Grey Areas of STEEM : #1 Legitimate Self-Voting vs Abusive Self-Voting
Some believe that all Self-Voting is bad while others don’t have any problem with it. I’ve seen calls to have Self-Voting banned but the truth of it is that if someone wants to Self-Vote then they can easily get around a ban by creating a sock puppet account and voting from it instead. So I personally think it’s better to try and understand why people Self-Vote and try to find out where consensus says the line is drawn between what is Legitimate and what is Abuse. Welcome to the first of my posts exploring the Grey Areas of STEEM.
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Before I start, this is a bit of a work in progress. If I’ve missed anything or you disagree with what I’m saying then feel free to post a comment and throw in your 2 cents worth (literally or figuratively - I don’t mind). My objective here is to try and understand these Grey Areas a bit better myself so that I can figure out where the consensus might be on what is generally considered to be acceptable behaviour. So here they are – The reasons for Self-Voting :-
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There is a small checkbox on Steemit.com where there is an option to “Upvote Post” when you submit some new content. This is generally considered to be an easy shortcut to Self-Voting your own post while submitting it and many use it for the purpose of giving their new content a bit of a boost so that it can get on its way to the Trending page. A lot of people have started using bid bots and even the seemingly defunct “Promoted” feature to try and boost the exposure of their own content in a similar way and this practise of paying to promote your content seems to be widespread on the platform. In this instance a user is spending some of their own Voting Power rather than paying someone else to promote their post.
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Once a user has posted some new content, many comments from other Steemians might start coming in. Some of those comments could be comprehensive, invaluable and/or insightful, while others might just be vague, brief and/or spammy. It is very common for dedicated Steemians to try and answer questions or provide additional content for people who have engaged with their posts by commenting. Comment Curation is the process of upvoting comments so that they are “bumped” and will appear higher on the page. It is done so that new readers can read beyond the original post and find more valuable content as they read through the top comments. Some Steemians will also comment on others posts and Self-Vote their comments so that they are boosted above the poor quality posts (often bot spam) and thus become more visible.
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There is a generally held view that we are here on STEEM to reward good content and we should be upvoting content that we think is undervalued and downvoting content that we think might be overvalued from a rewards (earnings) perspective. What this means is that if some people are posting or commenting and they believe they have added more value to the platform or the discussion than the rewards currently show, then they should Self-Vote to ensure that their valuable contribution is appropriately rewarded.
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This is the process of Self-Voting for the purpose of maximising ones own rewards and ensuring the best possible ROI (Return on Investment) for the STEEM POWER that has been vested by a user. It can even be possible to lease STEEM POWER delegations from others and then 100% Self-Vote to cover the lease expense and then guarantee a profit on top of it.
So I’ll be right up front and admit that I Self-Vote myself on occasion for the purpose of #2 and at the start of my journey I Self-Voted for the purpose of #1 but I don’t bother with Self-Voting for Post Promotion any more (partly because my vote is too weak). I have also recently gone to war with a user and downvoted them for Self-Voting for the purpose of #4. So for me what I consider Legitimate is #1 and #2 and what I consider Abuse is #4 which puts my Grey Area somewhere around #3. But I am genuinely interested to hear others views on this. Maybe I am in the minority here. Maybe some would consider me to be a Self-Voting Abuser, or maybe some would consider me to be an Aggressor or an Oppressor for initiating a war against a poor innocent minnow who was just trying to get a Return on their Investment. It's a Grey Area right?
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I think it matters depending on Steem power. For whales to be able to self upvote their post hundreds of dollars regardless of content seems outside the point of curation.
For minnows just starting out it makes sense to self upvote until you get noticed and start receiving larger upvote from the community.
However at the end of the day I favor decentralized action over centralized oppression.
It's an interesting angle. I hadn't considered the relativity of the voters STEEM POWER. Thanks for your comments! :)
It's an interesting debate. I was dead set against it at one time but now I share my votes out between self voting and curating. I have a long term plan and self voting helps me to achieve that plan. At the same time I don't leave pointless "Great post!" comments, I do try to add value to posts. I generally don't upvote posts that have just copied a link or video from somewhere else, although I might comment on them.
