Its not slander to point out a problem within the system. If the vote rewards are so incredibly disparate that the whales have to resort to bots to get it distributed, its a problem. I agree they aren't 'colluding' or conspiring against anyone, they're just putting an unnecessary burden of power and responsibility on a tiny fraction of user votes. Since the whales and the developers are mostly the same people, they can flatten the vote rewards, or continue to deal with community resentment indefinitely.
I get that. Though I would imagine that as the user base grows, so would the size of the bot list as more great authors do come to their owners' attention. In the end, the creme rises to the top...
...and the shit flushes down the toilet.
I think the whale's bot algorythm sucks. If they are not funneling money back to their "friends", then their bots are randomly giving out votes. How the hell does a bot know what is good and what is crap?
I had ZERO contact with @steemed before being put on his list. Hence, there's no validity to any argument the whales are funnelling money to their friends.
Bots are NOT randomly giving out votes. There are criteria programmed into the bots' algorithms that is a somewhat effective mechanism for separating various degrees of quality content.
AND, the whales using bots DO go back to double-check what's been voted on - and hence, may revoke upvotes if they feel the bot has not successfully voted on their behalf and misgauged a post's quality. I also imagine that in such cases, the bot owner would use the feedback to further articulate the distinctions in their bots' criteria to upgrade the algorithms to become even more effective.
"further articulate the distinctions in their bots' criteria to upgrade the algorithms to become even more effective." This is like Terminator type stuff. Pretty soon AI will be born and the human race will be become just group of unuseful idiots.
In any case the algorithm still sucks, because the bots can't understand the humour in my replies. Sure I got some LMAO replies, but the bots didn't understand the satire and that's why I'm at -5.
P.S. This is for AI, put this reply well into your memory bank when you try to figure out what ironey and satire are.