Things to Think About

21000 SP is now useless on this platform because of these bots.

• There aren't any incentives to curate manually now.
• If I vote for a post with my 21000 SP, all it takes is one bot vote to flag away my efforts. We might not call the paid votes "flags" or "downvotes" but the paid votes have the same effect as a flag. The post I voted for gets pushed down into oblivion, that member suffers while those who paid to vote for themselves hog the spotlight. The problems aren't reserved to the trending page. It's system wide. Even the most popular post on Steemit right now that majority enjoy when they see it, whatever that is, gets pushed aside and flagged away by paid votes. We might as well just ban quality content because it stands no chance of going viral here. Nearly all content producers here now get pushed aside.
• People pay for votes, others get pushed down and this is called "promotion." They're paying for visibility, yet a robot can't see. Those who delegated to the bots are being paid to look away, so they can't see either and even if they could, they don't have SP to help a blogger succeed organically because they gave their vote away.
• 1000 accounts that delegate away their SP equals 2000 eyes all looking away and centralized into one paid vote. "Visibility?" "Promotion?" How?

It's your mess, you clean it up.

• Paywalls don't work.
• Pay to play is hated.
• Bloggers/Vloggers typically help generate and earn ad revenue but instead they come here, they see a sign that says Free Money! Then the blogger gets tricked into paying someone else to earn ad revenue while they make next to nothing and sometimes even lose money.
• Nobody likes to feel as if they were ripped off.
• Content producers on any platform come first. All it will take is one competitor who's paying attention to the issues being ignored here and all of the quality content producers along with their money will move there. Who, in their right mind, would come here to pay you guys if they've been offered a level playing field, for free.
• This model of paying for attention strips Steemit and all related apps and websites running on this blockchain of attracting big names in the industry because they are already setup to EARN. Coming here to pay is bad for business and their brand. They don't need to fake it until they make it.
• Amateurs are paying for overexposure because they do not understand the business they are in. Much like hearing the same pop song on the radio ten times per day, nobody wants to see the same blogger hogging multiple slots on the trending page. Some members here were lured and trapped into "promoting" their content to the trending page multiple times per week and will now suffer from overexposure. Their reputations within the community; ruined. Pop songs don't last forever and that business model is designed that way for a reason.

To see where this pay to play model is headed, simply listen to the radio.

• The reason why radio sucks now is because those with money pay for their music to be heard.
• New performers with a great sound can't get airplay because the slots are all bought and paid for already. It's not hard to find information about that situation.
• That's what's happening on Steemit because of these "promoters" and their bots.
• Seems like people in the music industry are uniting to stand against that system because it's obvious, after this many decades, how content producers have suffered. Why attempt a broken business model here on Steemit?
• This broken system will eventually lead to a top 40 system or something similar.
• The Steem blockchain cannot be a disruptive technology if only a handful of people can benefit from using it.
• Payola is illegal for a reason yet people can't seem to learn from history and think that idea will somehow work here? That's how you set yourselves up for failure.

The best course of action now:

• Label the posts using promo bots as advertisements.
• Take them off trending and hot and put the posts under "promoted", where they belong. People can still place banners that lead to those promotions on their blogs. Wise bloggers can sell banner slots and earn ad revenue instead of being ripped off by these so-called "promoters" we have now.
• As it stands now: people are placing money beside their post to make it appear as if it's a popular post in an attempt to mislead me into voting for said post. Because those members attempted to trick me, seeing my vote is highly unlikely. I don't support con artists. Many new members aren't even aware of the fact they've been duped by these so-called, "promoters" and much of this practice falls under false advertising.

I could go on for days but I think I'll stop there.