The Bot Debate

Currently one of the hotly debated topic in steemit is whether bit or upvote bots are good for steemit platform. There are all kinds of opinion and cons and pros.

I just want to share my take on them. I really don't know whether bots are good or bad. I see them as tools, try to find out whether they can help me in any way in my work here in steemit. I don't use bid bots, because the return on investment (ROI) with them is always negative - at least for me. Upvote bots used to be profitable in terms of ROI, but not any more - they currently offer 1:2 to 1:2.1 which is less than the break even rate of 1:2.15.

I happened to respond to some of the posts. You might find them interesting. Here are the links and highlights:

https://steemit.com/steemit/@cryptoeater/bot-mainly-focused-on-bidbots-usage-on-steemit-how-we-can-make-steemit-great-again

My initial response:

Bid bots are practically useless. I use upvote bots to convert your steem dollars to steem power like @takowi does. That is a good steem power building strategy. But with the current upvote bots' payout rate, even that is a losing propotion (SBD 1 = $ 2). To brake even you need at least SBD 1 = $ 2.15 rate. Even at that rate if the value of SBD goes down after 7 days when you get your author reward, you lose money.

To over come this problem we minnows have got together and formed a small community where steemians can buy upvotes at SBD 1 = $ 2.87 which will guarantee profit for the buyer and at the same time support the minnows to get some SBD to grow their steem account fast. It is a win-win deal for both buyer and seller.

As I see it, the only way the minnows can benefit from the current situation in steemit is to form such small communities and help each other and grow rather than waiting for some whales to come and help or balming the bots or current steemit system.

https://discord.gg/9fp4XSW

@felander responded:

the only way to overcome this problem is to form small communities of people that power up what they have and produce good/decent content and vote for eachother. then you do not even need to sell or buy anything.
Its like replacing bots with bots, instead of replacing bots with humans. And if you want to buy upvotes, you will need someone who will sell upvotes.

In this current system, why should someone sell their vote in your system rather then the existing one as the existing one pays them more?

My response:

Minnows helping Minnows the name says it all. It is all about minnows who can't even sell to bots because bots' minimum vote value should be at least SBD 0.01 = $0.03. Of course, minnows with higher vote value can support other minnows with lower vote value, if they feel like helping giving up part of their profit. But they will still be in profit. When selling you always get your curation from steemit system. What you get from buyer is pure profit.

But even more compelling reason is that they are helping to create a market where sellers can turn around and buy at a rate where their working capital(SBD) is preserved and help them buy many times the value of the SBD. Because they get a very low payout for their post, they will want to preserve and leverage whatever small amount of SBD they get.

@felander responded:

will you cap the max amount able to be bought? otherwise this will again lead to abuse where someone with high liquidity can buy all the votes

but basically you are suggesting a vote selling service like smartmarket or minnowbooster but only for minnows with lower ROI for sellers and higher for buyers

My final response:

Thanks for your input. So far, we don't see any abuse.
The bots run it for a profit and charge a fee from sellers(15 -25%). We don't take any profit. It is a community service.

Although, as I mentioned earlier, the seller takes lesser ROI when selling, he will more than make up for that loss when he turns around and buy votes from the fellow minnows. So this service not comparable to what the bots offer.

In another post on the same subject

https://steemit.com/cryptocurrency/@crypto.piotr/what-s-your-view-on-bots-promotion-tool-or-necessary-evil-let-me-share-my-personal-view

My initial response was same as the above.