RE: If You Accept the Upvotes, You Really Need to Accept the Downvotes
Great points, well made.
I think it's a psychological thing. We see the pending $$$ against our names and instinctively it "feels" like the “money” is ours. If we get a regular payout, we normalise it. Anything that disrupts our "good thing" is anathema.
We forget (or ignore) the rules of the game that we signed up for. We also forget the reality of what happens outside of the platform.
I still can’t get over when people felt bitter that they were “only” getting $2k per post because others were getting $10k+.
The reality is; if you’re a Content-Creator the real currency is not the STEEM you earn but the following (real following not fake follows) you can amass/ bring. I.e. the attention and engagement you can garner. Steem is in the attention economy business and if Steem stakeholders do not see value what you bring to the platform, another platform will (assuming what you bring is valuable). I think sometimes people give themselves titles like “minnows” and relinquish their own power to better their situation.
Complaints about downvoting, about no longer getting upvotes, about others getting undeserved upvotes will be par of the course for any platform like this.
....and yet many "whales" are in this perpetual back-scratching club called auto-upvoting. One well-known whale makes a post and they have 800 upvotes worth $200 in 10 minutes. So much for being a "Content-Creator" driven platform.
Back-scratching, yes can be a problem - but it is different from autovoting.
Auto-voting is just a tool. Used effectively it can benefit Content Creators. I know many people that use auto-voting to provide consistent rewards to Content Creators that produce quality content.
I use auto-voting myself and I've lost count of the number of Content Creators that have thanked me for supporting them. I do not have the time to read every word of every post they make. But I do I review their blogs periodically and adjust my auto-vote, even removing my vote if warranted. Also I'm always on the look out for new Content Creators to add to my list.
I think it is important that we define the problems we see properly. Back-scratching, circle-jerking or whatever we want to call it exists and it is a problem. I'm not sure it can be completely irradicated but it can be mitigated. However eliminating or demonising auto-voting does not solve it. It is just as easy for a relatively small group of 'whales' to manually vote for each other as it is for them to auto-vote.
What doesn't scale so easy is trying to reward hundreds or thousands of Content Creators through manual voting, there simply aren't enough hours in the day. Auto-voting helps with this until we reach a point where larger Steem Power holders can run their accounts like a business and hire people to professionally curate for content. We're a long way from that point, so auto-voting is the best we've got to consistently reward good Content-Creators.
As funny as it seems apparently youtube algo rank higher videos that are controversial. So in the same spirit someone getting a +100$ worth upvote and a -90$ should feel way happier than a guy that get 10$ and almost no attention whatsoever.
The $$ part is very predominant on Steem. while this is good for transparency. It also encourages greed and makes new users feel like they aren't compensated well enough for their efforts.
I agree with this sentiment
Exactly. A very good addition to my post.
Loved this part so much!!
Yup... even if steemit dies tomorrow (hope not).. what I gained is the people I met because of it. The contests I took part in and people who taught me writing (@bex-dk, @tinypaleokitchen and @rhondak)
That's a big comments and it's a great I appreciate it @nanzo-scoop 👌