I'll ask you to please not downvote my posts specifically
Noted.
I don't see this as warranted
I disagree. I see them as grossly overrewarded. If you hadn't bidbotted them up to the tune of hundreds of STEEM and they gained their votes organically them maybe they wouldn't be.
I think the witness should care about the trending page and should keep tab on it
I would be more likely to do so if people including you didn't buy their way onto it. As things stand now the voting system is severely broken and the Trending page is near-meaningless.
We agree but I still feel witnesses need to keep a tab on it.
Many time no profit is generated from the bidbot. It's a zero-sum game many times.
It's also not very intuitive to use them and know how much $ total we bought and how much organic we'll receive. Ironically buying votes will very often discourage people to vote on a post because they feel it's too rewarded or because it didn't generate its views organically. It's a catch 22.
I used to post once a week working 20-30 hours on a post and even more and would still get flags sometimes even if I wouldn't buy votes as it didn't exist. I wasn't acting the way I was acting for the money back then and I'm still not. If I was back then, I would have split my gigantic post into smaller posts and would have made more money for the exact same amount of work.
I get your point and I'm not here to attract negative energy between the 2 of us or anyone. I'll obviously try to be more careful. I respect your choice and opinion. It's not about the $ that you're returning to the pool even though it's not negligible. There's more important to me, like how people perceive me and how I feel about myself from the way I act.
It isn't zero sum at all. Any rewards that flow out to your post aren't available to go to other posts, potentially more worthwhile ones (at least relative to payout amount). The $600 going to each of your posts could fund 1200 newbie posts at $0.50 each potentially encouraging thousands of new users to stay on the platform.
What games you play on the side with buying votes and such is your business and not relevant to the above.
It's a zero sum game for me. I put in 100$, I receive 100$ in upvote. That's what I meant. If I'm not buying the votes others are most of the time as they can just pick up the last bid and make them profitable.
That's not my concern. If the reward pool is not going to good use, that is my concern. Your side deals are your own business.