@berniesanders I am not disagreeing with you at this point, but I wonder where your strong opinion comes from... I am not sure how much internet marketing you do, but the name of the game on social media is Automation. Bots are everywhere, facebook, twitter, youtube, reddit, instagram, pinterest tumblr, literally on every single network. Do those bots add value to the network? I can tell you with certainty that getting bots to pick up a keyword that you targeted is worth money.

I understand we aren't really talking about automation of boring tasks here but we are rather talking about paid promotion. Again, every single social media has paid promotion in some form or another and that includes steemit.

I perceive the voting bots as probably the current best way to promote your content. Do I want it to be like this? No. But if there was an advertising system ran by Steemit then it would most likely be a centralized advertising system. I wish we had a better option but it doesn't seem like we do.

Also I see you upvote yourself a lot to collect rewards, either that or one of those other accounts talks to people the exact same way that you do. Why do you agree with that part of the system but not paying money to possibly make money with vote bots? Thanks for your thoughts.