You are defintely not the only one who sees the problem, @moderndayhippie.
As I see it, the use of the bid bots is not only destroying the ranking system, but the entire SteemIt platform.
In the beginning it was all about good content. And just like on other social media, you had to earn your audience and build up the number of followers over time. Not that I was here back then. I only joined in November 2017.
Then greed took over. It’s not about quality content anymore, but about who has money to buy his way up to trending.
And it seems like the only people who have enough money to throw hundreds of dollars at the bidbots, are the ones that are not capable of creating quality posts.
The trending page is like the SteemIt billboard. I think that there are lots of people who are potential content creators that check out SteemIt for the first time, are confonted with the trending page and just turn away.
If you don’t have the money, it is hard to get your content seen.
IMO, I wouldn’t mind if all the bots would disappear one day. Preferrably sooner than later...
I guess that’s just human nature: when money is involved, greed takes over.
SteemIt is killing itself, and there is little we can do about it, but try to raise awareness...
Wow, you nailed it with this comment. I totally agree with everything you said here. Greed is a huge issue for sure and like you said seems like the people with huge posts payouts have crap articles. I think ur right about the trending page too, i don't even bother looking at it anymore but if I would have found steemit now I probably wouldve not even bothered to sign up. I have convinced 10 of my friends to sign up since new years and none of them stayed on the platform..... Thats a huge problem in my eyes. If they cant even keep 1 out of 10 people here on steemit, it will not succeed!
May big guys keep voting each other, or keep flagging each other. If they would spend 5% of their voting power to upvote quality posts of the little guys, the situation for us minnows would be completely different.
There are exeptions of course. There are big guys who are being very supportive, but still, we minnows are stuck upvoting eachother, which results in 60 upvotes worth $1.50.
Selling and buying upvotes is not allowed in the SteemIt FAQ, but unfortunately Steemit Inc has abandonned the sinking ship...