Hello, SPIers! Buckle up because I’m about to stir the pot. This question has been simmering in the back of my mind for years, and I can't wait to see how riled up it gets some of you. So, what do you think, 6 years after we heroically banned upvoting bots and services? Did it help?
Disclaimer. I was a supporter of bidding services so this post is biased. Im just writing it because i think will be interesting to hear what people have to say. Im missing tons of facts and this is wrote from my POV (SSUK) so if you where in support of banning voting bots, you'll need to take this with a grain of salt.
(Randowhale Voter)
A Little History Lesson for the Newbies
For those of you who strolled into STEEM or HIVE after 2018, let me fill you in. Before 2019, a smorgasbord of services was offering upvotes for STEEM through direct transfers. They came in all shapes and sizes: small voters, large voters, and everything in between. Some required you to hand over your STEEM or SBD directly, while others had caps, no caps, bidding formats, and subscription models—truly a buffet of options.
(Snapshoot from 7 years ago showing options to bid on to receive)
Then came 2018, the year of the infamous "New Steem" movement, led by a self-proclaimed squad of STEEM police whose sole mission was to wipe out bidding bots and paid vote services. They were like a crusading army, shaking up the platform and driving away countless users in their righteous wake. By the end of 2019, they had succeeded, leaving a beautiful disaster in their path. If you were there, you know the chaos; if not, lucky you!
My Personal Experience with Bid Bots and Services
Now, let’s talk about me. I was a huge fan of bidding bots. When I joined STEEM in 2017, I used them all the time. I built my HP balance from post rewards and spent my liquid STEEM like it was going out of style to buy or bid for upvotes. It was a magical time, and I was thriving along with many others. By the time bidding bots were banned, I was so burned out from writing about silver-related content every day for 2 years that I converted all my HP into HE tokens and retired!
Yeah, banning bod bots was a stroke of brilliance🤣. I was against it then, and I’m still not backing down.
If memory serves, New Steem had a penchant for targeting bidding bot operators. and downvoting anyone who dared to use them. It was like a digital witch hunt! People were too scared to voice their opinions because they might end up on a blacklist, effectively rendering their future post rewards worthless. Get on that list, and you're never coming off it. This drove countless users away. Can you believe it? We used to have tens of thousands of active users!
The Spectacular Results
So what was the grand vision behind New Steem? The brilliant idea was that SP should be used for upvoting and promoting “quality” content. The thought of monetizing SP and the reward pool was, of course, deemed unethical because we couldn’t have people spending a mere $200 on bidding services to influence their way to the top. That would just ruin the "quality" of content!
Oh, how noble! But let’s be real: people went to STEEM to make money from easy blog posts, so cutting off SP's biggest use case was a stroke of genius!
The fallout from banning bidding bots was catastrophic! It obliterated our ability to monetize STEEM POWER directly, instantly killing the demand for SP leasing and delegation projects (note, this was all before we had hive-engine). Millions of STEEM disappeared into exchanges, and thousands of users packed their bags and left. Now? Dlease has a whopping 0 active leases because HP has become as useful as a chocolate teapot. When bidding bots got the axe, many folks just stopped buying STEEM altogether. Bravo!
Content pre-banning vs Content after banning
Back when we had bid bots, you’d write a post, invest 50% of the rewards into bigger votes and you could see your account grow and slowly compound as you grinded. There were lots more users, follower numbers mattered and most curation was manual. You could set a reasonable goal of hitting 1,000-2,500 SP in a year and hit it. What a time! This created a vibrant economy within STEEM, allowing accounts of all sizes to flourish. Sure, the organic route was an option, but why bother when you could pay for a boost? Back then, we paid to boast our post-payouts and influence. The more you posted, the larger your influence got.
Now, we’ve traded paying for upvotes for a new strategy: collecting autovotes. It’s all about begging in comments and Discord servers, delegating HP to "curation trials," holding HE tokens/NFTs, kissing some whale's ass and hashtagging like it’s an Olympic sport. Honestly, how many of you even know how many follow your account? Spoiler alert: it’s irrelevant. It’s all about racking up those auto-upvotes! Today, we collect autovotes and dont directly pay for anything. We're so ethical...
Starting from scratch on HIVE as a newcomer? Good luck! We lost half our community thanks to Justin Sun and the whales have never been fewer and stronger! You'll need lipstick
So, What’s Your Take?
- Do you genuinely believe the content on HIVE today is better than it was back then?
- If bidding bots had never been banned, do you think HIVE's market cap would be soaring or sinking?
- If we brought back bidding bots, would that be a game-changer for HIVE’s ecosystem, user base, and token price, or would it just stir up more trouble?
- Would you even use them if they were available?
Feel free to share your thoughts without fear. I highly doubt anyone is going to add you to the New Steem blacklist.
And just to be clear, I’m not above it all. SPinvest does exactly what everyone else does, minus the begging part. We play the same game, folks! Half of our posts are templates that we slap some content onto—mainly to share fund performance info with investors—but hey, those autovotes are pretty cool too!
Getting Rich Slowly from June 2019
| Token Name | Main Account | Link to hive-engine |
|---|---|---|
| SPI token | @spinvest | SPI |
| LBI token | @lbi-token | LBI |
| Top XV token | @spinvest | XV |
| Eddie Earners | @eddie-earner | EDS |
| EDS miners | @eddie-earner | EDSM |
| EDS mini miners | @eddie-earner | EDSMM |
| EDS-vote | @eds-vote | n/a |
| EDS DOLLAR | @eds-d | EDSD |
| DAB token | @dailydab | DAB |
| DBOND token | @dailydab | DBOND |
| RUG token | @rugem | RUG |
Stay up to date with investments, and fund stats and find out more about SPinvest in our discord server
