I deleted FB a few weeks ago and I was near my friend limit at the time. There's always the problem of perception of what is valuable in a post and that the vast majority of the good content creators here still do not make it.
I did some math recently while calculating taxes and feel that upvote bots don't really help minnows. It's become a force for recentralization of wealth, however I believe this only slows down the distribution of wealth, not sending it back in the other direction toward the whales.
But long term, those who invested in Steem will do well even if they don't earn that much posting.
PS - I've seen a sharp increase on the number of people upvoting their own comments recently.
Thanks for the read @zoidsoft.
Could you clarify the second paragraph in this comment for me. If I read it correctly, you say that upvote bots do not help minnows....it does reallocate the wealth but using bots slows down what would take place....
Am I reading that properly?
Yes. I haven't seen any benefit really except in the reputation score which of course makes the score less accurate when upvote bots can affect the score. If I was writing this algorithm, I would separate the upvote bots from any effect it can have on the trending and hot pages (and rep score) and just set it up to affect the promoted tab. Then require the upvote bots have greater distribution to those using them (as it is now, >99% of those rewards go to the bots themselves).
Thanks for the clarification @zoidsoft.
Being one not to use bots, I didnt know for sure...but intuitively, I didnt think they were a great deal. I see the money people spend to upvote content and make it trending and wondered if it was worth it. I never put pen to paper to see what the results were and I am glad you did.
To put it another way, bots create skewed reputation results, not much help for the minnows and slowing of wealth distribution.
The skewing of reputation I was able to grasp onto. Now that I see how you statistically showed how the bots dont really favor newer people (or older ones for that matter), it makes sense to promote this point.