I am fairly new to Steemit as well and have been testing a few options, steemvoter being one. And like this article steemvoter and my own upvotes dragged my voting power way down.
I only have 500+ steempower and at 100% my vote is only worth a measly two and a half cents at full power and 100% steempower, so it has been a week and even after turning off all automatic votes my voting power has yet to ever reach 100%.
So I went to steemd.com and saw that my account had been making upvotes with all my steemvoter rules disabled. I made no upvotes, so who had taken control of my account? My first thought was steemvoter as they are the only ones with my "Private Post Key" or else someone had hacked me.
Next I went to steemvoter FAQs and searched the word "upvote" and this was the only return:
What are Steemvoter Curation Guilds?
This is a philanthropic feature you can use to help give a little back to the community. When the Guild checkbox is ticked, we will use up to 1 full power vote each day from your account (or a few votes with power that adds up to 100%) to upvote 1 or more winning post(s) that are chosen by the community. Guild winners are picked through a nominating contest held every couple days. Follow our @steemvoter account on Steemit if you want to participate in the nominations.
So it was true, steemvoter had been using my vote and what about that "Checkmark" in the "Guild Box"? well I made extra sure that was removed. I deleted my account and reinstalled it with no "Guild Checkmark" and noticed that once my account was approved and my three rules were made available. That Checkmark in the Guild Box has mysteriously reappeared. Strange how that can happen and how such a little fact like that was not mentioned up front...
Actually my understanding was that "Good Content" received the rewards and not just Friends and Followers sharing pennies...
No doubt some people will feel obligated to Upvote back an Upvote received and some will actually demand such recourse. However such tactics undermine the "Ultimate Primary Objective" of Steemit, which is to "generate good content". So all these Voting Guilds are a distraction from the "Primary Objective" and will likely be the cancer of greed which kills Steemit...
This very article above is a perfect example of the corrupted majority of people who are non-participant on Steemit whose only interest is the money and have no interest what so ever in content or the quality there of. Not to blame the Author of this post as such behavior has become well accepted, even commonplace and the norm for steemit. A sad condition indeed to behold...
Wow! Thank for the insight! :))