I think the point is to prevent people from using bid-bots after 3.5 days. Go ahead and self-vote your own post, just don't use your own bid-bot to upvote your post/comment.
His algorithm isn't looking for people that are upvoting things older than 3.5 days, it has a parameter of the bid-bots that are upvoting posts older than 3.5 days.
The way you phrase it is to imply he isn't preventing me doing anything, which is not true. His parameter is punishing people from using a bid-bot after 3.5 days. What this means is it is taking my right to choose to promote my post after 3.5 days. If I had a high self-upvote, I would have no need for a bid bot. This is what he or she has at his or her disposal, the power to promote a post by a self upvote or by having a second account do it for him/her. When I attempt to do the same by investing my own money (as he/she has done into his/her accounts) he/she wants to prevent me doing so. This is not fair.
I am willing to pay for an upvote in order to promote my post - I should be allowed to exercise my right unhindered at any time before the post matures. The same right he /she has to self-upvote.
If my post is of a low quality - or heaven forbid, you are are a grumpy puss that flags people's content because you disagree with them, then by all means, downvote it. It is your right as well. What is depressing is seeing intelligent and creative people who simply cave in to this type of tyranny, citing all manner of rationalisations. One has to wonder, is it fear or profit that ultimately drives people to cave in when they are supporting something which is wrong.
He's completely entitled to flag any post he feels is abusing the rewards. And his particular reason is: if you use a bid-bot within the last 3.5 days. That's why you might get flagged. He's letting everyone know why he's doing it and giving them all a heads up, so if they do decide to promote after the 3.5 day threshold they are risking a chance to get a flag. Sure, if your post is of low-quality then it deserves to get downvoted, as you say, or simply neglected by the community, but it's also in his right to be able to flag posts. Also, before the cat implemented the 3.5 days time-limit, abusers would buy votes for their post at around 6.5 days which would reduce the time @steemcleaners would be able to remove rewards.
Sure, you may not have a high vote value and hell, neither do I, but why can't you just stick to using the bots within the first half of your post's life? Why isn't 3.5 days enough time to pump all your SBD into it? I use bid-bots and only use them within the first day, maybe the second day at the latest, and I find it more than enough time to promote my posts. But then again, I'm not relying on Steemit to feed my family and this is just a hobby for me, writing a blog about my travels.
Maybe everyone else is just driven by the dollar sign at the bottom of their posts and they lose sight of what this platform should truly be about.
Maybe @Grumpycat and @themarkymark, with his amazing blacklist, could team up and hunt down more wrong-doers abusing the system.
Why not just stay indoors after 6 PM because that is curfew hour and the government gave you enough of a heads up. It's all for a good, nebulous, cause. Most crimes happen afer 6 PM so why find yourself on the wrong side of the guilt line. Just trust the government.
Meanwhile, the government is allowed to do whatever it pleases after dark.
Sounds legitimate ;-)
The reason I don't support bid-bot owners who caved in to tyranny is because I don't like suckups. Give them a dollar today and by God, they will do away with you in a flash tomorrow if given the chance. I don't deal with gangsters. They break my knee caps, I buy a shotgun for the next time they come in the store.
You win the internet. I haven't seen this much sense on here in a while. Here's a hypothesis to think about:
Grumpycat is a bot owner himself (or a conglomerate thereof). These businesses seek to use force (or the representation of it in Steem) to limit the ability of their competition to service a part of the market for which they have no interest. They know the ramifications of carrying out such an action in public eye would be disastrous to their business. So they form a government (grumpycat) to serve as their muscle in order to weaken the competition.
Your theory is highly plausible. It would explain why the majority of these witnesses (some of whom are vegan, slash, non-aggression-principled folks too - @jerrybanfield @teamsteem etc) are not opposed to this type of abuse of the flag feature - I had @themarkymark, (this links to his admission of doing so) small flag as he calls it, an unrelated post a few days ago, merely because I questioned one of his bots that are supposed to be fighting a war against spam.
Highly non-aggressive actions: as teamsteem said it: as long as they don't do anything violent or was it aggressive I can't remember his exact choice of words.
You were flagged with a tiny flag because you flagged multiple comments with zero information regarding it.
I read the posts and according to my information, your bot comment was unrelated to the post. I felt it was spam. This means, I did not abuse the flag feature.
Your statement here is not saying that you disagreed with my post, felt I don't deserve the earnings, or that I was scamming, phishing or spreading hate-speech. These are reasons for using the flag. This means that your flagging of my post constituted an abuse of the flag feature.
Late edit: To borrow from mob parlance, "Capisce?"
Also, small has become tiny now - well, to be precise, it was SBD 0.42 - hardly tiny or small in my book, considering I can only upvote myself to SBD0.02