Hello @cryptogee Thanks for your post. I certainly didn't make clear the fact that, users curate their own Author List, I was talking in general terms ('the list'), so thank you for clearing that up.

Your point is valid that not all bots are voting for profit. I personally think the majority are, however it is right to point this out. I think this will get more acute when/if delegated voting gets implemented. Users in it for the good of Steemit will delegate their voting rather than have a Bot IMO...

I have upvoted you for the same reason, however I agree with your post. I have certainly generalised these accounts into a single motivation group, for the purposes of my hypothesis. However I believe in the hypothesis regardless of the existence of Nobel Bot's.

I also don't think Bot's are bad. I'm exciting to see the evolution of the bots. They could be a very valuable indexing tool for Steemit moving forward.. They will improve and get more intelligent. Users will benefit because bots are not emotional. We will hopefully see a day in the future when bot's push the best content to the top of the trending list, and create a true meritocracy.

Idealistic I know. But we can all dream :)