For most new users. It's very difficult to get started on this platform. We all need to write a good quality content and earn very little rewards and views. Of course if you are in this situation. Then it becomes verry appealing to use these voting bots. And as a result of that, they seems to be all over this place now.
https://steemit.com/minnowbooster/@minnowbooster/introducing-minnowbooster-beta
For people who haven't been familiar with these bots yet. These types of bot's help new users by giving them a amount of upvotes in return for some SBD. Which allows users to get upvotes faster. Which lets them to grow faster then other users who don't use these kind of services.
I get that some users are desperate to let their account grow faster. As a minnow myself it took me a great number of weeks and posts to get my steem power to 20. So I get it that some people prefer to get their account 'boosted' to ensure faster growth.
But please take in consideration that the current reputation system. which we use to verify a users 'trust ability' is also calculated on the number of up votes. So when people are using these services they are not only rewarded with monetary gains. But also essentially buying their trustworthy .
If people can buy their reputation, then this also means that the 'bad apples' under us. Are also able to get extra reputation they shouldn't have.
Which renders the purpose of the reputation system useless.
So therefore I'm not a fan of these services. I understand why people are using them. But the negative consequences of them outweigh the gains, in my opinion. And I don't want to take away the opportunity, because some well-willing people really seem to need them
But please take into consideration that when u use these services, they influence the platform in a way, which might not be the best for Steem in the future.