None of us can prove how many users left frustrated from watching the same people get rewarded day after day. One of the accounts in question was trending when they ADMITTED to just rewriting the article .. (not enough) and still kept trending the very next day!
fyi, in case you wonder what impact that has on people, it makes me feel like if I were to invest in SteemIt, my money would be redistributed to whales, sock-puppets, and friends of the whales. It makes me feel the site can't be trusted and the largest stakeholders can do what they want. If anyone speaks out or even has a question, they are threatened, teased and attacked mostly by those who are benefiting from collusive voting.
That is how SteemIt feels. There are many who want to earn posting, who can't speak out about it.
Personally, I had higher hopes for SteemIt than some rewards from a post. I can't even believe it is being justified... To upvote the curator's content at a higher level than the content you are curating? Are you really defending that? I haven't once seen you or the others say. "Maybe that wasn't a good idea.". Carry on.
At best, I have only heard them say, "We don't really like the idea, but it's what the whales want." Frankly - I don't find that to be a very compelling argument, especially since I have personally spoken with Ned about this very subject. There seems to be a lot of attempts at justification and passing the buck, but no actual acknowledgement about how users actually perceive it and feel about it. This doesn't help the situation.
And there is almost a complete lack of any discussion about the arguments raised in this post. I'm wondering if some of them even bothered to read it.
Yes - as I stated at the beginning of this post, it is the M.O. of many users to simply attack and attempt to silence, deflect, or project. You can see in this very post how some of the guild members and their supporters have decided to act. I attempted to have an open discussion about legitimate points of criticism. What have I received? Flags, personal attacks, and trolling. And a lot of it is coming from the very people who have been entrusted with the CEO's delegated power. Ned, however, seems to believe that claiming to be "hands off" (which he is certainly not, due to his involvement with the guild and its members) is the best way to handle it.
Nobody wants to assume any responsibility, let alone act civilly.
When I read the comments here, I want to put the "self-voters" on mute.
However, @ats-david, I happen to think it reads about the same as it did during the steemvoter, steemsports, ozcharts, debates. Just different people taking different sides.
I still say as long as the voting seems fixed, it makes SteemIt look scammy.
Thank you for your post and the discussion.