RE: Whoever is front-running my comment section is a genius 😉
Are you asking me or Octo? Since your reply is to my comment I will assume me for the moment.
Don't think your likes/dislikes do not have a financial impact on Facebook. There is a profit, it just goes to advertisers, not to the person posting.
Why are you on this platform if it isn't to be social with other people and get crypto in the process? Upvoting comments in our threads is a way of rewarding users for participating and adding value to the discussion. I don't see why this is an argument... it does the OP no harm other than the cost of a little voting power (based on his statement of an 8% upvote value, he can upvote 12 comments for a 2% VP reduction, that's not bad at all.
I don't see it as anti-human, I see it as pro-rewarding humans with brain power.
I'm sorry. I've been having a rough week.
I know that in the beginning stages of any new and developing platform, the first focus will be that on the functions and understanding the use of the platform.
I want to use it like how I use Facebook.
It's strange for people to talk about having a reason and incentive to upvote something. I've always been like, "Hey, I like that!" and I upvote. Or I don't, and don't. Not, "Hey, I can make money if I upvote that or do it in X way!"
Money over quality and sincerity is what that feels like, and I think the quality of posts, and interaction will, and do, suffer.
The obsession with gaming the system for "maximum profit," even in the face of the fact that STEEM is about as close to "fake game money" as you can get while still having some distant connection to fiat currency, seems to be pretty endemic to the entire platform.
You're right in that it does seem to get in the way of the ostensible "social network" aspects of the whole thing. If one does use it just like they would any other social network, it mostly works all right. The lack of individuation, the assumption that "more steem means more value", the complete absence of design around the idea of communities despite trying to leverage curation, these are things that provide a definite pressure against the social network being social.
I'm absolutely with you when you are publicly against of the 30 minute "race for money" when it comes to upvotes. The last decade of social media analysis tells us that the long tail of content, and discovering value to individuals in it, is where a vast amount of quality lies. That flies directly in the face of both the 30 minute limit and the fact that posting is no longer valuable to you after seven days. There is no real motivation connected to the rest of the implications of the platform to write content which will be useful or interesting to anyone beyond the one week horizon.
Maybe that's fixable, maybe it's not. I just can't say.
I can say that from a game theory point of view, there is a very important phrase:
"You get what you reward."
If you look around Steemit and see behaviors which are directly counter to the social network presentation of the platform but are clearly rewarded by the rules of the platform – no one should look surprised.
And we're not.
We're just disappointed.
You, not octo.
There is no dislike button in Facebook.
I'm aware that posts and such have money attached to them that is not shared with the users.
My prime issue is with Whales and the 30 minute limit.
However, this all is more a side-topic.
I dislike seeing anti-social obsessing about how to maximize profit that gets in the way of how the interaction with otherwise go... like waiting 30 minutes to interact.