While I'm against using bidbots myself, this is an interesting post that reminds us in a very clear way that attracting capital is one of steemit's primary aims (and it's always been clear about this from the outset. )

I basically have the same opinion (or I think it's more of an objective fact) that bid-bots are basically the mechanism whereby advertising takes place, although I'd never really thought about the idea that the revenue generated is more widely distributed than to just the owners of the big corporate sites, which is something I'll have to take away and think through.

I think it's just that all of us who prefer not to use bid bots just value the human validation more than self-valuation/ validation, but then again perhaps we're just naive in that we haven't adjusted this brave new age of micro-capitalism.

When I say 'think through' above I mean what I need to think through is why I'm perfectly happy to spend £1/ day on targeted Facebook ads, and earn £100s a month through advertising from WordPress, when I find the idea of self advertising on here through bid-bots as somehow demonstrating a lack of integrity.

Perhaps it's because it's my professional services I sell through those other platforms and more of of my personal interest stuff I share through here, which I think still has value, and I think that's true of many of us 'community curation types' who are haranguing your comments stream... we're not here to sell services.

As you and everyone else says, perhaps it's soon to be that the advertising services and the community aspect separate out so all of this will be moot, I can't see the bots going anywhere. Until then, it grates seeing good content undervalues and mediocre content bid-botted up, which is maybe something of a long term problem because surely for steemit to have utility as an advertising platform, people have to actually be using it? And clearly many people are being put off by not being able to get any kind of return (and maybe because of a sense of injustice caused by relative deprivation), so something does need to be done about making a distribution more equal, but I'm rambling and point taken about that not being a bot issue.

Bit tired to go into any more depth and am still thinking these issues through, just wanted to put something out there though.

It's still a very new space of course, full of contradiction and innovation so none of us can be certain what's going to happen moving forwards.

Useful article.