Yes, I appreciate that my suggestion is a UI feature, however, it does address reward distribution by directly empowering all users to affect reward distribution by disincentivising the use of bidbots in a way that everyone can decide to participate in or not participate in. If this approach gained wide adoption, it is easy to imagine that bidbots would no longer be attractive.
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Bidbots do not primarily exist for visibility, that's a secondary consideration, and arguably could be described as an excuse. Even if they granted no visibility whatsoever they would still exist and be used because they would have a small positive ROI (as they occasionally do already). Granted this might reduce their perceived legitimacy (assuming they have some?) and that could be a positive, but this is all very indirect.
In the beginning it was profitable to use bid bots just to increase rewards, but now it is much harder to do that. If people want to sell their votes to each other, that's their business and I don't see that there's anything I or anyone else can do to stop that. The issue for me here is whether or not bid bots prevent true 'proof of brain' from functioning and it is clear to me that they do.
Without something approaching 'proof of brain' - which was an underpinning of the entire Steem network from the beginning, we are left with much less attraction to the eco-system and it's technology for many people.
The only reason I would ever use a bid bot is to increase the reach of my posts and I don't even bother to do that now since I rarely meet anyone who even looks at the trending posts page any more because of the bots. I remember that before the bots, it was quite possible to see some of the best posts on the network in the trending pages, as was intended. Now that just doesn't happen.
They prevent proof of brain from functioning because people sell their votes. When votes are made on the basis of generating a reward vs. expressing an opinion it is not possible for their to be proof of brain. Proof-of-brain = express an opinion.
My point there was that privately selling votes cannot be stopped, but we can take action to empower users to stop known accounts that specifically only sell votes from having any effect on our experience. I believe that the 'Steeve' UI for Steem does this already.
Bid bots make it practical to habitually buy votes, then use the profits to buy more votes - this means that those involved in this 'arms race' will always be faced with the thought that if they stop then they will lose their 'position'. They will have a way of dominating as long as they continue - the pattern is really quite similar to addiction except that it's everyone else who suffers more than the addicted person!
By implementing the voter muting feature it becomes possible for all of us to identify those accounts that violate our own limits in terms of their voting activity - whether it be because we think they sell votes or for other reasons. We can then be empowered to elect to remove them from our experience.
This ultimately might be called 'proof of the will and brain' :)
This is true however with downvotes it can be made unattractive to both buy (because return on the vote will be poor) or and sell (because selling prices will be poor) votes in a content-agnostic manner.
Your voter muting idea doesn't help the proof-of-brain function really. It might help make your personal view more useful. I don't disagree it is a fine feature, just not one that really helps address Steem's core problems.
I agree that downvotes have a direct effect, but they have negatives too:
You are right on all counts but I see no other method where expressing an opinion has a chance to compete with voting for return or more precisely to anchor things so that voting for return is somehow connected with opinons. With all their downsides, downvotes are still the only viable option.