The former stance was illogical, the position detailed above is the official position of the management team.
We don't encourage people to use them, but the reality of the situation is, they are a tool and can be effective for generating exposure.
They can also result in you losing money, however it is not our right to tell others what they can and can not do with their money.
Use of a bidbot on your posts may affect how we curate a post, but that is subject to the assessment of the curation team.
But do you mind commenting about visibility versus real science article thing? People can write flat Earth stuff and get visibility under the tag steemSTEM! What do you think?
It won't show up as curated on https://www.steemstem.io, we can not control what people do with the tag. People could have always done that with bidbots if they wanted, regardless of what our policy was.
Do we still have flat earthers on the steemstem tag? :)
Probably not because its a hostile environment, IE the people that read our tag arent interested in flat earth. That said, there is nothing anyone could do to stop them from using the tag. It's part of the reason why we continue to work for steemstem.io, where we can display the best face of the community to the outside world.
That is correct; my question is just that it'd been a long time I've come across such.
What about Möbius strip Earthers? :P
A fork of flat-earthers :)
Having no right to forbid anything doesn't affect the right to criticize it. :)
For example I also have no right to forbid excessive self-voting, but nevertheless I can suggest to implement some mechanisms which would make it less beneficial.
And concerning exposure: if one user reaches more visibility, logically always another loses ... Where is the benefit for the community now? Are bid bot supported (and thus more exposed) articles in average of higher quality than non-bid bod posts? I strongly doubt that ...
True. However I support STEM content, if stem gets more exposure and others lose.. that fits my intention.
Some are, some aren't just like anything else. Want to fix bidbots? Fix the broken economics that make them more viable for delegators than anything else. Steemstem can't compete, so the same is likely true everywhere.
You are part of the community and choose judiciously which posts to support and which not. A bid bod doesn't care at all about whom or what it upvotes. It's just a money making machine. I think it's annoying for long term users and discouraging for new ones (just my personal opinion).
But yes, it's everybody's right to use bid bots ... but at the same time it's my right to criticize it.
Push for fixing the broken economics that make bidbots so profitable. I fear I have to repeat this like a broke record until more prominent members of the community demand change.