为什么Steem系统治理不了点赞机器人？ Why can't the Steem system manage the “Upvote” robots?

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Steem is an experimental economic system which is still relatively young. The economy has now reached the stage where the market has put a price on the purchase or sale or each upvote in relation to the value of the associated Steem Power. This allows users who want a passive income to sell their upvotes (through delegation to bots for a price) and active users to purchase upvotes from these bots to promote their articles.

This was always going to happen and would happen on the black-market even if restrictions were applied to the bot markets. As such, it's difficult to to counter directly.

It's worth noting that a similar situation existed even before the bot upvotes, which was that larger SP holders simply upvoted within their own circle. This also prevented the stated aim of Steem of finding the best content available.

However the problem of upvote bots seemingly taking over the system can be reduced in a number of ways, two of which are:

• An increase of SP towards platforms and communities dedicated to seeking out and rewarding good content so that creators are adequately rewarded. This is largely in the hands of the central Steemit team and is progressing at a reasonable pace.
• A change to the way posts are filtered and viewed. A recommendation system could be applied so that you can follow the recommendations of chosen curators, rather than simply seeing the highest voted posts. Hopefully "Communities" will bring this kind of improvement. This will reduce the interest of large bot upvotes.

A central flagging fund to reduce the profitability of large bot upvotes could also be imposed. The aim would simply be to make large bot upvotes unprofitable and put a cap on the practice.  This is unlikely to happen given the cost and the Libertarian nature of the platform.

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