Thanks Eon

This is a very wise and thoughtful appraisal of the system here and I think you're right. Bidbots are helping the greedy few take a disproportionate and undeserved wedge of the pie. Creative people are suffocating in the slurry.

Trending: yes, that page is full of shit. It's annoying to search for my fav topics only to wade through tonnes of shitposts to find anything decent.

Also there's no profit in using a bidbot. If anything, I've found I've lost money. The SBD payout is often smaller than (or the same as) the cost of the bid.

You've convinced me. I have decided, from now on, to use no more bidbots. My future contest posts will contain prizes from my own wallet without leeches syphoning off their %. I will no longer delegate to bidbots. I'm keeping my money in my wallet and will upvote content that I think deserves it.

We need to develop a more organic way of lifting quality, meaningful or useful content to the eyes of our community.

Resteeming and upvoting is a good way IMO. So many people resteem shite just because they're friends with the person without first considering the quality. I know it's hard, if we're friends, but this habit is just as damaging. Let's find quality posts and trumpet about them so that we can build organic quality control.

I understand your stance on flagging for the reasons you mentioned. I wish there was another way. As you know, I consider flagging as censorship but it makes sense in the context you described.

Thanks :)