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How is that even possible today? :p

For what it's worth, I do feel sorry for you in that you are clearly the most pro-active bot owner in dealing with obvious spam accounts.

I understand the frustration of many seeing utter shit in Trending which is promoted by one person, and clearly not the content that the community wish to see at the top.

HardFork 17(i think 17) gave us delegated Steem Power, thus the birth of the bid-bots. What people forget is that it also gave Steemit and other accounts the ability to delegate stake to projects like @dtube, @utopian, @dlive, @sndbox, @curie, etc.

In addition to that, the ability to delegate SP to individuals (something I do to 10+ accounts for no financial gain) has seen a massive boost in engagement in my part of the Steemit world.

The prime example of this was a recent delegation of @fulltimegeek to around 50 accounts with 350,000 Steem Power - the mission being to do the curation and engagement work of 1 account x 50.

Personally, I think that delegated Steem Power has offered more good than bad. The future is not steemit.com, it is the applications that are here and in the pipeline, that will need delegated Steem Power to kickstart them.

Feel free to send @buildawhale over to my 'house' for dinner tonight :)

I agree partially. It brought the bit-bots. And some bit-bot-problems with it. Maybe these problems can be solved without "killing the bots". Maybe it could be regulated in some way.

The future is not steemit.com...

Maybe there lies a big future in applications and the pipeline, but I am sure there are still many people who are interested in Steemit and don't want to see it drowning in shit-content.

I know that I'm a nobody here. I also know that it may result in loss of profits. That being said, have you ever considered putting that steem power into a human curation platform? It would be so much better for the community and the value of steem as a whole. I just really see the dangers of pay to play auto upvotes. I'm not hating on you Mark, and I know that you have every right to do with your money/sp/steem as you see fit. Just a thought. It could even be where people pay a set amount to be "reviewed" and if there post is worthy then they get an upvote worthy of their work. I personally won't use Upvote bots but would consider something like that because it wouldn't really be paying for a vote but rather paying to be seen and your work can show for itself. It could be like a @buildawhale meets @curie. It might be to labor intensive to implement, but boy would it be a game changer. I just wish I had the capitol and time to start a project like that. For now you still got my vote, I'm not planning to change it, but if things start to get out of hand with people "abusing" your services I'm not sure if I could in good conscience continue to support that sort of work. Please don't be offended by this, that is not my intention at all. I was considering sending this to you in a DM, but decided that perhaps some others with the means may see this idea and do something with it. I'm just a lowly guppy out here swimming among the whales, orcas, dolphins, minnow, and red fish.

Also, You would never have to do one of these posts again. :)
I got nothing but love for you @themarkymark. Just please consider what I have said, or at least bring it up to any of the big wigs you may be in contact with.