@scottcbusiness,

I don't have time to watch the video right now but I'll tell you. I absolutely believe vote selling will be the demise of this platform. People aren't dumb and they see what's happening with the witness / bid bot business collusion.

Witness ranks are becoming quickly centralized by one very prominent stake which is probably growing faster than any other by sponsoring and receiving handouts from bid bot owners. Have you heard how HF 20 is going to reduce the rshares of lower SP in a higher percentage then high SP accounts. Who do you think that benefits? It's the same thing happening with corrupt politicians working for big business interests rather than the interests of the people.

The more naïve users don't understand this and they have no problem feeding the beast but they don't realize how they are feeding into a system that continues to disenfranchise them by implementing forks that render their votes less effective and promotes increasing dependence on the bots. Unless the vote sellers wake the hell up, I don't think this platform will ever get out of the rut. SMTs may bring a pump but, as I said, unless it changes I think Steem is going to continue to bleed especially when viable competition rises which is already happening.

Also, I'm toying with the notion of forking Steem into a non-vote selling alternative with decentralized moderation / quality control built in from the git-go. I think the first order of business on such a chain would be to snapshot, dissolve @freedom's stake and reverse all bid-bot transactions and votes retroactivity. I think if I can figure out the Gateway part that I could possibly use Bitshares Dex to exchange the new token.

I think it's possible but would be a hell of a lot of work. The lazy passive investors can stay here. I think the regular bloggers will be glad to take their chances with a platform without the vote sellers.