There is no way to eliminate them and all the suggestions made penalize actual users. Just for example, your time idea, just means the proliferation of sock-puppet accounts to work around time limits with multiple voters. There is no technical way to eliminate them, and not much in the way of cultural ways. Since 1 in 3 users user them according to the data.
The deal here is they touch 17% of the reward pool. That leaves 83% of the money and 70% of the users "doing it right" without bidbots. Plenty of room for everyone, and in the end, much like real world issues, often used an excuse...
Where did you find the 17%?
Earlier I saw a calculation ending at 30%.
Lately I've heard that in the past it wasn't possible to delegate SP. That might work. Or do you also see disadvantages?
Crap now I can't find the book mark I specifically saved because I knew whenever I referenced this, I would be asked to source it. I want to say it was on a massive page of either grumpycat or berniesanders posts last week (probably gcat) and was by either um, markymark, realwolf or abh12345 (a data mining witness) but then I think no, wait, it was on the timcliff dust vote removal post comment threads. Damn, I'll keep digging for the reference, it was pretty reputable, I just can't remember where it was now, I'm going to need it though, more and more probably, so hang on let me see if I can find it.
I remember the data was cited along with this guys reports.
https://steemit.com/steemit/@maxg/bid-bot-usage-report-for-04222018
Which as the summary shows, doesn't even support 1 in 3 people using them for the more commonly cited 50-60K daily active users logging in.
This all seems like one of those issues that takes people's focus off doing good on their own and gives them convenient scapegoats, arguments to spend time on and excuses for not building good businesses. While many people continue to do so, despite it all.
I just read this email. And it indeed states that only a very few Steemonians use the bid bots. However the total value of all bought upvotes can be easily calculated. And I did this and come to a percentage of 34% from the total upvote value being sold by bid bots. So I stick to my opinion and think this is a real threat for Steemit.
Delegation of stake was not originally convenient, but I don't think it was ever fully impossible. In the absolutely earliest days of the chain, it still needed cli wallets and arcane and obscure steps that made all the stuff hard to do, and many things weren't obvious to users. Not sure if it was ever simply not possible.
But no, that wouldn't stop it. You can still make deals to loan sp, via contracts and trust, or just load your own accounts up and run bid bots on them directly. It might mitigate some by complexity, but it wont stop it. Just make it look different.
It's impossible to stop users from using the accounts and money to do any of the things, it is only possible to change how easy or well known doing such things is (like not making bot tracker pages for example) but that all depends on the consumers too.
And right now, about a third of consumers and a large number of stake holders support a bid bot industry. Cool for other users? Debatable. Going away? No. Deal with it? Deal we must.
Adapt, improvise and overcome. Also use the enemies weapons against them. Don't like trending? Bot better shit up there. This is the tool, and this is the battleground. Pick up arms, or be shot down.
Such is life on the chain.
Although I don't like them, you are fully right about everything you said.
Thanks for all your replies and the good conversation!