It will correct itself when they run out of folks easily parted from their money paying for overbid rounds and losing money. That happens quite a lot. The bots make out, their delegators make out, but the ones buying it will eventually wise up. Even those who aren't the sharpest knife in the drawer will have to understand when they run out of means to pay it wasn't profitable, lol.
And it isn't like anyone uses the feeds they rank on. I haven't looked at Hot or Trending since my second month here. I get all the action I need in my personal feed from those I follow.
Last time I checked you gain 10-25% back from what you pay.
I have avoided trending since the beginning of my time here. I've made it there a few times back in the day from organic votes, but a lot of content was favoritism voting for friends and always the same people were there. Now its the same people but they pay to get there..
The trick is to always use "bots less used", which usually have no cap on ROI to keep rolling. Nothing beats sending out 0.1 Steem and get 100% vote from the bots. Many of them are not on Steem Bot Tracker.
It's a good thing you don't check Trending. It's usually just one person and their other accounts at the top if nobody else is bidding.
Interesting to know. Most people seem unaware of this, as I was and are pissed when they get back less than they paid.
Yeah, trending sucks. It made me think I was going to be rich when I first joined. I didn't know about the bots yet and thought this was an easy crowd to please.
There are 'hot' and 'trending' pages? wow.
lol