A lot of people disliked the free downvote mana bar, but they weren't powerful enough to stop it.
A lot more people like it. Good riddance to those who don't start your own business with vote-buying enabled and see how far that gets you. Hint, you will certainly fail.
Many people, I included, feel that Steem has been dominated by a small crowd of anti-business tyrants that ruin the whole blockchain and screw Steem's future.
Steem is open for business as long as the business isn't exploiting the reward pool. If you want support from the community, come up with a good idea.
The Crypto Youtubers are famous among the whole of the crypto industry with many followers on Youtube, Twitter and Facebook. But these people barely make anything and rarely touch trending on Steem.
I've followed crypto-YouTubers on Steem. Most of them rarely engaged on Steem and just directed people to external channels. There are a few onboarding ideas to bring some of these people back, but it is either an advertisement or a 2-way street.
Because this place is nothing more than a big circle-jerk, wherein the key players keep milking the reward pool in hopes that it won't end soon.
So you think bidbotting is going to solve this problem? The youtubers who get upvoted on Steem are focused on Steem.
Justin is not probably good for Steem, but a lot of us are at least glad to see the old hierarchy getting broke up.
A lot of the 'hierarchy' are individuals who are very good for Steem. Do you want to see them fall out of favour quickly? Well, a few just did by making really bad choices. It's not the first time it happened either. Why would we want to punish the people who have been around forever building their accounts and helping the community? Sure they have become powerful, but name me a few who didn't earn it.
And if he sells off his stake it will mean low prices for a while, but it could also mean much more decentralization.
Low prices are great for people who can afford to buy like me, and don't need the income. But there are a few very good and important people around here who rely on income and cannot afford to have whales intentionally manipulating or crashing the prices. I'm not talking about people who are just shitposting either, I'm talking about people developing stuff, running servers, etc, who depend on their income. If they have to leave, Steemit will be all there is left and well, they aren't doing so much these days.
Although technically correct, I don't think dumping on the market is a good way to encourage decentralization. I'd rather see it go to developers who slowly sell it while improving Steem because then we win in 2 ways. I can't believe how many people fail to see this. There is literally no advantage to us simply giving the coins to Justin. If we wanted his help, we could have made a 'pay Jusin' SPS. We would probably get their help for a lot less than 65 million Steem and none of the drama or force 'agreements'.
Are you aware that the best posts on Steem that grow organic traffic here have nothing to do with Steem? SEO is enhanced when obscure, infrequently addressed content is produced. The "I love Steem because ..." posts are actually sending the blockchain to its slow death.
I agree that interesting content that isn't for internal audiences can help promote Steem. However, we just don't have enough of that content being made and Steem needs to be distributed. Better 'I love Steem' getting the rewards than people buying and selling votes for their crypto scams or junk content.
I've seen some pretty weird stuff get a lot of rewards.
Still, bid bot services showed us the way to increasing STEEM's value and providing a strong use case: promotion.
The best way to do the content promotion use case is through burning STEEM via a promotion tool. Steampeak's tool seems to not work perfectly, but its a good start.
Paid promotions shouldn't be rewarded with votes, bottom line.
That's a philosophical argument. I prefer a promotion system that involves STEEM being burned. To me that is a solid use case for STEEM. That said, I thought of bid bot services as a perfectly fine thing.
Frankly, I never cared and don't care about paid votes. People acting as if their reward pool is being "abused" or "raped" is just dumb. Everyone staking is adding value to the blockchain and due to that they get votes as compensation for staking. What they do with those votes is none of anyone else's business.
This is what I mean by Steem having an anti-business atmosphere that will likely kill itself over time. The only thing that draws content producers here is $ signs, the only thing that draws investors here is staking ROI.
People blamed the bid bots for Steem's decline, but it was never the bots. That's why Steem is still doing shitty even after that industry is gone. In fact, Steem only became less popular after HF 22 and alienated many investors and separated the community. Post HF 22 was an ugly witch hunt of downvoters going around like a mob.
No one will pay money for Steem if it is only used to promote stuff on Steem, The only reasons bidbots were around for so long was because it took about a year to convince a majority of witnesses that if something wasn't done about the issue, the platform would die.
It's like saying people will pay money to browse ebay or amazon or to look at online ads. You need to attract good content creators and advertising before that happens isn't how todo it. It could work in the future with an SMT, but this is very doubtful. None of the content creators are going to want that.
If we have a chain split and 1 chain allows bid bots while the other doesn't we will be able to test your theory in practice.
The bid bot chain will fail hard and fast.