If You're Autovoting Me, Stop
I want to opt out of all autovotes I am receiving.
The more I think about the inner workings of Steemit, the more annoyed I get. I'm starting to get tired of the pretentiousness of it all. In fact, I grew tired a long time ago.
If you feel my content is worth supporting, by all means, do so.
I'm just getting irked by the idea that most posts on Steemit are created because the author receives an X amount of autovotes from X amount of users, guaranteeing X amount of money every time.
The posts are just an excuse, a facade.
The exact same thing could be accomplished by simply voting which members receive which portion of the rewards every day. No need for posts. Nobody reads them anyway. The posts are simply a middleman used to get both author and curation rewards.
People don't read your posts; they either comment in hopes of upvotes or are not real people, to begin with, but bots designed for the same purpose.
The engagement is fake, the posts are fake, the users are fake, Steemit is so fake it's not even funny.
I don't need, nor want, fake support.
I hate the fact that I've actually found myself thinking whether or not to post something, considering each autovote I get. It's restrained me from posting something that could be deemed too controversial.
I don't want to owe anybody anything. I will post what I want. If you're with me, awesome. If not, I didn't need you anyway.
People manually supporting people and content that they like is how social media should work, right?
I would like for other people to follow my example, but I know none of you will. Because you lack the balls to do so. I don't.
The idea of Steemit presented to me way back when I joined: people post content and other people upvote and downvote based on how good they think the content is.
Exactly how close are we to this vision today? I'd say pretty damn far off.
The reality of Steemit goes something like this: people choose users to autovote, others join based on curation rewards, and then those people come up with excuses to post trash every day because it makes them X amount of money.
And it always gets worse with each price spike.
I remember when during the days of 7 cents there were more enjoyable posts to be found than today. The quality of the content is inversely proportional to price, I've found.
No one autovotes me on Facebook; no one autovotes me on message boards. People like and upvote because I posted something they considered funny, valuable, good, whatever the fuck.
I'm perfectly aware that this post will change nothing in the grand scheme of things, but it will at least prevent me from being a hypocrite, so do remove me from whatever autovoting service you're using.
If you still find my content worthy of your support manually, I appreciate it. But I don't want to be a fucking leech who gets it for free.
Like almost the entire trending page on any given day.
If you can live with yourself being a leech and a kiss ass, have at it. Go hog wild, man. If you're for sale that easily, enjoy. I will hereby choose having a damn backbone instead of a cock in my mouth.
But the reason this platform inevitably fails is not people like me being "TOXIC", it's something else, trust me. It's the bullshit that goes on in here every single day. It's that bullshit that makes intelligent people see Steemit for what it is: a pretentious shit hole.
Someone should notify Trump that he forgot one very important shit hole. But that's just because no one has ever heard of Steemit. And you know why that is? Because no one has any reason to change the status quo around here.
I will hereby martyr myself, but I'm also the guy who opted out of STEEM Guild votes back in the day. Yes, I'm autistic enough to turn down free money because of silly things like values and dignity and nonsense like that. What a stupid concept, right?
Hey, look at what happened to steemit.chat, one of the truly enjoyable things about Steemit. @riverhead was adding actual value to and for the community, and what did he get for his efforts.
That's because witness votes are just as fake as the post upvotes. They're not based on anything real. So many witnesses do nothing yet continue to receive support, most likely until the end of time.
Nothing here is based on anything real. It's all brown nosing and plastic smiles.
And for the love of God, if I get one more "Thanks for sharing!" comment, I will flag the ever-loving hell out of it. Each and every single one. No, I will not upvote you, I will not follow you, I will not go to a picnic with you, I will not engage with you in any way.
Is the average intelligence score of the Steemit community truly so low that "Thanks for sharing!" is the only thing such a big portion of the userbase can possibly muster out of themselves and into their keyboards?
Don't expect this place to go mainstream anytime soon, guys.
I appreciate all genuine engagement and genuine friends I've made on Steemit. I appreciate all genuine support. But I simply want to refuse the free lunch. I believe using a social media site is more fun that way anyway.
If you're still with me, appreciated.
I think that's it for my rants for the day.
À bientôt.
I understand your frustration. I don’t think that autovotes are the problem. From my humble point of view tthe bigger autovote I am receiving the more motivated I am to create a contributive content. Maybe I create shit and maybe I deserve the autovote. Maybe if the whales were autovoting, but reading the content and possibly re-evaluating their past "autovote decisions" Steem would be a better place...Maybe we will one day reach such a state.
