Even if you put lipstick on a pig, it's still a pig. And a bid bot is still a bid bot first and foremost. There's nothing really "smart" about this whole model.

The only reasons bidbots work is due to poor UI/UX choices on Steemit's part and they don't really provide a service that works to the best interest of the social media platform in the long run. Why use a pay-to-play model when other models are free to use? I would imagine that ordinary people would care about this more than "centralization" or "censorship" issues.

Bid-bots just funnel money from attention-desperate individuals into the pockets of investors. I don't really find that function particularly useful or helpful or anyone (beyond the ROI of the investor).

As for quality, that tasks is left up to a few individuals whose best interest would be to whitelist as many people as possible to increase profits. And even if they are fair judges of quality and strict standards, such panels have specific biases in certain directions. Given these circumstances, rather than market it as "quality-focused" it makes more sense to call it primitive spam filter.

But for a product to truly be "quality-focused" you would expect to see the trending page be filled with improved content. But now more than ever, people are complaining about the trending content. They aren't getting what they want.

Hopefully Hivemind and communities adjust the UI/UX experience to give us pages that are less susceptible to these bots. That way the system can be more mediocratic and wannabe entrepreneurs can stop trying to centralize the holdings when at this stage they should be decentralized to help growth and encourage new users.