I don't think it's a grey area, I think it's just a matter of choice. Having said that if they restricted self voting I wouldn't be overly bothered.
I'd be really interested to hear how the Self-Voting fits into your long term plan if you feel like sharing.
I'm just trying to build steempower, reputation and followers to the point where I can create a reasonable income from each of my posts (somewhere between $10 and $50). This will take a long time so in the meantime everything gets ploughed back into steempower. Generally if I get to the end of the day and I have plenty of voting power left I will use it up on self votes rather than let it sit at 100% which would be a waste of my voting power. Given that it all gets turned into steempower nobody loses out and many people gain from higher powered votes.
Seems logical and reasonable. Thanks for sharing :)
In the end, nearly everyone is on this platform mainly to make some money. (how many of the blogs and posts would exist if there was no monetary rewards...)
When thinking in probabilities and return on investment, smaller accounts tend to earn a lot more actually. The more SP you have the more difficult it is to get back your own 10 full upvotes. This is why bigger accounts upvote eachother or why many of the whales turned into upvote bots or sell their votes. (why do any effort if you can earn way more without any effort at all especially because curation is broken)
Upvoting yourself 10 times each day is socially not accepted while running an upvote bidbot, selling upvotes or giving upvotes for upvotes is.
If everyone would use part of their SP and upvoting power to give something back to the community without asking anything in return, Steemit would be a much better place allready and give much more back over time. Bigger accounts to me have a bigger responsability in this regard.
Solutions:
No matter what happens it's always going to be a very grey area and hard to stop real abuse as people have a very short term mindset. It sure is an interesting topic to think about.
You and I think very similarly. I think it is an appreciation and tolerance for variance ;)
You make very good points about it being easier to get an ROI with a smaller SP and it's harder for the big whales to get a high ROI. Maybe that is why they do what they do. Sometimes so blatantly....
Curation definitely needs to be fixed because some of the big problems we see today are a direct result of people (like me) giving up on putting significant effort into Curation. Reward for flagging is an interesting idea. Might have to stew on that one for a bit as it could be open to abuse too.....
As for your AI suggestion to identify Circle Jerking I was thinking that EXACT same thing yesterday. It is going to feature in one of my next Grey Area posts as I have been thinking about how I would frame an SQL query around identifying circle jerks. This kind of thing is going to get easier as AI gets better.....but then again abusers will probably get smarter too.
What about if we are all limited to up-voting a single account max 4 times per 24 hour period.
Even if you had a sock puppet account, you could only upvote yourself 4 times per day.
I don't think what you or the vast majority of people are doing is abuse.
I think abuse is posting 10 X 200 word fluff posts per day and up-voting them all 100%.
But what if you had 4 sock puppet accounts? I don't underestimate the desire for some people to do what is needed to get their precious ROI.
I saw your link to this post on SSG. Thank you for writing this and apologies for not seeing it when it was earning $ for you.
Self voting on comments shits me to tears. I posted something a few days back that has gotten a large amount of notice. This women posts some crap comment, upvotes herself to the top of my comments (I think with a bigger vote than she gave me.) And then upvoted a second comment of her own on the same post that she made in reply to someone else’s comment on my post. It just seemed like she is trying to ride my trail on that post to her own reward. I have no SP otherwise I would have down voted her into negative $. I also tried to upvote more thoughtful comments above her but again I have no SP so my $0.00 vote didn’t compete with the $0.11 and $0.10 she dropped on herself.
I also saw a post by another steemian. Some guy came by, commented, upvoted himself but not the post. His comment was dumb and short. Then two of his cronies followed in upvoting his comment, but again not the original post.
It is so rude.
Thanks. I had a look at your post and I agree it is rude. To self vote such a relatively large amount and not even upvote the post is just really poor form in book. It happens to us all.
