So recently, there has been a lot of talk about the increasing influence of bots on Steemit, and so I thought that I'd write my thoughts about it.
People have been talking a lot about the rising influence of bots on Steemit. One thing that almost everyone seems to hate is the fact that quite often, the vast majority of a post's payout comes from the bot upvotes, and that very often, the post doesn't seem to actually be a quality post. People look at all these plagiarised posts, or posts that don't have any real content get more upvotes than actual quality content.
Most people talk about the spammers profiting off of bots. But even genuine content creators use these bots to improve the visibility of their posts. The reality of Steemit(and most other social media platforms) is that the vast majority of quality content never gets noticed. Upvote Bots are a natural consequence of this. Most other platforms have nothing that lets you promote your posts as cheaply as is possible on Steemit thanks to these bots.
Even after all the talk about supporting minnows, Steemit still doesn't have a section specifically for small accounts. So as a minnow, when you see cents on a post, there is no reason you wouldn't use an upvote bot.
In fact I think that for a lot of people, the only reason Steemit is a viable use of their effort and time is because of this "subsidy" that they get from the bots. This is especially true of a platform whose main appeal is "make posts and earn money". People literally have come here because they believe that they will earn money off of their posts.
I think a lot of people, including genuine, quality content creators would leave Steemit if bots are banned and that "subsidy" goes away. So i think at this point,completely banning the bots isn't really something that's practical. That horse has long left the barn.
That, is the reason why so many people use bots. It's not that they don't see or that they ignore the fact that bots are used for malicious purposes. It's that they don't have any alternative to using bots. If you want to get rid of bots, you will first have to provide an alternative for the genuine users that works as well as bots. Otherwise, you'll lose the people along with the bots.
While bots are used by genuine content creators, i don't think anyone believes that every vote that a bot gives helps a quality piece of content. So obviously, there are changes that should be made.
These are the changes that (I think) should be made:
This is perhaps the most important change that should be made. When making an account, people should get a choice about whether they whether they want a human-controlled account or a bot. "Hybrid accounts" should not be allowed.
And it's perhaps even more important to make that distinction clear in the UI.
When people look at the upvote list of a post, they should be clearly able to discern whether the majority of a posts value comes from bots, or whether it comes from human accounts.
I don't think that there's anything wrong with using upvote/bid bots for promoting your posts, IF the fact that they have been used is properly disclosed in a way that is easy to understand. Sure, even today you can see the upvoter list of a post, but I think there is a better way to display that information.
What about the people who will lie? The ones who will make human accounts and then automate them?
OK. This may seem like an extreme step. But I think this will really decrease that kind of abuse. This will also decrease spam comments like all the "nice posts" that you find all over Steemit. It will also stop all the bots that copy articles from the internet.
(If you are a human who makes "nice post" comments, I encourage you to make better, more meaningful comments.)
What about developers who are making apps for steemit?
They can make separate bot accounts for their apps that will be used for interfacing with the blockchain. Maybe we'll have "test bot accounts" with some usage limits that allow developers to use them when they are developing their apps, and then when the app/website goes into production, they use their own bot accounts to access the blockchain.
Just to be clear, I'm not saying that the publicly available information of a human account can't be accessed by anyone. I'm just saying that that information must only be accessible via a bot account (and anybody can make a bot account, so there will be no API usage restrictions or anything like that).
I think at the core of all this discussion, is the concern that human interaction is being replaced by bots.
Banning bots from interacting with comments will do 2 things:
1. It will make the comments a place reserved for human interaction
There is no real need for bots to interact with the comments. And when there are no automated comments, human interaction will stand out.
So when you see a post with 10 comments, you know that those 10 comments are 10 real, actual humans talking to each other.
And bots still will be able to read comments (and posts), so 
2. It will make it easier to detect people who just use upvote bots to make money
If a post has a $50 payout with 80% coming from bots but no actual quality content, that will become clear very quickly because it will have no comments.
In this way, we can separate the people who use bots to promote their quality posts to a larger audience, and those who use them just to make money.
What are your thoughts on these changes? Do you have any other ideas?
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