RE: Why Voting Bots Are Great for Steem
I get what you are saying. Steem's value is dependent on voting, but I'm looking at the intrinsic value of posting. What type of posts deserve rewards rather than just giving rewards to people who know how to play the system. While there is validity in the second as a proof-of-work mechanism, I simply don't see the site achieving the mainstream growth with such an incentive structure.
The whitepaper argues that Steem is build around the idea that meaningful contributions will be rewarded, but voting bots allow users go around this. Contributions can now be meaningless if one has the money to spend to promote the post in the ecosystem.
While your issue with whales is absolutely right. The problem is not a "whale" problem per se, but a filtering and exposure problem. While voting bots can help with the exposure issue (which could improve the experience for some), the site still suffers from poor filtering and voting bots do nothing to change that.
It would be nice to see this fundamental issue addressed but I guess SMTs take priority over an intelligent user experience and a system that encourages people to find new meaningful content rather than concoct schemes to make their own content more valuable. The first is vastly superior in the ecosystem that it creates than the second, but right now the second is more profitable.
SMTs and communities will create solutions to the filtering and exposure problems you mentioned. They will never be addressed on SteemIt.com, I look at SteemIt.com as just a rather basic proof of concept.
With SMTs and communities it will allow new sites with their own tokens, and their specific type of content, to filter and expose the content in the way that is best for that community.
The best part is that if you don't like how a particular site or community operates, you're free to create your own that's better!
Yeah, but Joe Schmoe isn't going to create their own website. They are going to go back to Reddit or Facebook. I'm also still skeptical on the value of SMTs themselves. I understand why they add value to Steem, but we'll see how they valuable they are themselves.
I just wish Steemit would focus on communities before SMTs. In terms of business, people are more important than technology.