really love this piece and i want to thank you for bringing this issues to light with such clarity. first off, thank you for sharing dan's medium article as i hadn't seen it yet and look forward to giving it a read.

obviously a lot of these issues are on many of our minds, but as you said, without $$$ to talk or high enough SP in this case, our voices don't matter very much. i'm curious if the community he's created on the EOS platform will seek to challenge these issues and if so, how it will do so.

i think many of us just continue steeming (and i speak for myself here) even amidst all of this " bidbot dictatorship" as @tarazkp coined because this is the best we've seen on the net as far as blogging and getting compensated for it. plus this community is literally the best i've ever come across. like in life, we can create niches of our own reality, though major injustices plague the world. steemit is no difference; many of us just keep swimming in our own corner of the pool slowly gaining steem while the same people remain at the top of the trending page all the time. basically i just ignore it.

one way i look at it as well is to focus on create strong communities. the bid bot buyers can just continue to circle jerk and stay on the trending page. that doesn't have to matter to the rest of us. yes the reward pool is heavily endowed in their favor, but if we took our energy away from feeding their accounts, whether with our vote, comment or resteem, it is slowly revealed for the sham that it is.

all in all in appreciate you writing on this pervasive systemic issue and will watch to see how it evolves and unfolds over time. we can certainly do better. i found myself nodding in agreement to your entire article.

edit: wow just read @tarazkp's piece... incredibly eye-opening and if i had read this first, would have amended a few things i wrote above. this is much more serious than i realized!