RE: On Voting Bots
I don't agree with the bidder's profit motive of bid bots, there's clearly no value added in that transaction to the platform, and while I understand that it's something that helps a minnow earn, it does no good for the platform. I anticipate arguments about this attracting new folks to the platform, but I don't think that is the right approach and is largely short term thinking for a social media platform.
As for advertising, I would feel a hell of a lot better if the native promotion worked better and made bid bots obsolete. That leads to a healthier platform in my opinion, because now the rewards pool can focus on content independently of advertising. I already know there are some good ideas for that so I'm curious to see how the discussion evolves.
I hear your point @eonwarped, and as far as user of the bots not adding value of to the platform I would also mostly agree with you. But it is what it is. They way it currently sits, the owners of the system have delegated so much of their voting power to encourage the use of bidbots, minnowbooster, and smartsteem that it essentially necessitates that people earn a profit or their wouldn't be any more vote selling. There are no natural buyers yet of the "advertising", and until that develops we will have the owners do what they can do to get their return on their SP. They aren't going to let is stay unused, I can promise you that.
Yeah I know how that goes. It's just that it's a shame that everyone thinks that that are entitled to such gross returns on their SP to begin with. It's the old fight between doing more for the platform vs maximizing what you can for yourself. In my ideal world even when advertising develops the $$ won't go to SP holders anyway. We'll see...
This is the best possible outcome for the platform.
Currently, SBD is sent to @null for "promotion." In exchange for this sacrifice, you are rewarded with a higher ranking on a separate tab which nobody in their right mind would visit.
In my opinion this was the most terrible idea ever to exist, and I'd like to have a conversation with whoever came up with it. Not to shout or demean or attack in any way... to listen. I want to understand the reasoning behind that decision, because in my view, it alone is to blame for the current situation.
(That's right! I don't blame bot owners for doing what they're doing. They're doing what the platform allows them to do. The bidbot problem is systemic. It's a problem with our consensus code, full stop.)
Let's replace the current in-built promotion mechanism with one that actually assigns higher trending ranking to promoted posts, in proportion (let's say 10x) to the amount of STEEM (not SBD) that was burned. That's the first step and it would help the platform in several ways: