Is there some reason why voting bots can't just be banned? Is it logistically impossible?
There is no reason why someone with a considerable amount of SP can't spend an hour a day curating, considering the rewards at stake. If you want to set it and forget it you can still delegate your SP to a manual curator.
In terms of the pay for upvote bots I think one big factor is that the promoted section seems to be fairly ineffective. I have used it a few times with dismal results. It looks like you would have to spend at least 20-30 SBD to get noticed which is hard to scrape up if you are a minnow. If you have a quality post and throw a few dollars into a black hole you should at least get noticed by a few people. This of course wouldn't solve the problem completely but many people use paid for bots to get their post on the trending and hot pages to get more views and followers not because it can be immediately profitable.
I haven't followed the argument closely, but I believe it's generally considered difficult to stop bots from voting.
I agree that the current promotion section isn't effective. As you cogently point out, it's much more effective to get noticed by paying a vote-bot for a vote, because you can get attention on the lists that more people actually look at. Obviously one potential solution would be to have promotions promote in the normal lists and I'm sure I've seen that suggested before.
A solution for making promoted section work more effectively could be adding the money spent for promotion to the curation reward of the promoted post, instead of burning it by sending to null. That way more people would be incentivized to visit promoted section.
I understand burning Steem can be beneficial for all, but since it is being promoted, those who are willing to view the promoted content should be incentivized to do so. Or maybe burn half of it, and add the other half to the curation rewards for that post.
This actually might increase the use of the promoted feature.
I like that idea. As it is now there is no incentive to even look at the promoted section. Something needs to be done. Either as you are suggesting or the promoted content needs to be treated more like an ad would and displayed in other sections of the platform so that many people will at least see them.
@bitopia has an excellent post regarding how to improve the promotions feature, about 10 days old now.
He includes that idea, of slipping them into relevant tags.
I will check that out, thanks.
I will check that out, thanks.
That is an interesting idea and not one I've heard before.
Since it caught your attention I would like to elaborate on that idea. Making promote work might be a big part of Steem success economically speaking. This topic might even need its own thread. Sorry for going off the topic.
First, if 50% of it is burnt it would reduce the supply of Steem which will increase the value. For this to happen both authors and curators should be incentivized in using promote feature.
Second, if the remaining %50 percent is added to curation rewards, more curators will be visiting or setting up bots to upvote promoted content.
Third, more and more authors will start using the promoted feature. Because now they know regardless how much they spend curators are incentivized to go through the promoted section. This might change vote buying behavior. Instead of buying votes authors could use promote feature.
Fourth, if more authors use the promote, more Steem is burnt, which again decreases the supply of Steem and increases value of Steem.
Fifth, this can become a great way of advertising on Steem and can attract companies to invest. Currently, there is no straight-forward advertising component of the platform that works. Obviously, traditional ways of advertising will never be accepted by the community. We need a mechanism that works to attract companies to spend their ad money. This will have to be figured out at some point.
Lastly, I want to thank you for starting this conversation. This post might be the reason Steem price is going up since yesterday. Last time this kind of Steem price rally happened when Ned announced SMTs. Market seems to like when leaders of the platform are discussing improvements on Steem.
That's an excellent idea!
Thanks for the reply and for bringing the issue up for discussion in the first place. After reading many of the comments it appears that the bot problem is quite complicated. I did not realize that the bots interact directly with the blockchain. I will have to do more reading on the matter. There is almost always a solution it just needs to be figured out.