as well as for the reasons you've brought up like inflating the value of payouts and damaging user expectations.

This is my biggest gripe with bots - that there is not limit on how much votes can be bought and so new people think that the payouts on trending are profit. This is why people come and go so quickly in my opinion - they think it will be easy to atleats make a few hundres dollars but then make mere cents and so leave.

Yeah I do the same still with the culling of people I am following and sadly notice the same thing - really talented writers I have been following are just no longer posting -maybe its just not worth there time (I feel the same at times but just keep on Steeming!)

I dont know much about HF20 but I might research it and write a post about it in the future :)