So...

What is dlike? What should it be? And what should Steem be?

And beyond what it should be, what is it?

I know everyone that uses Steemit asks themselves these questions at one point or another. I've asked myself these same questions and then allowed them to drift to the recesses of my overthinking brain, but... inevitably... the questions pop back up again to torment me.

So, my main question right now is... is this supposed to be a sharing platform? or is it only a creator/blogger platform? Is it both? Can it be both? Should it be both? Thinking about these things seem like way more trouble than they are worth, but I've had some issues recently that caused me to once again ask myself, at least, what I would like out of Steemit and more specifically what I would like out of dlike.

Recently, the Cheetah bot has flagged a few of my posts and I noticed someone I follow, @nataboo has also started to get downvoted on every dlike post he makes and now his older posts are hidden due to multiple flag bots. I also follow @crypt-skip who writes a little opinion/response to the news he posts, which I enjoy, and I suppose that is what most users on steemit/dlike would want, but quite frankly, I don't think it's necessary. I mean, I like it in the case of crypt-skip since that is his style, but it is not something that I think is a must. When someone posts a bare link to an interesting article I feel like that creates enough value for me that it doesn't seem like spam at all. Which is exactly what nataboo has been getting downvoted under the pretenses of.

I value crypt-skip AND nataboo's content. I don't think just posting a few links is necessarily spamming.

I was using dlike as a way of simply sharing interesting articles, and occasionally some music I've come across that I really enjoy.

One of the top websites that I go to is reddit. A place where I can get good information on different topics, where I can read different people's opinions on these topics, and a place where I can be entertained by various Memes and pictures/videos of dogs and cats doing funny things. This seems like something dlike and steemit would want to emulate, but many people post a single link or image and add no comments of their own and things seem to work out just fine. And another website that I regularly visit is 3quarksdaily (I recommend everyone check out that site for smart, interesting, and thoughtful articles on a variety of topics). Many of the links I've posted on dlike came from there, and the fact is I sort of was modelling my way of posting on the way 3quarksdaily post. They quote a few paragraphs from whichever article they are linking to.

So, I've noticed while browsing the site, I quickly look through the headlines, and if that pulls me in, I'll click the link to see more of the article, and if that pulls me in even further, I'll jump to the main website they are linking to. Pretty normal obvious stuff right? Well, I figured in many ways that seems like what the dlike idea most closely represents.

The funny thing to me is, if I do this now the "steemcleaners" come and flag me. And, I can still post a single link to a youtube video that I thought was interesting and i'm not flagged by these bots, and no one accuses me of stealing anything. It's just me sharing something cool and interesting that I found on the vastness of the internet.

I hope this doesn't sound like a whining post, it's just a strange thing. The internet is a crazy big sharing machine, and it seems natural in a social media world that Steem inhabits, as long as you are using quotes and not posting a full article I would think that would be ok...

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I guess at this point if I continue to post I'll have to either leave the tiny couple of sentences (sometimes only a fragment of a sentence) that dlike pulls from the articles I'm linking to or write a small blurb of my thoughts. Though, sadly, my thoughts about the articles usually consist of "Well, this is interesting, I'd like to share it with others." Will I have to write that from now on? It seems pretty silly and doesn't improve anything. I just don't seem the need for it. So many of these bots that have been created in order to "improve" the steemit platform actually just make the experience here so much worse and dumb down so much, and seems like a way for overly controlling actions from a group of former hall monitors that ruins the potential that they are trying to foster.

It's an easily abused system, I know, but the problems the bots are created to try and solve don't really do the trick. Or, I admit to not knowing... maybe they are doing a good job and I'm just seeing the small downsides. A platform is created in order to share links of things the user "likes" and then that same user gets flagged or downvoted for using the platform in the way it was created for. I dunno. Just my thoughts...