Some groups are trying hard to bring content up to its worthy place on trending.  I'm a reader, not a watcher much.  So when DLive shows up in trending with hardly nothing to read but a *Blip* -- I ignore.  I'm ignoring more and more unfortunately.  


You can lead a user to content, but you can't make 'em vote.  Sad.

Yes .... you can see this now from a mile. Me as newbie and just learning all the tricks and tips of steemit, this is more than obvious. So the question is are you going to play the game, and continue with the recycling of the old ways, or there is still some hope that something difrent will emerge.

Votes are bought ever since I joined the platform and I think this practice will perpetuate itself long into the future. I don't think though that Proof-Of-Brain is doomed as I see it mostly appreciated inside small communities on the Steem Platform. 
On the large picture Steemit seems to become more and more a business and a way of a passive income for some. I can understand that thing too because when you join the platform with the idea of making money and invest in Steem Power you expect the fastest and most efficient ROI you can get. I believe though that the ones who really believe in their work around here and have built themselves a community of users who appreciate their efforts of creating good content won't be affected by this transformation of Steemit. I see it more like a hard fork where on one side there are these who still manual curate the ones who create and on the other side the business oriented. That's my vision.

Proof of brain is expectation but not algorhytm.
> Will we ever see a return to curating content where it's actually being evaluated in order for rewards to be allocated to make posts trending?

Machiavelli and many other philosophers were right that people work for themselves, thus need to be convinced by promises of advantages to them not to the community. In one of the Ancient Greece conflicts, two polises asked one for help. One came with gifts, the other reminded of existing debt. You can easily guest who gained the military support. I don't see anything bot buyers / owners could ever be offered, so they would stop using bots.

The other way to initiate the return is through software development. I am not IT professional with with further blockchain expertise, so I can hardly say what is in the power of developers. But I guess they can' t do much about this, at least not at the moment. They would have already done it if it was possible.

Flagging campaign is unlikely too as it would cause the conflict on Steemit damaging to both sides with non-existing chance for win for any of the sides.

So my answer is no.

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I have already started searching for an alternative to Steem and carry on using it when posting benefits me by either community members rate my language / grammar / plot etc. or I learn something when looking for the material and summarize my own thoughts.

If there is a chance, I will be happy to hear it. But I think Steemit will fall and be replaced by more modern service in the future (such as many products / companies in the past, its natural development of market), unless the issue is resolved.

I know you are a fighter against bots. Good luck with that.

Bang on @krnel the condition is not favorable for long sustainability of steemit. Bid- bots and favoritism and groupism are taken over steemit...the basic ideaon which this platform was developed has lost the path.

There are many posts like this lately, and I tend to agree. But the problem may not be bots specifically, it's the incentive structure. Having your actions translate into monetary gain will lead to people engaging in certain behaviors, bots just automate those behaviors.

exactly, and it is the main reason why we manually curate. Thought we do find ourselves very rarely upvoting content thieves or copy/pasters we do eventually detect it and blacklist/mute them.

With bidbots I know they do have that going on, but from what I have seen only some bidbots actually ban people from upvotes while the vast majority do not.

I think manual curators validate the content, autovoters validate the value of the author and bots validate the value of the Steem blockchain and the work that bidders put in. 
I think you should try using some bots especially small ones like @speedvoters and other .01 ones. Even the .10 bots are not really generally worth it I don't think unless you are in a country that has a $1 minimum wage. 
Steem votes have value so I think the buying and selling is here to stay.

I am new to the plataform. But already understood that things are not as supposed to be. I believe we should take action by flagging and downvoting bot pages and votes. Don´t you think this is a reasonble action to be taken rigth now?

Amen, bro! Nowadays POB is about milking it all for what it's worth, which means selling, getting sold, so your money can work while you're trading your assets for other assets. 

I actually see a new definition of POB around, which is slightly different, than the ideological one, and it's something like that: "Don't whine if you can't make it, and whales don't give a shit about you, they can do whatever the fuck they want with their money. INVEST! You don't have money to invest? Well, that's your problem".

Let's be realistic, steem blockchain allows for bots to thrive, it's the easy way out, and people always choose the easy way out! Banning bots is out of the question ATM. 

I don't even wanna get into this argument anymore, cause it's a waste of time as any change to the blockchain demands consensus of 21 witnesses and they all profit from the bots, so they have no actual incentive for any change to happen.

I have only encountered one bot that I have found useful: @trufflepig they promote posts that seem to be decent but not enough to be on the trending page. I have found two blogs I now follow through that service. 

I do otherwise abhor bots. Voting bots are a joke, it’s taking the whole concept of this platform away from the way it was intended. This is supposed to be about people creating content, others reading it and the reading validates the design; if someone likes the content they give it an up vote, if they dislike it they can not vote it, flag it(which I think is ridiculous but that’s another discussion) and comment. The engagement this process brings brings a level of interaction that’s not found at such at level elsewhere. But of course the bots have changed that game completely. It’s difficult to even get recognition by posting unless you go to other blogs and engage with as many people as possible without these bidbots. 
There needs to be a cultural shift on the platform but a shift away from these bots is unlikely since there are heavy hitters that are invested deeply in the continued success of the bots.

PoB is done, steem is just a dpos coin nowadays with people trying a variety of stupid different schemes to gain their part of the inflation. 

Creating content and bring value seems to be dying on the trending pages. But there is still a lot of god content here, we should be building apps that apply different filters to the content. I would immediately support an interface that filters posts by manual curation, removing all known bot votes.

I'm not at all a fan of bid bots.  The next thing that will happen is bot will write the articles, do all the voting and then The whole thing will be automated; no people required...

I have watched scores of high reputation bloggers on steemit post and they already have several hundred dollars of earnings without many comments at all.  Frankly, I wish we could do away with bitbots.  If this was done, then the down flagging bot networks wouldn't exist ether.

I can understand the side where people argue, 'bidbots incentive whales to lock up steem power' or 'it allows small users to gain exposure' but in true essence we are not bringing value and growing the community for the good we are just auctioning off the rewards pool.

It will only create this sense that your success hear on steemit lies purely in bidbots. I remember when I joined the posts which were in hot were 'all' upvoted by randowhale. Initially I was bemused and I decided to stay away from them. However those who did latch onto these bidbots early on has now become significantly larger here on steemit boasting 10,000+ SP. I'm not jealous of their success but we shouldn't be in a climate in which it is pay to win. 

With the present implementation, 100s and 100s of users have less power than 1 person with tons of STEEM POWER. this is often the opposite of the preferred behaviour. the perfect scenario is that 100s of individuals are exptected to be far more reliable in curating content properly than simply 1 person.

Everyone has this greed to earn money. I'm glad high quality people like you exist but you have whales equally as big who shit post and they get huge peer engagement since people will try every avenue to make money. We will have to be forced to curate or behave in line which is better for the platform since no one has the power to suppress their greed.

I hope it pans out positively in the long term but I remain fearful for now @krnel.

Oh yes absolutely agree with you. I’m new to the platform and can already see this. It’ll either deter people from creating quality posts and join the bot bregade or they’ll just stop posting because what’s the point.  I don’t even look in trending any more.

For me, a non-Proof of Brain vote produces counterfeit steem; which causes inflation like any counterfeit currency. 😎

Nicely worded @krnel. It has become more and more difficult to find quality posts. Guilty as charged, but not for using bots, unless you include @ginabot. Guilty of writing and giving up when no one reads them. 🐓🐓

Yes, this is definitely a problem.  The reward is not in writing good content, it is in the strategy in getting your content, whatever it might be, as high on trending as possible so that the feeding frenzy can begin.