I'm relatively new to Steemit so I'm not sure what exactly witnesses are supposed to do. I know they run servers and make money from it. If that is all then how do I sign up for that? Of course, if there's more they should be doing then it's good to call them out.
However, isn't doing nothing still better than actively doing something that harms the platform and the community as a whole? If you're already getting paid to run servers that generate coins used by the community AND you sell your votes in order to collect a significant portion of those coins, isn't that like a conflict of interest or something?
I have come to understand that vote buying and bid bots are a bad thing for Steemit. If this is the case, then why would a witness, no less, be doing it? Or are vote buying and bid bots actually good things? Or is there simply no consensus on whether they're good or bad?
In any case, I may be wrong but I still feel there is something not right about witnesses selling their votes or renting their delegation out to bid bots.
In my opinion, at the very least, there should be transparency. I'd like to see clearly on the witness page who sells votes (either directly or indirectly through delegation) and who doesn't. People will then be better informed on the witnesses they're voting for.