Better option imo is setting a beneficiary to @null.  You can’t do this easily on steemit but you can on steempeak.  

Declined rewards just go back to the pool for other posts.  Beneficiaries to null get Steem permanently off the chain.

Those guys who burned their rewards are brave to do so! Or should I say smart. There's a psychological factor that plays when you see a post with declined Payout. Respect. (Depending on the content of course.)

Is that a shooting game that's promoted? I should look for it, it might be interesting.

There should be a certain level otherwise how one who post quality content will rise

The question is does Steemit or any of the interfaces still have room for an organic, un-promoted, new content discovery section?

I think the whole notion of "trending" is a little nebulous when a site is too big to be a single community (Steem is bigger than that) but also too small to be representative of a much larger zeitgeist. Twitter thinks it represents a country's zeitgeist but I'm having serious doubts about what it does represent and the high level of control they're imposing on trending).

What Dan's proposing here is that Trending will become largely a paid-promotional area where the payment directly benefits the entire community. That's not a bad thing.

Back in the late 1990's in London's nascent tech startup scene (and before the 2000 crash) I remember a guy pitching me his idea called "Paid Attention" which was a physical device plugged into your home phone to opt into receive marketing phone calls at a specific time of day for 30 minutes. I have no idea what became of the guy or his startup.

@theycallmedan, @hatu always come up with very effective content which brings new world to explore and which adds so much **Cryptocurrency Knowledge** and project journeys too. And most importantly this kind of behaviour reflects that he is respecting the #Newsteem culture and he truly know how **Bidbots** are used. This aspect will be discussed to some extent but there will be a time when flow of culture will be adopted.

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When someone declines payout, they are sending their reward to null? Burned? Wasnt awere of this.

Steemit is a business social network, of course, if you want to make money then you have three options :

1. Invest in Steem ( Steem Power )
2. Make quality post
3. Make combination ( 1 and 2 ) 

Steemit is not a social institution that helps those who have no money, Steemit is a business model that gives everyone a chance to make money. 

To me, downvote is a business model disaster, instead, it should have the tools as a ban on my personal followers' list. This gives preference to those with Steem Power to control what they like or dislike. The bottom line is that the value of Steem depends on 1. Investors (those who have Steem power), 2. marketing (those who promote the Steem ecosystem ), 3. developers who build applications in the interest of Steem promotion.

I agree that this is a business and that we need to attract a large mass of users and investors.

I agree that it has to be paid for the trending page, everything else is a complete failure for me.

well said,, i agree with the sentiment here, and especially that getting ROI to promote a post is not going to yield good content on the trending page.. #newsteem really is a breath of fresh air, and i can feel and see the tide is turning VERY fast.. these changes were SO needed, and despite getting a fair few flags myself, i fully support this new shift in the steem ethos..

Incredible information my friend @theycallmedan 

Totally I agree with you.. 

You right..!! Bid bots are not bad, it is bad when we use them with abuse and a high promotion service to promote our articles.

Since the newsteem started, I stopped using bots to promote my content because I understood the importance of care our Steem and this amazing ecosystem. 

My content is about meditation, and sometimes about psychology, with my content I always try to help people in our community, but how to be visible without using promotion service..?

Some people downvote original content just because the reward is high but they don’t check that the publication is original, and the autor don’t use bots. Rewards are solid organic. 

It is very clear that many people don’t understand why downvotes section was created. 

My reputation and SP are small and I don’t have the power to bring my content more visible. The only thing I’m trying is to help people. 

If you have the time visit my profile, I did some publications to help Venezuela community and some donations to people to try help others bringing food. 

You know, I’m not reach but I’m trying to do my small support to make some difference in this beautiful ecosystem called Future for all of us. 

Have an amazing time.

Your, 
Edgar..!!

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> You can't put certain people on pedestals and say it's ok for them to use bid bots for free trending space but not others, that leads to Old Steem quicker than an elevator to hell.

The above paragraph nearly cracked my ribs. More seriously, #newsteem is marvellous and will take Steem to the promise land. This new approach to bid bots is great and beautiful.

$trendotoken

I think that we should see organic, not bids form the trending page.  

Calling it trending when the only way to get there is to buy a slot is a massive misnomer and not an accurate reflection of what is "trending".

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I always took the approach that, I was never abusing the system by using the bots...I just wanted to get seen!

If I had something I thought should get more eye balls, I happily paid for it...Without a second thought of...Hey, this is supposed to cost something!

You are right man...Advertising and promotion SHOULD cost something out of pocket. Think of Google, no one in their right mind thinks Google will pay them back a percentage of what they dropped on Ad Words....But here on Steem, we got spoiled.

We expected ROI just from the upvotes.

Took me a while to figure that out...We shouldn't expect to get all our Steem back and like you said...Heck, we should burn some in the process.

Cost of doing business and the more this starts to make sense to me...I'm perfectly fine with it all.

New Steem is getting better and better the more we start to see how this will play out in the long run...

I do buy vote of about 2 steem sometimes in order to get let's say. 0.30$ payout on it because I want prospective curators too see how quality the post might be and then vote it. What I'll never do is to inorganically trend myself. Because I believe that should be naturally instilled. I basically feel an action of burning steem while promotion is basically a bit about respecting the importance of the trending Pages. Like you said, no one is entitled to trend it isn't really a birth right. I Believe the community should determine who trend. That way there will be an Equilibrium or check really. In other words we're cleansing steem and we're getting there.

