LOL brother you are literally insane.
Perhaps but I plan to pull metrics in user attrition along the way and we'll see if I really am or conversely I know exactly what I am talking about.
I think more people are starting to realize the ones that the benefit the most from the arrangement are vote sellers and not content creators or real curators. That is the crux of the issue. Why would anyone curate when it's more profitable to delegate to a bot? The problem is this platform needs more manual curators but that doesn't really pay. We have some people holding on to hope curating but their rewards have been supplanted by the bots leaving much less incentive to perform their vital function. One of the cool things about curation is the ones that found the post early would get a nice payout when a whale found it.
When most whales are selling votes or delegating to vote selling services, there is statistically less probability for the curator to expect significant rewards even if they performed their task optimally.
Correlation =/= causation.
That's all true. Yet since that is the case, I would encourage you to utilize the system to your advantage. For example, have you tried starting a curation group and asking for a delegation in SP from anyone? Maybe you could make an "ethical" bid bot that only upvotes whitelisted users and reinvests the profits back into its own SP?
Agreed. That's the problem with the curation system.
Then again, this is all kind of pointless anyway since the distribution of SP is retardedly skewed to one side. Are we just supposed to expect those accounts to sit around and not get involved in a platform where they have so much influence?
I've said it before, but I think the solution is a more careful monitoring of the bid bot system. They're not going anywhere as long as STEEM is worth anything, but I think that some unofficial guidelines regarding post quality would go a long way towards encouraging people to polish their content before buying upvotes.
I don't understand the math beneath all of this, but there is one point I can't see my way to agreeing with: that one person's vote ought to count more than another's - except on the basis of his reputation/engagement/votes received. I observed that it is impossible to publish something and gain any reward, while someone with a certain 2 or three supporters publishes total numpty content and gets immediate rewards. If that wasn't the case, i would never have used a bot. If there were no need for an equalizer, there would be no equalizers.. enter the bid-bots, selling of resteems, the pathetic discord and other circle jerking. I don't know, I may be wrong but I think the only way from here is for bid-bots to reveal their approach so people can use the services they consider to be ethical.
"but there is one point I can't see my way to agreeing with: that one person's vote ought to count more than another's"
Well, Communism is that way, then ---->
I don't think you (mean to be) advocating for neutering the concept of stake, but this is literally the defining feature of Steem. One person's vote will always count more than another's.
I know it as direct democracy. Call it what you like, but I don't believe that an elite ought to determine what a community eventually becomes.