BTW, it is the unfortunate truth that if you just set the upper payout filter to say $10 and then sort by a criteria like comments you are already going to be getting a much better result set in most tags than the actual trending posting :( And this is actually a reasonable proxy for no bidbots / paid votes ATM.

That's not always the case. There are still many of us veterans still holding on, our payouts can be slightly higher than that, and many of us still get slammed with comments; we're not using paid votes.

New and existing members often get rewarded for commenting, if they can find us. That helps them grow.

The people seeing success on apps like dtube also see a higher reward. They could use the views as well.

Getting free visibility back is a game changer though, for everyone. From the bottom, to the top, and everyone in between; there is a huge demand for free visibility. Combine that with your preferred language and these people from all over the world can start building each other up instead of wasting their votes on overly inflated trending and hot posts. It gives everyone that proverbial ladder back and they can start climbing again, free of charge, like it used to be when the place was working incredibly well for those who produced the good stuff that people like according to their own tastes. Manual curators benefit immensely as well if they don't have to share those rewards with bots and it brings some of the value and reward back to curating; as well as making it one hell of a lot easier to find stuff.

Damn fine work here though. Good job. If I see that feature in the future, I'd gladly donate to the cause.