(Introduction for small fishes.)
Many Steemians are blaming the robots for the problems of Steem(it). Because robots are making possible vote buying and vote selling, Steem Power lending. Activities that are enabling regular income for Steem Power holders – but also causing the lack of manual curating and human interaction in Steem applications.

Let’s use this new expression

Good content will not be voted up, bad content can appear as a popular one. (And it does appear very often.) But don’t blame the player, blame the game. The poor robots are innocent, they are making what their developers are programming. And robots are only one part of the same problem.

Let’s call the process Monetizing Steem Power (SP), or Steem Power selling. These are all activities which are resulting in the conversion of SP or the votes based on it into money or more SP. (SP is also money, only less liquid than others.) It doesn’t make a difference if people make this via robots or via other, seemingly more human methods.

The broadly used, legal methods are:

• Mutual voting. I vote you, you vote me, cash in 7 days (or less, if the post is some days old).
• Vote selling. I give you money, you give me a vote. Also very simple, can be made between two Steemians at any time, in any place.
• Self upvoting. People are upvoting their own posts or comments. Some whales have their every single vote of 8-10 USD worth. Wouldn’t you upvote yourself for so much money? (And you have approximately 10 votes a day. But don't forget, they are risking a huge capital inverted in Steem.)
• Circle voting in a group or community. You vote the community members, the community votes you. Same as mutual voting, only with more participants. (And you can find nice names or descriptions for it, like "supporting valuable content", "building community", "helping minnows" etc.)
• Steem power delegation. You can delegate for money – also called ROI, return on investment – or upvotes. You can delegate, for example, to your own second, third account to upvote your first one.
• Robots, automated upvote services or bid bots. People delegate Steem Power or sell votes for money in these services. Other people pay for the upvotes of their posts. Only a more complicated and concentrated, automated form of the other methods above.

Positive or negative?

The buyers are buying votes mostly to “make their posts visible”, to receive some attention in this highly robotized world. That can happen with positive ROI – if the value of the upvotes is greater than the value of the payment. Or with negative ROI, in this case, the vote buyer loses money.

Some are trying to make a positive ROI all the time to grow their overall wealth. Another side effect is the increase of their reputation with the votes. (The small number near your name.)

If you want a stable income doing nothing, you can lend (delegate) your SP for payments. Or sell your votes for money. Don’t forget to recollect your curation rewards, in the latter case.

The bottom line

Old Steemians wrote in their posts in earlier times the voting bots were not possible or existing in Steem system. People were using mostly the other methods instead.

Is Monetizing SP bad? “Vote selling was invented 1 hour after the invention of voting” – wrote @btcsec in a comment. Below my post in which I wrote that vote selling was very popular already in ancient Rome. I think we can’t blame people for being selfish, so is the world (and capitalism) functioning. We should make a system where manual curation is more worth than an automated one. But how?

(Pictures: Pixabay.com)