It's sad that this is even possible.
I'm sure your intentions are all fantastic but paying for votes mainly helps the big accounts that sell them rather than the person that pays for them.
And rather than being rewarded for producing great content, you're simply being rewarded for creating a post with some text in it. You could be writing anything, hell you could just put a little comma in the post and the return will be virtually the same.
I don't like bid bots. I think they're doing more harm to Steemit than good. So if you're looking for a long term and stable wealth creation tool then this is highly unlikely to be it.
Thank you @gamernoob,
I really appreciate your engaging comment. I am going to rebut most of your points but please feel encouraged to keep the conversation going.
To your first point about helping large accounts.... Did you know there are pools where smalls voters band together and create bots. So small voters can get the same (proportional) gains as larger voters. And you also infer in the end that the transaction is not mutually beneficial.. or maybe more beneficial to one party than the other. Well to that I say you must provide some clarification.
You are claiming that by buying votes you are being rewarded for creating a post that could contain nothing of value. Here is my counterpoint, Yes you COULD create a post with no content; but by buying votes you are actually bringing more views (advertising) because people will be looking to curate authors with high rewards. With more views comes the opportunity to get more upvotes. But there is also the risk of people seeing the post and not agreeing with post reward and down voting. So to summarize, I feel there is a substantial amount of risk associated with buying bids and having to display those bids for at least 3 - 4 days. I've bought bids and lost value before so it is not as simple as it may appear.
I Respect your personal views regarding the buying of bids but I ask you to consider what the alternative is in the current ecosystem. People have voting power they are not always necessarily using so if they don't spend that SP and they have lost it. People are willing to pay for the unused votes. Do you want to regulate transactions to not allow such a thing?
Lets start a conversation about this cause it is top of mind for many people here one steem
You don't lose SP by not using it. Your voting power is just wasted. The Steem is still there.
Your post here for example, is what I would consider low value. It doesn't serve to educate, it just describes your profits through the use of bid bots and encourages others to use these services.
Many bid bots are owned by witnesses on the Steemit platform. So buying votes via these bots simply serves to increase the Witnesses position on the rankings. For example, @jerrybanfield owns one of the large bots. So everything he does serves to increase his strength as a witness. Every vote you buy places him in a stronger position. Witnesses are meant to be helping to grow the platform, not raping the platform for everything that they can, but @jerrybanfield is only here to serve himself. And does nothing to grow Steemit (he might say he promotes Steemit off the platform, but all he does is makes himself look like a nerdy timeshare salesman so is more of an embarrassment than anything).
If bid bots were either removed or heavily regulated then people would be simply curating each others work. And you wouldn't see people buying votes to low quality or even plagiarised content. Think about all the crap you see on Steemit. A lot of it would be gone if there were less people encouraged to buy votes for their shitty content.
Ouch, shots fired. Low value post. Gaaasp.
Just kidding. I will respond soon with more.
Edit. Here goes my long winded response.
"You don't lose SP by not using it. Your voting power is just wasted. The Steem is still there." I completly agree but I didn't word it all that well. But point being UNDERUTILIZED VOTES THAT HAVE NOT BEEN SPENT LOSE THEIR POTENTIAL TO EARN VALUE. By selling I would consider this a "salvage" item similar to when a hotel has a hotel room for rent. Yes they want $150 a night (fair market value) but if you catch them at the right time you could get the exact same room for a fraction of the value. This is salvage price. Unspent voting power is similar. Just want to point that out. I am a business guy; so finding fair comparisons helps me to keep things in perspective.
Your next point about my post not having any value is quite harsh. I will start by stating that I disagree. I find value in information that helps me make financial decisions and I feel like this blog is likely to help people decide if they will spend money on bid bots or not. I want to address your point about me encouraging the use of bid bots. I don't think I have done such a thing. Could you please point out where I did this because my intention was to try to stay neutral. You cannot categorize a positive or negative ROI as encouraging or discouraging.... I am collecting data and presenting factual information... at least that is what I though I was doing.
I agree completely that there is a conflict of interest when witnesses start to use their position and understanding to, as you put it, "rape the platform". This needs to be addressed. We are in agreement; but, the service is not the problem.
Now to your last point. This is what I see as the real meat and potatoes of our disagreement. You want to resolve the issues by imposing some sort of market controls to regulate people's behavior. I don't think that will solve the underlying issue though we might be able to strong arm people into complying with what you think they should be doing. The truth is of matter is that bid bots are actually generating profit. Money drives adoption, therefore bid bots helping to drive Steem's development forward. As people become aware of profit from bid bots the competition will increase and the profit margins will decrease with the increase of competition. This is how free markets work and trying to intervene and manipulate markets for a certain desired outcome, almost always, ends badly.
We need an engaged community that is not just here to profit. That is how we build this thing up. The idea of building this platform up by tearing certain people down, in my view, will not work. Bid bots are a part of the ecosystem and I think we should accept it and move forward. The best solution I see going forward would be rewarding those who downvote and not only those who upvote. That way there will be incentive to curate both good and bad content.