I agree he's not doing Steemit much good. With 13000 followers does he really need to buy votes? He's collecting some big flags that may wipe out his profit, but then he's selling something to make up for that. I don't see any need to buy a Steem course when there's so much free info here. You pay with your votes.
The Trending page is really low quality these days, which is why much serious Steemians hardly go there.
I only use Stemmit and Partiko; they both use the same algorithm to make the Trending and Hot lists. Is it really that hard to make a ranking algorithm that ignores the bot votes?
If I was elected Chancellor of Steem, I would replace the Trending page with a Curied page. @Curie is a much more reliable way to find something worth reading.
Posted using Partiko Android
I've suggested that the trending algorithm should change, but it seems Steemit are not interested. There would still be ways to game it, but I'd prefer to see what the community likes
All Steemit needs to do is make "Hot" the default for the front page instead of Trending. That way there is swift change-over of posts (nothing would stay there longer than 6 hours). That's how reddit does it.