Why are we able to vote for ourselves on Steemit??

in #steemit7 years ago

IMG_2155.PNG

I’m not sure how popular this post is going to be but I’m going to publish it anyway.

I’ve thought long and hard about this and I think being able to vote for yourself or across multiple accounts you own is a serious weakness of the Steemit Platform.

Unfortunately I don’t have data on the proportion of the total reward pool made up of self-votes but I imagine the amount is significant.

In my opinion, it represents a portion of the reward pool that is allocated in a completely inefficient way with no bearing on the quality of the content, only the steem power of the account. The formula for Steemit to move forward is a fair reward structure supporting quality account across a growing community of users.

Ring-fencing a large portion of the reward pool for self-voting will in my view slow down the progression of Steemit.

In addition to slowing progress, It is also completely open to abuse. Currently, having 10k of Steem Power will afford you 5/6 dollars for a single upvote. If you just invested in Steem for this purpose alone, you could make that investment back in a year by abusing the system. I know it is possible to get downvoted but you could easily hide posts in Steemit by not having followers and giving your posts obscure tags.

I just don’t see the logic in it and I’m concerned this will damage the integrity of Steemit. I think Hard Fork 19 will actually bring more attention to this issue as more people will see the benefit (first hand) of self-voting.

Any thoughts on this, @teemsteem.

Sort:  

Gotta remember that steemit needs investors. Letting you promote your own content is the benefit of having pumped in some fiat.

Still voted for yourself, though... :D Wait, I can vote for my own comment, yay! :D

Don't worry, I voted for yours as well :)

I love the fact that you voted for your own post :)

That's done automatically, no?

You can take it off.

You are right! I didn't know that, actually.

Thanks!

Gonna have a look at your posts now...

Obviously, upvoting your own content is pretty lame. With some exceptions maybe.

I commented what I think of the possibility little bit lower on the comments here, I don't think it is lame at all if you spend energy and time and think your content is worth something, it just completely depends on the situation.

Agreed! It depends on the situation, indeed.

depends yeah!

Suggestion: You can upvote yourself once a day only

It makes you come out and create content; this content can be your own post or curation comment. In reality steemit is not your regular blog site.

It is meant to absorb any activity happening on it as a transaction. Hence you not only notice a upvote, but you could also potentially downvote self. Now you decide which one is more seriously damaging one 😛

I agree that for the integrity of the system it needs to be done away with. Integrity is still a thing, right?

When you are submitting a post, the upvote post box is checked by default as seen in the screen capture below (bottom right corner)

Screen Shot 2017-06-21 at 4.11.06 PM.png

Back to the topic: I am for the idea of removing the upvote button on your own posts. It would be more interesting to see those votes being distributed to other posts that are relevant to you and think they hold value.

Then there is the argument that you should be able to value your own created content, abusing is not good, but biggest part of Steem community creates content that they consider valuable, and this takes time and energy. To upvote yourself just means getting small boost for the work you do.

“The Best for the Group comes when everyone in the group does what's best for himself and the group.”

― John Nash

You might have a point also.

The thing is I still have my 10 votes and I use only one on myself, I don't post more than one post in two or three days, all my other votes go for others, so I am contributing and just taking a small profit from my votes, because I do spend time in creating my content and I don't run around and ask for followers, it is just nice to put my stuff out there and get a little something out of it even if I know I am not going to get huge profits from my posts and my small follower base.

Great quote by the way!

That's a fair approach!

We are still relatively small in the platform with close to no influence so I understand that yes it would be fair to help ourselves. It would be tougher to find an excuse for more influential steemers to do so. Actually, it would be against the principle laid out in the quote (the best for themselves would be to spend their upvotes on others).

But again, it completely depends, yes, if the steemer is using all his power or most of his power on himself it is not benefiting anybody , but this one person, promoting one of his posts though doesn't seem so wrong if he actually created quality content. What is ten dollars if you spent three hours creating your content? If it actually benefits others or if you had to spend money for a camera or any other gear to create the content. It depends on what you give and there are always going to be selfish people, but I like to think that the kinder ones will weed out the bad ones.

Definitely, on the long run it will all balances itself out. Good point!

I still do not know what the real impact of HF19 will be on this matter.
But who does not agree with the possibility of giving votes in the own posts, can always vote in the posts of other people. :)

one way to see this is that we are being offered a free will to act on our post, just like a conscience. we are supposed to contribute valuable content on the platform so thats why its on default to upvote your post but in a case whereby you are not sure if your post is valuable, you can choose not to
upvote it, and if you had already made a post and then after going through it over again you think its not worth an upvote, you just downvote your post.especially good for minnows like me, sometimes you come up with great and valuable content and you dont have enough followers to decide if its valuable or not, atleast being able to vote for your good content comforts you.