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RE: Vote Buying Will Destroy Steemit If We Let It.

in #vote7 years ago

Great thoughts and an interesting discussion item. I have mixed feelings about the vote buying and renting. All of my votes are used for good content and for people who are working hard as curators and community builders to build this ecosystem. Even from a self-interested perspective, as a Steem holder, supporting good content and growth builds long term value and is a much better use of my voting power than simply selling it.

However, not everyone wants to engage with the content all the time. There need to be good reasons to hold Steem and some want a faster return. Also, the biggest issue here from Day 1 has been the imbalance in voting power. Kevin, you and I have spent the last 18 months or so supporting good content but also helping Steem climb out of that hole by giving under-rewarded users a chance to earn rewards for their work (and hopefully save some of it to increase their own voting power).

So I am sympathetic to those who want to rent or buy votes on their posts. I did not need to go through that, but only because I was fortunate to start here early. It's not easy for most people to get votes and rewards. I can see how renting or buying would be quite tempting, especially in the beginning when it's hard to get noticed.

I would much rather see good content get curated and rewarded for its merits rather than votes being sold and rented to anyone, but everyone deserves a chance and not everyone has been getting it, absent those services. So they do fill a need. That probably results in some lower quality content, but I also feel that we need to move beyond the expectation of only long posts getting rewarded. We need to reward people (at an appropriate level) for short form posts, links, memes, photos, videos, music, comments, and other activities and participation, not just long writing. Hopefully, we find those organically.

Finally, it's a free market. If voting power has a value, then that indicates a gap in the system, and I think people should be able to trade in it. We may see the same thing in the future with bandwidth as that becomes a desired item. And in the end, 😊 I don't know what effect all of this has on the content, but as long as people are engaged and participating and attracting others, then we'll see where it goes. @richardcrill

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The length of a post has little to nothing to do with its value in the community. Is it creating conversation? Is it adding to the overall value of the community it was aimed towards? To me, it goes back to the foundation, the "proof of brain" concept is the only thing separating our steem, from every other shit coin on the market and if we don't defend those principles, soon it won't matter.