What Does Your Moral Compass Say?
People have talked about self-votes ever since I created my Steem(it) account in July 2016. At first, during a rather long period of time, users we're literally encouraged to vote on their own content. With time, it became a huge talking point. One could often notice people include words like greed and selfishness whenever the discussion came up and even the engagement leagues from Asher (
I mean, it's rather scary to "pick a fight" with wealthier accounts, because you never really know if you will be struck by downvotes. Some accounts have been flagged into oblivion during my time here, and not everyone is willing to take that risk, so a bunch of people keep their thoughts for themselves.
Personally, I used to self-vote on all articles I published. I never (at least not what I can remember) voted on any of the comments I made. The funny thing here is that most people seems to be totally fine with self-votes, as long as the little guys are doing it. It's entirely different when wealthier accounts does it. Especially the whales..
I can totally understand that 10x self-votes as a whale doesn't do much for anyone else besides themselves, so we don't want that to happen.. Which is why we've seen famous "flagwars" over the years. But honestly though, do we want users with less stake to vote on their own content instead of others?
It might not be worth more than $0.01 for each vote which isn't much to argue about, (which is why I think most people doesn't), but allowing self-votes is basically the same as encouraging it. Especially if you fight with wealthier users one day to prevent self-votes and the next day you allow a lesser account to self-vote..
While I was voting on my own content, I did that for a reason and I'll try to explain that as simple as I can. Everyone wants to be rewarded for their efforts, in one way or another. In terms of money, comments, a larger audience etc.
I was looking to grow my audience, engage with my readers and I wanted to grow my account. While I admit some of the mistakes I did by focusing on my own profile and my own articles instead of others, I definitely believed that my content was worthy of a few cents I could give myself with an upvote. Instead of missing out entirely, I at least earned a few cents each time I published something.
That was the sole reason for my self-votes. I wasn't willing to risk the time I spent writing, editing and creating covers for my articles. I had to earn at least something for my efforts.
That being said, I have never tried to "drain the reward pool" by creating low-quality articles or what one would call spam, and even though the quality lies in the eyes of the beholder, I was certain of the fact that my content was worthy of rewards. I have never created 10 articles per day either, so I justified my self-votes with the quality of my contributions as well as the quantity of them.
On top of that, we've always had the "inner circles", which basically is a group of people upvoting each other. A.k.a circle jerking. Many of them continued to self-vote multiple times per day even though they generated plenty of rewards from the other users in the circles. Add the general auto-votes on that, which made things even easier to vote on specific authors, at a specific time so you could earn as much as possible. Things were easy for lucky authors who gained access to the inner circles or had the chance to be put on auto. This is still a very common thing, and something I benefit from myself as well.
Now, I don't think that auto-votes are entirely bad. I definitely think they have a purpose, but I would much rather prefer manual curation, as that would also increase the overall engagement. LEOFinance recently made some changes to the rewards, so manual curators will have the same chance to earn as auto-votes. That's a huge step in the right direction and I am sure it will boost engagement overall, which will also lead to encouragement and motivation for everyone. People will be much more likely to stay as long as there is engagement. Well, that's how I see things.
Anyhow, now when we've come to the point where I mentioned LEOFinance. The communities. Let's go back to the point of this article but include communities as well.
I talked about communities in my recent post, "Hive Communities - Multiple Income Streams!", but I didn't talk about self-votes. In fact, I haven't talked about self-voting in a long time..
However, with communities, Hive users are able to have multiple income streams. One income stream for each community they are active in. One could say that we have managed to change the tide with communities, as communities also results in a different group of users. A different user base.
With that comes different users spearheading. The wealthy accounts we are used to see doesn't necessarily invest, contribute or passively earn anything on the communities, which gives us new whales and a different crowd of people. Even though we might still see new "inner circles", I personally love the idea of having communities. It gives Hive users more freedom and they can easily choose where they want to be.
How about self-voting though...?
It is still an on-going thing and I doubt it will ever stop, but on the other hand, everyone wants to earn. You want to earn as a content creator and you want to earn as a curator as well. It doesn't matter if you engage or not, are active or not. You obviously want to profit and make something out of your investment.
Is it the end of the world if a whale self-votes a few times per day?
10 times wouldn't do much for anyone besides themselves like I said previously, but how about 5?
As long as they "spread the wealth" with the other 5 votes it should be okay, right?
I don't know about you, but I love the fact that we reward each other. It is more rewarding for me to give back in whatever way I can, instead of keeping it to myself. I want to help others. I want to motivate, encourage and inspire people. Both online and offline.
I do that in real life on a daily basis when I'm at work. I work with people who suffers from mental illness. I even risk my own well-being and my own body, perhaps even my own life sometimes when I force someone to drop a knife they are cutting themselves with, or when they tie a rope to hang themselves. I went from being a full time freelancer, or a better word for it is probably a brand building business owner, to a full time student so I could work with what I do today.
I brawl, I'm taking a few punches sometimes and a couple of kicks, but I still do my job because I love it. Not the pain or the bruises, but I love to help others. I give and I get something back. That is truly rewarding for me.
Is that good or evil?
I never considered myself to be selfish back when I was self-voting, and I definitely didn't upvote my own content because of greed. I did that because I felt that my content was truly worthy at least those few cents I could give myself. I gave something and I got something in return..
To tell you the truth though, in my opinion, that is also where this entire problem starts. We are different, so there will always be different opinions. That is often a good thing, but sometimes it's not.
It shouldn't be up to me to decide whether my content is worth something or not, especially not how much it's worth. People on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram and all those other social media platforms post content without making a single cent. The rewards on those places are in the form of engagement. They get likes, shares and comments. They give something and they get something in return. That is why engagement is crucial on Hive as well.
On Hive though, people often seems to forget that money is not the only reward you can get. Oh well, sorry for the sidetrack, I was sure I was ready for an article about self-voting and nothing besides that.. But I guess I was wrong.
