I love the thoughtful debates here. But I don't believe steemit should be a "game" because that will hurt its reputation long term for those who treat is a platform to have their voice heard. I don't understand why someone would make a bot that simply says upvote based on a category and not add any worth to the post. Just because someone is behind the bot doesn't mean value is added. People can make bots that do great things. Spam helps nobody.
Also can someone explain the metrics that go into trending, hot, popular and active? I have not had this question answered.
@bendjmiller222 It's a matter of incentives. Getting in early on a hot topic can mean the difference between earning nothing that day and earning a hundred dollars. This makes it a bot task. The bot votes what the owner thinks is important. The owner doesn't care about content they care that their upvote matters and produces income.
Change the incentives and this problem begins to solve itself as people move towards curating based on quality content rather than on a race to see who can beat the whales to their next big sighting.
Thus my comment about a whale's power should be the same as a minnows in voting power, or at a minimum their upvote power should be culled dramatically. Either that or give the minnows and upgrade.
Any other suggestions would be good, but the race is the reason for the bots.