Anyway blame the people not the tools:) Be a better example and maybe we will one day be the cause of the change...the new Steem whales that have different, morally more justifiable approach...and maybe not...
Thanks for offering a differing point of view. I'm about to head out soon, so I'll get back to you later, but I do think that autovotes also breed complacency.
However, I do appreciate that you could be right and they may have a different effect on others.
Sure take your time and if you want to discuss the matter further more Im up for it.
I agree with your take, @fingersik. I really appreciate both having autovoters who support me, and the ability to autovote others. I don't have very many autovoters, but the few I do have value my content and want to upvote it even when they are not able to read it. Once you have so many people you are following, it's nearly impossible to get to every single person's post every day, so I appreciate the ability to autovote others whose content I've found consistently valuable. If someone who I autovote starts posting crap, I'll stop autovoting, and I expect my autovoters to do the same if I all of a sudden just start smearing shit across their feeds. Knowing I have the few autovoters that I do makes it that much important for me to make sure I'm contributing high quality content to the platform. And it has the added benefit of keeping me posting even through times of low activity on the platform. I think the ability to autovote is a net benefit to Steemit.
And I think you're wrong, @schattenjaeger, that the platform is not growing or that it's only attracting bottom of the barrel usership. In my local community, I've recently met five people who had heard of Steemit and had either joined or were planning to join. It was really exciting to see Steemit catching on without me being the megaphone holder, lol. But I was able to help those people with their questions and upvote their first posts. It feels good!
Yea not much to discuss here. We obviously fully agree with each other:P
You rock the boat, but that's OK, I was already seasick.
Is there also a way to get rid of the 95% of my followers who never look at my content, while we're at it?
I've just looked at both of your posts, are those photo taken by you? I will follow you to everywhere you take a pic, I absolutely love your work. I also get that you don't like that dark part of the network. But I'm following the two of you because of how well you're doing. I am truly grateful to have the opportunity to get paid because I really need it (the country I live in), only been here 12 days and tripled the income I was getting working far from home. But the truth is that I only got paid not just because of steemit, but from people like you who supported what I did and said. I get it that it's like mixing love and money, it just kinda gives you a bad taste. But it's one bad taste that we need to adress without getting paid less. I get what other people say about autovoting, that you earn more and helps other people. But I'm with you guys in this one. What I really like of being (starting) here is other people being supportive and taking a bit of time to think of the content they're not only creating, but sharing. You're not just earning an upvote. You're taking time to make good shit, and that is cool. You guys are. I'll try to post some good shit, but I will also put my energies in being way better than what I was before in real life, that is really the place where we should put our focus and new shit together. BTW, about the autocomments, they're like ads. I prefer those a thousand times over new youtube ones... So, cheers! I'm really happy to run into you today (I'm sorry that I'm no whale, but you guys are doing fine).
If they are autovoting you, will they see this?!
I do think that as more people join the platform, the worse the content will get!
Hear, hear. So much emphasis is put on getting as many people as possible to join the platform, and not enough emphasis on getting high quality users to join.
I'm sure there are autovoters who won't see this, but at least I tried.
Every policy change since Dan left has moved us away from quality posts.
Changing the 104 week power down to 13; linear rewards, 75/25 author/curators split; all delivering 'fairness' at the cost of quality.
My rewards used to range between 2c and $300 (most at the 2c end), now they range between $20 and $50.
So why not post 4 times a day and make $80 instead of laboring over one incredible post only to take a paycut?
Amen here. You are totally spot on about the posts and creating the quantity over quality with how the current system is designed. I think we need to focus on quality most importantly.
Ah, yes. Fairness. Because, for whatever reason, Steemit needed to become a social media site catering to people who don't know how to social media.
In the name of fairness.
Yeah...I've been saying this exact thing for a long, long time. Rather than catering to actual bloggers who know how to blog and network, the community has decided to cater to those who - quite frankly - suck at creating content and never bother to put in the time and effort to network and market themselves.
The protocol changes that have been made since last spring have been awful. There's no coherence. There's no vision from the "leaders" we have here. There's no real development outside of hobbyists and marketing outside of Facebook group posting. It's a sad state of affairs and nobody wants to listen to actual criticism, whether it's constructive or not. Everything has to be sunshine and fucking rainbows - all day, every day.
