No thanks, I prefer playing on a harder difficulty.

^Not like this.

Ok, now that the initial fun is out of the way, it's time to get serious.

Why? Because I feel strongly about this topic and wanted to take a moment to respond to a comment @whatsup left on my previous vote-selling critical post as it was very thoughtful and deserved careful attention. Original comment may be found here

Facebook's earnings breaks down to $19ish dollars per user, per year. Using the advertising model. Think about that for a moment. There is a vast amount of content on Facebook, from deeply thought-out opinions, well-written articles, to pictures of dinner.

Most people do not pay for content they consume directly. How often would you take even $1 dollar out of your wallet and pay to read someone's article?

I know you likely posed this as a rhetorical question and I agree with the implication. People don't often do this. Steem provides an easy way for people to "take the dollar out of their pocket" and reward people for the content they consume via upvoting. Unfortunately, bid bots disrupt this mechanic and, as I stated previously, diminish the incentive for curators to get out there and do this. Bots have created a avenue for stakeholders to be lazy, not curate, and make greater returns. It's jacked..

I tried your perspective on and what I can't figure out is where does the revenue for a "Pure" content site come from? Are you thinking that stakeholders will just hold and slowly liquidate their own holdings to the best Content Creators? If so, why would they do that?

I am not entirely sure what you mean by "Pure". I'm not naïve enough to believe a pure utopian meritocratic ideal Steem is attainable. We are flawed human creatures, after all. That is not to say we cannot strive closer to this ideal and my contention is that bid bots are one of the greatest obstacles preventing this. I know that there isn't an easy solution to remove these what I call blights to the Steem ecosystem.

There are technical solutions that can facilitate this but such would require consensus. For example, a fork could be implemented to change the code that would require a check on posts being upvoted to require to be set to decline rewards IF there is a transfer of SBD to the user within the last 2.4 hours to ensure bots are, in fact, being used for promotion. Promotion is the purported function for the bots after all so I think the request is reasonable. I would call that a compromise.

This would also serve the benefit of reducing inflation. To that end, the code should also require those curation reward rewards to either be burnt. As the bots are not typically performing meaningful curation so they should not be rewarded anyway.

Is it your opinion that if we had the best darn content that would generate more traffic?

Why wouldn't it? We create an ecosystem that encourages the creation of engaging content that draws people in and desire to want to participate without false pretense (not like that get-rich quick bullshit as that just creates the revolving door effect) encouraging them to buy Steem. That's a win for us all. I believe creating a place with honest appeal is the best long term approach but, who knows, maybe that will only serve to attract other dumb ass idealists like me. :P

In my mind, this is how it is working right now... We are a site in very early development. We have a supply and demand problem. Investors and Developers are rare, especially those who can code and invest in Crypto. We need to retain our investors and our developers.

One problem of Steem is we know it is conspicuously pay to play. We don't have a system that facilitates up and coming talent that have limited monetary resources. If it weren't for the people, often narcissistic ones, buying up the trending real estate for pictures of coffee or anecdotes about masturbation, how many economically disadvantaged "people magnets" could we have found?

In my life, I've had a dichotomy of experience concerning affluence or lack thereof. I've been rich and I've been poor. Being poor sucks and there are a lot of people that are determined to get on the grind and fix their situation but don't have capital. That's where you may find me being an advocate for promoting a more meritocratic system in place on Steem so people disadvantaged by the corrupt system of fiat would be able to work hard and make it. Building a more equitable system, I believe, will bring more talent to the blockchain and will in turn compel others to buy.

These are the kind of people we need so that the content consumers will be more eager to buy in. Ultimately, we need people buying Steem but we need to provide more of an incentive to do so and, in order to achieve, I think upgrading the protocol to achieve a better balance between user that sell votes and those that do not. Right now, vote selling is OP. It is really pointless for someone that doesn't sell votes to even try and compete.

