I prefer to be an owner, not a renter. I think bot use is just another form of self-voting so it can create more noise and less signal. Many people come to me asking for advice on how to succeed at Steemit, but it seems few do the work of replicating what I've done. The three posts I mentioned here outline a lot of what works for me. I try to add value to other people's conversations first and build relationships that way. Eventually I've gained enough followers and friends to have great conversations in the comments and people now like my stuff enough to share it. That means I see no need to use an upvote bot. If my content is valuable to community, I'm confident it will be appreciated eventually. If something good gets missed, well that's why I keep producing.

Proof of brain is all about the community deciding what is valuable. I don't self-vote because I want others to make that decision about my content since I have a bias. If I think my content isn't valuable, I wouldn't bother posting it. Sure, I could self-vote all my root posts and maybe some comments, and no one would get mad at me, but I don't do things solely based on other people's perspectives. I try to operate based on my own principles and values. If they work, I can then be a demonstration for others of a better way.

Does that mean I'm leaving more rewards pool for scammers by not taking it for myself? Maybe. It's a sound argument. Instead, I'd like to shift the discussion towards personal responsibility for curators and stake holders to vote more for value-giving authors instead of expecting them to vote for themselves. There's plenty of good content out there, we just have to do the work to find it. As the communities and the steemit interface improve, that will hopefully become much easier in the future.