Yeah, the whole grumpy/bernie/rewardpoolrape etc etc etc is all the same person, that is one of the "conspiracy theories that may or may not be true" things I was talking about. And I agree with your conclusion that he is merely trying to "get rid of the competition". If he is the only game in town, then everyone will use his upvote service, right? I was fully against bots of any form, buying/selling votes and leasing SP for the same reasons as you. It limits and hinders what Steemit has the potential to be. But since I can't beat them (not by myself and not with my limited stake) I decided to use the same tools that the scammers and spammers are using to spread the rewards to more users. Is my way right? Debatable. Is what I am doing harmful? Maybe, to some small degree, but I personally don't think so. Every vote I buy to spread rewards is a vote that a scammer can't buy. It's age old and time tested "Fight Fire with Fire". Until the bots are gone completely, it comes down to a matter of "what is X account doing with the rewards he buys from bots?" And yes, there are definitely some large stakeholders that are only on the platform for what they can get out of it, and have no care for how the platform fares in the long run. As long as they can run off to the exchange for a profit, it won't matter to them what harm they do to people on Steemit, or Steemit itself. Then there are the people who truly have no idea what is going on, and they follow and support the large stakeholders in the hopes of getting an upvote from them, all the while turning their heads to the real damage being done. grumpycat doesn't have any supporters because he is doing anything good. he has trolls kissing his ass in the hopes he might upvote their bullshit.
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Well, my logic is this. The bots aren't good or bad. Much like guns, they are a tool, and "good/bad" is determined by how they are used. People buying votes on day 6 for poor content (spam or stolen material) is an abuse of the bots. People who are using them as advertising tools (there is no denying a post with rewards already on it is likely to get more views than one that doesn't) as they were intended, I don't believe are being abusive. I mean, what about people who run contests where the prize for that contest is a percent of the SBD that post makes? Is it bad if that person uses THEIR OWN tokens (steem or sbd) to boost the value of that post, only to give away what they earn? These problems are not as "black and white" as everyone seems to want to think. Where is the line between "good" and "bad" content? Who gets to make that decision? There are things that are clearly abuse to the platform, and then there are things that are not so obvious. These are the gray areas. Sure, I sell some of my votes to minnowbooster. I am "bad" or "evil" for doing so? Some would say so. But what do I do with the SBD I get from them? Well, I turn around and spend MY SBD to buy upvotes on SOMEONE ELSES introduceyourself post. Does someone just joining the platform not deserve a warm welcome and greeting to steemit? Steemit is a big place, and it is easy for posts to go unseen, especially brand new posts from brand new accounts. Should a well done intro post get 0 rewards because the whales and larger stake holders just MISSED their post? It happens, but I think every new user should receive a hearty greating. So I shouldn't be allowed to boost the intro post of someone else because MOST of (not all of, but I can't deny it is most) the people using the bots are only doing it for self profit? This is where regulation from the bots would come in. Problem with the bots, regulating what their bots voted would take work, and most of the bot owners built their bots so they could have passive income, with little to no work. That is why this 3.5 day rule was imposed. I can't say that I disagree with the 3.5 day rule, but it is only a part of the solution. What I do disagree with, is the method that grumpycat used to enforce this change. Instead of taking a moment to look at the accounts using said upvotebot and trying to decide if the post was spam or stolen content, grumpy just blindly downvoted everyone who had used that bot that day, even people who were within the "3.5 day rule". "Hurt the customer to damage the business" is just a wretched, barbaric practice. Effective, but absolutely vile in a place like Steemit. Not all people who use the bots are scammers or plagiarists.
Right? It isn't like the bot owners aren't making money hand over fist. They are. They don't really need the extra boost from the curation, too. I figured, if I purchase a vote on day 4 or 5, then more of the curation rewards would be given to the people that manually voted earlier. I understand why people are against the use of bots on older posts, but most "natural" votes come in the first 24 hours of a post anyway. Buying votes to reward the curators on day 3 still accomplishes the same thing as a day 4 or 5 vote. But again, that is the "gray area".