The price of STEEM is low and of course the less people using the platform (blockchain) to "earn" "Free" Steem the better it is for those who are left but I believe that is a short-sighted thing to want and will only hurt the USD value of STEEM in the end.

This place needs new sign ups and with new sign ups come new investment money. Scaring away and pissing off potential investors isn't the way to go.

I think the whales are going about this #NEWSTEEM the wrong way. Don't go after newbies who are making an effort to create the best content they can and are using small paid for votes to try and get noticed. Don't go after the person who wanted to advertise his post with a little $1-$3 upvote so he could get some eyes on the work that likely took an hour or more to create. Don't go after the posters who been here for a year plus showing they are making an effort but their account has barely reached minnow status. To me there is a distinct difference between those things I mentioned and abuse of the bot system.

Since I been on this chain the go to line is, Create good content and you'll get valuable upvotes. That simply isn't the case ...... Most with valuable upvotes (not all ) are more interested in upvoting their friends / alt accounts or themselves on a much more consistent bases then upvoting good content. Some others are likely too busy to manually curate . I'm lucky enough that I have a whale or two that reads my content and upvote it from time to time so I know what I just said doesn't apply to all whales.

I have seen countless good content with barely any rewards on it. I also seen some whales post a screen shot or picture and get more rewards on that post then most make in a week/month posting much better content.

In the end everyone can use their weight here as they see fit and that includes downvoting. As the saying goes, it is what it is.

Edit: In defense to mysearchisover posts that you seen with $10 on them and that had bid bot(s) used on them. Sometimes there is no way to know what type of vote you get because as you know the upvote you receive is dependent on how many used the bot during that round of voting. As a second note, not all post that show "high" rewards and had bid bots used on them give a profit. Many such posts end up with negative ROI.

For example I used a bot a couple days ago (yes I got flagged) and I ended up with a $7 upvote when all I was expecting was a $2 upvote. I got flagged which was ok by me. Not because my content wasn't worth $7 but because all I really wanted was to hopefully break even and have my post not look like it was worthless with just pennies showing for its rewards. Readers are more likely to click an article that is showing a couple dollars on it and some upvotes/comments then they are to click an article that is showing pennies.

This comment ended up being allot longer then I intended.