hey @richreeve , I understand your concerns. As I mentioned to another member, things are always evolving. One thing is you've labelled all bots into one category. There are many types of bots. You may find this article inspiring https://steemit.com/utopian-io/@yabapmatt/community-bot-a-voting-bot-for-steem-communities We feel like there is room for paid upvote bots in this space and if there are more "community type bots" it will be very helpful. This is assuming that the managers of the community bots choose 'members with quality content" but this can also be judgement. Some people love heavy metal music for example while others think its trash. Its complicated. Also, its not fair to the people working hard creating posts that the most they ever earn is 10 cents because all the "whales" are part of a special boys club that don't share with anyone else. If authors aren't making any income from their posts, then Steemit will not survive because everyone will leave or a new type of Steemit will come and everyone will go there. Voting bots like us give content creators the power to earn some ROI on their posts and get visibility.
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I'm a big believer in the power of reputation building and organic earnings as a result. While you are right, some whales dont spread their love enough for the benefit of the whole community, this will change over time as more people grow and more people join but this will take time.
Unfortunatly, most of the amazing potential opportunities I see from this community will emerge in the future because these things take time. Patience will reward incredible longevity. However, some of these possibilities are in contention with bots that provide an opportunity for people today. Will this current opportunity with bots provide the same longevity? Who knows!
I can honestly see both sides of the argument.
My biggest issues with bots is they enable people with any reputation and any quality of content to populate the high valued trending feeds. If that wasn't bad enough for the community, this opportunity provided by bots is only available to the people who can afford to throw 200 SBD at every post they publish. This creates an unbalanced level of opportunity for Steemit users as most people can't afford that kind of money.
Rather than being an equal and fair level playing field for everyone no matter where you live in the world. The opportunity provided by bots turns Steemit into another voice for the privilaged and wealthy. Don't we already have enough of these on the internet?
The thing that I was most excited about when I first discovered Steemit was the potential to distribute wealth and create jobs in third-world, povety stricken counties. While this is still possible, bots are harming this incredible opportunity in various ways.
I know bot owners want this community to improve and grow just as much as anyone else but I don't think you guys see the bigger picture of what could be possible in the future. Or, maybe, I am missing a bot owners bigger picture of their vison for the future. Maybe. However, I have tried to consider both futures but I keep finding more problems that bots cause us in the long-term.
@richreeve , thanks for your post. Something big that you might me missing is the fact that upvote bots allow anybody to make some ROI on their posts. It's quite possible to consistently make 15% or more gains using upvote bots. So even if someone is from a "poor country", they can gain a little bit of profit by using vote bots correctly (which might take some time to figure out). It takes 7 days for the post payouts and then they can reinvest for their next content. This is a great long term strategy to build up Steem Power and wealth on Steem. I see a future where Steem is worth $100+ so this is a great opportunity for all people.
Another point is that if we only have the elite Rich and everybody else is Poor on the platform, things are very out of balance. Having a "middle class" can be of a benefit. 200 SBD to promote a post, hit the trending page and get your money back in a week isn't that out of reach for a large number of users . I think there is a greater likelihood that this emerging "middle-class" would be supportive of people in poorer countries. I haven't seen many posts about philanthropical whales here on Steemit (yet)..