@maneki-neko, if you want to get rid of bots you have to get rid of the whole self-voting mechanisms altogether.

Just look at who's at the trending page. It's the same people voting themselves (with their $200 SBD Upvotes) and their friends (with $400 SBD Upvotes) at no cost to them but a press of a button. Again take a look at the trending page, do 90% of the content there warrant a $1K SBD payout?

For normal content creators like me, I don't have a $200 SBD Self vote. How am I going to get a crack at the trending pages? I don't know any whales and they're too busying upvoting themselves too go dig through content.

Please take a look what's happening overall on Steemit before condemning normal content creators who will have to use bots to keep up. Now, I question the use of $400 SBD to buy the votes because it's taking the voting power from the pool of votes on the bots.

Smaller content creators with less money are getting less for their ROI, but that's another issue worth discussing.