Are you @boomerang's lawyer or something? ;-) The "not guaranteed payouts" were estimated just fine at -76% in the tracker - after it was too late. The warning "Beware of shady business paractices! Bot operators may collect more money than they can dole out!" is missing entirely, if we want to get technical.
If it's O.K. to accept bids up the YinYang it should also be possible to withdraw a bid at any time, to level the playing field.
Lol! No, I'm not his lawyer. Voting services aside, I actually engaged Grumpy Cat directly about his newly started initiative after reading about it and the experience of the user that was flagged by him and lost a considerable amount on his post because of it. It resonated with me because I think it points to more systemic issues plaguing the platform. Namely, an equitable rule set being applied to all.
I completely understand your point and am not downplaying it. I just think the voting services themselves are now in a very odd predicament. For example, boomerang takes bids up to day 6. If a user places a bid on a post that is more than 3.5 days old through boomerang and boomerang upvotes it, someone like Grumpy Cat could flag that user's post and they will have lost everything. Whose fault is it? Boomerang isn't obligated to follow Grumpy Cat's rule. The user isn't either. And so we find ourselves in a situation that is untenable on a macro level.
The only way misunderstandings like this can be avoided is if the voting service market has broad based rules applied to it. I'm not a final authority on anything but simply trying to point out the considerations of this whole situation from multiple angles.
The Grumpy Cat thing is another issue entirely. My problem right now is with the bot that ate my money. If Grumpy is of the opinion that a post isn't really worth what the payout shows and downvotes it, that's his prerogative. As annoying as that may be for the post owner.
E.g. I'm a poor pisser renting a Mercedes to impress the girl, and she could get in the Lamborghini of the guy who owns one instead. Tough titties. That doesn't mean the car rental place can take the wheels off the Mercedes after they have processed the rental agreement and my credit card.
That said, I agree with you: There should be a consensus on bot rules - or no bots at all and a better promotional mechanism instead.