Again, I appreciate you taking time to answer my lengthy post. Earns my respect for sure even if we might think differently on certain topics involving Steem.

"Don't you think it's important to act as a positive leader for the community?"

You kind of answered your own question with "Fact is, words are worth nothing." - When I go to trending I'd rather just see some interesting content that community has upvoted through organic curation rather than "positive posts to read when the price is down". Well, I'd settle for just interesting content since bid bots dominate trending :) Imagine if Reddit was a publicly traded company and when the price of its stock plummets for a while, their trending would be filled with "feel good" posts suddenly. I know it would drive many users away and fast. I'd like this place to also serve people who don't actually have stake in here already. That's why I don't like bid bots, the normal end user gets the short end of the stick with them.

If it weren't for promotion services, I would have left Steem very early. Who wants to be on a platform where manual curation is flawed and the chance of being seen is based on the luck of having a stakeholder rewarding your post.

Yes, the manual curation was flawed since many stakeholders chose self voting or voting circles instead of actual real curation. These people also happened to be ones with biggest stakes so it set a bad example for everyone. We need to offer a solution where passive investors can have their rewards without messing up the content discovery process, where real people vote on content that a) They actually like b) They think others will enjoy

I think the idea of dividing Steem Power to two camps, passive and active is one of the best ideas I've heard so far that could solve this huge problem.

Has bid bots improved curation? Who wants to be on platform where trending shows posts that just have paid the most? Isn't that just plain advertising? We could call it promotion yes, but there's no difference other than the term used or is there?

That's not the only negative effect bid bots have. I'm sure you've heard them all but most probably haven't seen all the cons. Top promoted posts set certain expectations for people, and when their own posts don't meet them, it makes many feel very negative vibes, the opposite you're trying to bolster with your post here and they'll just leave when they see the system inherently as unfair and broken. At this state buying votes is almost required to have any change of hitting top 20 trending, so we're requiring new users to pay to comment and post and then pay hundreds to have their post seen on trending. How attractive is that on its own? Yes, rewards are paid back but it's still an obstacle.

I'm not even going to bother listing more cons since this reply would turn into a book rather than a comment.

let me work on bringing value to Steem, before it's too late.

I hope your new projects as big success as Smartsteem, keep up the good work. I hope you consider this input when it comes to deciding on what to improve next :)