I remember back in the early days where people could sometimes make nearly $1000 on a post you'd find people who were paying content creators from Fiverr... it was outrageous... and not because it was genius but because as you said, everyone feels cheated.
Not just for the SEO damage it does for the blockchain but because one of the reasons we vote is because of the author. We like the content but we also want the author to succeed because we appreciate the value they bring to us all. So if it's not their work then I hope they do suffer downvote hell... especially now that we've got a separate downvote resource.
Yeah it was crazy. People could write shit, bidbot for a return freely. Downvotes ended that :)
This is the thing. When I first brought it up, I think people thought I was attacking the account owner, but actually gave the benefit f the doubt. But it set off a sequence of events that uncovered that they were cheated too... lols.