Thanks @acidyo I appreciated your article.

I read through @aggroed's post and the comments. One interesting comment thread was between @themarkymakr and @em3
And then @limabeing (or @limabean?) mentioned that ESL speakers (english as a second language) are led to use the vote bid bots without understanding them. And when they don't use them smartly, it is just a pillage of the poor, ignorant by the rich(over dramatization is mine). AND I have seen this! $0.05 and $0.85 bids on bots that say, minimum bid $1sbd. That doesn't get refunded.

Anyway.... I agree with @em3 that, if vote bots are to serve an acceptable service, they should operate with a whitelist. Or at least a well maintained blacklist. Because abuse now is and has been bad.

I would offer, that any respectable, ethical witness that also has a vote bot would consider the community and put forth the efforts and expenses in order to 98%-prevent abuse of these services. Otherwise, I don't want to vote for them as witness.

And, what is up with BID VOTE BOTS anyway??? Why not just have a price like minnowbooster. Wouldn't that do better about at least giving honest, content creators a fair price (or a price they find acceptable)? Some idiot bidding huge in the last 5 min of a bid bot's window can screw over all the other earlier bidders. I don't get it.