Trusting the Hive Mind: Building My Own Voting Bot for Robinhoodwhale

Have you seen @robinhoodwhale's teaser intro post?

The basic idea, as I understand it, is to build out a new whale whose voting tastes and curation habits are determined by a group of people, a hive mind, instead of a single individual. I find this idea fascinating and wanted to support it while also challenging myself to write my own bot in PHP. The bot monitors @robinhoodwhale's voting activity and, if there's a new vote, goes ahead and votes on that same post using piston. The idea being, as more people vote up what @robinhoodwhale votes on, the more curation rewards @robinhoodwhale will make and the more visibility those posts will get (making @robinhoodwhale even more valuable to the community).

I worked on the CopyCatVoter bot yesterday and had it running all night. Here's the output from its first day of life:

āžœ  Bots git:(master) āœ— php CopyCatVoterTest.php
2016-08-28T02:47:38+00:00
Starting CopyCatVoter for lukestokes who wants to copy robinhoodwhale...


------------ NEW VOTE! -----------
robinhoodwhale/re-kateblack-a-rant-about-a-germ-obsessed-parent-and-outdoor-play-20160827t201239908z
2016-08-27T20:13:54
----------------------------------
Already voted.
......................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................
------------ NEW VOTE! -----------
kazumba/modern-day-edgar-cayce-nostradamus
2016-08-28T07:12:00
----------------------------------
Voting...
.
------------ NEW VOTE! -----------
robinhoodwhale/re-kazumba-modern-day-edgar-cayce-nostradamus-20160828t071218005z
2016-08-28T07:12:27
----------------------------------
Voting...
.....................................................................................
------------ NEW VOTE! -----------
webosfritos/thoughts-on-steemit-power-distribution-and-steempower-an-anthropology-based-approach
2016-08-28T07:34:21
----------------------------------
Voting...
...
------------ NEW VOTE! -----------
robinhoodwhale/re-webosfritos-thoughts-on-steemit-power-distribution-and-steempower-an-anthropology-based-approach-20160828t073446896z
2016-08-28T07:35:03
----------------------------------
Voting...
............................................
------------ NEW VOTE! -----------
robinhoodwhale/re-picokernel-alpha-squeek-io-twitter-alternative-for-the-steem-blockchain-20160828t074629039z
2016-08-28T07:46:36
----------------------------------
Voting...
...............................................
------------ NEW VOTE! -----------
naquoya/sometimes-we-just-need-to-rage-against-the-machine
2016-08-28T07:58:48
----------------------------------
Voting...
...
------------ NEW VOTE! -----------
robinhoodwhale/re-naquoya-sometimes-we-just-need-to-rage-against-the-machine-20160828t075914448z
2016-08-28T07:59:36
----------------------------------
Voting...
.............................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................
------------ NEW VOTE! -----------
dorit-israeli/experimental-learning-space-education-by-dr-dorit-israeli
2016-08-28T13:11:21
----------------------------------
Voting...
..
------------ NEW VOTE! -----------
robinhoodwhale/re-dorit-israeli-experimental-learning-space-education-by-dr-dorit-israeli-20160828t131146396z
2016-08-28T13:12:03
----------------------------------
Voting...
.....................................
------------ NEW VOTE! -----------
tonypeacock/join-a-niche-online-community-here-s-10-reasons-why
2016-08-28T13:21:48
----------------------------------
Voting...
..
------------ NEW VOTE! -----------
robinhoodwhale/re-tonypeacock-join-a-niche-online-community-here-s-10-reasons-why-20160828t132210398z
2016-08-28T13:22:15
----------------------------------
Voting...
.............................................................................................
------------ NEW VOTE! -----------
jaytaylor/on-international-dog-day-be-more-dog
2016-08-28T13:46:18
----------------------------------
Voting...
..
------------ NEW VOTE! -----------
robinhoodwhale/re-jaytaylor-on-international-dog-day-be-more-dog-20160828t134633948z
2016-08-28T13:47:03
----------------------------------
Voting...
..................................................................................................................
------------ NEW VOTE! -----------
sitaru/yes-you-are-right-to-fear-and-hate-islam-there-are-1-7-billion-potential-criminals-out-there
2016-08-28T14:16:24
----------------------------------
Voting...
.
------------ NEW VOTE! -----------
robinhoodwhale/re-sitaru-yes-you-are-right-to-fear-and-hate-islam-there-are-1-7-billion-potential-criminals-out-there-20160828t141641424z
2016-08-28T14:16:48
----------------------------------
Voting...
...................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................
------------ NEW VOTE! -----------
anahilarski/graphic-design-and-social-media-pro-from-panama
2016-08-28T15:23:42
----------------------------------
Voting...
.
------------ NEW VOTE! -----------
robinhoodwhale/re-anahilarski-graphic-design-and-social-media-pro-from-panama-20160828t151705067z
2016-08-28T15:23:48
----------------------------------
Voting...
.....................................................................................................................................
------------ NEW VOTE! -----------
owdy/color-for-the-color-blind-the-science-behind-the-enchroma-glasses
2016-08-28T15:58:18
----------------------------------
Voting...
...
------------ NEW VOTE! -----------
robinhoodwhale/re-owdy-color-for-the-color-blind-the-science-behind-the-enchroma-glasses-20160828t155910607z
2016-08-28T15:59:15
----------------------------------
Voting...
.......................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................
------------ NEW VOTE! -----------
lukmarcus/wicker-heart-with-roses-made-from-paper-and-ribbon-beautiful-present-from-my-wife-to-hers-grandmother-on-70th-birthday
2016-08-28T17:11:18
----------------------------------
Voting...
.
------------ NEW VOTE! -----------
robinhoodwhale/re-lukmarcus-wicker-heart-with-roses-made-from-paper-and-ribbon-beautiful-present-from-my-wife-to-hers-grandmother-on-70th-birthday-20160828t171141695z
2016-08-28T17:11:48
----------------------------------
Voting...
...............

I just changed the configuration settings this morning so now it will only vote up root posts and not vote on the comments @robinhoodwhale votes on. I'm doing this to conserve some voting power for people in my feed, but will probably change that up based on how active I plan to be on Steemit for a given time period.

All the code for this is on Github here: https://github.com/lukestokes/php-steem-tools. The CopyCatVoter code is here and the code to run it is currently in a test folder. This is basically my embarrassing prototype sandbox play code, but I'm putting it out there publicly in case anyone else wants to play with it also. You'll need to be able to run php and have piston configured with your posting key and have no password on your piston wallet (I hear from @xeroc some changes will be coming in the future to allow for ENV variable for this).

So why did I do this instead of just using my account at https://streemian.com/ and its curation trail feature? Well, mainly because I wanted to challenge myself. I really like the idea of having my own bot I can tweak and adjust, almost like a pet. I'm already thinking of improvements to make, such as ensuring it will unvote a post if @robinhoodwhale removes a vote.

Also, I like to have the output available for me to review. I'm not one to automate social media activities, so it took a while for me to warm up to the idea of trusting others to curate good content. I had to trust the hive mind to promote content which will benefit Steemit as a platform. With it running locally, I can easily review the posts and still use that 24 hour window to remove my vote if it's something I don't personally think is beneficial to the network or if it is contrary to my subjective opinion of what I "like."

If you want to know more about @robinhoodwhale, give them a follow. You can review the list of posts they've already voted for in this spreadsheet which is updated in real time, as far as I understand. Shout out to @kyriacos for the awesome artwork and the robinhood / robinhood-links chat channels.

I hope you're having a great weekend!
Steem On
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