Those participation awards they hand out are just as detrimental to the platform as your paid votes.

You basically sell flags. If I publish a post, it gets bumped down and knocked out of contention by people who use the paid vote bots. It's the same as flagging my work, except your flags cost money.

So, I came here to be an independent artist and writer. Since junk memes and low quality posts can easily bump my work down, I'm left with two options: Leave; or cave in, use a middleman like you and lose my independence. I don't want to work for you, you never hired me. So, I suppose I have to leave like everyone else you folks are chasing away; and that's unfortunate.