I agree with pretty much everything you say

Even if a bid bot operator does not take any fee, he is still contributing to 100% content indifferent voting behavior. All that money is then extracted from the system and passed onto the sellers. The damage is the same whether the intermediary takes a cut or not.

Now it use to be pre HF21 that stakeholders would only make a quarter as much curating honestly as they would abusing (vote selling, circle jerking, self voting etc). No surprise pretty much all active stake ended up doing it and completely undermined the entire POB system.

Now with the new incentives in place, curation is a healthy 50%, and with all the free downvotes floating around, it's probably better just to vote honestly and help fight abuse.

Acid has already told me he plans to go full curation in the near future. I believe him. Smartsteem is making a move in that direction too, and will attempt to do that for smartmarket as well. That's ballpark 20m SP converting to curation from content indifferent behavior (actual numbers will vary of course, but it's definitely something.)

Please play a part in honest curation now. If most people settled for 50% returns from honest curation, it actually benefits us all the most. And from how things are looking, we're heading in that direction.

See if you can convince @sweetsssj to give it a chance and do the same. Fight against abuse like vote selling and other content indifferent behavior like I do. If we're no longer abusing the system, why should other people get to?

It's been less than 2 weeks but things are looking palpably better. Persuade your circle in playing a bigger part. And if we can install a broadly honest set of voting behaviors platform wide, over time I believe it'll be reflected in the Steem price.