I still can't believe how Steemit Inc totally screwed up when it comes to post promotion - Now we have Trending list that is full of posts with bought votes and only select few benefit from it while the normal users get the short end.

Every third spot should had been preserved for promoted posts on the trending list (Tweakable but probably better than now) with clear indication of promoted post, the funds used to promote then would have been burned and this would had benefitted everyone in the Steem ecosystem.

Has anyone done any research on how many of the top 20 trending posts has been bought votes each day? Would be interesting to see the data