I am sure many of the people reading this post use upvote bots. I used to do that in the past too because I didn't know better and I saw no harm in getting some extra profit for my content. But we all learn and grow wiser.
There is nothing "free" in life. If you are here for the long term and care about the future of the platform I urge you to read the two posts below and pass them along any other friends you know that also use bots.
They will give you a good idea of how bots work and how that "free" profit for you isn't actually free:
- Defend Yourself Against @GrumpyCat by @erodedthoughts
- The coordination of Steemit's present for the future by @tarazkp
Just remember, people who upvote you already make money when doing that. It's called curation rewards and the system was designed that way so that the wealth is re-distributed in a fair way between the investors who put the money and the content creators who bring new people here.
But by buying votes you don't only shoot yourself in the head in the long term. You also harm those few generous whales that actually take the time to read your content and throw their fat upvote. You lessen their position on the platform and you give them all the reasons to stop being the good guys and turn to the dark side. The temptation to get 80 % of their vote back instead of 20% is really strong, don't you agree?
And imo what you harm even more is the newcomers. If you are an old member getting votes, it's possible to reinvest some of your earnings again and again and again into bots. But if you are a noobie, with no cash to invest it's very difficult to enter that cycle of bid-voting and somehow get a chance to stand out in the sea of already established members and spammers.
In my opinion, if we continue supporting these services we just ask for more abusers and less legit content creators to join Steemit.
So, please consider giving the points made by the two posts above some good thinking next time before you buy a vote. In the end, your money is your money so what you do is up to you. I think Steemit is a good experiment and sooner or later its content and what it becomes will be a nice mirror of the human nature.
Now if you ask me, the only legit use I think voting bots should have is to reward posts by other people as a gift or to counter truly unfair flags.
If you have a different opinion or something to add I would love to hear it in the comments below!