This is a really good analysis of what's happening here, Eon. It's a worry that the high SP scammers are upvoting shitposts just before payout to sneak their actions under the radar. Like you say, outsiders are gonna see shitposts making a fortune whereas excellent, quality content makes pennies. It's obviously scammy. It'll repel investors and new content creators. There always will be people who'll rape the system to get an easy payout. It's nigh on impossible to police it. Maybe we need a vigilante bot.

My worry is that the big scammers and flaggy whales may drive curious rubber-necking traffic to steemit then become repellent to quality content creators who don't want their gems wallowing in a stinking pile of detritus. I hope Steemit doesn't turn into another shithole full of selfies, one-liners and 'look how cute my kitten is again'.

I use the bots to help nudge my posts up a bit and I delegate SP with the aim of getting a return on my investment (I'm no charity). 

Great post!

Anj x

Never used a single bot for the post's of my own and i think i never will

Nice piece.  I wish I had some answers for you.  I've been thinking about this a bit.  Personally I think self-voting is OK on posts where authors need some exposure.  Most authors would struggle to write 2 decent posts a day so that still leaves 8 x 100% votes that need to go elsewhere.

Self-voting comments I consider OK only as means for curating the comments.  Frequently these can be much lower % votes if you're just trying to bump your comment (usually an answer to another comment or question)

Clever abusers then create multiple accounts and "circle jerk" to hide their self-voting.  Harder to detect but not impossible.  It is generally easier to spot the "good actors" from the "bad actors" so I personally think there should be focus on rewarding the good rather than punishing the bad.

You are our go-to guy for advice on the technicalities of steemit related matters. You may or may not have all the answers, but you certainly have more than we do.

@tripdespider has proven himself a great asset to steemit in his short time with us, and he has done nothing here but enhance his reputation with us. You'll have to share the honours with him.

This excellent post was included in our new curation effort ***The Magnificent Seven*** -- a collaborative work by @enchantedspirit and @catweasel.  You have received a 100% upvote from each of us to show our appreciation for your post.  To see your creation showcased here ... and the fine company you keep ... please visit this link.

<center>[The Magnificent Seven # 25](https://steemit.com/curation/@catweasel/the-magnificent-seven-25-the-7-best-posts-we-found-in-our-latest-travels)</center>

We appreciate your support both for our work on this project and for the other creators of exceptional content who make it all possible.  (Follow @catweasel to catch our future ***Magnificent Seven*** posts.  @enchantedspirit says I'm really not as annoying as you might think, but she doesn't mean it.)

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its always good to make more steem out of the content from work i think even in cents

As much as I would like to admit it but they only way for smaller people like us to get noticed is through bots. It's the only way for us to have some traction, most especially when steemit is a pretty vast community. ^^

This article is simply superb.  And I don't give that praise often.

![The-STEEM-Engine](https://steemitimages.com/DQmaTqHTyDj5fmWU8Y3aPtfCudt7Qo43q2EQ4h5SBVj8vyQ/STEEM-Engine-sm.png)

This definitely left me something to think about. I even have to reread it LOL. Resteeming to help get this out there. I want to see what more people have to say about it too. Thank you for this ^_^

I appreciate you writing this.  Thank you.

Your post touches the key question in mind... Is there logic in the code base to feed the 'noble whale' and kill off the 'toxic whale'?  

Just joined today!  I'm fascinated by what's going on here and look forward to contributing myself.

I guess everyone is still trying to figure out what works. If one method gets a bad reputation I'm sure people that value their content will stop.

Thank you so much for the informative post @eonwarped; I stumbled upon this from @theinbox ...congratulations!

I've only been on steemit since the third week of December and in the beginning, I 'experimented' with the upvoting bots just to try and figure them out, you know, another avenue on this platform.  It kind of felt like I was either giving myself a birthday present, OR, paying myself for a job well done.  I was successful with them a few times, but lately, I watch steembottrackers (https://steembottracker.com/bottracker.html#free)  and watch people over-bidding at the last minute and everyone ends up with only matching their original contribution or sometimes being in the negative.  

For the time being, I have stopped using them because I quickly figured out that it was more beneficial to try and become a legitimate member of this community, by genuinely commenting instead.  And by "beneficial" I don't mean financially, although that was a fortunate result of it all anyway.  The bots have a purpose for sure, and everyone has a right to use them, not use them, love them or hate them:)

Thank you again for the post...you've given me food for thought for sure.  Cheers!

I think we are slowly getting to the saturation point for bots because with the price of SBD changing from time to time by the time your payout comes out the price of it could have gotten lower than 10-20% of what it was on the previous days. 

the 3 day validity is a good one to implement so that people will have enough time to check on some posts and downvote it. Although there are golden shitposters who are flying down the radar who reap in 200-300 easy and they dont get noticed by flaggers. 

I hope that there will be a time that we can correct it and make it an even playing field but for now play the game and amass SP.

