Until downvoting is inventivized to check the abuse, either by code changes or communal support or outright pressure by the many or a combination nothing will get better. I heard of a good alternative to it, [a free market approach](https://steemit.com/bots/@edicted/bid-bots-are-nonsensical-and-exploitative#@edicted/re-trincowski-re-edicted-bid-bots-are-nonsensical-and-exploitative-20180920t211809786z) but then in the process we will trade our curation for a total vote market/exchange, and I don't agree with the author that curation is broken. There's very compelling arguments to say the least and it'll take some digestion, at first thought maybe this is the free market approach I postulated some time ago which will require bid bots to rethink their game and so maybe my sentiments of "the people coming together" are simply my naivite of "most people are good", but I'm cautious of the free market approach as to deal with consolidated wealth being used to speculate and exploit the system in turn and how abuse will be dealt with then. The whole "hf 20 and SMTs are gonna fix it" is ridiculously insane since I know of nothing in that which will even attempt at addressing the issue. In my view, Steem is definitely not the masses, the level of thought from the community by and large is an indication of that, but there are a lot of reserved people and quite a few sitting on their hands as well.