Matt, first of all I want to say publicly that your first point about you wanting to engage with others in a honest discussion about the bots or any other topic is completely true... I have seen you interact on many occasions with me and others that you may disagree with, but you have always been approachable and helpful in trying to get across your point of view. So I think the point that people make about "bot owners" not engaging clearly can't be talking about you, since you are readily available and happy to engage. It is why I support you as a witness because I clearly think that you have the community at heart and care about the little guys too.

On your second point about the advertising, I completely understand the concept. And I would be thrilled to accept that point if people were using the bot services to advertise a product. But from what I've witnessed, I haven't seen anything approaching "advertising". I think most people that use the bots do so with the desire to 1) make a profit 2) have a scheme where if it gets high enough they will get some less informed people to upvote (or follow) or 3) want to increase their reputation so they can earn instant "respect".

Don't get me wrong, I'm not saying all bots need to go simply because they aren't really "advertising" yet, what I am saying is that people can see with their own eyes the truth. And when that advertising argument is used it diminishes the credibility of the argument.

In my opinion, we might one day have advertising so its good to have the architecture in place. And I completely agree some of the bots provide value for steemit, most of the bots provide value to the SP holders (which is good for short term demand for steem as you say), and some of the bots even provide value to the users.

Where I think the good bot owners such as yourself could improve the message is through continuing to increase your transparency... And I know you are the leader in this area as you are the creator of steembottracker which attempts to provide transparency (and does some really amazing things btw). So this comment isn't really so much directed at you, as it is to other legit bot owners. I think the bot owners have made a big effort to do so in the past few months too btw... Gone are the 6 days posts for instance. But there is still a wide range of abuse by the bot owners that give you all a bad name... Things like taking payments and not delivering the votes, changing the rules from one day to the next with no notice, some bidding on their own auctions to give a losing vote value. These are things that if they could be cleaned up will help you all a bit more with the image.

But I will agree with you that the bots are not the cause of the problems that people have with the platform. My opinion is that the bots provide that utility you discussed for the owners of the SP, ie you can monetize their votes so they can be passive owners of steem. Let's face it, that is really what the bots do (including minnow booster and smartsteem too)

So whether the paid upvotes are "advertising" or simply a way for people to make a profit, they by themselves are definitely not the problem. And frankly I use bid bots myself to make a profit, so I don't see anything wrong with that either. I think the problem people have is much deeper, and the bots bear the brunt of the anger as they are easy targets because of 1) some bad apples that take advantage of users 2) lack of transparency (but getting much better) and 3) there is a lack of consistency in enforcement of what is considered "good".

In my opinion, the true thing that people get frustrated about deep down is the point you made here. It is dead on.

I know one of the main issues people have with this is that it’s a small number of “whales” that are earning the vast majority of these returns. That is a distribution problem with Steem which pretty much everyone is aware of. It really has nothing to do with voting bots at all.

It’s just the way that Steem works that these accounts control the vast majority of the reward pool. It’s naive to think that they will give it all away and not seek to earn a return on their investment.

And by the way, I think this problem will get fixed too... One way or the other. People don't like to think that the prices going down are a good thing, but in reality it is how the free market adjusts for imbalances. I have faith that things will get better in the future. And I have a lot of respect for many people I have met through this platform. And that definitely includes you! Thank you for what you do for all of us and for taking the time to talk about these issues that we face in an open and honest way!