If that sounds too gloom-and-doom, keep in mind that it is not my sentiment. I'm simply trying to make sense of the tea leaves.

If I'm wrong, it's not me that's wrong. :-)

On bidbots, good perspective. I think the frustration, for a lot of people, is that they check trending topics and see a bunch of low-quality posts bid up by bidbots. I don't check trending topics, so that doesn't affect me. But I've heard that.

Thanks for reading, and for commenting.

Bots are "no different" to using Google Adwords.

Interesting comparison. I see your point even if I'm not sure I agree. The blogger is spending money to get a return. I guess there's the similarity, but few people are selling things on the Steemit blogs. It is an investment, however, and I think that's like Google AdWords, for which a person hopes but is not guaranteed a return.