I'm so very conflicted now.
For a few weeks, I've been using the @smartsteem service. They have a whitelist and sell votes. I've been buying votes steadily for each of my posts, after giving a few days to see how they do on their own first. In this way I've been able to build up my account to over 60 Steem Power.
I've asked various people and most say that as long as I'm not buying votes for poor quality posts, there's nothing wrong with doing it.
But I've still always felt a little like I was cheating somehow.
And reading this post from you, the Steemit user whom I admire the most, has made me want to stop using the service immediately.
Please be honest with me... Is what I am doing wrong, do you feel? I mean, I'm not using bots that upvote just any content... I'm buying votes from a system that has a whitelist and that also blacklists abusers. But even still, is this harming the Steemit ecosystem? I honestly don't know enough about the system to say for sure.
Aviators are telling me to .. "Wake up now and see the truth, I'm here to show the world to you, the way it was meant to be, so follow your destiny..." ... Hehe. Such idealism! And Steemit, blockchains etc, are beacons for some people, representing a more ideal world. If I'm being part of the problem, hindering such a vision, I want to stop immediately.
Also, good whale color purple =)
She really seems like she's falling, reminding me of the whale from the HitchHikers Guide to the Galaxy. Though that one was a Sperm whale, not a Humpback.
I am not familiar with the service you mentioned, but whitelisting/blacklisting sounds good and also there is nothing wrong with rewarding good content. However, the idea of just ordering votes in general is harming the Steem ecosystem, because it means that lot of people will abuse it for quick gain and don't focus on long term vision of Steem, building connections. Most of them cash out and never invest/power up and give back to the community. If you buy votes and power up with the thought that you want to grow your account, influence on platform and being around for the long run it is a little bit different, but most of the time people are greedy and don't believe in Steem enough. Also the ones that are running the bots are profiting mostly and not the community. They take the big cut and feed scraps to people that use their services. Most of them don't even check where the votes land. I wish there was a solution to this, but bots are unlikely to go away anytime soon.
I am more for organic growth, but at the same time I find it unfair that good users don't get curated and some greedy people take away from them via bots and abuse.
I can't say what other people should or shouldn't do. It all depends what is the idea they have in mind when they order those votes. All we can do is to keep in check with the morals, ideas and common sense we each have.
Hehe, I actually have never seen the HitchHiker's Guide to the Galaxy. I have heard of it a lot though. Maybe it is time to finally watch it :)
Thank you very, very much for this reply.
So, first, please don't watch THHGTTG ;P ... The movie is sub-par. You absolutely have to read the books though. Douglas Adams was a genius. I promise you, they'll be the funniest books you've ever read =)
About the vote buying... My aim is exactly as you say... To grow my account. I have 64 Steem Power now, and about 25SBD ... I started from scratch so I feel good about my progress (been on here for 3 months now). My goal is to reach a point where I have enough followers that I don't need to buy votes anymore to increase my Steem Power. I feel better about it because they do keep a check on abusers.
Also, your occasional upvotes on my posts haven't gone unnoticed. Thank you <3
@mandelsage have a look at @tarazkp latest post -
https://steemit.com/steemit/@tarazkp/10-little-idiots-trying-to-answer-or-if-everyone-delegates-to-bidbots
See also comments.
Thank you Jolanta =) I've read it and left a comment there. Just to be clear: I have never used a bidbot before. I buy votes from their service, from real people who sell their votes through their service. I've decided to stop doing even this though... Until I am 100% of whether it's damaging to the system or not.
At least I no longer run into bandwidth problems! (Although that might only be because steemit traffic is way down right now).