As someone who has been here less than 4 months, there is something I see missing that I feel is even worse when it comes to the bidbots that is overlooked. I have mentioned it a few places now and hope the more i say it the more people will spread this.

Almost all of the people I connected with who were new at the same time are now dead accounts. One of the reasons I believe is tied to these bots.

Unless the bot is paying out more than 200%, it will result in a loss for the buyer of the votes. Newer members believe they need to use these vote bots (especially when top witnesses have scummy videos proclaiming that's how one makes their foundation here) and watch their tiny rewards evaporate as they hand them over to these whale machines. So not only are the rewards minuscule to begin with, but for these newbs it shows them the site is a scam that costs money to post.

I believe this is why there has been no rush to fix the value of SBD, and possibly why it was allowed to grow so high in value. Instead of curating at the normal split between SBD and SP, these whale bots bypass that split and get it all paid upfront in SBD. Then get gravy at the tail end for curation, which is all they would have received to begin with. I have to believe this was all done by design for this reason.

The flip side, those who are using them are not, for the most part, clicking with communities. Robots are not a community, and they will find themselves ultimately always having to pay these bots to be their friends.

As for trending, I have read it was a mess due to whale circle voting before the bots became prevalent. I think it will always be a matter of slowly finding those you identify with, then you will find a lot of others in their comment sections. I don't follow a lot of people and my personal feed is already filled with more posts than I can share upvote love with. Screw trending. Water rises to its own level and once you find the water it all falls into place.

I think anyone who sees what this idea represents will realize quickly as I did that to grow here you invest in those you want to grow strong with. In my case this meant renting SP so I can reward those around me. It won't pay off quickly, but it adds another brick into the communities I am drawn to and maybe a handful of small votes from me will be the deciding factor on someone staying another week, another month etc.

Want to see those bots dry up, set SBD back to what it is supposed to be pegged at. You will see a lot of people pulling their delegations out of these profit bots real quick.