I am actually not interested in the vote values.
The debate, on the contrary, is central to the future of steem. In general, these types of debates have always appeared in new social systems, they are bound to appear.
These are debates about how the system behaves when people are not doing what the creators of the system have hoped they would be doing, but are rather trying to "increase their utility".
I do not feel a need now to justify the use of bots. Do you think companies need to justify their use of ad-agencies to advertise their products ?
Have you ever seen a company wringing its (virtual) hands because they felt embarrassed that they advertised their products ? You haven't, right ?
On the other hand, I have already written a theoretical treatment of the topic of "advertising bots", you are welcome to comment it:
https://steempeak.com/steem/@sorin.cristescu/how-i-learned-to-stop-worrying-and-love-the-bid-bots
In short, bots offer a service which is potentially desirable to people from outside the steem system. Bots can add to the number of people who take the jump and decide to buy steem with fiat. And the steem ecosystem needs those people, as I explain in the above paper.
Sure, buy votes to advertise your content. Just make sure you are declining rewards so that you don’t take from the reward pool.
And it’s not like you are advertising a product or service. You’re not a business. So your argument falls pretty flat from that perspective.
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Why is it that by advertising I forfeit the right to be rewarded for the work done in researching and writing ? By virtue of what logic ? Where else, in what other situation advertising something cancels all right to be compensated for creating that thing?
Also, indeed, I am not a business indeed. But I happen to think that it would be GOOD for steem if real established businesses were to come to steem and start creating content and advertising ... Perhaps you should read the parable of the finger and the moon ...
https://www.satrakshita.com/the_finger_and_the_moon.htm
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Because you are taking from others in the process.
As already mentioned, by buying votes you take from the reward pool. Thereby taking what others should have earned through curation and “proof of brain”. Purchasing votes bypasses proof of brain and directs rewards to your content instead.
Whether or not advertisers come to this platform is irrelevant in this discussion.
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