Work on something that might actually have widespread appeal or otherwise be useful, and you'll get little support for it.
Create another vote-selling bot or promise to upvote "minnows," and you'll get whale approval for your witness node, delegation from STINC, and the nincompoops who can't social media will throw their money at you for upvotes, even when taking nothing but losses on the "return."
Can't fix abject stupidity, bro.
100% truth. I do believe though that there is no need for fixing the stupidity (since as you correctly said it cannot be done), it just needs to be replaced or at least challenged by whales with a long-termish vision.
I think if the platform is really going to become the go to social media platform there will need to be millions and millions or more of daily active users. But getting high quality users should be a major priority
Oh dear, do you think so? I was hoping the opposite. I don't ever dare to click into the 'New' tab but I find a lot of newbies through reading the comment threads on posts, and a fair few of them are posting some good content.
Some are posting quality content, but I also see a lot of trash getting posted by people who don't really care
This happens on other social media too. I get more memes in my facebook feed than quality thoughtful posts. Most people just share shit there..
Just have to follow the right people I guess to get the good content. I agree with most everything you said on your post though, you have the good problem as opposed to the new people that dream of the auto votes. Dont stop posting though, don't not post because you don't know if its worthy or if the auto upvoters will be made etc... Some people care what you say and bother to respond intellectually. Just focus on those kinds of people.
A thoroughly enjoyable rant articulating many of my own views. I just wish there were more like you.
I've heard all the arguments in favour of autovoting, but where's the fun in it?
I curate manually, and yes I do actually read posts. I wouldn't vote on them otherwise.
i'm new to steemit.
joined a couple of days ago.
while browsing i felt immediately there is something artificial in the way people comment on posts and recomment and thank each other and blabla...
and my guess was: it has to do with the - still unknown to me - rewarding system of steemit.
it made me think of leaving again.
i stayed.
came back today and hit on "NEW".
reading your post i've learned there is the possibility of "autovotes".
don't know how it works but sounds weird.
i like the approach of yours!
Wow you've just vented alot there and i see where you going with this. People on here they dont actually read content on here, most of the days are consumed in ways how to auto vote and stuff like that which im not much educated on. I thought this was just a post, read and like interface where u get paid for quality work, so much for thoughts.
I actually have a hard time getting through my feed every day because there's so much good stuff to read I can't keep up with it. But I know what you mean because I see a lot of very highly-rated garbage too.
I've been so grateful for the autovotes I do receive - they might be modest by whale standards but it means a lot that people have liked my material enough to indicate they want to support me even when they might not have the time to read. I also understand it when an auto-vote goes away. I write about a lot of different subjects and maybe whatever tangent I'm on during a given week doesn't resonate with someone.
The auto-votes also keep me from posting short, throw-away stories. I know these people have invested in me and I want to live up to their expectations.
I think the bigger problem is when the autovotes go into a round-robin of multiple big accounts, often controlled by the same people, that keep boosting posts through the roof - often at 6 1/2 days when people aren't as likely to notice the circle-jerk. If these posts were really interesting and valuable, why hide the votes with a sneaky 11th hour transaction?
I've never used any of the shenanigans on steem...So you're wrong and there is at least one other:D
But I agree with your assessment of the discrepancy between what this site could be and what it has become...
I added you to my filter so any votes you get from me or any of the accounts using my voting service will be manual votes.
I don't agree that bots are the problem, though. I think it's just the lure of "easy money". Personally, I spend a lot of effort trying to prevent my bots from voting for poor quality content, or supporting people who plagiarize, buy or sell votes.
My expectation is that getting rewarded for posting here is going to follow a difficulty curve like bitcoin mining has followed for the last near-decade, and only when the difficulty ratchets up will the rewards come into better alignment with the post quality. And unfortunately, it'll probably always be hard to find quality content - look at twitter & facebook, and those folks aren't even chasing easy money. It's good to be conservative with "follow" and liberal with "mute" I think.
I've rarely even used steemit chat, so I don't have much of an opinion on that. I didn't even know (or remember) that @riverhead ran it. When I found out this morning, I voted for him as witness. Too little, too late, I guess, though.
Hei! Nyt kun luin tämän postauksesi, muistin lisätä sinut suomalaisten listalleni (jostain syystä se oli alkuunsa jäänyt) ja nyt olet listalla, joka saa automaattisesti ääneni. Ihan vain siksi kun olet suomalainen.
Etkä voi tehdä sille mitään.