1.60% @pushup from @eonwarped

I am not a fan of the bots. They take away from the genuineness of the site and just feels like a cheat. imo. If a post is good it'll be upvoted and if not it won't and I think that's how it should be.

Brilliant write up. I hope people with high SP read this and use their voting power more judiciously then they currently do. 

This is a general statement not directed towards any individual as I am nobody to judge which content is worth upvotes and which is not. At least, I can't decide  for others not can I suggest.

It's rather a call to everyone who votes to understand that each vote matters, that each vote will impact the success or failure of Steem. The more SP you have, the bigger the impact.

1. Paid advertisement, nothing wrong in that

2. While paying bots to vote posts of other accounts is fine?

3. Who decides what is fair or accurate in a decentralized platform?  

4. Not without flagging / downvoting being promoted  

If you don’t have enough voting power or followers with high voting power, your opinions or claims do not matter as much as those who do. This is not an opinion.

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Hello. As a new member to Steemit I am still exploring all there is to Steemit. 

So far I have noticed few of the things you mention and I agree with most of them. Some others I don't yet understand well enough to have a clear position about them. Here is a long comment on those I have opinion about.

---
I did a few small experiments with bots and so far I see them only as a tool to get "noticed" in trending/hot categories. On the other hand I have a feeling that not that many people are checking the feed from the tags in order to find content they will read/watch/listen to. My opinion is based on the two facts:

Firstly I don't do it. Usually I go and check what is new on the blogs I like. After that I check @thesteemengine promotion channel and curation posts by @enchantedspirit and @ethandsmith as they are far better at finding good content then both my hot/trending feeds and my own feed. If they have covered the topics I am not interested in then I check what have people whose content I like upvoted and check that. I only end up checking the feed of specific hastag when I am chosing tag for our posts.

Second point is that trending/hot posts (at least those in the topics I am mostly interested) are garbage compared to what can be found under the same tags if you are lucky enough to run into it.

---

Now a bit on how I see the economic aspect of bots. So far we have spent around 5-6 sbd total in various sums on votes from minnowbooster mostly out of curiosity. Based on what I have seen I don't think they offer any gains in form of self voting.  If I am  correct when 25% from curation is cut from the post, and when remaining reward is split 50:50 (which I still don't get how it is 50:50 when we get far more SBD than SP from the reward) you get nothing or next to nothing. You might even lose money.

---

Although I understand all of that there is a third reason for using bots, and that is frustration. I am still fresh, but there ought to be some frustration from the garbage that is filling trending/hot in some of the categories. I can't say with certainty that is the case in all categories, but it is in gaming.
At the moment the top posts in the category is some god damn cryptokitty give away and I don't even want to know what the crypto kitty is. The next in the line is some guy talking about how he decided to reward his 1500 followers by giving them a link to a contest from another guy who is going to split 100 steem among people who manage to get to the highest level in some game that looks like a terrible clone of old Diablo series. Following are two posts about poker, and one post about Hearthstone deck (which is the only post of these I even consider to have place in category of gaming). 

Now as a part of game development team that is out here to share some original content on development of the game and game itself later on, seeing those posts up there frustrates me. I don't think that in our 3 weeks here we have made the post that deserves to be on top of the gaming category, because there are probably some other good posts out there that are also buried in the heap of trash. I have found one or two so far. But I am absolutely certain that our post is more representative of the category and far better written than any of those I have talked about right now.  I can only assume that people who are competing in other categories feel the same. That is the third reason to use bots for self voting. I am itching to use the bots to get us on top of those posts and I believe lots of users are doing that for the same reason. 

---

In conclusion I think that self voting with bots can't do as close as much for the new user as engaging with the community and creating quality content. In past three weeks using the latter two we have gained friends and support, I have participated in a few live chats and two live post promotions. We have been covered in The Steem Engine Express, The Inbox Runeth Over,  Two issues of The Daily Whistle Stops and The Steemit Creative Curation Show with Shane and Isaria. Each one of those is worth more than anything bots can award. We are here on steemit to network with the community and not to play the stock market game.
Each new member of community should be encouraged to do the same, because the feeling of getting insightful comment, chatting with someone and getting legitimate upvote/follower is the thing that really means something. 

Thank you for reading this huge chunk of the post but after reading a lot  about this today I couldn't have said what is on my mind concerning  this topic in less words.

I wrote a post about an idea called [Steeminators](https://steemit.com/flagging/@twodollars/new-idea-for-steemcleaners-to-combat-things-like-rewards-pool-abuse) to combat things like rewards pool abuse, and I think you might find the idea interesting. Unless something like steeminators is implemented, then I think rewards for the typical person will continue to move towards the rewards portion of the yearly STEEM inflation rate because more and more tools will likely be developed that enable people to get much of the benefits of self voting without blatantly self voting. One popular tool that already exists to do this is delegating to minnowbooster (i.e. per their own words, "delegating STEEM POWER to the @minnowbooster bot and get roughly the returns you would get if you voted up only your own posts, but without the shame!" Disclaimer: I currently delegate some steem power to minnowbooster, and I also self-vote fairly often.