Yes this is a hard thing to see past. Most of our voting and behavior on what post ends up making it on a trending page is based on the rewards. That is what attracted us to this platform and separates us from other sites.
People are focused on the money, which is why we have sites like http://steemwhales.com/ and pages like https://steemd.com/richlist. It's great for statistical data but most people look to it to see how much Steem someone has or their voting weight. Not everybody does this but the behavior usually comes up as "this post got downvoted and lost half it's rewards thanks to @berniesanders." In my opinion the reward value should not get people upset. We are posting content to share that is beneficial to this platform and others but at the same time, we are trying to monetize social media. It's like a catch 22...
I agree with your assessment. Trying to monetize human behavior, well, it's never been done before that I"m aware of...
Well thanks @stellabelle,
I keep pointing out that we don't see the behavior on other social sites like you do on Steemit. On other sites, we only see the amount of likes/comments and the report abuse button is tucked away in an expandable menu. You don't hear people making a post about how someone downvoted or disliked their post. That information to me, should be the last thing I can see. It's a part of the Steemit ecosystem in order to function so that is why it is difficult to monetize social media but I think it is a necessary direction we need to take to incentivize content creators to prevent a widespread of false information and content.
We're going to get there :)
Also, now that the posts have come down to a reasonable $ amount, I don't think people get so emotionally schizo about it. When I see a $300 post now i think, "Nice work!"