This is a great point. I completely agree with this line of thinking. It costs money to promote your products in the real world, it should cost money here too.

If promotion could be implemented, either directly into the Steemit front end or through some private initiatives I will be all for it. Problem with the current solutions is that they wreck a system promising to be something else: proof of brain. You can't have one number with a dollar sign in front showing both the community's assessment of and reward for quality content and a user's need to have people see his or her post. This is as I see it the main problem - that the most fundamental thing in Steem distribution becomes ambiguous and even illogical.

The trend in online advertising is to reward people for watching commercials, and steem is perfect for this. Instead of paying for *not* seeing adds, you could pay people to have promoted posts in their feed. Psychologically it would probably make much more sense to people. If someone set up a system like that with a sort of trickle down economy I would be all for it. Could be tons of market solutions I couldn't even fathom. I just think it is important to make sure they are not built in the same place that is already occupied by important Steem infrastructure.

**I completely disagree with this**
>> Regardless of your content is hot shit or not, trending space should never be free, ever.

**What is Trending Then?**
![](https://cdn.steemitimages.com/DQmUoFa43P9gXB6ynXVEVMHenegQYBJPx5MVqPNDs77A1sT/image.png)

In my opinion, the trending page should be fully organic, by allowing paid posts on trending page we are just spreading a false message to the whole community members as if these are the recent hot discussion on steemit but sadly which is not true most of the time.
 In fact, this is the exact situation of steemit trending page for a long time now and I know many are complaining about this specific topic many times.

If you want trending position to be paid then what's the use of the promoted page. Now don't tell me promoted page here is different, I know it and I just want to give example.

**Let's take an example of other centralized social media, in theory, don't pay for twitter's trending page, neither for facebook or youtube.**

***Now we are in decentralized media(so-called ) and being one of the influencing people of this platform you are saying trending page should be paid??***

### Trending represents the currently popular topic/discussion of the entire community and hence it should always be organic.

>> You can't put certain people on pedestals and say it's ok for them to use bid bots for free trending space but not others,

This is what I always say if you set any rules then, it should be equal for everyone. But here, it seems like rules/barriers/....whatever you say are only for small fishes.

Indeed, ive suggested that before, if they want to actually promote and buy ad space, then make it decline payout. Otherwise, the argument that bidbots were simply or mainly used to buy ad space or promote is a lie. People were doing it to make money first. To prove its not about making money from buying votes, decline payout. Thus is the first time ive seen this actually happen.

First of all, from the steem whitepaper it doesnt seem that by declining payout you "BURN" steem. It just remains in the reward pool. Theres a difference imo. 

>Promotion should never be free, or you get the worse of the worse!

This is point one we try to make when dealing with bidbots.

>Honestly, who is anyone to think they deserve a free spot on trending? 

This is the second point. Its a trending page for stuff to trend by proof of brain, by a large number of people deciding its "hot shit". 
If the bot delegators and bots dont care what the content is or dont even look what posts are that use their service, regardless of them blacklisting the worst offenders, even those that dont create absolute shit content, their content wasnt "picked", "chosen", "evaluated as being something that wants to be seen" by any larger group of people. 
It was just decided by the guy that has the money to pay for that spot and that action is quite detrimental to the platform. 
If they for example burn the Steem to trend, that would be a positive action as a counter balance to them taking the trending position. That doesnt happen. 
Paying the front end to place on top would be positive since its the front ends choice to place them there and that goes towards more development, employee pay and it doesnt create unnecessary inflation. 

>You can't put certain people on pedestals and say it's ok for them to use bid bots for free trending space but not others, that leads to Old Steem quicker than an elevator to hell.

Exactly. Thats what i mentioned in my last post with the "fyrst example". You cant let people wiggle themselves out as a "exception" just because they promised to do something, even the smallest insignificant thing. He so easily manipulated people on steemchat the other day. He got so confident that he stacked bot votes to the top of the trending page 2 times and then Whatsup, that actually talked to him on Steemchat upvoted him.
People will promise anything for the rhetoric to soften. 
We cant let that happen. 

>These two users declined payouts, then used bid bots to reach the top of the trending page.

This is a much better option, but still not ideal. Forcing declined payouts is positive in the sense that it gives our trending page "ad space value". Thats a huge benefit. Before, our ad space was worthless.
 
Still, the tokens arent burned (like you said here) which would be the best option since it would provide Steem a sink which it does not have and desperately needs and would work to reduce inflation. By declining payout the steem just remains in the reward pool for others to use. 

This opens an opportunity for front ends and ill ping @steempeak and @justineh here since now they can simply calculate the cost of getting to lets say no1. spot on the trending page and offer that spot up for, lets say, 10% discount then the author promoting the post would have to pay via bots.
 
<b>That creates a business for front ends and makes them sustainable, profitable, much more so then bidbots that only take a small 5%-10%-15% (or what ever it is) cut and the rest going to delegators.</b> 
The front end could take 100% of the promotion payment, which in turn avoids unnecessary inflation, which could potentially lead to higher quality front ends we so desperately need.