RE: Introducing UserAuthority (UA), @steem-ua and UA-API !
Those aren't even remotely two different problems, they represent the two things being done to try and solve the singular problem of recommendation and curation, which are the same thing. Pointedly, UA does not purport to be a "recommendation engine" or "curation engine" and really only supports its own voting engine which is cranked by effectively its own SP and issues out up votes to people who have registered with it and offered it enough material.
That will earn you some votes with the percentage that a a complex algorithm (you weren't expecting that were you?) decides you can have based on the amount of SP that you have given over into their care. You know, just buying votes in a slightly different way.
A recommendation engine or curation engine would care about the things that I am, personally, interested in and want to look at all the data that's coming in, see if it fits, and if so give it to me. That's not what we're getting.
If nothing else, this new UA algorithm appears to focus entirely on trying to drag systems which were never meant to do what they're doing into doing – this.
Sorry, but you're talking out of your ass here: the upvote from @steem-ua is completely independent of the amount of SP delegated to @steem-ua. Provided @steem-ua has enough SP, I'd be perfectly fine with upvoting some post with $100.- when the content is magnificent, even when the author only delegates 25 SP.
And also:
UA != @steem-uaUA is a metric, @steem-ua an Algorithmic Curation Program using that metric. @steem-ua does not restrict contributions on a topical level, all types of content are eligible for its algorithmic curation and an upvote, but since we can simply not upvote all content on the Steem blockchain, we'd need ~ 100 million SP to do that (maybe some day though! dreams, dreams...), we need another type of filter: delegating SP to @steem-ua, even 25 SP will do, is that filter.
On a personal note: having an alternative opinion is fine with me, spreading around false rumors and even blatant lies is not. If you have any questions regarding UA, you know perfectly well where to contact me for answers on Discord for example, we've been talking for months there.