After the fork people have some free downvotes and by some coordinated efforts they are used to downvote posts that use bidbots.
Thing is that the vote-selling kind of ruins this place. The reward was meant to reflect the quality of the post as judged by the community. That principle is very much ruined if you can buy the upvote no matter what you post.
Maybe you could simply try to go for the organic approach where you get upvotes if people like your posts.
I could, but that's not really worth it to me. I was able to quadruple my Steem stake in 6 months using smartsteem up votes. Organic votes aren't really worth it because they don't add up to much, and no one outside of Steem takes this place seriously, meaning time invested here does not see any returns outside of a few organic up votes. Instagram is much more lucrative for me for now.
That was a flaw, not a feature.
It was a consequence of a broken economy that completely undermined Steem's ability to function correctly through honest voting.
I'm confused, why is self voting still available. Doesn't that go down as a flaw too then?
Aah ok. Is it fixed now? It seems like it was still working normal on Smartsteem. I did hear that Steem went down recently.
It's impossible to say if it's 'fixed' this soon or perhaps ever
But recent economic changes have made honest curation far more competitive than before (curation is now 50%) and it's less expensive to fight against content agnostic voting (self votes, vote buying, circle jerks etc) with the 25% free downvotes now available.
Some who were taking part in the content agnostic voting economy have since adapted to honest curation and many of those who remain are feeling considerable resistance in the form of downvotes rendering their exploits less profitable.
So with respect to pivoting from a broken set of economic rules, things have certainly improved across the board. Many are hopeful that they will continue to improve until the overwhelming majority of stake engaging in honest voting behavior becomes the norm.
Fair enough.
You would get organic votes now but you need to put some effort into the post :)