@booster and @randowhale. You may have seen something about them on Steemit or even used them at some point. There may be other accounts that do this as well, but these are the ones I’m familiar with at the moment.

What are they? Essentially, you send them STEEM/SBD, and that account upvotes a post of your choice.

At first, I thought these were a cool idea, and have even used them a handful of times - A few times on my account, and a few times on others’ posts. At one point, I thought it was a great way to show your support for someone else’s post. But then I thought about it more and formed a new opinion.

Using one of these services to upvote my own post felt sleazy to me.

Let's think about this, what’s happening here?

I’m paying someone to upvote my post, which takes away rewards from every other user on the platform. @randowhale is getting rich, I earn a small profit, and everyone else gets hurt by way of lower rewards on their posts/comments.

Arguments in favor of "Pay for Upvote"

You could argue that people aren’t getting hurt, because if it’s not @randowhale using that voting power then someone else will. That might be true. Considering the fact that a significant percentage of the system-wide voting power goes unused, I think that argument lacks some substance.

Additionally, if all that voting power would otherwise be used, there’s a good chance the voting would be done by a human -
who's curating content they think is valuable. I think that type of human curation is far more valuable for Steemit than a glorified self-upvote.

You might also argue that since this service is extraordinarily profitable for the person(s) providing it, it will entice others to provide the service, which will result in a higher demand for STEEM. All else equal, more demand means a higher price. Rising price benefits all users, right? Well, the key here is all else equal.

Will users continue flocking to a platform if their perception of it changes to "Steemit: Buy votes, get paid"?

I don’t think so. I believe it will hurt the platform.

I don’t want Steemit to be a “Buy votes, get paid” platform

If you agree that this isn’t good for the platform, you have to incentivize others not to use these services! If this isn't done, these services will continue to be used.

How my behavior will be changing:

If I see a post has been upvoted by @randowhale or @booster, I will not upvote that post.
Now, if I really like a post, instead of buying them a vote I’ll be sending them a direct donation as a part of my Random Acts of Kindness campaign. This way, I can still show my support, no one gets hurt, and there’s no middleman.