchy closed.

Of course, this is just a speculation and the article is supposed to be mainly about the uselessness of upvote bots and not „reward pool rape“, but this does strike me as very odd.

Upvote bots effectively widen the wealth and influence gap on the platform while the Steemit „middle class“ is as common as a unicorn.

A few days ago I came across an article by @talkmaster4450 about @ fulltimegeek and @stellabelle delegating Steem Power for free to others so that a „middle class“ can emerge. The argument in the post was that most users are disappointed because they hardly get a good upvote (~10$) and have to live with good content getting just cents – or they have to use bots to make it look like more. That the same moment there is a thin upper-class busy with voting for itself, or running auto-voting systems – or running upvote bots.

The wealth gap with the absense of a „dolphin“ middle class, so the argument, hurts the platform and drives users away. That's why whales like @stellabelle and @fulltimegeek are so important, because they give so much Steem Power to others for free, so more users can make upvotes with significant amounts and the wealth on Steemit can spread better throughout the platform and reach smaller users who create quality.

@talkmaster4450 demanded that other whales should do the same to facilitate the creation of a strong „middle class“ made up of thousands of „dolphins“.

While I was at first very sceptical especially because there is not enough Steem Power out there to put is idea into reality, I am now convinced that this is absolutely necessary – even tough of course on a smaller level because there is simply not enough Steem Power out there. Instead of 10,000 new dolphins, maybe 2,000 or so might be more realistic.

But this won't happen and here comes in my hunch that I have mentioned above:

The current situation is so extremely profitable(!) for whales that you need to be a very big idealist to change course and delegate SP for free instead of a bot.

The profit situation for the top 0.01% of Steemit is so extremely – no, epically – crazy that they would be stupid to change anything.

• They are ok with the platform not running smoothly.
• They are ok with no improvements in the user experience for the platform.
• They are ok with 95% minnows with a 1% upper-class and some dolphins between.
• They are ok with SBD being a faulty „currency“.
• They are ok with „proof-of-brain“ distortions due to the upvote business that drains the quality filter for upvotes (right now it's more of a „proof-of-brainless“ concept)
• They are ok with dissens throughout the platform over payout distributions and Wild West methods to fight „reward-pool-rape“ which drives away users and investors.
• And they are also ok with Steemit failing eventually!

And why?

Because they found a way to become filthy rich in a dramatically short time.

For some whales it appears that the Steem blockchain and Steemit as its application is not a new exciting concept where the future of the digital world is tested and explored. For them it's just an enormously huge goldmine with the nuggets lying around openly on the ground.

All they have to do is picking them up and carry them away before others realize their chance and it looks to me like they are doing exactly that.

This priority overshadows necessary improvements of the front-end, a proper marketing strategy and the development of a reward structure that makes sense as a whole.

I have painted a very negative image here.

Of course, the money made is not immediately paid out and exchanged into something else. Most of the money goes to holding accounts. In the case of buildawhale it is the account @alpha and the bulk of SBD made by upme goes to @freedom.

This indicates that these players do have certain long-term interests. At least as Steem crypto holders they will want to play a decisive role.

But it also means that their voting power for witnesses is growing fast and with that their influence on the general direction of Steemit. All that in such a pace, that the platform will soon end up with an oligarchy that can only be toppled by the userbase when they leave Steemit collectively and go elsewhere for blogging and networking and whatever you do here right now.

I can't stop you from using (or running) upvote bots, but I think it is important for you to know that you don't help yourself by using them.

Given how the Steem/Steemit system works, I guess, we will have to live with paid upvotes as long as there are no dramatic changes made to the platform (or to the attitude of its whales and witnesses).

With every upvote you buy, you close the system a little bit more on the back-end. And looking at the impart rampant inactivity, incompetence and ignorance (and apparent greed) by some in the witness stand, with every upvote you buy, you also kill Steemit a tiny little bit more.

That's why at least I won't use upvote bots anymore.

Image sources: Alamy, Republic Broadcasting