I've tried bidbots and am still on the fence about them. I believe that they can serve a useful purpose for guys like me. I write my own content. I do a little manual curation every day. I don't use any autovoting at all (though I have one fan who votes for my articles automatically>.
The @transparencybot seems to be replacing one lottery for another. I'm not sure that another lottery is going to help.
I would have to give it more thought, but my first impression is that this system doesn't seem to address a pet peeve of mine: nepotism.
I use the word nepotism in this context as an attribute of people who vote for their friends and their friends vote for them, regardless of the quality of content. I know of one whale so accused who said, and I paraphrase here, "You're just jealous because you're not one of my friends or family". That is nepotism. That person does write very high quality posts with pictures to boot, but I don't believe in voting for someone just because they're your friend.
I believe that I write high quality articles and I do so without regard to the trending page. I'm under the impression that in order to build a following, I must engage with my audience and do so consistently. I must curate, comment on other articles by other people. I tried bots to see if that would help me.
I've found that the math for bidbots works well in the sense that they generate demand for Steem and SBD. If you're asking for 50/50, you're going to need to keep investing to keep it going. If you go 100%, you're not going to earn much Steem Power, but you can in theory buy it later by powering up. I think in that regard, bidbots are an asset.
As to the abuse that you aim to stop, I only try to set an example by just performing manual curation. I am fervently in favor of manual curation, but still I am split about the bidbots because I've seen arguments on both side from whales and dolphins.
I can't say that I have both feet in on this idea, but I'm willing to give it a try. I will try the #nobidbots tag on my next few posts to see what happens next. I am interested in manual curation for my own posts and I'm actually rather hungry for comments and feedback on my articles.
You have an interesting approach here, one that I will check in on again to see if it has gained traction.
Thank you, this is a very well thought out response.
I believe the best long term solution will be to have a new UI that allows for better filtering, sorting and exposing those articles that have been boosted. These UI's are now in development by 3rd party people that are concerned about the long term health of our platform.
Please contat @whatamidoing for more information on the direction of the #nobitbot tag, he and his team are now taking the leads on this one as I have turned over the keys.