The Hard Spork VS. Bid Bots.

Let's be clear: You can make a profit using bidbots: But you could potentially make a lot more hooking up with a good curation project. Bid bots are just a lazy way for small users to compete with Whales when really they should A. Buy or earn more SP themselves or B. Find users and curation projects who have lots of SP and reward smaller users. Bid bots are breaking a dollar to make pennies.

But isn't botting harmless?? A victim-less crime?

Here are the main arguments against bidbots:

1. You can fight censorship with bitbots. Everyone knows spammers use bidbots when their posts get hidden. They also bot hidden comments. This completely circumvents the point of Steem power. If you can use liquid steem for everything: What's the point of staking Steem power and holding it?!

2. Bidbots strongly effect the trending page. The trending page used to be influenced by everyone's SP: Now it can be bought with Liquid Steem.

3. Bidbot owners can block whomever they want This could be used as a form of censorship. If botting = trending then you can limit an account with a bidbot blacklisting. You cant blacklist SP.

4. Bidbot accounts can earn TONS of Sp. They have been used to maliciously downvote people who don't deserve it. "Bidbots have become powerful account holders with garnished Steem and SBD that they are like corporations in the real world that has the potential of abuse." {@greenbeans}

The Hard Spork will be rewarding steem users @ctime and @dicetime for downvoting bot users. These accounts host bot code and use their own RC to downvote bitbot users. Now these two accounts will earn 800 Hard Spork {HSPK} Tokens a month! Hopefully this will help pay for the flagging.

{local heroes @dimetime and @ctime will now receive a passive income of 800 HSPK a month for flagging bidbot users.}

Steem user @trufflepig will also be awarded 800 Hard Spork {HSPK} Tokens every month! The bot trufflepig on steem provides lists of what SHOULD be trending if bidbots didnt exist. Every few days @trufflepig posts a list of what would be trending without upvoting or bidbots.

Conclusion: Bidbotting discourages Powering up Sp, hurts the trending page and hurts curation projects. Bidbot accounts become unfairly powerful and can censor people. Everyone who fights bidbotting should be supported. People who bidbot often should be flagged.