I suggested it once that the promoted feature could be changed in a such a way that the SBD used to promote a post would just push a post up to the trending page.
So, let's say I put 50 SBD into a post. That 50 SBD would show as $50 in the post payout. And so on. There are people who put a lot of money into promoting their posts, even though the gained benefit is rather low.
This SBD getting burned wouldn't exactly hurt anyone. And it would give a reason for someone like me, who isn't that big of a fan of handing money to the bot owners who are partially responsible for turning Steemit into the anti-social media, to promote my posts to the trending page more.
Here is my old post about it.