One of them tried bidding 180 SBD for a vote, but that was over the limit. He is spending hundreds on votes to trend, but does that mean a profit? I've heard some say you don't actually make money that way. I can accept that people use the bots to get a little more 'exposure', but this is serious money. Of course those running the bots are quite happy to take the money and they are doing really well from it. There must be some sort of bidding war going on to get the big votes. I'm just not going to play that game. There are some people setting up accounts we can delegate to that will flag posts with excessive rewards. That may be a more effective way to do it and give a degree of anonymity. I really don't care about losing some curation rewards. I just want to see good content rewarded from a more diverse set of users. This is why I have delegated so much already. Much of that gains me nothing in return.

I note that several big Steemit players are voting on these. Are they just following the bots? I think they should be conscious of the content they support.