I'm new to Steemit and was surprised to find that voting bots were allowed. If the idea is to promote quality content through community voting, then all voting should be by the people in the community. If automated voting is allowed in order to make money for an individual, that threatens the integrity of the system and the community.
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It isn't that they are allowed, it is that they cannot be prevented.
It can't be prevented but the community can make it clear that it is considered bad behaviour. That can bring considerable pressure on people and help to create a change in attitude.
@thecryptofiend Not to mention many of us have been flagging most of the more annoying bots so much they've been cast off deep into the depths of the block chain. Due to their negative Rep, many of the more unpopular bots have never been seen again since the new rep system went into effect.
What kind of "considerable pressure" would make @wang decide to stop making ~$4.5k USD/week from his upvoting bot?
That has happened. There have been many debates about that.
In a prior life I worked in technology. I'm not sure how a bot could not be detected and removed. But more to your point, if the community could downvote voting bots that would help to equalize the voting and make things more fair. The only thing you'd need, aside from the mechanism, is the ability for the community to aware of this type of bot voting and take action.
I think that is a very difficult cop-out to make to just say
"I hope ethical behavior prevails"
this is the internet and placing a dollar value next to a post influences greed.
More on topic of a solution, should users be able to upvote their own posts? Should there be a master thread for unethical behavior? Or if we're embracing botting, should there be a whalebot to show off large unethical profit margins?