I thought steem corrected vote buying that it was no longer profitable anyways ?
Free downotes are what made vote buying no longer profitable.
Without downvoting a bid botted post, they will make ROI and hurt organic curation. You can get on trending for around $40 nowadays, esp if you get the votes quickly. There are plenty of "non-whales" that end up on trending organically now. Of course, not everyone will get on trending, as they could before, you have to actually earn it now.
Thank you for this, honestly trying to keep up with the changes and find all this information is near impossible when working a job and doing a bunch of stuff including trying to make something of Steemit. I appreciate the feedback and information and doing so in a kind way. So many people are still snap happy on here.