Feel like I can allude to gaming tournaments. Let's take Smash Bros 4 for instance. There was a problem when the character Bayonetta was created for being way too overpowered. IIRC the tournaments actually banned use of that character for some time because she killed competition. I guess people could have all played as Bayo but that would boring. Similarly, if everybody on Steem decided to sell their votes instead of using their votes more constructively, Steem would also be boring. You know this. I know this.

I know this is going to burn a little, but something being a hard truth doesn't stop it from being a truth. There are literally Millions of people who create content for free. That equals... Supply. There is not a shortage of people who will create content nor is there a shortage of content.
Don't be angry, just think about it for a minute...

You're right again. Content creators are a dime a dozen. We need a means of generating revenue. I've seen criticism of Steem for not having advertisement-based revenue generation in mind but I do believe SMTs do have the potential to alleviate that by bloggers requiring them for access to premium content for example. I'm not mad. I'm not a commie. I love the free market but I also love when entrepreneurs have enough integrity to offer products that are not as riddled with problems like bid bots.

I do not believe there is a net utility in selling votes. When you sell a vote, it degrades curation and it takes away from any others that have received actual organic proof-of-brain votes while enriching the vote seller and buyer in the short term. Selling votes is indeed a zero sum game as I see it. The ones that get ahead in relative terms or the ones that participate but overall the system is strained by their existence.

Even with the depressed Crypto Markets and the bidding bots, most people here are completely out earning any other place I can think of to sell content. I admit it is flawed and hard to deal with sometimes, but there is another way to view it. No, we may not be rewarding content perfectly or even really well... However we are rewarding it. Please don't lose site of that! It is bad advice to point out the unfairness with out looking at that side of it also.

I agree. I don't want to be careful not to throw the baby out with the bathwater but I am concerned about the sustainability of a Steem if bid bots reach a certain threshold. I think we would be better off without them but good luck convincing a bot owner of that.

In this situation, the speculation on the coin Steem is what is paying for the content. In other words, those who are holding Steem hoping it will pay off at some point that gives a creates the value of our content.

That sounds about right.

I don't hate money, I don't hate business people and I feel our content pays out really well. Not perfectly based on "Quality", but at a much higher level than any other site I am aware of that pays for content.

Please hear me saying, I know it isn't fair, but if you are reading this are you going to give up being paid at extremely high rates because it isn't fair? If so, you also have to consider what you are earning also isn't "Fair" based on value in the market rates. YOU ARE WINNING.
Don't accept my vision, but please consider it.

I have considered it and your argument does have merits for Steem but I don't believe there is anything particularly compelling about the necessity and net benefit for bid bots in the ecosystem. Think the best reason you have given me for why bid bots is because it's better than the collusive voting alternative.

My answer would be to reject both and it wouldn't be hard to target and deter collusive voting if we really wanted to change it. If enough people with VP would come together, we can deter collusive voting with flags. Sure, people may find a workaround with other accounts but I think the trick is just to make things more difficult for them so that would naturally choose the path of less resistance. Anyways, I kind of going off on a tangent as I am prone to do. Again, I thought your comment was very thoughtful so I wanted to spend more time on replying. Not sure if I had done so in a very succinct manner but I think you get the gist.

I think the bottom line is our worldviews and/or values may differ causing us to think about things in the different way. I consider how bots affect the work ethic of users for instance. If people are merely using bots for SP accumulation, they may opt for a mediocre post (but not entirely a shitpost) to use bots to turn a profit. In this case, it's about economy of effort and, if it is easier to accumulate X amount of rewards using bots with a mediocre post vs a well-thought out post organically. There is a good chance users may opt for the former if they are strapped for time. What's the net result? Post quality will generally become more mediocre.

---

With that, I leave you all another meme I created using good ol browser developer tools. Actually I just learned that you can go to dev mode on Edge and replace images in text on a webpage to make fake comments like the one below.

When EA decides to make a Bid Bot, It's GAME OVER!

_{See what I did there? ;)}

Inspired by Reddit's most downvoted comment which can be found here