Stake-weighted community approval was the logic that really excited me, we don't have that anymore. Now it is stake-weighted self-votes (using own or leased SP, or other sort of deals)
Yes. It is insane. I have paid delegation at a price where I need to self vote about 40% to get it back. I SV about 30 or so. But, I am able to spread the 70 relatively wide on posts and comments. Many delegations are so expensive to return it is in the 90s but, human greed always wants 'maximum' return doesn't it... regardless of the harm to others.
The bid bots are being paid for their stake in the pool but, it comes at no cost to themselves at all. At least with the delegation, they must give up ownership to the pool temporarily. It is a disaster for community, content based development.
Finally, in terms of curation rewards, for me as a manual curator, the best thing I can do economically is to pick 10 random posts per day that are older than 30 min and stand at 0.0 $ payout and vote them with 100%.
Sad isn't it? Better curation still is if they then pay a bidbot to follow you....
All the best for your baby!
Thank you. My wife is with her now so i have a few minutes.
I don't have the answers here but working within the current system, this is a temporary solution to a few fundamental problems. Perhaps it would give some better insight into how to deal with these things in future hardforks.
We have an opportunity to change at least on platform a broken economic system yet, we are behaving identically to those who taught us. Can we do any better? At the moment, it seems unlikely.