in addition to your solution, I suggest a new and specific custom Feed (Trending), filtering only human votes by removing Bot votes from the est. reward value. That way, we can have top articles with bot votes (in current Trending: sort by rewards incl. bots), and one without bots (in new custom Trending: sort by rewards without bots).
The problem with this approach is that it's an extra filter that isn't run by the witnesses, and won't be decentralized. The hot and trending are the only ways to discover content, without a central server.
I agree that UIs should also fight to diminish the visibility given by bot upvotes if they can, but it's not easy as it requires each UI to have it's own separate db to query and sort in the way they want ... Hot and Trending are kinda good, because its the same algorithm than reddit and it's been tested through time.
We can also create processes to not give upvotes (from @busy.org , @dtube , i.e ned's delegation) to people who use bid bots in general.
We are also doing something similar at our (the steemstem) level. Less and less support to posts being rewarded by bots. Of course, we are dealing with 10 times smaller rewards :)
I am happy when I see the status of the steemstem trending page. Not perfect, but already much better than the general one or the one of many other tags :)
Wouldn't it be enough if we had an interface that allows people to use some sort of filter lists, to disregard certain account's voting power? People could then go ahead and make a list of the most commonly used upvote bots or really just anyone they think doesn't contribute to good curation and share those lists with others to use as well. Anyone else could then decide for themselves what to leave out for their browsing experience.
Good idea. captcha also sounds good
Sure but the hot and trending metrics are not blockchain-level metrics anyways? It seems like ultimately it's best for layers on top of the blockchain to run algorithms to identify the right content for a given user.
Agree,
1/ It could be run by witnesses. Just need a proposal to allow new content filters in witness consensus. (HF) Not easy though...
2/ It could be a solution like Hivemind or specific db like you mentioned with an open-source algorithm (and provably fair etc.) to query and sort the way we want.
I think your solutions, incl. the last one about not giving upvotes to people who use bid bots, are short-term solutions. Still, it can improve the overall quality of the Trending page, but we still need more long-term solution to keep aligned both interests:
unless we HF the Steem blockchain to remove the delegation feature, bid bots will exist because it's allowed and incentivized by design. So you have to deal with it and find a solution that doesn't necessary fight the existing reality. It can be just done by building an alternative that makes the current system obsolete: a New trending section sorting content by rewards without bid bot votes. If dTube would have it instead of the current trending, users would not be incentivized to use bid bots ;)
To be honest I don't think we will ever turn back on this Delegation model :(