If it's about who sees the post, rather than how many, then that might be different. Hitting the top of a tag, or hot, or trending might be enough for some whale to notice you and throw you a decent upvote. But I think the chances of that are pretty slim.

Yeah, I think a little hustle and groundwork would quickly overtake the pay pathway.

You don't get a huge return, but they can raise your rep pretty quickly. So, it's kind of like when people used to pay to have someone play their WoW characters while they were at work, so they would still be levelling up.

Does it make them feel good? The rep is a becoming even more irrelevant with each passing day.

I suspect for a lot of people, bidbots are a psychological crutch. You pay out some SBD, you get a good vote on your post - and tell yourself you deserve it.

Yep. I see a lot of this too.It is kind of like paying a prostitute to say they love you. people who have stopped using them have quickly seen the reality of their true engagement.

When you subtract the fee and the curation, you probably didn't come out very far ahead. And not that many more people are viewing your content unless you spent up big to hit the trending page. Even then, there are much cheaper ways to get 1,500 people to look at your blog post.

Some people are getting far ahead though, they just aren't the users. There are definitely better ways for long-term account sustainability.