Exactly, you don't know about them, because most of them are anonymous/inactive. In contrast, I am not - which makes me an easy target for blame.

I appreciate that and I am not blaming you for anything really - I am just highlighting something that I would like to hear your response to and to learn if maybe I can help to redirect your energy a bit :)

I agree. But circle-voting, horrible content discovery & low incentives to vote on others peoples content are also responsible. Don't you think?

Yes, all of these are relevant. I am just commenting on your thread here because I see such a glaring contradiction in the message of the post and the actions in reality.

The thing is, in my eyes, Steem is not a forum or just a social platform. It is the blockchain of opportunity and hopefully dApps. Which means, that I'm seeing some of these things with different eyes.

In order for opportunity to be real for users and not just something obviously and disturbingly fake like 'the american dream' and 'land of the 'free'" - the blockchain has to be able to fully support 'proof of brain', or at least not totally diminish it for short term financial gain of those who 'corner the market on opportunity'. Like healthcare, opportunity isn't actually a market, yet people have found ways to make it look like one.

I am here both as a financial experiment and because I value censorship free social media. I would use Steem even if money wasn't involved at all - but the issue is that people like me actually won't use Steem because they see the glaring unfairness of how it is right now. I actually know for sure that over 80% of people I know (many of whom aren't so much like me at all) won't use Steem for similar reasons.

Do you think it's unfair that @steemmonsters are promoting some of their posts with promotion-services? Or do you think that this brings value to Steem by making more Steemians aware of @steemmonsters.

I think that great products get spoken about in social spaces such that they succeed. Products (and messages) that rely mostly on paid placement tend to be of a variety that the majority actually aren't so inspired by.. Hence they are paid. This is a generalisation, but having studied business and information systems to degree level and worked in numerous industries - including having studied the psychology and history of marketing, I maintain that generally if I need to pay to promote my 'thing' then it probably isn't as good as it could be. There's nothing wrong with marketing, but in an environment which is specifically designed to promote good 'things' for free - paying is a sign of failure somewhere.

I personally don't relate to steem monsters, it's not my thing and I don't really have any interest in it's success or failure, but if the community loves it then they should promote it to the top of the list.

We are really talking about the difference between 'proof of brain' and 'proof of wallet'. 'Proof of wallet' is the old world that many know needs to die.

Do you think that promotion services are somehow part of Steem?

The ability to upvote is itself a promotion service. The original 'promotion' system that is built in to Steemit.com was always pathetic (I even considered leaving Steem when I first used it and realised how badly thought out it is) and I offered an overview for a redesign of it over 18 months ago - but like most suggestions here, it was ignored.

And would you rather have them in the hands of some anonymous guys, who don't care, or in my hands - who cares (maybe too much) about Steem and is always available via Discord/Slack/Steem.chat.

Promotion on Steem was designed to be in the hands of everyone with Steem Power. The Terms of Service for Steemit.com actually state that bots are banned - but this has never been enforced. I think it's clear that both @ned and @dan want to take whatever steps possible to prevent the use of bots in the future since it breaks the basic design.

I think that as long as bots are being used it doesn't make a huge amount of difference who runs them, at least in terms of the effect it has on the public perception of Steem. I know that there are bot operators who are far less rational and perhaps less well intentioned than you are - but it still doesn't change my feeling about the belief that says that you are acting always for the best interests of Steem, while at the same time participating in the primary activity that harms Steem the most.

It would be great if we could all collectively re-envision Steem so that it is optimally attractive to new users and investors. I have, in the past, participated in an early social networking startup that attracted the biggest venture capital groups and I know how they basically think about investing in such projects. They are generally looking for projects that can gain mass adoption and there is no way that Steem can achieve that as long as people see such glaring exploitation of the system occurring.

I'm sure that if you weren't running your system, then someone else would just run something to replace yours - I just don't see much of a future for Steem as long as people are actively supporting the mechanisms that are destroying it. It's a lot like a drug addiction.