Yes.
Basically these practices all share something in common: they're content indifferent voting behavior.
When you vote on your own post farms, or swap votes, or sell votes, you don't care about the content itself. If the content isn't the thing influencing your decision, and this becomes widespread over the entire platform, than we have a worthless platform.
That's basically what happened for the last 2 years but the new economic incentives gives us tools to fight it, such as free downvotes.
Thanks again. ... I don't vote for myself. Neither my posts nor my comments. It's a principle I follow. I never downvote anyone of whom I in general have a possibility to approach in person first.
Maybe if people would have behaved in this way we wouldn't have the problems we are facing (but who knows the hidden benefits of that whole thing). But I find it nevertheless an interesting experience and I think people learn a lot here in terms of the issues entering an unregulated space. They face the great issues of society which is reflected in democratic history. We experience here what the settlers of unknown territory once went through who grew to communities and nations. Maybe those mistakes were needed in order to realize what we blame others for is not that easy.
By the way: Actually, the reward pool: Does anyone know it's size and when it'll be near emptiness? If you find that a silly question: I rarely hear it asked ... :)
The reward pool doesn't empty
It comes from inflation, the currency increases at a certain rate, around 8%pa right now, but goes down over time.
About 65% of that goes into the reward pool split 50/50 between author and curators.
Yes, it was a silly question, wasn't it? :D
From all the high arousal on this platform, a newcomer on this platform might assume that, no?