https://cdn.pixabay.com/photo/2014/07/27/09/42/e-commerce-402822__340.jpg
Yo yo people figured I'd talk about observations I have made about changes to steemit upvote market ecology. The first major change I noticed was Grumpy Cat's continuing war on 3.5+ day upvote bots.
https://cdn.pixabay.com/photo/2018/03/20/05/42/keyboard-3242251__340.jpg
Now other bots claiming in the name of countering reward abuse have destroyed all sbd profitability from upvote bidding by instituting capped upvotes. So despite you being able to lose by people overbidding, if you happen to put in a bid that is profitable they will cap it to help their profitability while not refunding you. 
https://cdn.pixabay.com/photo/2018/01/17/04/18/shelf-3087406__340.jpg
Very interesting change. Now sure some people seemed to be getting mad about promo for content they disagree with so this energy probably helped the up vote bots make this new way to increase their profitability while destroying it for the consumer. The following bots of larger upvotes seem to have this new anticompetitive capps, so I will not be likely to use them anymore:
postpromoter
buildawhale
smartsteem. 
upmyvote
https://cdn.pixabay.com/photo/2018/03/03/12/28/gavel-3195577__340.jpg
The following Grumpycat compliant bots I will continue to use:
upme
appreciator
upmewhale
pushup
jerrybanfield
https://cdn.pixabay.com/photo/2017/02/20/08/47/professions-2081837__340.jpg
Another cool change to market ecology on steembottracker from yabamatt, is adding tracking the minimum post time, some of the bots if a bid comes in below the time will rollover the bid really hurting the curation take. 
https://cdn.pixabay.com/photo/2017/02/20/08/47/professions-2081831__340.jpg
It will be interesting how these changes occur and continue, but these changes have significantly made my time investment very high so seriously considering just becoming an upvote bot--especially a capped super profitable one so they I no longer need to add content to the network--but we will see if things change. 
https://cdn.pixabay.com/photo/2017/01/11/10/19/guatemala-1971374__340.jpg