There is starting to be some co-ordinated response to this sort of bad self-voting behaviour. Have a look at @sadkitten it is one I am supporting and it is an approach which is hopefully going to start chipping away at the problem.
Thank you for sharing the info re @sadkitten. This seems like a very logical way to counter excessive self voting.
If you're running a competition where the prize is the SBD payout then a self vote increases the prize pool, so I think that's an acceptable use of self voting. Also if your post is a fundraiser for a cause then self voting could be considered acceptable to help increase the donation. I prefer to add a self vote the following day though, so it allows more curation for other voters
#3 would be a grey area for me too. As a newbie your self vote is hardly going to make an impact anyway, but once you're bigger then the chances are that you don't really need to self vote to reward your post as you'll have a following to do that for you.
I've only self voted a comment once and it was to say something that would be of benefit to the author the more people saw it. My vote was so puny I didn't get it far up the list, but a couple of others helped bump it up some more.
Self voting is like a lot of things. In the right hands it can do good in the wrong hands it's just an enabler of greed, but I don't think it should be gotten rid of just because some use it for selfish reasons.
Good point. Boosting prize pools or fundraisers seems a good use of self-vote. I guess the underlying theme here is that it is not "selfish" voting.
Hey I wrote an article about this awhile ago.
My thoughts are that as a minnow it doesnt make to much of a difference whether you upvote your own content (I sometimes do) but I usually like to share around my upvotes with content I enjoy.
However as your upvote becomes worth more I think upvoting your own posts will obviously make them more visible which is a good thing (providing you are writing good content)
What I hate and disagree with is when people comment a meaningless comment on someones post and then upvotes their comment. Expecially if there upvote is worth a bit all it does is bring their meaningless comment to the top of the comments and push others further down the list
That's a really good piece. Sorry I missed it.
I agree with you on the meaningless comment. It's annoying. It was happening to me consistently and that was the initial catalyst for my war declaration.
Thanks! Good to share and discuss opinions :) Yeah I see it all the time. 'nice comment' and then the author has upvoted it for like $1... what a waste - it doesnt do anything to help or encourage minnows to grow - just lines their pockets
Use a bit of then vp to flag their comments. Maybe some Will improve over time.
Great idea. Its worth a try for sure
Well it's what I tried. First thing is always reply to the comment and give an explanation for why you are flagging. If you're lucky they might even read it and learn from it :)
I don't really think upvoting yourself is that big of a problem. Ya it sucks to see a whale 'waste' voting power on themselves and not someone else but if you are posting original content or adding value to the platform I think you have every right to reward yourself too.
I think we have a bigger problem with people spamming, posting articles and videos without citing sources. It's to a point where I see a lower rep post a lengthy well written article with no sources and I don't even bother voting for it because more often than not someone else wrote it.
I am more concerned about my good comments not getting up votes, in last two hours I have commented on 11 posts but no one has up voted. Selfish people.
Well, you'll get a decent vote here for decent engagement, so come again soon! :)
I think some of those other problems will show up in future posts about the Grey Areas of STEEM.
I would draw the line when self voting is no longer necessary to launch undervalued posts in order to attain a "seed" audience.
Other words, when it reduces opportunity for supporters, when they are already on the hook to share in a reasonable % of the reward.
Many shrewd authors know that most curators are not aware that the reward pool can be and has been devalued for them.
I'd say it's another microcosm of what we see in the world all around us.
A gray area.. I think so - in that perception of need vs. greed.
"Gray area" is expected when there is a lack of structured boundaries but I don't think that these are necessary and may do more harm than good. Difference in opinion are healthy to a great extent provided these are not allowed to assume power over the choices of others.
By bringing it up in conversation however, if there are many actual human beings at the table- raises awareness and with that, a chance to shift additional weight toward communal benefit and growth.
I'm not quite understanding the entirety of your points. But I do like your initial sentence. Just wondering how you would measure or quantify that. By the number of followers? By the number of "organic" voters on previous posts?