Why Bid Bots are Bad for Steemit | Imagine if the NBA Allowed People to Pay to Play in the League?

What's going to be incredibly ironic about this post, is that in this post about how bid bots are bad for Steemit, I'll likely be using them to promote this post. I don't use bid bots all the time, but when I have a post I really want to get eyes on and really want to get visibility to I will use them.

In this post I want to argue why bid bots are ultimately bad for Steemit. I'll lead off with what I think is the strongest argment.

Bid bots play a large role in what content here on Steemit gets visibility and gets seen. I think many people would agree with me that much of the content in the "hot" and "trending" section isn't great content, it's just promoted by powerful people with lots of money to throw around.

Now when a reader or content consumer comes over to Steemit and says hey let's see what this site is all about. Let's see what's trending, and then they see this low quality content, they may say, this site kinda sucks, nothing here interests me, I'm gonna go back to reading clickbait articles on Facebook.

In my opinion that's because getting seen on Steemit is pay to play. Here's some food for thought. Imagine if the NBA was not made up of the best basketball players on this planet, imagine if the NBA was a pay to play system where you could pay money to play in the league. While there would be some elite athletes, you'd also have Tim the 5'8", 250 pound accountant from Madison Wisconsin playing. Do you think people would pay $150 to go see Tim play basketball as opposed to seeing Lebron James? Probably not. By allowing Steemit to be a pay to play system were not getting the best content or the best quality content displayed most prominantly, were getting the content people are willing to pay the most to get seen.

I think the above is the strongest and best argument for why bid bots are bad for Steemit but let's take it one step further. Bid bots have the potential to wield a lot of power here on Steemit. When everyone else is using bid bots to get visibility here, if you are not you are at a disadvantage.

Well recently with the whole feud between Hive account@berniesanders and Hive account@jerrybanfield , Bernie is suggesting that bid bot owners should block Jerry from using their service. I get where he's comming from, I believe his argument is that Jerry is promoting low quality content. Now this goes way beyond Jerry and I don't feel it's fair to single him out because almost everyone is doing the same thing, they just aren't as visible, aren't as well known, or aren't doing it as well as him. If Jerry were to go away tomorrow this issue would still persist.

My point is that bid bot owners in a way have a lot of power and influence on here. Now when they band together and act as a group that power and influence is magnified even more. If bid bot owners decide to block certain people from using their services, and not block others, in a sense that's a form of control or a governance of this platform. It may not be comming from a corporation or central authority like Youtube/Adsense/ABC but its control and censorship none the less.

Now I get bid bot owners own their bots and they should have the right to use them how they see fit, but I would argue it's dangerous how they have the ability to create an unlevel playing field when they decide to help and support some creators and block others.

So how does this differ from say Youtube? Youtube will let creators pay to have a sponsored video at the top of suggested videos and will let creators play a preroll video, however youtube will not let you buy your way to the top of the search on the trending page. I think allowing this to happen almost assures quality content is never going to be the focus of Steemit.

Im curious to hear your thoughts?