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Remember that there were no bid bots in 2016-2017 either, which mean people instead did backroom deals for selling their votes, etc.

I think there is a big difference between Steem circa 2016-17 and a Scot tribe with centralized leadership actively trying to keep its trending page organic. Back then if someone became known as a vote seller... nothing would happen. Nothing could happen. Now, if someone becomes known as a CCC vote seller, the tribe leaders would mute their account and say bye bye, no more CCC for you. Will it be possible to 100% stop all vote selling? Of course not. Will it be possible to stop the most egregious examples and keep the trending page organic? I personally believe so. And that is a huge win for a tribe like CCC compared to Steem mainchain.

I wasn't on steem back then. Joined around March 2018 so have only seen the (steemit) platform with bid bots on.

I am pretty sure you're right though as I have seen other new crypto sites plagued with upvote rings and playtrading groups so people will always try to game a system.