So yesterday we had a great conversation on the MSP Discord server. I was invited to discuss this along with @clayboyn, @r0ndon, @isaria and other prominent leaders of Palnet including Steem Witness @lukestokes. I often think that the main reason why people abuse bots, why they bot up in insane numbers is because they don't really understand what they are doing, and maybe the solution is not that complicated.

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Maybe, saying it's not complicated is not entirely correct, but hear me out. The way that things seem to work currently, is that we have an uninformed part of the steem population overusing bots to promote content with very little social value. Trending posts of the color challenge types are hardly something that edifices the value proposition of an immutable blockchain. However, I think I know why these people use the bots, why they think this is the way to "game the system".

Mathematical Enigma

More than once just this week, I've had the opportunity to explain to some Steemians how much money they are losing using bidbots. In other words, they think wrongfully that they are actually making money on top of their investment, but this is far from the truth.

It may not be clear to most people, specially when they start out, how this whole thing works. Curation, early voting penalties, flags, etc. So, many of the new users see the payout on the post, on the bottom of their publication and simply say - "Well, that says more than I spent... so I'm good".

If you think I'm exagerating, it might be because you've not tried to teach someone how to analyze the numbers. Even Steem Supply is not 100% reliable, specially at the moment when the blockchain is attempting to curve the circulating SBDs by printing liquid Steem.

I guess, it might be insulting of me to say that some people are mathematically impaired. But then again, I know a few that admit it, and simply say almost with pride "Math is not my thing"- To those I would advice, to seek out someone they trust and verify the information I'm sharing.

What would happen if they knew?

I think they would tone it down, and maybe considerably so. In other words, if I knew I was going to lose 10% , 20% of the money I was about to use to promote a post, I would probably not be so careless of the content. After all, the idea is to gain organic support and increase the number of followers.

In this sense, the bidbots become not a money printing machine, as many Steemians seem to think they are, but a promotional tool, as they should be. You don't send to trending a post to triple your money, you send it to promote your absolute best attempt to make the best content. Maybe, I can get behind that idea.

How do we teach them?

Here is the biggest challenge of them all. My approach is not very effective if I'm to be honest. I've reached out to them on Steem, later on discord and I've taken the time to explain the math in private. Why would I do this? - Well, because I think its more effective than just flagging and much more effective than insults.

But, I've been thinking for the past few days on a new bot. Yes, I know what you are thinking and I also happen to know most people hate the transparency bot out there. But give me two more seconds to explain:

What if we had a bot, that after 7 days, after the post had finished paying out, it would go to a ex-trending post and tell the user X something like this:

"Hello there @userwhousedbotslikeamaniac I'm the investment adviser bot, I noticed you used 978 SBD's to promote your post. I just wanted to let you know, that you lost 27% of your investment on this promotion after payout"

And take its leave....

You see, it would not be on every post, specially not on every post that used bots, but just the one's that made it to the top spots of trending.

Development

I'm not a programmer, I simply dabble a bit with the scripts, but I wonder if the task is a lot easier than I think it is. After all, since the bot would be posting results, the only calculation would have to be done comparing the initial transfers against the total payouts.

I wonder if this would be something a developer could get behind. I'm sure there are a few programmers out there that could pull this off in a day or two, and I'm willing to bet most if not all, also wish they could help clean up the trending page a little bit.