When I first came to Steemit, I immediately assumed that upvoting yourself is done just for fun, and doesn't really pay you anything. Any other option is just absurd, and could easily be manipulated by users.
Imagine my surprise when I found out that I could pay myself by upvoting my own posts!
Even after considering this, I still can't believe that this option exists. Let's consider why this is such a horrible idea:
1. Easy manipulation of the platform
A simple way to make money would be to invest in the platform and upvote every single one of your own posts. There, free money! The posts don't even have to be any good, they just don't have to be so bad that people flag them.
This type of manipulation could easily be the reason why Steem's price has been crashing.
2. Post quality from whales will go down
If you can pay yourself, you don't have to work hard to get paid anymore. Submit any old post, upvote, and forget. The platform will be spammed with these boring, meaningless posts.
3. Unequal distribution of Steem/SP
An immediate consequence of this problem is that it makes the rich richer. In order for this platform to work, the SP has to be spread out as much as possible, and not put into the hands of a small number of users.
4. People shouting "scam"!
Imagine you're a new user on the site. Here are two facts you'll learn on your first days here:
- upvoting yourself pays you
- every single dev is a whale
this reeks of a scam, and has undoubtedly scared off new users.
This option has got to be taken down. It makes absolutely no sense and is hurting this website!
Unless you have hundreds of thousands of SP, voting for yourself won't make much of a difference. Even millions of SP only produces a few bucks per 100% up-vote, on average...I think.
From what I've seen some whale upvotes are worth more than a hundred bucks (or at least were worth that much a few weeks ago, should be a bit less now...)
But one could argue that this is exactly the reason why the price of Steem and SP is so low - if it was higher it would be more beneficial to upvote yourself and create Steem without contributing to the platform, thus lowering the price back down.
So the fact that upvotes aren't worth that much now might stem from the self-upvote problem
It gives a completely different perspective on masturbation right?
hahahaha :)
When posting unless you uncheck the box all of your blog posts are automatically up voted by you when you submit the new post. Comments though are not.
What's your vote worth? A penny?
I look at up voting myself the same way as I look at finding loose change on the sidewalk. It'd be stupid to ignore it but it's not really significant.
That might be one reason for the four full power posts a day rule. How much money are you going to make by voting for yourself four times in a day?