I have never been to keen on bid bots but @leo.voter has come to my attention as one of the better ones. Perhaps some of you have not heard of it or how it works.
How it works
You can send any amount of LEO token to @leo.voter with a memo to the post that you want to have upvoted. I think it votes up about twenty times the value of the LEO token in Steem rewards on the post but I'm not sure about the return. The LEO token sent to the bid bot is returned to the users that have delegated steem power to the bot and the bot's LEO earnings are burned.
Some advantages
Burning LEO tokens reduces the supply of the token and should increase the value of the remaining tokens for all the holders of the LEO token.
Trending page on LEO is unaffected and trending on Steem is already FUBAR so no harm done, yes? LOL.
Payments made to the @leo.voter bot are not going just to large holders of Steem for payments of votes and concentrating the capital as much as other bots might.
Last nights sunset as stylized by Google Photos
Some disadvantages
Any voting bot can be used to vote up rather dubious content and even copyright infringing content gleaned off the web from other popular authors.
The LEO community might not be that interested in policing bad content voted on by the bot because it shows up on other trending pages.
Full disclosure and personal thoughts
I have delegated some steem power to the @leo.voter bot and receive some LEO daily from its operation. I've tested it out on posts on this account and it works nicely.
I hesitate to use it much because I am not that good at judging the value of my own work and I would rather not spend LEO on a post that might get hit by downvotes as a result.
However, Steem is getting much harder to earn. I used to be able to give out around $1.00 dollar in value with a 100% vote and now it looks like it is down to around $0.10 and this value was after an extended period of both investing and posting. It is really not worth my voting on comments any longer because my vote easily falls into the dust range and does not pay out. It is really difficult for content to get much visibility on this platform.
At this point bad content on the Steemit trending page is really being looked at closely and the recent changes should allow this content to be downvoted more easily. But, even if the steem rewards are removed, using the bot will help the LEO price and benefit many people. So I'm really thinking about using the @leo.voter bot more if I believe in the content.
In fact I've been thinking about using it to vote up other peoples posts and not just my own. I'm not sure if this is a really good idea or not. You can see who sent the vote your way by looking at the block explorer on Steem-Engine and searching for leo.voter so I could never really be fully anonymous.
Perhaps some people would not want a bot boosting their earnings because it is not a fully organic vote. I can just see what I do with good intentions becoming a real problem because, "The evil trolls on Steemit downvoted my post - stop using your bid bot on my stuff!!!" :D
Plus, what if the user was intending to use the bot themselves and my small vote on their post rekt their plan? (The Steemit game can be very confusing at times.)
So, I would welcome any guidance on this. How would you feel if someone voted on your post with the LEO bid bot?
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I was here before delegating was allowed by the code, hence there were no bid bots. I know I am the only one, but I do not use them. I dont hold it against folks that do, it just has never felt right to me.
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There are some issues with them for sure like most things. I keep going back and forth around how I feel about many things. I think we are seeing a gradual shift towards supporting investors more. However, it is hard to see where to put your Steem investment to create a safe rate or return. In some ways I think this is good because it can encourage more active investment rather than passive investment through delegation to bid bots and automatic voting.
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