Follow Friday: New Steem > Old Steem

We are nearly two weeks into the post-hardfork era where everyone gained free downvotes, but lost some posting rewards. It has seem some drama with the blockchain going down for a couple of days and some flagging wars as the vote sellers reacted to what the community was doing. My friend @katharsisdrill got caught up in this when he created a mascot for those voting to counter excessive 'bid bot' usage. That is still going on, but some big accounts are taking action against some of the abuse.

Bidbotphant

There are some debates going on about what constitutes abuse, but it is generally accepted that buying multiple votes for a low quality, low interest post is bad for Steem, even though the vote sellers always profit. There is some merit in buying votes to promote projects and important news, but those with a lot of SP should not think themselves overly important as to be on Trending all the time. Some of them are buying votes and declining rewards or sending them to the @null account, which is better.

We are seeing some new curation accounts and some vote sellers switching to a better curation model including @curangel and @smartsteem. The former allows you to nominate candidates for their downvotes is you delegate to them. I am seeing good people I know get rewarded by these schemes.

I believe Steemians should look to use their downvotes for the benefit of Steem in general. You get 2.5 full flags each day before it needs to recharge. A good account to follow is @dmacs which is featuring some people to check on. If you are nervous of retaliation you should check how much SP they hold. A lot of them do not have much as they are always powering down to free up Steem to spend on more votes. I do not know how much they are making, but they are taking an unearned share of the reward pool that we want to claim back.

Another way to do this is to join the @SteemFlagRewards community. This is not the sinister conspiracy some paint it as. It is a group of Steemians who are prepared to take the risks of dealing with abuse for the good of Steem. It is not their policy to attack people doing good work here, but as individuals you may get see some downvotes that some would disagree with. We each make our own judgements.

In any case there is still more than enough Steem abuse going on to use up my downvotes.

Some other people I suggest you check out are:

@blewitt is a comic store owner who has brought in lots of new people. He also has some very funny posts of his own.
@markshepard is a singer (and hypnotist!) with some nice videos to go with his songs.
@bozz is a great community member who posts about what he gets up to as well as commenting a lot.
@papilloncharity does good work in South Africa whilst sharing great photography with we Steemians.
@TenKMinnows is an account I operate and delegate to which supports small accounts who are trying to build. We need more active and engaged Steemians to curate and engage.