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RE: Is the Steem social contract being abused? Steem funds are to be used to sponsor unrelated projects.
I think its entirely fine to use steemit as a fundraising platform for commercial projects. No one has a gun to their head when it comes to the upvote button. If you disagree with those practices, don't upvote those posts.
That fact that it's possible to do something does not imply that is legal to do it. And I mean "legal" from the social contract's point of view.
So the real question is this: does Steem's social contract allow this?
As you said in your other comments: the steem "social contract", whatever it is, hasn't been defined in any way. I wouldn't make accusations of people abusing it, when they are being totally open in their post about where the money is going. If people feel it is abuse of the platform, they don't have to upvote, and can even downvote. I feel that this post can create misunderstandings among people who don't necessarily understand all the inner workings of Steem (it can be complicated).
Taking whatever money you earn from posts cannot be abuse of the platform. It might be abuse of people's trust if the writer lied about where they were going to use the money and then used it differently. But that's not what is being discussed here. Steemit is designed to reward you with money from the posts, and it is allright to take that money out of the platform, by design.
It hasn't been explicitly defined by still it exits. Lack of censorship on the Steem blockchain is the best example. Has this aspect been formally defined?
Steem is not meant to spend funds just on anything the shareholders want. The part of the social contract that matters in this case, has been clearly described in the whitepaper: Steem is a mechanism which constantly redistributes funds from those who contribute less to the system to those who contribute more.
@jonnybitcoin's post clearly does not meet this criteria - he just asks for money without even trying to contribute anything to Steem. He is just making use of the fact that some Steem whales are BitShares shareholders.
But I have to admit this: it's not really @jonnybitcoin's fault. He is free to post anything he wants. The fault lies with those who upvoted it in an attempt to suck money out of Steem into their private investment which is unrelated to Steem.