@grumpycat What the heck are you talking about? Terms of Service for steemit:
https://steemit.com/tos.html
From the Terms of Service:
{ 17. User Conduct
17.1. When accessing or using the Services, you agree that you will not commit any unlawful act, and that you are solely responsible for your conduct while using our Services. Without limiting the generality of the foregoing, you agree that you will not:
..........
17.1.3. Use any robot, spider, crawler, scraper or other automated means or interface not provided by us to access our Services or to extract data; }
When you are buying the use of an upvoting service, you are [USING] a [ROBOT] to [ACCESS] the [SERVICES].
That is pretty clear that bots are forbidden and of course there IS a Terms of Service.
Read the first line of the TOS link you posted:
The TOS refers to steemit.com - the website you are likely looking at right now. Bots do not typically use the steemit website directly, therefore this TOS does not apply to them.
steemit.com is NOT the same as the steem blockchain
Yes- I know that, and there is no way to regulate the behavior on the blockchain itself besides flagging behavior that is contrary to the nature of steemit. @grumpycat is doing exactly that, to an extent, but as I will say over and over, steem is supposed to be a 'proof-of-brains' platform, that will become the future of social media, no?
I mean we can fill the steem block chain with racist child pornography as well, who can stop us, and we can use an alternative site to steemit to do that as well, but is it good for the future of this platform?
There is a reason that these terms of service were spelled out, and if people want to abuse it, at this moment it looks like noone cares enough to stop them.
But really ask yourself, do you think steem will become a household name in a future where this platform is 99% bot, because that is the direction it is heading. Do you think average Joe, or better yet, average third world guy, will be enticed by : the new social media site where all you have to do is pay $2000 dollars to make money blogging!? This model is NOT going to succeed, at least not in the way it was intended.
So do you guys care about future of steem? Or just maximizing payouts?
Also @maneki-neko in the last 90 days, why have you given yourself UPVOTES of more than 30% of total outgoing? http://www.steemreports.com/outgoing-votes-info/?account=%40maneki-neko&days=90 You speak of gaming the system, do you think this is ok? @purepinay only has given herself 6.4% of total upvotes in this same time-frame. But lets just ignore that, right?
He speaks about BOT votes, not self votes...
So pretty much ALL bots are forbidden. You don't think that eliminates some of the fun?
It even says "spider, crawler, scraper". That pretty much eliminates the need for any useful third-party app that I can think of.