I think the important thing to keep in mind is that it acts as a form of vote-trading/excessive self-voting if I can delegate to a project and get a vote on a post every day (for instance). I realize they're not guaranteed and that curators keep an eye on it, but at the same time this means that ecency's voting power then is a tiny bit more focused on those who delegate to it and ignore others who don't. I'd be fine if for instance ecency were to ignore people who post on other front-ends (which I know you don't), but this sort of delegation exchange for curation and extre benefits goes a bit against curation and fairness for anyone no matter their stake or who they delegate to to earn curation. Again, I know you also do other forms of curation, engagement curation, etc.

You're right that people still vote-trade, and for instance projects like dlease are mostly just abused where the only reason they can offer leasers a high APR is cause the buyers use that to vote-trade and maximize on posting rewards (which as you know means less rewards for those not doing so), that some discords welcome post sharing which also negatively effects those who don't do such a thing, but I don't agree with grouping posh together with these things. There's potential value to be had from driving traffic to our front-ends from web2 even if the chance is small currently and our reach is limited (although it has been growing partly thanks to @poshtoken and initiatives by others like @theycallmedan). They're providing something in an effort to earn some extra value, they're not delegating to POSH and then POSH for instance treating them better with more guaranteed rewards/curation because of the latter. That's my main issue with being able to earn points by delegating to then direct (your own stake, in a way) towards your own posts. Here too I understand they may all get the same sized votes so it's not like a direct (delegate x and get 10x vote back = 10x self-voting) but I feel like there's a point where there's some authors using points on farmy content, curators maybe due to it being volunteer work not doing due diligence and it costing the rest some potential curation.

I'm glad you chose to respond here, I'm not someone to hide away or throw dirt at projects for no reason, I just care about curation and the health of it on the network. It's not the first time some of ecency's initiatives have been brought up as examples by other curators and then also by abuse fighters who see direct vote-trading/selling services point towards ecency as a reason for them to exist. Maybe you can consider changing a few things so that delegations don't effect curation or that buying points don't give you profitable votes (not saying they do, I don't know, just two of the things that stood out as being controversial). I'd much rather see curation be used in a way to incentivize people to check out ecency (promotion), possibly get higher votes depending on points they've earned on there and if they continue posting through there (what leofinance does AFAIK) than these couple things that occur now. Maybe there's also a way to incentivize curators with some rewards for the promotion curation/proper curation than trusting people to go the tipu route of doing self-curation in exchange for points.

Just trying to be constructive here, I know you've heard me out in the past when I found the messages left on new accounts about delegation and proposal votes to be in bad taste so maybe you'll consider this too. I don't have anything against the other ways people can earn points so maybe more ways there or higher focus. We both know how downvote curation works on hive right now, it's neither incentivized nor is it something anyone wants to volunteer doing as it just causes drama and negativity all around. It also doesn't take a long time to see how some, who most likely also would vote-trade/self-vote/buy profitable votes are using ecency similar to tipu which I think is close to abandoned, where the only activity is getting out 1 post per day and getting the ecency vote and nothing else.