Vlog 318: Voting bots or promotional services have their place on t...

I have written two post recently where I believe that earning STEEM on the blockchain is moving from content creators to entrepreneurs here and here.

I consider this a positive thing because entrepreneurs make the blockchain grow with the development of apps and tools and also give investors a reason to invest and a place to get ROI on STEEM besides blogging and curating.

Content creators will earn a little less STEEM while we are in the transition period towards SMT's.

On one of the articles I made this graphic explaining how I see things.

This is a question I received regarding this graphic and below it my answer.

Screen Shot 2018-06-06 at 11.59.41.png

The question was regarding voting bots or promotional services and how I feel about them.

After writing that comment I thought about it the whole night.

I think the two biggest arguments people have against voting bots at the moment are:

Anyone can promote content to trending (wether it's good or bad).
It takes away rewards from other content creators.

But there are also positive arguments to be made, namely:

Voting bots give investors that don't want to blog or curate a tool to make ROI (return on investment) and therefor a reason to buy STEEM.
It locks up SP so it can't be sold on the market.
It gives users that want to a tool to promote their content. (And remember: You don't make money using a bot even though the payout might be high).

Voting bots rely for a large part on delegation and the fact that people want to use them to exist.

Now the fact that people want to use them with a negative ROI (again they are not profitable for the user, only the investor) to push their content already tells me they have their place on the blockchain.

But let's say you wanted to end them somehow.

How would you go about it?

A possible solution is to ban delegation all together.

No delegation, no voting bots (except for a few big whale accounts).

But that causes a problem because a lot of projects also rely on that same delegation to exists. (dtube, dlive, dsound, utopian.io and more).

I rather not see them go I think they add tremendous value to the blockchain.

So that's not really a solution.

Another solution would be to somehow ban people from using them.

I'm not in favour (if this was even possible) because I hate to see restriction of freedom on here.

Personally I see a much simpler solution (and I'm not even against voting bots).

A solution elegant and very much in line with the blockchain of opportunity.

Simply come up with better ideas or projects that need delegated SP but offer a greater return on investment than a voting bot.