I believe that vote buying is bad for steem as a whole, and for the individuals who do it.
Because when you are new to steem and you buy votes... you may earn a few bucks, but you cut yourself off from the real valuable stuff like Curie upvotes, OCD upvotes, etc etc.
It also looks bad - all those "Upvoted by [bot!]" comments are like kryptonite for real power users here, lol. I don't wanna support content that is funneling money into upvote bots.
It's hard though... what can we do? This is a free market, after all, and as long as there is profit to be had by running votebots, someone is gonna do it. So how can we constructively de-value bot votes? IDK to be honest.
What are Curie and OCD upvotes and why would somebody be cut off from them by using voting bots?
Curie and OCD are two of the largest curation projects on steem. They offer big upvotes to new users creating quality content. In Curie's case, these votes can be worth $80+.
For Curie, you are not eligible for upvotes unless your post is worth less than $1 and your reputation is 52 or lower. This is because the goal is to support new, unestablished users - to get them some rewards and recognition for the hard work they do.
Whenever a new user boosts their posts via upvote bots, they usually end up earning 3-5 bucks... minus whatever they pay for the bots. This makes them ineligible for Curie and only earns then a dollar or two of profit. It's a real shame, IMO.
Thanks for the explanation :)
Any link to this OCD and Curie think would be greatly appreciated.