Why Voting Bots Exist…

initforthemoney(59)

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...and why post promotion is a waste of money.

Voting bots are evil

I recently read a post by @heimindanger, in which the author took a stand against voting bots (see here for a full overview of all the bots).

The post was especially interesting to me, since I am a frequent user of voting bots.

(happy me, waiting for my new post to upload)

@heimindanger’s main point was… Well, I’m not quite sure exactly what it was, but the voting bots were described as ‘dark schemes’ that we would all be better without.

In the post, @heimindanger suggested that we all use the built-in promotion feature, and mentioned the initiative, @promoted (created by @fabian), which gives automatic upvotes to paid, promoted posts.

Always looking for new ways to get my content out to more people, I decided to spend 10 USB on post promotion and see what the new @promoted feature would do for me.

What happened

The result was...next to nothing. I made less than a quarter dollar during the first couple hours, and ended up using a couple of voting bots (after about six hours), which ultimately resulted in 14 post views and three ‘organic’ comments, - one of which was from my wife, and another from a person, that had clearly not read the post, but wanted a follow…

My first encounter with the promotion feature

When I was brand new on Steemit, about five weeks ago, I wrote a couple of relatively comprehensive posts. Good quality posts with actual content, imo.

I used the ‘promote post’ function. I was looking forward to reading people’s comments as well as getting some of my money back.

Next to nothing happened.

One of my posts received 7 views, earned 0.26, and had no comments. I spent 5 USB on that.

My introduction post received 3 views, 2 automated robot comments, 3 upvotes, and earned me 0.00.

I stopped using the promotion feature.

(me, watching the results of a $10 post promotion)

Are voting robots the solution?

I’m in no way proud to use voting robots to promote my posts. The problem is, they help. Why – or if – that is indeed a problem, I don’t know at this point. The robots are financially lucrative (although not a lot) and they do seem to give me more traction and more readers; which is really all I want!

I do agree with one point - although not explicitly expressed by @heimindanger:
Voting bots seem to lead to more posts with a lower quality, instead of fewer posts with high quality.

But then again, if we want the mainstreem to adopt and embrace Steemit as ‘the new social network platform’, we better get used to posts that are very far from the blog post genre, but rather consist of birthday greetings, photos from an afternoon stroll in the park, selfies from the gym, food pictures, etc.

We can’t all be professional bloggers.

What does this have to do with the robots?

Right now we are welcoming myriads of people from all around the world. I’ve recently noticed a heavy influx from India, the Baltic countries, and Africa. Without generalizing too much, I dare say larger segments of these people are ‘finincially challenged’.

To many of them, a few dollars from a voting bot can make a huge difference on the monthly household balance sheet. This will inevitably facilitate larger quantities of posts, - which automatically means lower quality of posts.

Blaming these people for using voting bots seems...distasteful.

So what do we do?

I’m honestly not a fan of the voting bots. However, they are a rensponse to a need:
The need for exposure, that all ambitious Steemers have.

In Steemit’s current state, it is extremely hard to gain any type of traction - to get even a single person to read your posts – at least as a minnow.

The voting bots are one of the solutions to this problem.
When there is a demand, supply mechanisms arise.

The bots may not be the optimal solution to this challenge (obviously, they’re not), but until significant, structural changes and new approaches have been found, they will remain a part of the Steemit ecosystem.

When I no longer need voting bots, I will stop using them. I’m even working on a structure for how to ‘cut back on them’. But until writing quality content is enough to reach readers in itself, I will probably keep using at least some of them.

Thoughts and comments are always welcome.

My favorite song (yes, alright I wrote it and my wife @emmacairo performs it, but it’s still awesome as hell):
https://emmacairo.bandcamp.com/track/in-it-for-the-money
(enjoy it while planning your next crypto investment – you’re welcome)