RE: Vote selling hasn't been affected by the fall of minnowbooster
I can't answer for @littleboy, but I see bots, as @willymac does: simply direct competition for rewards with actual content creators. @markymark has posted several comments of late in which he points out he just doesn't have the ability to screen out shitposts, and I don't doubt him.
Essentially, focusing on financial schema to gain rewards kills content creation, and drives churn. Steemit users leave in droves, for this reason IMHO. Steem is consistently being ever more concentrated in the accounts that hold most of it. Steemit has a worse GINI than any nation in the world, and this discourages the artistic types.
Steem needs the artistic types, since content is the engine that drives Steem use, and thus it's value. Killing content kills the Steem.
I don't hate on profits, bots, or anything. I'm just pointing out the results of their proliferation, and the transformation of Steemit from a social media site to a pool mining site, that uses shitposts (at worst) as a vector for mining ops.
as aggroed points out, hardfork 19 is what brought the ability to make profitable bots... most of the bots that came out weren't that good... I'm no developer... but I suspect the answer is something besides linear rewards, which also is not n^2....
so really we need developers and mathematicians.... or mathematician developers... and someone to come up with the code... because obviously steemit inc has a pretty hefty load to complete roadmap2017, and doesn't seem available for these types of changes at the moment.
However, "we" have the power to propose forks... but everyone is too busy to do anything but complain about it.
Well, I can appreciate that I do often sound like a broken record on this and related issues, but I also do attempt to offer improvements, and am aware of many others that do also.
@bitopia has posted several relevant proposals, and the best of them, concerning the promotion feature, is simply outstanding. My own latest post is, in fact, a conceptualization of how to insulate creators from profiteers, while allowing profiteers to concentrate on profit, their apparent overriding interest.
Have a look if you care to. I won't link it, cuz I don't wanna spam, but it's todays, and it's brief.
@bitopia's is better than mine, and far more developed. I fully endorse it.
Thanks!