Other projects also have distribution problems!11!..
"Pretty much every Social Media and Content platform has a Pay for Visibility aspect", yet when you publish an ad on Facebook for example. You pay for it, facebook earns from it. Facebook's worth increases. In Steem when you share an "ad" you pay to a 3rd party instead of burning it (which should increase the value of Steem/SBD). In the meantime buyer and seller of this "ad" also gets a share from Steem (daily pool). And people still think that bidbots are harmless.
No one said harmless.
I don't know an adult who thinks there are many silver bullets or any harmless solutions.
It is a matter of picking the least worst solution.
Oh, I was talking in general. Most people says ". I don't like or hate them", simply hate them, there is nothing lovely about them. They did nothing good for the ecosystem. It was an alternative when some early-birds dominating trending and since then bid-bots dominating it.
Probably about a year ago, again I'm not sure but probably heimindanger decided to "clean" trending.found the article :)
https://steemit.com/steem/@heimindanger/operation-clean-trending
Actually, that is my point as well, a bit of downvoting would have gone a long way!