Thanks for the well-thought reply.
I agree that the Promotion tab is a poor solution and needs reworked. Maybe its worth shuffling promoted posts onto the Trending page? Promoted could work like a simple auction for a span of time for those Promotion spots on the Trending page.
Good content can buy votes as well, but what if the good content gets lost among the spam? What general behaviors are we encouraging if any content can reach the Trending page. Are we encouraging solid posts, or cheap posts? Which would become the majority?
I agree.
I don't know if this holds true. Is there a trend for bidbots becoming more expensive? Or, are we just getting a higher quantity of bots with less SP, cheaper buy-ins and less competition?
Payment is not always a net-good. Would you want to get paid in Venezuelan bolívars? The payment needs to remain valuable. I'd argue that Steemit's value is driven by Proof-of-Brain, and shouldn't be driven by Proof-of-Bidbot.
I agree, content is a commodity. People's attention has plenty of things to keep it engaged these days. Relationships and engagement are extremely valuable and should be incentivized.
So, how do we design Steemit to encourage better engagement?
On that note, thank you for the quality conversation and discussion. :D
We need to design it in such a way so it's easy to find discussions and to be able to jump into them and engage. For example how YouTube had it back in the days. Where you could find the videos with the most amount of new comments. This would be great because active users would be seen more.
Also another thing that is extremely valuable that currently is undervalued is the SBD liquid send system. That is what will make this Steem Blockchain worth the most in the long run. The Steem Blockchain surely should reward Proof-of-Brain.
Hive Mind will be interesting in that regard.