RE: The difference between a stake distribution bot and a promotion bot
All those things could be tweaked and fixed. If its not the view count, it could be something else.
The point is that a superior model does exist and it can be figured out because this clearly isnt the one that is working.
And really, i believe that if you did actually do this, even though the numbers would be slightly smaller, they would still be significant. The big numbers now dont even show anything.
If it is true what you say that they want to have big numbers on the trending page, then you could make the case that they are actually scamming potential users by showing them posts that arent labeled by the front end as "promoted content" and lying to them about the earning potential here.
Do you think there could be something there legally speaking?
Some, albeit not much, of the content in Trending hasn't been promoted. It would be cool to stick a label on every post that had received a bought vote, again though, I doubt this is on steemit.com's priority list, but could be easily implemented and appear on other front-ends.
I don't think there is anything to discuss from a legal perspective, but agree it is false advertising :)
Label promoted posts as promoted and you give secret bid bots/manual bid bots power and we're back to 2016's trending.
Yeah. Can't win.
Hey, didn't you used to be on Trending in 2016? :D
Only a few times, wasn't much into posting back then. Chose the harder path: curation. :P
This is a good idea and makes it more transparent.
Well, false advertising is regulated by the FTC....