The Trending Page
The Trending Page. That's where the big money is. Or is it?
If we look at the posts that actually make it into Trending (and believe me those are not many), there is one common denominator:
A very, very high reputation score.
So what? These people are just active members on the platform and have lot's of Steem Power. What's the big deal?
The reputation score basically shows how respected and active you are in the Steemit community. Oh and did I mention that the difficulty to obtain a higher reputation score than the one you have right now, rises exponentially with you climbing the 'reputation ladder'. To give an example:
It might be very easy to go from 25 Rep to 26 Rep but infinitly harder to go from 69 Rep to 70 Rep.
The problems arise with curators, who instantly upvote posts from accounts who have a high reputation, hoping to earn a lot of sweet curation money.
Notice how there are almost no posts in Trending with a reputation below 60?
That is exactly why.
A new user could routinely write top-notch posts contentwise and still not earn a dime whereas a 'whale' gets 100$+ for a shitpost. Yes there are instututions like Curie and yes they help a lot but it's a drop in the ocean to be honest. It involves way to much luck and for new Steemians it is just straightup frustrating and exhausting to pour your heart and soul into a post and having sitting there at 0 upvotes.
Equality of opportunity?
Is there equality of opportunity here on Steemit? Some might argue that there is. Some might argue there isn't.
Has every Steemian the same chance of making it from minnow to whale or not?
The short answer is No.
If you look very closely on the top earning posts in Trending you will find that the small user is being deceived:
The big money you see on these posts is fake.
If we take a quick look on the best performing post right now:
1000 dollars?
Not really.
I visited the user and took a look into his wallet. There are a ton of transfers of 30 SBD+ to Bid Bots or Upvote Services.
But we can't even be mad at him for doing this. What else is he supposed to do if wants his post to receive attention? He himself is just trying to survive. I myself had to resort to Upvote Bots to even stand a chance in this ocean of posts. This is a problem which can only be solved on a platform wide scale. The money that is presented on Trending is deceptive and not true to reality.
Good content is no longer rewarded. Paying money is.
Everybody on Trending is using Upvote Bots and I can guarantee that 95% of all these upvotes are not organic. And that is a huge problem.
Wasn't Steemit supposed to be this great platform where authors are incentivized with money to write good content? And you could be sure that the highest earning content was actually good and written in sophistication? This is no longer the case as people put up a post, then they pay hundreds of dollars to make a profit of only 50 bucks. Minnows to not have these 100s of dollars to make their post get more attention. And therefore there is no equality of opportunity. The gap between whales and minnows widens each day and to be honest the latter are losing motivation to put up good content if only the people who can afford it gain exposure.
Is it immoral to use Upvote Bots then?
Obviously not. It is currently the only possibility to have your post seen so nobody really has a choice, not even most of the whales.
This is a call to all the witnesses: A great change is needed. A system has to be implemented where content which is actually good is rewarded and whales are not able to buy tons of upvotes to put a mediocre post into Trending. I will specifically adress 
Here are a few points that could be done to improve the platform. Please Witnesses. Take action and don't just watch.
- Don't allow people with extremely high Steem Power to use Bid Bots unless they actively support good and useful content on the platform by upvoting lower level users. I.e. you can only use this Upvote service if you have upvoted 20 minnows with HIGH QUALITY CONTENT.
- Make it so that posts go into Trending not based on total money raised but rather based on money raised IN RELATIONSHIP TO ACCOUNT REPUTATION AND STEEM POWER. That way a high Steem Power user might need to earn 200$ to go into Trending, whereas a low reputation user only needs 50$ to go into Trending. (Obviously bots should be filtered out as otherwise the system can be cheated.)
- Make it obligatory for whales to resteem high quality post if they want to have certain benefits.
These were just some impulses I wanted to set. I wanted try to lay out the problems I see with Steemit.
I will use some of my few dollars to get this post into the faces of people. I sincerely hope that maybe a witness will pick up on this and maybe make a change.
Because a change is needed.