The way I describe SBI is as a vote subscription service. Exactly like bidbots, there is no proof of brain. Similar to bidbots, you are buying votes, except you are just paying now for future votes. The main difference is with a bidbot, you get some, they get the rest. With SBI you get some and someone you named (perhaps your alt) gets the rest. It's vote-buying, it's just a less toxic form of vote-buying. SBI wasn't the only honest vote-buying service that would blacklist and ban really bad users either, OCDB only allowed whitelisted users to vote and quite a few would remove votes of abusers with enough pressure.

That said, I like SBI. I agree it is good for onboarding new users. However, I do wish that they would create their own token and payout in that. If you cannot create your own token for such a service, in the end of the day it is a tax on the platform. In other words, SBI is taxing everyone who doesn't use SBI. We didn't vote for it.

Still, I think it is a good tax. If it was put to a poll on the SPS/@steem.dao, it would probably beat the return proposal or any no easily. I don't know too many people who are actually against it. Most people are only against the actions of certain individuals abusing it who are banned. I say this as someone who wrote a post that helped SBI adapt to a post EIP hard fork consensus.

Less related to SBI, personally, I think the current solution of just using your downvotes how you want is most fair. I have more SP than some because I acquired it one way or another. It's proof of stake, the more you have the more influence you have. This works exactly the same regardless of the account. Just like SBI, there is no brain involved in having more or less.

If a project is using its upvotes or downvotes in a way you don't like, stop associating with it, or downvote it. Or if it doesn't produce content, downvote whoever or whatever it supports. This is a fundamental part of Steem which would need to be changed after a whole lot of discussion I argue is currently unnecessary. I'd save it and potential solutions including removing all rewards and paying out in SMTs, or worse some sort of centralized authority, for another rant.

One thing I don't personally like is auto downvote or downvote trails or delegating to anyone who downvotes. Unlike upvoting, I like to be in full control of my downvotes and know exactly who I am downvoting case by case and why. Call it a bias, but I think most people here share that bias. Getting random upvotes feels nice. Getting random downvotes sucks. We don't need bad feelings. That said, I don't think most decent (1000SP+) downvotes are random.