https://steemitimages.com/0x0/https://farm8.staticflickr.com/7921/47387011642_84210eb7cc_k.jpg

I've been following conversations about what should be downvoted and the value on Trending. After reviewing what has been said, I'm beginning to think that Trending should be able to fulfill its original purpose which was to be a place for organically popular content. Any content that occupies a spot in Trending because upvotes on it were bought should be downvoted - and not because it shouldn't be there but because buying a spot in Trending should cost money. If it is possible to get to Trending for free, or worse, make money in the process, that will severely devalue it. Trending should be the most valuable piece of digital real estate on Steem <b>and it can only be that if the content in it great enough to draw eyeballs</b>. 

At the end of the day, this is really simple. Trending should be the place where everyone, including those people who have no Steem accounts, goes to look for attractive content. That can only be possible if the most attractive content on the platform ends up in Trending. Promoted content has a place in Trending but it should only happen at a financial loss to the promoter. So long as there is no other mechanism for putting promoted content to trending than buying votes from a bid bot, it's up to the community to downvote it to ensure it happens at a financial loss. Otherwise Trending gets shat all over again.

@nonameslefttouse wrote an <a href="https://steempeak.com/life/@nonameslefttouse/the-state-of-the-nonameslefttouse-address-another-month-down-with-some-time-off-in-between-for-thinking-purposes">excellent piece</a> on this topic today.

https://steemitimages.com/0x0/https://farm8.staticflickr.com/7895/46524664565_00b03c5048_k.jpg

P.S. There is yet another problem with curators upvoting bid botted content: regardless of the profitability of buying votes, it can be lucrative for curators to front run bid botted content because curation rewards heavily depend on the total value of the post and not the difference between what the author makes and payments made to vote sellers. Ways to counter this are limited because downvoting can't directly reduce anybody's curation rewards. I have some ideas how to do this and I will discuss them in another post.