This Post is More or Less to Entice Community Discussion, I am Having a Few Concerns Arise for the Future of Steemit
Lately I have been noticing this crazy rash of finger pointing going on within the Steemit community. A lot of reporting, snitching, or whatever you want to call it about what users are doing with this platform. While some of it I get, plagiarism should definitely be policed and sharing bootlegged media as well, but now we are creating flagging bots for self upvoters when the system allows self voting? Are we going to far or is this really what the community desires for this platform?
I will admit I am not even close to on the in when it comes to what bots we have running around and what ones we aren't but the other night a huge drama ridden discussion within my community hit over some bot called smackdown.kitty and by that conversation alone and the one that proceeded it, seems a huge divide is happening about this one. From what I gather this bot autoflags people's posts down if they vote too much on their own comments or posts. But mainly tied to whale up voters and those with anything above 1000 SP by what I was told...don't quote me on that because I am still trying to grasp what this is for and why.
What I gather is the concept of self voting is being deemed immoral by a small crowd of Steemians and the targets are more on those with whale power status are up voting too much on themselves and not others. I do grasp the issues with HF19 knocking down the small guys with less voting power to spread around but not really catching onto the need to run around and police how users upvote just yet. Personally maybe I am just a keep to my own business kind of guy who doesn't care what others do by nosing in their business but to me having a bot on autopilot running on algorithms to black list posts seems a bit too excessive for the future of Steemit.
Concern number one I have, I self vote as well and I am close to that 1000 SP mark. Since HF19 my payouts went from doing pretty decent to barely scraping change. I have toughed it out through this period and kept at it but honestly without my own personal upvote on my own blogs, I would literally be seeing pocket change a day. I feel I have the right to support myself due to the downfall in my earnings, I have saved back every dime to invest back into SP and do not feel I should be punished by having what little earnings I do get get flagged away by some bot. Second point, Steemit allows self upvoting...its an option we have so who really has the right to run around and cut people's income completely out for them trying to make it through this rough period in Steemit? This I just deem as overstepping some boundaries. Last issue I see, this new bot is only focusing on dolphins and whales, which means no equality at all within its algorithm. Is it fair to punish those with more power but make it okay for the little guys to self vote? Though equality was meant to be a standard in this community??
How Far Are We Going to Go to Turn This Into a Facebook Like Drama Fest?
I don't know about you but I came here to makes some money and to have a home that was censorship free. I abandoned Facebook pretty much at this stage because I thought Steemit was decentralized and a platform to encourage free thinking and free choice in how we use this. Lately though I am hearing so many knit picky rules on everyone that I wonder if its just human nature to take all platforms and try to control people that use them? Don't get me wrong, I commend policing units like steemcleaners for cleaning up the theft and abuse content, that is needed but the policing an telling people how to use our accounts is to me really getting me to dishearten how I feel about this place lately.
I am unsure if people are grasping crypto and what decentralized means. The concept is simple, open source involvement and giving of free will to provide better positive enhancements for the community we are involved in. The finger pointing games are negative and could ruin this platform if it keeps spreading. I honestly think we should be less about calling out the wrong doers and more rewarding the people doing this right. Positive reinforcement always works way better than stirring up drama and playing the holier than thou card in most cases.
Flagging should be for some serious misuse of Steemit, putting improper material out there or stealing others content to make money on it. Upvoting should be free choice for all to do with what they want because its a part of their investment options here and it makes no sense to me to start this rule of turning something that is okay by system standards into a moral conquest to hurt peoples income. Simple solution, just don't upvote users you deem are doing something wrong but let others support them if they feel they right about it for themselves.
I am going to stick to my own moral code and compass, it has served me well in life and don't need a babysitter in life or in Steemit to point out what is right and wrong...especially a bot. I have to survive and to make financial sense of continuing to use Steemit and if I have to upvote myself to keep going so be it until some support levels return with upvoters. I write original content, I give sources to all images I get from the internet and I uvpote as much as possible that my voting power will let me for other users. I also run a free service here to help Steemians out that I do 16 hours a day with my fiance. Who is some bot to tell me how I use my allowed upvoting privileges ? I think the community really should think more about the effects of stuff like this because I can tell you right now, I am meeting more opposed to these things than are actually for it...we might want to get these things in check before its too late.
~sflaherty
