RE: "Code Is Law (Only When I Want, Otherwise It's Abuse)" - The Shaming Syndicate Of Steemit - Our Own Brand of SJWs & Social Repression
Brilliant post.
Code is law: To me means that if something is possible on the blockchain, then it’s allowed. If it’s harmful to the platform, then we need a fork to fix it, not reliance on the good will of the masses not to take advantage of it.
Self-upvoting: To me, this just means you value the effort you put into your post. Unless you’re spamming or plagiarizing, I see no reason to second guess someone’s motivations for a self vote.
Vote buying services: These exist to increase the chances of content being seen. If you value your effort enough to take the risk of buying a vote that will put your content in front of others who may also find value in it, that is your decision. Some people see this as cheating, but I’ve never seen them mention the Promoted page, which does basically the same thing as pay for upvote services, except that it puts the post on a separate page that nobody ever looks at. Pay for upvote services are like the Promited Page only better.
Voting Bots: Some people seem to think these will destroy Steemit. Everyone’s going to have a voting bot upvote for them and never read the posts. I use Steem Voter and I still read posts, and vote manually as well. There are humans behind every bot. And when I did manually upvote everything, I still had the option of not reading, which I’m sure a lot of people are still doing. We don’t need to get rid of bots, which is pretty much impossible anyway. We just need better bots.
Cheers.
I love your points.
" then we need a fork to fix it, not reliance on the good will of the masses not to take advantage of it."
Agreed. Steemcleaners, Spaminator, Cheetah, manual rockstars of varying repute or notoriety such as pfunk or Berniesanders...they can only do so much. We must minimize the time and efforts of these people that we allow to be wasted on abuse with hard code, and not fight an endless battle against what can't be stopped. Remove the economic incentive with intelligent restrictions rather than "send our best men to die in the trenches for years". As a wild, off the top of my head, example, what if new accounts could not cash out any rewards for a full power down cycle? What does that do to abusers?
"Self-upvoting: To me, this just means you value the effort you put into your post."
I would argue if you aren't producing content you see worthy of whatever your stake's share of the rewards are, you've already dun' screwed the pooch.
Large users who feel they have enough to do this I, of course, applaud as much as anyone else who gives "charity" to something they believe in.
"These exist to increase the chances of content being seen. If you value your effort enough to take the risk of buying a vote that will put your content in front of others who may also find value in it, that is your decision. "
There are also valid reasons to use these bots that are not solely selfish. At the behest of a Steemit friend, I began using these last week and the difference for the curation rewards for my followers is mammoth. My post times don't always sync up with the bids on the bots, but when I can add votes to fully curated posts I am giving huge rewards to my loyal voters and followers who have stuck with me for months through what I am sure were not game-theoretically-optimal curation rewards.
I've also lost over 15 SBD on a single bid for boosting bots, as a result of last minute bidding antics. Depending on the time of day and the bot, there can often be no way to get these votes without actually taking a loss. I work hard on my posts, so it's still totally worth it, and I often do OK.
"Voting Bots"
I agree. These are a scapegoat for the real problem - voting without any real interaction, whether that be reading or in a side community in discord, etc.
Good job! Thanks to @lexiconical you have planted 0.13 tree to save Abongphen Highland Forest in Cameroon. Help me to plant 1,000,000 trees and share my Steem Power to the others. Selfvoting is prohibited, but that should be the reason to spread the world to protect our precious environment. Check out profile of our conservation association @kedjom-keku and the founder/coordinator @martin.mikes to get more information about our conservation program. My current SP is 14273.85. Help me to plant more trees with your delegated SP.
Thanks a lot,
your @treeplanter
www.kedjom-keku.com
I self vote, I know my effort and why not. Best wishes :)