Your Vote Is Your Power
Are You Using Your Vote To Promote What You Want To See More Of On SteemIt?
Many people post/talk about being unhappy with the trending page, or not liking the value of this post or that one. It has been discussed that what we like or want to see more of is relative to our personal preferences.
However, are you using your vote to help mold SteemIt?
If you are reading this there is a good chance you are using at least some of your votes to reward content that you like and to help promote the growth of the site. Some have just turned on a voting bot and have mostly walked away. That is their right as they are the holders of their stake and I support their ability to use their stake how they like. We all benefit from them "holding" their Steem.
I can not blame you either way, as I have been excited about earning some easy Steem myself. However, as we grow, I have made a decision to voice my opinion of content with my vote. It is easy to lose sight of long-term goals in becoming focused on short-term rewards.It is not my intention to criticize anyone or tell anyone what to vote on. I just want to encourage everyone to promote what you want to see more of. I personally want more diversity, I want to see articles on parenting, sports, special interests, science, view points, etc. I want to use my vote to support new-users and minnows who are swimming upstreem to get noticed.
All votes are not upvotes, we also have the power of the flag.
I flag posts that have 1 picture or sometimes a video and no words. At least tell me why you are sharing it.
To be clear, I don't care about the pennies, I care about the clutter though. I don't use bots for voting on this account and I never have. I don't seek curation rewards, I vote for what I find interesting, at the time I see it. (Natural Use) I often scroll down "New". For the most part during my SteemIt Journey I have avoided flagging and leaned towards education and discussion. The number of 1 picture posts, and other crap I see with no text makes it harder for me to find the people who are trying to write, post and interact on SteemIt. So, if I right click and google search that photo and there are millions of copies out there, I am just going to flag it. That is how I am choosing to use my stake. I am not going to find a special room on SteemIt chat and report anyone or join a police squad, I am just going to do a bit of clean up as I go.
What are you using your votes to support? Do your actions help mold SteemIt in the direction you want to see it grow?
What about your flag? Are you using it yet? It is a tool provided to us to keep the site clean :)
Let's talk about it.
I fear it is an uphill battle, as besides the clutter we have begging (please upvote and follow me type junk), and usually they reply like thus not even bothering to upvote what they have obviously not read either.
I do support the bot and use it, not just for easy Steem, as you can see I post a lot of articles, replies and comments. But it is because I travel a lot and quite honestly can not always keep up with good value posters I follow. It is my way of support for their effort, value to the platform and support of my posts.
That said... those with value will rise, those without will not.
Over the long term, yes. Spammers and such might make a few bucks in the short-term, but in the long-term they are doomed to failure.
@whatup
I don't suggest anyone to Flagged any posts. The last one I seen someone being Flagged back in result, all their posts rewards being wipes off.
If you can not afford to lose what you have please stay out.
I have been Flagging Plagiarism posts, yes they do fight back.
Can afford to lose what you have?
Things that I flagged are
Resistance is Futile ...
I'm not overly worried about people fighting back. Offenders tend to have relatively low Reputations and low Steem Power.
@preparedwombat
You haven’t meet whales with low Reputation yet.
There are a few here.
You have been warned.
Yeah, that's why I said tend. 😜
I have noticed that there are at least a few Steemians with 100,000+ SP and low Reputations. Some of them have never even posted and are at 25, as if they're newbies. Why anyone would have that much invested here and not be at least semi-active on the site is beyond me.
I pretty much have a similar view to yours @whatsup and have done from when I first joined about a year ago.
I heard about these bots and I wanted to know more. In one way they are convenient in that you can vote for those you wish to support without having to find their content. But saying that you might upvote on a post that, if you have seen, you might have decided against. It is also a way of earning easy money, as you say. But of course modern times is all about making easy money. The banksters and the stock-market fraudsters we can thank for that.
I dont use a bot myself and never have. I prefer to actually read content and decide from that.
Perhaps when Steemit reaches a million "actual" users then they will do away with bots?
When I discovered Steemit it was a refreshing change for me. A place where I could find good honest content and also upload content I wanted to share.
Im not the best at interaction but if something gets my attention, like this post for example, then I always write my thoughts.
I have not thought about the flagging and have never once used it. The danger is it can create a flagging war of which I have seen. Its a tricky one.
With regards to "shaping" Steemit, this is a major point you bring up.
What exactly do we want Steemit to be?
I guess market forces will have some say in this.
From the beginning I have made a point of welcoming newbies in the inroduceyourself tag. And from this I have noticed a distinct increase in the motivation to make money. The other day o went into steemit chat and within 5 seconds someone asked me: "shall we swap upvotes". Forget the content, just give me your upvote. I see this more and more.
I understand this and it is a free system but it does rather defeat the point IMO- Why not create a blockchain platform where people can just upvote each other for the sake of making money. Who needs content.
I have noticed this change even in my short time on here and it definitely has something to do with money.
When I started the value of steem was so low it took many many many votes to make any actual cash. I was checking this out the other day. On one of my first posts there had almost 200 upvotes and I made just over $2 lol. All who started (after offering value price fell I mean) we posted inspite of this low value. No one can accuse s of being in it for the money at that time. Yeah we all hope it would rise but it was an act of faith for all of us. And because of this there was a genuine sense of "we are all in this together". At least that is how I felt.
Newbies ask me a lot of questions on how they can make money on steemit. As aI say this is understandable in one way and I totally agree we should be rewarded for good content. I suppose I hope Steemit would transcend this impulse but of course Steemit itself is promoted as a place where you get paid for content. I dont know where it is all going but life has a way of being driven by wave of public wants and wishes whether we like it or not.
I can not control steemit, no one can, butI can control myself, and as such I will continue to look for and upvote good content.
Very powerful indeed and yes something a lot of people need to consider when upvoting things! Thanks for this post!
Sincerely,
@joeparys
whatsup you are always a voice of logic I very much appreciate your existence.
I am a little scared to flag post so they dont rage on my account or anything, i have seen wars between people and I am not encouriging that. However i chose to upvote content i like and so that content keeps comming :)
@whatsup i see that you are still lost on your way to the bitcoin store...i still have a beer waiting for ya if you ever end up in colorado land...
I appreciate the reality that people that are owners of steem have a level of power thats seen in their vote. I appreciate the ability to choose, and I think its the baseline of being powerful.
I am trying to push the #discussion tag @timcliff introduced earlier last month and was wondering if you would check out this post and if you like it engage the discussion, up vote and maybe even resteem it...I am trying to up my ownership in the steem world and need some whale figures to look at me...
https://steemit.com/racism/@breakthrough/racial-reconciliation-main-stream-media-being-politically-correct-discussion
I don't flag very often, but when I do flag, it's hate speech that tends to earn a flag. Yeah, I should probably flag copy-pasta more often than I do now.
Yes, we want to see in steemit meaningful things and learn more by interesting article, and not like some who use there photos(body) to attract people to upvote. @whatsup
Me saying my honesty here, I use my vote to for projects I support even it worth little. I flag user once because it was spammy and I was annoyed.
I am not fan of bot voting but I am using it to help people around me, so I kinda have my own voting guild to constantly support my favorite users who constantly creating quality posts whilst also contributing to steemit.