RE: Why free downvotes are a good and necessary part of STEEM
Who is to decide what is quality content or not?
I see the same problem developing with the downvotes that was there before. This imbalance between the minnows and the whales. Only now the minnows that have the idea that certain practices are good or bad can now downvote each other. It doesn't matter if you're making good content and contributing to the value of steem in this way - anyone can downvote you for any reason.
The absence of an upvote in the previous system should have been enough to keep things in check. Simply adding a costless downvote does not solve anything. it makes things more complicated. Stupidly complicated.
I've just started releasing some music from a music project called Zen in a Nightclub, it's based on improvisation and involves artists from all around the world. I used a bid bot minnowbooster.net to promote my post.
It's good content, it should be seen, sometimes my content is picked up by curators and sometimes it is not.
I get a comment and a downvote from @acidyo telling me that I have received a downvote for using a bidbot.
I have a steem wallet with less than 150 steem in it, none of it I have put actual cash into, only generated from rewards. If I'm not using steem for promotion, besides steem power, what do I do with that steem?
Not only that, I am not the big whale that is causing the system to crash by using a bid bot. I am a small time user that is creating far greater quality content than many other accounts that have a much higher value.
It shouldn't matter that I use a bid bot.
Instead of @acidyo looking at the content and deciding its value, and giving a productive comment - I am immediately judged on my use of a bid bot and on that alone, without even looking at the content. With free downvotes small users and their spite have the power to pull down even smaller users just because. It's created the domain for virtual bullying.
How is this helping the platform? I'm on the edge about whether to use steem at all or not. It's becoming quite useless and now with free downvotes has given any Joe Blow the power to fuck you for any reason they imagine in their lucid mind.
Let's use our brains on this one.
I don't think steem is the future. Something else will emerge, but for sure steem has paved the way for that new thing.
The community should decide together what's quality and what not. You rewarding yourself break that system. Thinking you should be allowed to do that, and then saying that you don't think the system will work at all is very self centered and giving out a bit fuck you to everyone who is trying to make it work.
If it helps you to get over the edge: please don't use steem.
I am not making money off this. I am doing it for the love of it.
I am not loving steem. Goodbye steem.
It used to be acceptable to use minnowbooster. I wasn't aware the rules changed.
Now we have new rules and new upstarts thinking they know everything.
I honestly cannot be bothered.
"If it helps you to get over the edge: please don't use steem."
This was added later in an edit.
I won't use steem. It's ok. I'll use real life. I'll get away from computers and speak with real people.
More than anything this whole exercise has taught me that expression cannot be contained in electronic form and we lose the live aspects of things. We've lost the life trying to put a value on everything.
Steem is full of mediocre content. And that is not improving.
The whales still rule the day and the rewards still end up in the pockets of those that have. It's a general rule of thumb, those that have will be given more and those that don't will have whatever it is they have taken from them.
Free downvotes doesn't change this.
"You rewarding yourself break that system."
I am not rewarding myself. I don't get money from using this bid bot, it's just promotion. It uses the same steem that I put into it, to make my content seem a little more popular. There is no real accumulation of wealth, am not suddenly in charge of the keys to the inflation of steem and giving myself all the wealth.
This is how you make it seem.
I am not the enemy in this equation.
Whales will abuse because that is business.
You do what you can with what you have. If bid bots aren't 'legal' anymore then other means will come to the fore to make something be perceived as popular.
Numerous accounts with networks set up that are not in any way honest about voting of content because it is popular are generated by whales. They get votes on content because that's where they want the votes, not because that's what is what the people want.
It's the nature of 'attracting investors' and putting a value on things. This is business. Art and business traditionally do not mix.
It seems that those that have gone ahead and decided to express themselves on here have done nothing more than become content slaves for the whales.
And if you say it's becoming more equal, well good for you, the whales aren't getting smaller and the need for their money is not going away.
A new platform must be generated in which everyone is equal from the start. No new money can be brought in, it must be open source and volunteer based and yes it will have problems. I see this as the only way.