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Time is my biggest problem when it comes to Steemit. 

I want to consistently upvote everyone I am following but a lack of time prohibits this. 

And now that I run a Facebook group (Aspiring Steemit Whales & Dolphins) in which I have promised to consistently upvote all who post there I find myself in the frustrating position of not being able to deliver on my promise.  

Especially with the terrible, intermittent internet I experience here in Bali.

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I am expecting the birth of my second child any day now and in preparation for the upcoming period in which I have promised to not open my laptop (somewhat reluctantly) I wanted to find a way in which I could continue my upvoting.

## The solution

Many thanks to @craig-grant who mentioned the use of a voting bot in one of his films just at the moment I was contemplating my dilemma.  

I must also extend a thanks to @rok-sivante whose post on this subject two months ago helped me find what I was looking for. He said this to the community in his post:  "I will hereby give 100% of the profits from this post to whoever programs a simplified bot and makes it available to all Steemit users, which allows them to automatically vote for posts by authors of their choice, complete with simplified instructions for how to set it up."

A noble gesture which I am sure he carried out quickly, because in the responses to this post, right at the top was the answer:

steemvoter.com by @marcgodard
https://steemvoter.com

I assume there are many such programs now, but my experience of Steem Voter has been completely painless.  Other than the aching fingers I had after tapping at my keyboard for three hours to input my list of people I would like to upvote consistently.

## The controversy

It is thought by some that an automated voting system takes away from the human side of this platform and to quote @tamersameeh 'give rewards to those who don't really deserve it'.

@rok-sivante responded with these words: "if I use a bot, I choose who goes on the list and gets my rewards. I would not put anyone on the list who I feel does not deserve it. And I would continually check in to make sure those authors are continuing to post quality content - if they slipped up and I felt they didn't deserve my rewards any longer, they'd be off the list."

I could not have said it better myself.

Of course, one may easily fall into the trap of never reading anyone's post again.  But this would be foolish of them.

## Why we must never stop reading the posts!

- This platform is ever evolving and one must keep their ear to the ground if they are to advance their knowledge & skills here, even beyond the boundaries of Steemit.  Just as it is with @busy.org who are expected to publicly release their Beta version of another social media platform which utilises the Steem Blockchain any day now.  If we never looked at our feed to digest the words of others we would have no knowledge of them at all.  

- We must always look to find new people who are deserving of our upvote.  Without our help & support they will vanish from this platform without a trace. 

- Always remember that even a useful comment in response to a post can generate Steem.  I have seen people earning up to $10 from a few simple words at the bottom of my own work, which is sometimes more than the post itself earns.  This is a fantastic aspect of our platform and we must always take advantage of this by sharing our wisdom freely and enjoying the rewards if our words ring true with people.

- The best thing of all about this platform is the outstanding content. And it would be crazy to miss out on all the new information being provided by the open-minded members of this amazing community.

We are ground breakers, risk-takers & pioneers in the world's largest social media experiment... which by the way was quoted in Forbes magazine last week as being the fastest growing decentralised social media platform ever.

And it would seem to me that this experiment has been a resounding success.  Whilst I know tweaks still need to be made, there can be no argument that the system doesn't work.  Thankfully the tweaks are coming soon and the user experience will be greatly simplified, encouraging even the most untechnical of people to join us.  A drag and drop picture system is just one of these many upcoming tweaks, immediately eliminating the need for a secondary site and ultimately speeding up our user experience.

## The advanced bot

Reading through the responses to Rok's request I can see that @biophil has created something even more advanced than the standard upvoting bot.  In his own words:

"I operate a private curation service for a limited number of clients: 

https://steemit.com/curation/@biophil/milestone-reached-i-m-the-best-curator-on-steemit

My bot attempts to maximize curation rewards, which means it never ever votes for those curation wastelands like steemsports and curie. It attempts to predict which posts are going to be successful, but have not yet received many votes."

This sounds pretty amazing to me and is certainly the kind of bot the whales & dolphins need to be using!  The growth of this platform is dependent on the support of newcomers who are producing quality content.  I would be interested to find out how successful the use of this bot has been.  If anyone has any information on this, please let me know in the comments below.

## In conclusion 

I am most grateful for the voting bot programs and welcome them with open arms.  Especially due to my current situation.  But like Rok I will review my list regularly and read as much as I can to make sure my upvote is not going to people who have become lazy with their content or indeed begin utilising their own bots to create posts, as it appears to be with accounts such as @ozchartart.

The bot is not an excuse to be lazy, but rather a tool for helping us consistently support others and create more time in which to dazzle the community with our awesome posts.

Thank you for reading.  Hope this has been helpful.

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