What a dramatic few weeks it has been since the start of hardfork 21, and the beginning of #newsteem. Bid bots have essentially dissapeared and manual curation is back! A quick peek at steembottracker.com and I can only see 7 bots taking bids with the total bids adding up to just over $5 - incredible.

A change in attitude from all (most) of the community

The introduction of free downvotes has done wonders, and the community has come together to target spam, and also over inflated posts that are bid botted to the trending page. The outcome has been amazing, as we are seeing a much more organic treding page rather than just the same authors paying their way to the top.

Even some of the most notorious bid botters (not naming any names!) and abusers have seen the light and made changes - I must say I never saw that coming!

Manual curation - great for minnows!

Before HF21 there were mass circle voting pools going on, bid bot abuse and whales self voting or autovoting their friends. This use of SP made it nearly impossible for new users to gain any traction - even if their content was amazing.

As manual curation is back in a big way, it is easier to be noticed as a newer users, as those with loads of SP are on the lookout for under rated content. As the reward pool has now changed to 50/50 it is in whales best interest to upvote quality maximise their curation - everyone wins!

Those bid bots are putting that SP to good use though, with many of them going manual with their curation.

Less content, higher quality

Because users can no longer get away with posting crap 3 or 4 times a day and self upvoting, there has been a noticeable reduction in posts. Not to worry though, the quality has really increased, as there is more motivation to be curated by the bigger accounts. Also some users are taking a step back from posting because of the chanhes to the rewards curve - all good news if you are an active poster... more chance of getting noticed.

All in all life on Steem is alot sweeter after bid bots