Dear friends on Steemit. Recently on Steemit payout for small blog posters have gone down a lot. The none lineair payout curve giving more to very popular blog posts isn't helping. And the low Steem price only makes it worse.
The natural reflex of someone with a not so popular blog and with little Steem Power is to use bidbots because of the new situation, to at least get some payout. However this is no longer allowed by some of the big boys.
Some seem to be on a real power trip downvoting everyone using the bots no matter what the content of the post is, or even how high the payout is. Also opinion doesn't seem to be free anymore. Post a friendly critical remark and you risk getting downvoted.
Now, I could understand part of the reason why no bidbots should be used to get more Steem. However the reality is that the current situation is totally unfair since the rule only applies to part of the Steemit users. Let's looked at a few of the points:
Small players get less pay out and are not allowed to use bots to get a bit more. This is independent of the value of the content of the post. The message is: you are not owed any Steem.
Whales do not have to use bots. They can be considered bots by themselves. Giving huge upvotes to themselves and each other. I see some of the most active downvoters posting really low quality blog posts with huge payouts. I also saw that some of the biggest downvoters are sending all their Steem rewards to exchanges, I would presume to sell. So far for helping the price of Steem.
So the way one might see it is that a bitbot is a whale for the small guys. But you are not allowed to pay for it according to the "New Steem".
Now in no way am I saying that all smaller players are good and all whales are bad. I have seen some Minnows posting daily scripted posts that just publish some crap pulled from the Internet and getting upvoted to insane levels with bots. At the same time I have also seen several whales being really good to the community, supporting it in any way possible. The issue is that if we got a whale that is a bad actor, he can do a lot of damage. And that is IMHO what happens now.
It is my impression that only big accounts are really welcome on Steemit. Plankton/Minnows are pushed out because of less rewards and a downgraded freedom of speech.
So what are your thoughts? Am I seeing it all wrong? Or do you agree? Am I missing something here?
Oh, and before anyone asks. I will NOT get paid for this post. All upvotes will go to 
