To reiterate for those that missed it (which appears to be almost everyone) -
As I stated in the comments under @Trafalgar's post, I have a solution to the bid bot issue that steps on no-one's toes and cannot really be circumvented. I wrote about it here. By giving every steem user the ability to mute the EFFECT of votes by allowing them to mute VOTERS - we allow everyone to block out the effects of bots while also empowering users to see more of what they want/need to see. This would also enhance the effectiveness of good curators too since their work would be more visible to those who care and they can then both benefit from their work by reading posts they discover and also then upvote them. This facilitates proof of brain in a pure way that does not involve overpowering anyone and that actually empowers people more than they have been. Empowerment is what is needed here.
I also commented that I see an issue with free downvoting in that the imbalance among user's Steem Power holdings means that malicious whales could literally shut down a large amount of the reward activity for the entire network, which would in turn boost their own earnings. Ultimately, power imbalance that can limit exposure is a problem when exposure is the proposed way to gain power and rectify the balance. This is a fundamental flaw in capitalism too, in the sense that new users (or new born babies) have to join in an old game where monopoly is already established. It's fine to say 'work hard and you can be big too', but in reality that's not how things play out due to the nature of the weighting involved and the ability of the biggest to crush the smallest with little incentive financially for them not to do so. The idea that the big whales who act selfishly to the point of destroying the network would change before they actually do destroy the network, presupposes a level of intelligence and perceptiveness/care on their part about such things - which is already possibly evidenced to be in short supply by the fact that they would have taken things to that point.
Every point in all of this is unique and we need to dive deeply into every point to fully understand it and reach the best outcome. Soundbytes jut can't cut it here. However, I will say that options that empower without overpowering anyone are always helpful.
This addresses this issue of visibility, and any UI can experiment with different visibility systems right now. It doesn't address the issue of reward distribution. The latter is a Steem blockchain function and can't be changed by UIs.
Yes, I appreciate that my suggestion is a UI feature, however, it does address reward distribution by directly empowering all users to affect reward distribution by disincentivising the use of bidbots in a way that everyone can decide to participate in or not participate in. If this approach gained wide adoption, it is easy to imagine that bidbots would no longer be attractive.
Bidbots do not primarily exist for visibility, that's a secondary consideration, and arguably could be described as an excuse. Even if they granted no visibility whatsoever they would still exist and be used because they would have a small positive ROI (as they occasionally do already). Granted this might reduce their perceived legitimacy (assuming they have some?) and that could be a positive, but this is all very indirect.
In the beginning it was profitable to use bid bots just to increase rewards, but now it is much harder to do that. If people want to sell their votes to each other, that's their business and I don't see that there's anything I or anyone else can do to stop that. The issue for me here is whether or not bid bots prevent true 'proof of brain' from functioning and it is clear to me that they do.
Without something approaching 'proof of brain' - which was an underpinning of the entire Steem network from the beginning, we are left with much less attraction to the eco-system and it's technology for many people.
The only reason I would ever use a bid bot is to increase the reach of my posts and I don't even bother to do that now since I rarely meet anyone who even looks at the trending posts page any more because of the bots. I remember that before the bots, it was quite possible to see some of the best posts on the network in the trending pages, as was intended. Now that just doesn't happen.
They prevent proof of brain from functioning because people sell their votes. When votes are made on the basis of generating a reward vs. expressing an opinion it is not possible for their to be proof of brain. Proof-of-brain = express an opinion.
My point there was that privately selling votes cannot be stopped, but we can take action to empower users to stop known accounts that specifically only sell votes from having any effect on our experience. I believe that the 'Steeve' UI for Steem does this already.
Bid bots make it practical to habitually buy votes, then use the profits to buy more votes - this means that those involved in this 'arms race' will always be faced with the thought that if they stop then they will lose their 'position'. They will have a way of dominating as long as they continue - the pattern is really quite similar to addiction except that it's everyone else who suffers more than the addicted person!
By implementing the voter muting feature it becomes possible for all of us to identify those accounts that violate our own limits in terms of their voting activity - whether it be because we think they sell votes or for other reasons. We can then be empowered to elect to remove them from our experience.
This ultimately might be called 'proof of the will and brain' :)
This is true however with downvotes it can be made unattractive to both buy (because return on the vote will be poor) or and sell (because selling prices will be poor) votes in a content-agnostic manner.
Your voter muting idea doesn't help the proof-of-brain function really. It might help make your personal view more useful. I don't disagree it is a fine feature, just not one that really helps address Steem's core problems.